He looked sadly down to the ground and sighed profoundly. “I have been working very badly,” he said, “very badly indeed. I am a broken thing. I am the flesh and you are the knife.” It certainly looked remarkably like it.
I asked him what excuse he had to make for his conduct. He looked at me for a moment to see what line he had better take, and the one that he took was not particularly complimentary to my intelligence.
“It was very hot, Your Excellency—very hot indeed. And I was alone and an afrit climbed up on to my camel.”
At this point I thought it might be advisable to have a witness, so I sang out for Dahab.
“No, Effendim, not Dahab. Don’t call Dahab,” said Qway in a much perturbed voice. Presumably he thought Dahab would be less likely to be convinced by his story than I would. Dahab entered the room with surprising promptness—the doors in the oasis are not sound-proof.
I told Qway to get on with his story of the afrit, which promised to be a good one.
“There was an afrit, Your Excellency, that got up behind me on my camel and kept on telling me to go there and to do this, and I had to do it. It was not my fault the water was upset. It was the afrit. I had to do what he told me.” Then, hearing a snort from Dahab, he added that there was not only one afrit, but many, and that that part of the desert was full of them.
I thought it time to stop him. I told him I had heard quite enough, and that he had to come round with me to the merkaz. This upset him terribly.
“No, not the merkaz, Your Excellency. Not the merkaz. In the name of Allah do not take me to the merkaz. Take everything I have got, but do not take me to the merkaz.”
But to the merkaz he had to go. We called in at the camel yard to pick up the other men, as they might be wanted as witnesses, and then proceeded in a body to the Government office, Qway all the way attempting to bribe me to let him off by offering me his belongings, among which, with an obvious pang, he expressly offered me his camel.