“But I will make him give this old woman something,” I persisted. “She is his mother, perhaps, and is trying to ask him for food with all her strength. Give her some milk,” I cried.
The man mumbled something; I understood that he was telling me she was old, worn out, and that it was waste to feed her.
Overwhelmed with horror, I gasped: “Then you are letting her die—on purpose! She—she is dying because you have let her starve to death?”
He bowed his head. Then, as if he felt that some explanation was due to the roumia who was his guest, he added, in a low voice, “Her children will have her share. They want it.”
I seized my husband’s arm. “Come—come away from this horror,” I cried; and quickly we ran down the hill to where the fragrant narcissi grew, and there I flung myself on the ground and sobbed.
Presently the sweet, balmy air was filled with sharp shrieks and yells—the cries of mourning of the Arab women as they tear their faces with their nails. And I knew that the poor old woman had passed away, and that those who had starved her to death were now bemoaning her loss, and consoling themselves by saying, “In cha Allah!” (“It is the will of God”).
“‘GIVE HER SOME MILK,’ I CRIED.”
I went home a wiser and a sadder woman; I have never forgotten the horror of the incident.
From my window in the fort I had a beautiful view. In front was the range of mountains along which the cedar forest runs. I could just discern the rock where General M——’s first lion tried to get at him, and the small, scrubby tree up which the gallant General swarmed just in time. Lions are very rare nowadays in these parts, though a forester signalled the passage of one on the other side of the forest during my stay. On the left of my window I could see the bee-hive habitations of a race of negroes who live on the hill rising up immediately behind the chief street of Teniet. I think I have never seen such inhuman-looking, hideous specimens of the human race. Monkeys are far superior in looks to them, and their utter malignity and wickedness of expression lent additional ugliness to their distorted, pointed features. Murders were—well, if not daily occurrences, at least very frequent among them, and at last I grew quite accustomed to the diabolical shrieks and shouts which the warm, balmy air wafted to me from the opposite hill.