“Allah!” he exclaimed. “Are you a doctor?”
This little pantomime was completely thrown away on the stolid Abdulla. He looked at the mamur with the amused curiosity that he would have shown to a performing monkey.
“No,” he said, in his slow stupid way. “I am not a doctor, of course—but I know a fool when I see one!”
The mamur concluded that he had heard enough of Abdulla’s evidence. I began to wonder if the Sudani was quite so “feeble in the head” as he had been represented!
“I find that Qway is a traitor. His work has been like pitch. What do you want me to do with him?” asked the judge.
I suggested, as delicately as I could, that that was a question to be decided by the court, and not by the accuser. After a whispered conversation with the police officer across the table, the mamur announced that he intended to put him in prison and send him, when the camel-postman went, in about a week’s time, to Assiut to be tried.
The attitude of the men towards Qway changed completely after his trial. There was no longer any need to be afraid of him. Their resentment at his conduct in the desert had had time to cool down. He had been bullied by a fellah mamur, been forced to confess in public that he had disgraced himself by getting lost in the desert, had been arrested by a Sudani and publicly paraded through the oasis dressed as a fellah. His humiliation was complete and could scarcely have been more thorough. The bedawin instinct for revenge had been amply satisfied. Hatred is generally largely composed of fear, or jealousy, and there was certainly no room for either where Qway was concerned. Moreover, the men had the usual feeling of compassion for those in adversity that forms one of the finest traits in the Mohammedan character.
So far as I was concerned, I was feeling rather sorry for my erring guide, to whom I had taken a strong liking from the start, for he had only been made a tool by the Senussi, who were the real culprits. So having once got him convicted, I told the mamur I did not want him to be severely punished, provided that “the quality of mercy was not strained.”
Dahab told me Qway was confined in irons and being fed only on bread and water. So I sent him some tea and sugar, with a message to the police that they might take the irons off and that I would “see them” before I left the oasis. Dahab asked for money to buy a quite unnecessary number of eggs for my consumption. I never enquired what became of them all; but the same evening he asked for leave to go to the doctor’s house, and started off with bulging pockets in the direction of the merkaz. He came back again with them empty shortly afterwards, saying that he had been told that Qway was resigned and very prayerful. The Sudanese, as I afterwards heard, sent him some cheese and lentils, to which Abdulla added a handful of onions, so altogether Qway must have rather enjoyed himself in prison.