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Give a man the egotism of grief, and eloquence, and popularity, and he'll cut as sharp as the khamsin wind. The dust he'll raise will blind more eyes than you can see in a day's march, Yankee. You may take my word for it." Renshaw looked at Dicky thoughtfully. "You're wasting your life here. You'll get nothing out of it. You're a great man, Donovan Pasha, but others'll reap where you sowed."
"O effendi, shall the camel-driver laugh when the camels are lost in the khamsin and the water-bottle is empty?" "Certainly not, O son of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert, nor a gaudy caravan. This is a feast of all angels. This is the day when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in a ring. Where is the Saadat?" "He is gone, effendi!
At a little distance the two lovers watched not with their eyes but with their nostrils and ears, and their sharp growl was like the breath of the khamsin passing through the branches of the euphorbium and the nopal.
He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words. Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible, intervened. "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be useless," he said, with a chuckle. "When the khamsin blows the dust-storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels. 'Malaish! he says, and buries his face in his yelek."
The old man said this with so much emphasis, that Nebenchiari could not help smiling and saying: "Have they treated you so very badly then, old man?" "Pestilence and Khamsin!" blustered the old man. "There's not a more good-for-nothing Typhon's brood on the face of the earth than these Persians. I only wonder they're not all red-haired and leprous.
Called in the east the Sherghis, and in the west the Khamsin, this fiery sirocco comes laden with fine particles of heated sand, which at once raise the temperature and render the air unwholesome to breathe. In Syria these winds occur commonly in the spring, from February to April; but in Susiana and Babylonia the time for them is the height of summer.
Sime continued: "When I got to Cairo this evening I found news of the Efreet had preceded me. Honestly, Cairn, it is all over the town the native town, I mean. All the shopkeepers in the Mûski are talking about it. If a puff of Khamsîn should come, I believe they would permanently shut up shop and hide in their cellars if they have any! I am rather hazy on modern Egyptian architecture."
He had heard of the disfavour in which the Inglesi was; but, as he looked at David's face with its quiet smile, the influence which he felt in the desert long ago came over him again. "By Allah," he said aloud abstractedly, "it is a face that will not hide when the khamsin blows! Who shall gainsay it? If he were not an infidel he would be a Mahdi."
Day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, when the whole land lay sweltering with the moist heat of flood-time, in the period of the khamsin, in the dry heat which turned the hair grey and chapped the skin like a bitter wind, he slaved and schemed, the unconquerable enthusiast, who built houses which immediately fell down.
As Cambyses had heard at Thebes, that the army he had sent against the oasis of Ammon in the Libyan desert, had perished miserably in a Khamsin, or Simoom, and that his fleet, which was to conquer Carthage, had refused to fight with a people of their own race, he fancied that the Memphians must be celebrating a festival of joy at the news of his misfortunes, sent for their principal men, and after reproaching them with their conduct, asked why they had been gloomy and morose after his victories, but joyous at hearing of his misfortunes.
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