I walked quietly away from the door, and then returned clearing my throat loudly and making as much noise as I could and asked for my mail. Sheykh Senussi welcomed me most cordially. The basin of water, the gum and the sealing wax had all disappeared. The postmaster was busily engaged in sorting the letters. But I fancy that I had just seen one of the many ways in which information gets known in Egypt!
Affairs in Mut I found to be in a very queer state. A new mamur had arrived on the scene, who, according to reports, both drank and took hashish to such an extent that he had gone practically mad. He had quarrelled so violently with the police officer, his understudy, that one day he had fired three revolver shots at him, from a window in his house, as he crossed the square by the mosque. I was shown the places where the bullets had ploughed up the ground, so something of the sort had probably happened.
The mamur, after this exhibition, shut himself up in his house and never went out even to the merkaz, and declined to see anyone. The policeman was doing his feeble best to keep things going; but as he was afraid to go to the merkaz, which lay close to the mamur’s house, for fear that he should be shot at again, he was somewhat handicapped in his work.
I passed once through the mosque square and caught a glimpse of the mamur peeping at me through the crack by the hinge of his half-opened door, but this was the only view I had of him.
He sent me, however, a roundabout message to the effect that he had seen me pass his house and he considered it an ayb that I had not called on him as he was the head of the Government in the oasis, and a much more important person than I was myself. He added that he expected me to do so at once. As my views as to our relative importance differed from his, I continued to ayb him in the same way till I left the oasis.
The day after our arrival, Qwaytin asked permission to go for the day to the village of Hindau. There was, I knew, a small Senussi zawia there, but it would have been useless for me to refuse him permission, so long as he was at liberty, and with the existing state of affairs in the oasis it was quite out of the question to try and get him arrested. So I thought it best to pretend I did not see what he was driving at and allowed him to go.
Later in the day I was in my room in the upper floor of the store when, rather to my surprise, I heard Qwaytin’s voice in the court below talking to Dahab and Abd er Rahman. As I had not expected him back so soon, I suspected that he was up to some mischief, so had no hesitation at all in listening to the conversation, especially as I wished to know more exactly the terms on which he stood with my men.
They were immediately below my window; but Qwaytin was speaking in such a low voice that I could only catch a word here and there of what he was saying. But I caught enough of the conversation to become greatly interested.
He was apparently giving them instructions from a certain Sheykh Ahmed, whose identity I was unable to ascertain. Repeatedly I heard him mention a certain kafir (infidel) and once a “dog,” of whose identity I entertained no doubt at all—listeners proverbially hear no good of themselves. Several times I heard him state “Sheykh Ahmed says—” something that was quite inaudible, followed by expostulations from Dahab and Abd er Rahman, and then again they were told that “Sheykh Ahmed says—” something else that the kafir would have given a good deal to have heard.
Eventually, I heard Qwaytin take himself off, and, shortly afterwards, Dahab, looking terribly scared, came into the room, announcing that Dakhla was a very bad place indeed, and that we must get out of it as quickly as possible.