“How came the donkey to obtain this great measure of respect?” inquired Mr Thorpe.
“He belonged,” replied Demetri, “to a builder who was engaged in repairing some tombs in the neighbourhood: this donkey had been one of a score employed in carrying bricks and mortar. It would seem that he had contrived to shake off his load, and had gone for shelter into that half-ruined sheik’s tomb: meanwhile his owner, with the other donkeys, had been suddenly called off to do some building-work at a distance for the Viceroy.
“That night it appears that a fikih [priest] of some celebrity in the town had a dream, warning him that if he wished his prayers to be heard he must go to the sheik’s tomb in question and pay honour to whomsoever he might find under its roof. Hastening thither in the morning, he found it tenanted by a donkey, to which, in order to obey the warning he had received, he made an offering of some beans and barley. Having communicated his dream to his religious brethren, it was soon spread all over the town. Pious Mussulmans flocked thither to pray for their sick relatives, and the long-eared recluse tasted of the sweets of idleness, plenty, and all the other ingredients in the cup of donkey-happiness.”[[106]]
“Why, Demetri,” said Mr Thorpe, laughing, “you have finished your tale in a style worthy of the ‘Arabian Nights.’”
“It is no wonder,” replied the Greek; “I hear so many of those story-narrators at the Arab cafés in the town that I borrow their style almost without knowing it.”
“Mohammed Ali well knows,” continued the Greek, “how to take advantage of this popular reverence for the tombs of sheiks. A short time ago one stood close to a garden of his, and the visitors who flocked to it disturbing his privacy, he determined to remove it in a manner that should offer no offence to the reputation of the sheik or the fanaticism of the people.
“Collecting in secret a large body of labourers from one of his distant villages, he caused them in the course of a single night to destroy the tomb and to rebuild it at a spot about two miles distant, in the same form and of the same materials, after which they were sent back to their own village as secretly as they had been summoned.
“On the following day all Cairo was full of the new miracle—Sheik-el-Ghazi had transported his own tomb two miles in the course of the night. Thousands flocked to the miraculous shrine, which is to this day an object of the deepest reverence in the neighbourhood.”[[107]]
The next day Mr Thorpe and his party went to pay a visit to Delì Pasha previous to their departure for Upper Egypt. Emily and her mother were conducted to the harem, where, after a brief and uninteresting visit to the senior Khanum, they went to the apartment occupied by Amina.
Both were struck by the change which a year had wrought in her appearance. She was not less lovely than before, but her bright and mirthful glance had given place to a look of saddened tenderness and a general expression of melancholy.