The streets by night were even more bewildering than in the daytime. The long vistas of yellow lamps, branching endlessly one out of another, confused his brain. Every wheeled vehicle had monstrous bright eyes to frighten him. The mist of light was blinding—the eternal mist of cloud by day, of fire by night, from which the dull roar of traffic seemed inseparable. The crowd where no man saluted other, no one looked friendly at his neighbour, but every face was grim with a set purpose, seemed awful to him. He feared it with the fear of evil spirits. The cries which assailed his ears were mournful as a wailing for the dead.
At length, after hours of wandering, he found an archway giving access to a quiet court and flung himself down in its gloom, too weary to know or care that the stones were icy cold. But it seemed that he had scarcely fallen asleep ere he was awakened by the flash of a lantern in his face. A gruff voice made a humming in his ears, and the form of a policeman loomed tremendous in his heavy eyes—a dark form holding the light which dazed him. He struggled to his feet, and seeing the enemy in the act to step forward and seize him, made off through the archway and down the sounding street as fast as his stiff limbs would carry him.
After that he dared not lie down again, but wandered on, sometimes resting on a doorstep, sometimes leaning against a wall or some railings, until a pallor of dawn appeared in the east. He found a quiet place where he said his prayers undisturbed, and soon after, by the grace of Allah, lighted on another crust of bread—a huge chunk on which he broke his fast. Then, when the day was fully come, he entered a public garden enclosed with palings and lay down upon the first seat he came to.
How long he slept he could not tell, for when he awoke the sky was completely overcast, and the brown fog had no point of brightness to indicate the sun’s whereabouts. But the place where he lay was noisy with the play of ragged children, some of whom fled pell-mell as his eyes opened on them. His limbs were numbed so that, setting foot to the ground, he had to support himself by the back of the seat; and it was long ere he could walk safely.
As he issued from the garden he espied a well-known object amid the hurrying crowd on the footway of a great thoroughfare—a scarlet tarbûsh. With the strength of hope renewed, he ran as fast as he could to overtake its wearer. He came up with him, panting a salutation. But the face turned to him was not the face of the son of an Arab, but darker and of an olive tint not far removed from mouse-colour, the eyes set closer together. The reply to his salutation was in an unknown language; it was the speech of an unbeliever, in which the name of Allah did not occur. With a gesture of apology, expressive also of the deepest despair, Saïd fell back from him.
He got little heartbreaking reminders of the East from the form of a building here and there, and from homely objects in the shop windows. The sullen roar of the city was terrible in his ears, seeming now the voice of a cruel monster, now the growl of thunder—always hostile and inhuman. His eyes, unused to the subdued light, unable to appreciate its half tints, met a grey-brown horror everywhere. The women, too, dressed to provoke desire, had a share in his loathing of the scene. He would have liked to kill them for the involuntary thrill they gave.
Men and women with great baskets crouched by the edge of the roadway, selling flowers. Some of the foot-passengers stopped to buy them. Saïd met people with nosegays in their hands, and it surprised him that they did not smell at them as folks used to in the East; but on reflection it seemed likely that in this land of gloom and disappointment the blossoms had no smell or, if any, a foul one. He saw the sign of the cross often in all sorts of places, and spat on the ground for hatred of it, cursing the religion of the country secretly under his breath.
His brain grew confused. He was hunting for the sunlight which was lost. Little patches of colour drew his eyes and caused him a moment’s rejoicing as for a treasure found at last. But each disillusion left him more despairing. Of a sudden, at the turning of a street, a blare of trumpets smote his ears, together with the rhythmic beat of a drum. In the heart of an eager, hurrying crowd, of like hue with the houses, the fog and the mud of the roadway, marched a company of soldiers clad in gorgeous scarlet—a hundred of them moving as one man. Their brightness and the marvel of their going attracted Saïd. He followed them spellbound, yet with a kind of horror such as one has of jin in the night-season. He knew nothing of
