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However, I reflected that it would be a just and righteous thing to go down and write a kind word for the Hadjis Hadjis are people who have made the pilgrimage because parties not interested could not do it so feelingly as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the valedictory.
The Turkish soldiers and the Hadjis are particularly fond of it, but the Arabs never can be induced to taste it; many of them, observing that it differs in appearance from all other meat with which they are acquainted, persist in regarding it as pork, and the estimation in which they hold the Turkish soldiery and their religious principles is not likely to remove their prejudices on this head.
There were eighty or a hundred men, no women, and five or six 'Hadjis', draped in beautiful Eastern dresses, and looking very supercilious. The whole party made less noise in moving and talking than two Englishmen. He told me the dead man was his brother-in-law, and he himself the barber. I hoped I had not taken a liberty.
Francois and I talked entirely in Arabic, and the old man asked: "Who are these Hadjis?" whereupon F. immediately answered: "They are Effendis from Baghdad." We had intended making the ascent of Olympus, but the summit was too thickly covered with clouds. On the morning of the second day, therefore, we determined to take up the line of march for Constantinople.
A long verandah, lined with hadjis and elders, all smoking and talking, led to the principal room, which, unlike any Malay house before built in Sarawak, had large Venetian-shuttered doors all round, and was therefore cool and airy. There was a little round table, and some armchairs covered with white mats for the expected guests, in the middle of the room.
They are all going to the market where the khat will soon arrive, each one anxious to have first choice and get the best bargain. There they will bicker with the khat traders for an hour sometimes, then in will come the despised hadjis, the venders of firewood, who will buy up for a few pice the scraps which remain."
He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl over the green steaming mud; and of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.
He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little café at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.
"It is only to hadjis," observed Yussuf, "that I give this great proof of my skill." The man put his hand into his pocket, pulled out three dirhems, and presented them to Yussuf, who was astounded at such liberality, and again expressing his satisfaction, the hadji left the hummaum.
I call that complimentary. It is complimentary; and yet I never have received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I speak nothing but the serious truth when I say that many of them even took exceptions to the article. In endeavoring to please them I slaved over that sketch for two hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never will do a generous deed again.
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