Saïd sped on, laughing in pure joy of the sunshine and the shadows, the bright hues and merry sounds of a life familiar to him. Swarthy faces looked out at him from dark thresholds of taverns and shops. There were donkeys, mules, camels, laden with sacks and bales and panniers. There was nothing sad, nothing to recall the cloud and its fear, save only a few Franks here and there; and even they failed to anger him, being clad not in dull raiment but in white. The sunshine on the multicoloured crowd, the chattering and gesticulation, the blue sky, the air, the very smells were friendly, redolent of home.
In a place where there was less traffic he slackened his pace, panting, and found himself bathed in sweat. For the first time he grew aware of the sun’s beams scorching his uncovered head, and instinctively he sought the shade of a wall, near the shop of a petty trader.
His own cries and laughter rang yet in his ears, but hollow and senseless. In the plum-coloured shade he sat down to rest, his eyes dwelling on the sunlit buildings opposite. Their tint against the sapphire sky made him think of barren, stony hills—the sunburnt hills of Es-Shâm. Of a sudden, there was a swimming in his head. Sickness seized him, forcing him to vomit. He groaned aloud, calling heartbroken on the name of Allah and bewailing his evil day. The merchant reclining at ease in the coolness of his shop hard by, hearing the sound of lamentation, came forth to see who made it. He was a tall, bearded man of middle life, wearing a high fez and embroidered turban; and his robe of mixed silk and cotton was green and crimson striped. Seeing an old man sit there bareheaded, he reproved him gravely for his folly, vowing by Allah that if he got a sunstroke he could blame no one but himself.
Saïd raised despairing eyes to the speaker—eyes which saw nothing but his own immediate wretchedness. He heard the voice of Selìm cry—
“Merciful Allah! … O my master! … O my eyes! O my dear! Is it indeed thyself, and in this shameful plight? … O mother of Mûsa, get food and drink! Let Hasneh make ready a pleasant bed! Behold Saïd, my beloved, is returned to us at the point of death, having white hair and the clothes of a Frank. Praise be to Allah that he is returned to us! May Allah spare him to us, and grant him peace and good health once more!”
Saïd heard Selìm’s voice and was glad to hear it. It sounded familiar, and he knew it friendly. “Praise be to Allah!” he murmured naturally. But his mind had no real knowledge of Selìm, and the words were but empty sound.
XVII
When Saïd recovered of his sunstroke, he was the honoured guest of the little household. Selìm’s love for him, born years before of gratitude for the gift of a stolen garment, was now doubled with the respect for one of unsound mind. The whole house was Saïd’s, the shop also and all it contained. Selìm or his wife would have waited on him all day long had Hasneh not forestalled them. Mûsa was told off to shadow him when he walked abroad, lest any evil should befall him. His head and the hair of his body were shorn duly according to the law, and he was arrayed in good clothes, which the master of the house bought for him at no small cost.
At the hour of the evening meal, when men are sociable in the relief of the day’s task done, Selìm would often tell his children and any chance guest the story of his acquaintance with Saïd. He would lift the brown dressing-gown with the red braiding out of the chest where it was kept, and tears would stand in his eyes as he showed it to the little circle, handling it reverently as a priceless relic. He would glance ruefully at the fisherman where he sat cross-legged, muttering often to himself and making strange play with his hands.
The young ones loved better to hear of the great slaughter and how bravely Ahmed Pasha met his death. They would clamour for their father to act the scene for them, showing where the Sultàn’s envoy stood, where the Wâly, where the file of soldiers who shot him down. Mûsa clenched teeth and hands at the point where the soldiers shirked their work, and for a time doggedly refused to fire. He vowed that he would rather be killed himself than slay an old man and a pious Muslim to pleasure infidels. They loved that story best for the fighting and bloodshed that were in it; but Selìm liked most to tell of Saïd the Fisherman and his great goodness.
Every morning, having broken his fast, Saïd roamed forth out of the city to a place he had discovered, where there were palm-trees beside a sandy road, and whence, through the dusty leaves of a garden, he got a glimpse of yellow sands and the dark blue sea. There, sitting cross-legged in the shade, he was happy all day long, laughing and crooning to himself, receiving homage from the poorer class of wayfarers—camel-drivers and muleteers, beggars and gipsies, snake-charmers and itinerant merchants—who respected the fine robe and the embroidered turban with which Selìm had invested him.
He loved to watch the long trains of camels winding with the road, and would strain his ears to hold the music of their bells when it grew faint and died in the distance. It pleased him to see big men and fat go jogging by upon small donkeys, their legs distended because of full saddlebags, their feet not far from the ground. The blue-robed peasant women made eyes at him as they walked
