But as the people's sufferings increased the metaphors were dropped, and the injustices they laboured under were stated in plain terms. Hitherto, when a summons had been taken out against a man for the non-payment of his taxes, the magistrate might remit or cancel or postpone, but now there was nothing but summary execution everywhere, with the result that stock and crops were being sold up by the police, and neither the Mudirs (the governors) nor their Sarrafs (cashiers) cared what price was realised so long as the amount of the taxes was met.
"Is there no redress, no remedy, no appeal? What are we to do?" asked the people, in the messages that came in the turbans.
"Be patient!" replied Ishmael. "It is written, 'God is with the patient.'"
A hundred times Helena wrote this answer at Ishmael's dictation, on pieces of paper hardly bigger than a large postage stamp, and it was hidden away in some secret place in the messenger's clothes.
As time went on the messages became more urgent and painful. The law said that at times of distraint the clothes of the debtor, his implements of cultivation, and the cattle he employed in agriculture were to be exempt from seizure, but the district officers were seizing everything by which the people worked, and yet requiring them to pay taxes just the same.
"What are we to say?" asked the messengers.
"Say nothing," answered Ishmael. "Suffer and be strong. Not for the first time on the banks of the Nile have people been required to make bricks without straw. But God will avenge you. Wait!"
This message, also, Helena wrote a hundred times, wishing it had been more explicit, but Ishmael committed his signature to no compromising statement, no evidence of conspiracy, and that deepened Helena's conviction of his cunning and duplicity.
The intensity of her feeling against Ishmael did not abate by coming to close quarters. Day by day, as she sat in the guest-room, she poisoned her mind and hardened her heart against him. She even found herself taking the side of his people in the sufferings he continued to impose upon them. She was sure, too, that in addition to his plan of passive resistance he had some active scheme of vengeance against the Government. What was it? She must wait and see.
After a while letters began to arrive from Cairo. They were from the Chancellor of El Azhar, and contained the messages of the Ulema.