He Knows No Fear But For Those Boxes.
Frequently During Our Search For A Vessel He Forced Himself Into
Ja'afar Bey's Presence, And There He Demeaned Himself So Impudently,
That We Expected To See Him Lamed By The Bastinado; His Forwardness,
However, Only Amused The Dignitary.
He wanders all day about the bazar,
talking about freight and passage, for he has resolved, cost what it
will, to travel free, and, with doggedness like his, he must succeed.
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.
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