“But you are a guide. And you got lost!”
“Yes,” stammered Qway. To have to own to a mere fellah that he, the great desert guide, had lost his way, must have been most intensely humiliating; for the favourite gibe of the bedawin to the fellahin is that they are “like women,” and get lost directly they go in the desert.
No Egyptian could have resisted such a chance. The mamur began to question Qway minutely as to where, how and when he had got lost, and to the exact degree of lostness at each stage of the proceedings; and Qway, to his credit be it said, answered quite truthfully.
When he could rub it in no further, the mamur began to question him as to the remainder of his journey. Qway described how he had had to go two days without water and had almost ridden his camel to death in order to get back to our tracks, and how he and his camel had eventually managed to get back to Dakhla more dead than alive.
“You were hiding when you got back. Where did you hide?”
Qway hesitated a moment, then asked him in a low voice if he need answer. The mamur did not press that question. It was a distinctly ill-advised one. Qway had been in the Senussi zawia at Smint. He put a few more questions to him, then told him again that he was a traitor and that his work had been “like pitch,” and asked me what I wanted done next. I suggested that he might perhaps call a few witnesses, so Abdulla was brought in.
Abdulla had entirely recovered from the scare he had had in the desert, and, though Qway had tried to let him down, the mamur’s treatment of him seemed to have softened his views towards him. There is a bond of union between those who “know the nijem” and Qway, too, was in difficulties, and Mohammedans are usually sympathetic towards each other in those circumstances, so Abdulla tried to get Qway off.
The mamur asked him what he knew about the case.
“Effendim,” he said, “I think Qway went mad.”
The mamur flung himself back in his chair and spread out his hands.