This The Young
Man Did, And Shortly Afterwards I Met Him Unexpectedly In The Streets
Of Cairo.
Deprived of my companion, I resolved to waste no time in the Red Sea,
but to return to Egypt with the utmost expedition.
The boy Mohammed
having laid in a large store of grain, purchased with my money, having
secured all my disposable articles, and having hinted that, after my
return to India, a present of twenty dollars would find him at Meccah,
asked leave, and departed with a coolness for which I could not
account. Some days afterwards Shaykh Nur explained the cause. I had
taken the youth with me on board the steamer, where a bad suspicion
crossed his mind. “Now, I understand,” said the boy Mohammed to his
fellow-servant, “your master is a Sahib from India; he hath laughed at
our beards.”
[p.272] He parted as coolly from Shaykh Nur. These worthy youths had
been drinking together, when Mohammed, having learned at Stambul the
fashionable practice of Bad-masti, or “liquor-vice,” dug his “fives” into Nur’s
eye. Nur erroneously considering such exercise likely to induce
blindness, complained to me; but my sympathy was all with the other
side. I asked the Hindi why he had not returned the compliment, and the
Meccan once more overwhelmed the Miyan with taunt and jibe.
It is not easy to pass the time at Jeddah. In the square opposite to us
was an unhappy idiot, who afforded us a melancholy spectacle.
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