United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
How, think you, will the Mohurrum go this year? I think that there will be trouble. He turned down a side-street and left me alone with the stars and a sleepy Police patrol. Then I went to bed and dreamed that Wali Dad had sacked the City and I was made Vizier, with Lalun's silver huqa for mark of office.
Wali Dad lay in the window-seat and listened to the talk. "It is Lalun's salon," said Wali Dad to me, "and it is electic is not that the word? Outside of a Freemason's Lodge I have never seen such gatherings. There I dined once with a Jew a Yahoudi!" He spat into the City Ditch with apologies for allowing national feelings to overcome him.
For reasons which will appear, I never went to the Fort while Khem Singh was then within its walls. I knew him only as a grey head seen from Lalun's window a grey head and a harsh voice. But natives told me that, day by day, as he looked upon the fair lands round Amara, his memory came back to him and, with it, the old hatred against the Government that had been nearly effaced in far-off Burma.
A petty Nawab had given Lalun the horror, and she kept it for politeness' sake. The floor of the room was of polished chunam, white as curds. A latticed window of carved wood was set in one wall; there was a profusion of squabby pluffy cushions and fat carpets everywhere, and Lalun's silver huqa, studded with turquoises, had a special little carpet all to its shining self.
The advantages of having a jujube-tree for a husband are obvious. You cannot hurt his feelings, and he looks imposing. Lalun's husband stood on the plain outside the City walls, and Lalun's house was upon the east wall facing the river. If you fell from the broad window-seat you dropped thirty feet sheer into the City Ditch.
Wali Dad lay in the window-seat, more bitterly scornful of his Faith and its manifestations than I had ever known him. Lalun's maid was very busy cutting up and mixing tobacco for the guests.
"If I am of no value, I am unworthy of this honor," said Lalun. "If I am of value, they are unworthy of Me," And that was a crooked sentence. In the long hot nights of latter April and May all the City seemed to assemble in Lalun's little white room to smoke and to talk.
Nor did it strike me that Wali Dad was the man who should have convoyed him across the City, or that Lalun's arms round my neck were put there to hide the money that Nasiban gave to Kehm Singh, and that Lalun had used me and my white face as even a better safeguard than Wali Dad who proved himself so untrustworthy.
And the native guard said: "Yes, Subadar Sahib," in deference to his age and his air of distinction; but they did not know who he was. In those days the gathering in Lalun's little white room was always large and talked more than before,
I think we can arrange a little surprise for them. I have given the heads of both Creeds fair warning. If they choose to disregard it, so much the worse for them. There was a large gathering in Lalun's house that night, but of men that I had never seen before, if I except the fat gentleman in black with the gold pince-nez.
Word Of The Day