Lion of Petra (Unabridged). Talbot Mundy
came in, looking like another person altogether, although, if anything, bigger than before. He had got out of uniform and was dressed in a medley of Indian and Arab costume that made him look like one of those slaves in the “Arabian Nights” who cut off the heads of women. All he needed was a big curved simitar to fill the bill.
“Henceforth I am the hakim’s servant,” he said, showing his teeth in an enormous grin. “Only,” he added, “since it will be I who instruct the hakim, in secret the sahib must listen to me.”
He got out the medicine-chest, and being a Sikh with all of a soldier’s opinion of civilians proposed to teach me what the labels on the little bottles stood for. Even he laughed after a minute or two, when he had got himself thoroughly sewed up and called each bottle by its wrong name.
“Ah! What does it matter!” he exclaimed at last. “Sore eyes—broken leg—boils—knife-wound—let it be all one. Give episin salts—always episin. Then, if we are long in one place, so that a sick man comes a second time, swearing grievously because of episin, give croton. That person will not come again, but the fame of the hakim will spread far and wide.”
“You’d much better teach me how a hakim sits a camel,” I suggested.
“All ways, sahib, for the hakim is not seldom a bunnia whose parents bought him education. Softer than wax is the rump of a bunnia and one who reads books. He sits this way until the boils break out, and then that way until the skin chafes. Then presently he lies across the saddle on his belly and either prays or curses, according as his spirit is pious or otherwise. But the camel continues to proceed, since that is its nature.”
“Well, go on, instruct the hakim, then. The sahib listens.”
“It is well to remember there will be with us, besides those seventeen thieves of this place, who know who we truly are, four sons of the desert and a woman. Now the woman, being woman, and they are all alike, will take note of the hakim and pretend to little sickness for the sake of making talk. Whereas the men, being, as it were, the guardians of the woman, will be seized with pride and jealousy. So that what with the woman’s curiosity and the men’s watchfulness there will be great need for discretion.”
“How would you define discretion?”
“In the case of the woman, insolence. In the case of the men, a good humor —with perhaps some such physic for quarrelsomeness as croton oil administered in their food on suitable occasion. Whenever they get suspicious, sahib, drench their food!
“When the woman makes great eyes and shams complaints, tell her what their cursed Prophet said of women. Never mind whether he said it or not, sahib, for she will not know the truth of it, never having read the book. Only speak evil of all women, and so we shall come to Ali Higg’s nest in good repute.”
“All right. I’ll try not to flirt with the lady. What next?”
“The sahib will be accused of being a Persian, and will be insulted accordingly, for none loves a Persian in this land, Islam having two chief sects, of which the Persians chose to adopt the Shia faith, which is not in favor with the Sunni, who are most numerous and most fanatic. The less the Sunni knows of his religion the more he despises a Shia; and when these people despise they steal, strike, abuse, and act otherwise unseemly.”
“But I’m not supposed to be a Persian, am I?”
“No, for you could never act a Persian’s part. But they will accuse you of being a Persian because you are an Indian, as I have heard a man called a dago because he was born somewhere south of a certain line. When it has been established that you are no Persian, but an Indian, it must be remembered that there are only two kinds of Indians whom they do not despise, and they are Sikhs and Pathans—Sikhs, because a Sikh can smite three Arabs with one hand, and the Pathan for much the same reason.
“But I must not go as a Sikh because of the religious difficulty; neither may you be a Pathan, because you in no way resemble one, nor do you speak the Pushtu tongue. But I will be a Pathan, because I can speak that language; therefore they will respect me as a man prone to fight readily and well. And knowing that no Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you, although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course between peace and pugnacity, pretending on the one hand to restrain my quarrelsomeness, yet on the other depending for safety on my readiness to take offense—as a man who is accustomed to a servant of mettle.”
The rest of his lecture was about niceties of behavior, religious observances, and so on. It was a mystery how that man had never been promoted. He seemed to have eyes for everything and a memory for everything that he had ever observed. The Sikh despises the religion of Islam quite as fervently as the follower of the Prophet scorns Sikhism; yet he seemed familiar with every detail of Moslem custom, and knew to what extent geography affected it. The point he seemed to understand best was how to turn the flank of ignorant fanaticism.
“Whenever you make a mistake, sahib, remember this: you are Darwaish, which is a man who is privileged, having set behind him all unimportant matters. So when you are accused of not observing this or that, or of acting with impropriety, confound the Bedouin always by sneering at their ignorance, saying that where you come from men know what is proper. And Jimgrim, having truly made the pilgrimage to Mecca, will confound them likewise, having knowledge, whereas most of these rascals only know by hearsay.”
I suppose he lectured me for two hours, until Grim came in looking pleased with himself, followed by the two infants looking much more pleased. You can’t mistake the adventurous air of an eight-year-old with money hidden on his person, whatever his nationality may be. De Crespigny followed them in to learn the news.
“Know anything about old Rafiki, the wool-merchant?” Grim asked.
“Steady-going old party,” said de Crespigny. “Says his prayers, cheats his customers, keeps the curfew law, and runs a three-wife establishment, I believe, in three parts of town, all according to the Book. Why, have you run foul of him?”
“He has offered me ten thousand piastres to poison Ali Higg”
“Show me the money!” laughed de Crespigny.
“He was hardly as previous as that. His head wife bribed these kids to bring me to the house, and the old boy met me in the wool-store. Said he’d been told I was going to Petra.
“First suggestion he made was that I should take my time on the road and waylay a caravan that’s sure to follow. He’d no idea, of course, that the lady Ayisha is to travel with me. His little scheme is to provide her with camels and men on his own account—mean camels and his own men, who would run away at the first sign of trouble.
“He assumes that I’m a gay Lochinvar who’d like nothing better than to carry off the lady. He wants her carried off and ravished as a spite for Ali Higg.
“Well, I didn’t exactly fall for that; said I couldn’t very well approach Ali Higg afterward, and he admitted that relations in that case might be kind o’ strained. So he proposed next that I should meet up with Ali Higg and poison him. He offered to supply the poison—stuff that he said would make him die slowly in agony.”
“What’s his quarrel with Ali Higg?”
“Seems the old boy had a daughter who was the apple of his eye—or so he said. She was on her way down to Egypt; and I suspect she did not travel by train because she’s been bought by some beast of a pasha. They didn’t want inquiries by passport people, or any interfering bunk like that.
“Anyhow, Ali Higg is quite a ladies’ man, and he happened to be crossing the map with part of his gang of thieves somewhere down Beersheba way. He agreed with the pasha on the point of taste and carried off the girl. So old wool-merchant Rafiki had to refund the purchase-price—not that he admitted that to me, of course.
“I suspect that’s where the rub comes. If he hadn’t been selling the girl illegally he’d surely have complained