After this I gave him a thorough good dressing down, and then graciously forgave him and we drowned our enmity in the usual tea. I was not altogether dissatisfied with the transaction, for I felt that I had read the ’omda a lesson that he would not forget for some time. In this, however, as events turned out, I was to be grievously disappointed—my troubles with regard to the camels’ fodder had only just begun.
On our arrival in Mut, I went at once to the post office for letters, and finding that the upper story of the place was vacant, arranged to rent it during my stay in the oasis. It proved to be far better quarters than the old gloomy, scorpion-haunted store, and I found no reason to regret the change.
UPPER FLOOR OF POST OFFICE.
The man who tended the garden of the post office was quite a local celebrity. He was no other than the blind drummer who officiated in the band, when there was a wedding in the district. He was also the town crier, and I frequently met him in the streets, where, after beating a roll on his drum to attract attention, he would call out the news that he was engaged to spread.
Curiously, considering that he was totally blind, he had the reputation of being the best grower of vegetables in the neighbourhood, and his services as gardener were in great request in consequence. He was passionately fond of flowers, and was almost invariably seen with a rose, or a sprig of fruit blossom in his hand, which, as he made his way about the streets, he continually smelt. Once, when I happened to meet him, the supply of flowers must have run short, for he was inhaling, with evident gusto, the delicious perfume of an onion!
His sense of locality must have been wonderful, for he made his way about the streets almost as easily as though in full possession of perfect eyesight. Plants of all kinds seemed to be an obsession with him. He would squat down by the side of a bed of young vegetables he had planted, feel for the plants by running his hands rapidly over the soil, and, having found one, would tenderly finger it to see how it was growing. He would in this way rapidly examine each individual plant in the bed, and occasionally comment on the growth of some particular plant since he had last handled it. The loss of his eyesight had evidently greatly quickened his other faculties, for he could find any plant he wished without difficulty, and seemed to have a perfect recollection of the state in which he had last left them, never, I was told, making any mistake in their identity. The gratified smile that lighted up his blind, patient face, when his charges were doing well was quite pathetic.
While staying in the post office my camels were accommodated about a hundred yards away, in an open space under the lea of the high mud-built wall that surrounds the town, close to where a break had been made in it to allow free passage to the cultivation beyond. The choice of this site for the camping ground of the camels turned out to be unfortunate, for the locality was haunted. A man, it was said, had been killed near there while felling a tree, and his ghost—or as some said a ghul—frequently appeared there.
A night or two after our arrival, Ibrahim, who was sleeping there alone with the camels, came up to my room, just as I was getting into bed, and announced that he was not a bit afraid—and he did not seem in the least perturbed—but an afrit kept throwing clods of earth at the camels, which prevented them from sleeping, so he thought he had better come and tell me about it.
The clods came from over the wall, and several times he had rushed round the corner, through the gap, to try and see the afrit who was throwing them, but he had been unable to do so, so he wanted me to come down and attend to him.