“Yes; I was told so as I came in by Ahmed the mirakhor. I hope that some of those brought by the Kiahia will be strong and skilful, so as to make head against that tyrannical, ill-natured Osman Bey, our Pasha’s wakeel. Here we have no one who can contend with him. I dislike him,” added the old eunuch, “but, to say the truth, I have not seen his match at the jereed.”
“Will not the young stranger whom you spoke of?” said Amina, hesitating to mention the name.
“Hassan?” said Mansour.
“Yes, Hassan; will not he play at the jereed, and may he not be a match for Osman?”
“I doubt it,” replied Mansour, shaking his head; “notwithstanding his strength, activity, and horsemanship, he is but a youth, and he can scarcely have had opportunity for acquiring the skill and experience requisite for complete proficiency in this game.”
While this conversation was passing, Hassan had brought the wounded boy to the house, where he had carried him gently upstairs and deposited him on his own bed. Shortly afterwards the surgeon arrived, and having examined the wound, he found, to Hassan’s great satisfaction, that the ball had passed clean through the fleshy part of the arm, just below the shoulder, without injuring any bone or ligament, and the patient was only suffering from loss of blood.
Having dressed the wound, he said, “Let him have rest and light wholesome food; in a few days he will be well.” The doctor then took his leave, and Hassan, by the assistance of his friend Ahmed Aga, found a small empty room, not far from his own, in which he placed a bed, and having conveyed thither his patient, went to find some refreshing draught, for which he stood much in need. In a few minutes he returned with a cool lemonade, and having drunk it, the dumb boy looked up in his face with tears of gratitude in his eyes.
Hassan was desirous of ascertaining something of the history of his helpless companion, who began to converse with him by rapid movements of his slight and delicate fingers. This, however, being a sealed alphabet to our hero, he shook his head in token that he did not understand a syllable. The boy then began with his right (his unwounded hand) to imitate writing with a pen on paper.
“You can read and write, can you?” said Hassan. The boy nodded his head. Hassan then went down to his office below, and soon returned, bringing with him an inkstand, a reed, and some paper. The result of the written conversation was that Hassan learned that the boy’s name was Murad; that he was an orphan, ignorant of his parentage; that as a child he had been in the house of a captain of Bashi-Bazouks, who one day, in a fit of drunken fury, had cut off more than half of the poor child’s tongue owing to some hasty word that had escaped him; that having been kicked out of the captain’s house, he had been kindly treated by one of the mollahs attached to the Mosque El-Azhar,[[57]] where he had remained for several years learning to read and write, fed from the funds of the institution; and that for the last two years he had picked up a precarious subsistence by carrying letters and parcels all over the town. He ended his artless tale by saying that everybody in Cairo knew him, and he knew everybody.
While this conversation in writing was passing, Hassan received a summons from Delì Pasha, whom he found in his salamlik on the first floor.