Shaykh Hamid Al-Samman Derives His Cognomen, The
"Clarified-Butter-Seller," From A Celebrated Saint And Sufi Of The
Kadiriyah Order, Who Left A Long Line Of Holy Descendants At
Al-Madinah.
This Shaykh squats upon a box full of presents for the
"daughter of his paternal uncle"
[P.163](his wife), a perfect specimen of the town Arab. His poll is
crowned with a rough Shushah or tuft of hair[FN#1]; his face is of a
dirty brown, his little goatee straggles untrimmed; his feet are bare,
and his only garment is an exceedingly unclean ochre-coloured blouse,
tucked into a leathern girdle beneath it. He will not pray, because he
is unwilling to take pure clothes out of his box; but he smokes when he
can get other people's tobacco, and groans between the whiffs,
conjugating the verb all day, for he is of active mind. He can pick out
his letters, and he keeps in his bosom a little dog's-eared MS. full of
serious romances and silly prayers, old and exceedingly ill written;
this he will draw forth at times, peep into for a moment, devoutly
kiss, and restore to its proper place with the veneration of the vulgar
for a book. He can sing all manner of songs, slaughter a sheep with
dexterity, deliver a grand call to prayer, shave, cook, fight; and he
excels in the science of vituperation: like Sa'ad, he never performs
his devotions, except
[p.164]when necessary to "keep up appearances," and though he has sworn
to perish before he forgets his vow to the "daughter of his uncle," I
shrewdly suspect he is no better than he should be. His brow crumples
at the word wine, but there is quite another expression about the
region of the mouth; Stambul, where he has lived some months, without
learning ten words of Turkish, is a notable place for displacing
prejudice. And finally, he has not more than a piastre or two in his
pocket, for he has squandered the large presents given to him at Cairo
and Constantinople by noble ladies, to whom he acted as master of the
ceremonies at the tomb of the Apostle.
Stretched on a carpet, smoking a Persian Kaliun all day, lies Salih
Shakkar, a Turk on the father's, and an Arab on the mother's side, born
at Al-Madinah. This lanky youth may be sixteen years old, but he has
the ideas of forty-six; he is thoroughly greedy, selfish, and
ungenerous; coldly supercilious as a Turk, and energetically avaricious
as an Arab. He prays more often, and dresses more respectably, than the
descendant of the Clarified-Butter-Seller; he affects the
Constantinople style of toilette, and his light yellow complexion makes
people consider him a "superior person." We were intimate enough on the
road, when he borrowed from me a little money. But at Al-Madinah he cut
me pitilessly, as a "town man" does a continental acquaintance
accidentally met in Hyde Park; and of course he tried, though in vain,
to evade repaying his debt.
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