One Inquisitive Man

[P.217] was always at my side.

He called himself a Pathan (Afghan settled in India); he could speak five or six languages, he knew a number of people everywhere, and he had travelled far and wide over Central Asia. These fellows are always good detectors of an incognito. I avoided answering his question about my native place, and after telling him that I had no longer name or nation, being a Darwaysh, I asked him, when he insisted upon my having been born somewhere, to guess for himself. To my joy he claimed me for a brother Pathan, and in course of conversation he declared himself to be the nephew of an Afghan merchant, a gallant old man who had been civil to me at Cairo. We then sat smoking together with "effusion." Becoming confidential, he complained that he, a Sunni, or orthodox Moslem, had been abused, maltreated, and beaten by his fellow-travellers, the heretical Persian pilgrims. I naturally offered to arm my party, to take up our cudgels, and to revenge my compatriot. This thoroughly Sulaymanian style of doing business could not fail to make him sure of his man. He declined, however, wisely remembering that he had nearly a fortnight of the Persians' society still to endure. But he promised himself the gratification, when he reached Meccah, of sheathing his Charay[FN#13] in the chief offender's heart.

At 8 A.M.} on the 14th July we left Al-Wijh, after passing a night, tolerably comfortable by contrast, in the coffee-house.

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