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Updated: July 26, 2025
You have stolen me from my father to make me a slave!" "Yes," said Mohammed, "I intend you to be a slave, the slave of your love! For I know you love me, Butheita!" "No!" she exclaims: "No, I do not love you! And you have no right to make me a slave. I am the Bedouin queen; my whole tribe call me so, and the daughters of the Bedouins have never been sold into slavery. No, I will not be a slave!"
I would Butheita were my second wife." The curtain of the tent is drawn aside, and Butheita enters, a wooden waiter in her hand. All that she has to set before her guest, the beautiful dates and bananas, the black bread, the butter, all are nicely arranged on the waiter, which she now smilingly deposits at the feet of her guest.
Butheita patted her dromedary on the neck with her little hand, urging it to greater speed. Like an arrow they flew across the sand until they had reached her father's tent. Butheita drew in her reins at the door and commanded the animal to kneel down. "Stranger, we are at our journey's end! At the threshold of our tent, Butheita bids you welcome, blessed be your entrance into our house!"
There he sat absorbed in thought, seemingly forgetful that he was the sarechsme, Mohammed Ali, and a captive, for a happy smile rested on his lips. His thoughts were beyond the sea, in the distant Cavalla. Whom did he see there? It seems to him that Masa, stands before him with her large soft eyes, and sweet smile; and Masa's image is strangely interwoven with that of the Bedouin-child, Butheita.
He says they are talkative and quarrelsome, vain and lazy, too, and he has had enough of them. Twelve wives has he brought to his tent, one after the other, but after a short time he sent every one of them home to her father. I am the daughter of his first wife, and my father loves me more than he has ever loved any of them; and he wants no woman in his tent but his Butheita.
"You are a great and distinguished man, and would laugh at the poor Bedouin child if she should regard you otherwise than as a great sarechsme, who had condescended to honor her father's tent by accepting his daughter's hospitality. I had best not ride with you. And I have already told father so." "And the reason, too, Butheita? " said he, smiling. "No, sarechsme!
"Seat your self beside me, Butheita. Let me hear your voice. Tell me the sweet history of your heart. Remain with me till your father comes. While listening I shall forget all shame and disgrace, and rejoice only in your presence. It would seem as though, a good spirit had led me into another world, where an angel was bowed down over me, to whom I looked up in sweet ecstasy!"
Butheita's heart is oppressed; the sarechsme, Mohammed Ali, is thoughtful and grave. Once Butheita raises her arm and points to some towering objects defined sharply against the sky in the distance. "See, stranger, see; those are the grand monuments of our kings, the Pharaohs, the pyramids, and there lies Sakkara, where the graves of the holy oxen are to be seen.
He would gladly have clasped the girl in their embrace, but, with the grace and ease of a gazelle, she sprang back out of his reach to the door of the tent, and looked at him threateningly. "Mohammed Ali, if you abuse your freedom, you are not the man I took you to be." He bowed his head in silence. "You are right, Butheita, forgive me!
She looks only at him, sees only him, and yet, as he now bends down closer, she turns her face aside. Mohammed smiles and points to the sphinx. "Only look at the shadow the moon throws from the dromedary to the mouth of the sphinx! Look at the two heads there, they are our shadows, and they are kissing each other, Butheita!" She utters a cry of delight.
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