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Updated: May 28, 2025
Of nights you may see the houris sitting sadly under them, darning their faded muslins: Ali, Omar, and the Imaums are reconciled and have gloomy consultations: and the Chief of the Faithful himself, the awful camel-driver, the supernatural husband of Khadijah, sits alone in a tumbledown kiosk, thinking moodily of the destiny that is impending over him; and of the day when his gardens of bliss shall be as vacant as the bankrupt Olympus.
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.
Born of a camel-driver by a slave; working his way across the desert a score of times before his wages made enough to buy one bale of hides; venturing the earnings of a lifetime on one voyage making a profit, when a loss would have put him back to the beginning venturing again, winning again buying three camels leasing them buying three more starting an express from the Soudan to Biskra one day short of all others; carrying only dates and gold-dust insuring his gold-dust, something he learned from the French in Biskra; buying thirty camels at a plunge at once the master camel-driver of the Sahara and here he was, pacing up and down before a laced tent which held behind it a woman.
What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.
When the watchman came back, he found him seated in the shop, account- books inhand, and reckoning with his fingers; nor did he cease to do thus till point of day, when he said to the man, "Fetch me a camel-driver and his camel, to carry some goods for me." Then he gave the watchman two dirhams and went away after the camel-driver, leaving the watchman believing him to be the owner of the shop.
"Allah is good to me Flamencine," whispered the camel-driver as he drew her close to avoid a careless dancer. "Why, Flamencine?" demanded a carefully altered voice, from which, however, the music had not been eliminated. "Don't you remember?"
After my friend, Kandarka called on me. I did not know the fellow, he having twisted a white turban round his head. Strange, this Aheer camel-driver visited me before I called upon him and sent for him, and when he came I did not recognize him again, on account of his assuming such Protean shapes. To-day I was much pleased with his intelligence and the frankness of his conversation.
The long velvety tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel, looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in peace all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.
The sultan, enraged at the wicked behaviour of the cauzee's brother, the camel-driver, the young man, and the master of the vessel, condemned them to death; and the executioner was preparing to put the sentence in force, when the lady arriving at the presence demanded their pardon; and to his unspeakable joy discovered herself to her delighted husband.
The camel-driver put us right, Omar and Saïd were well cursed, and we began a toilsome journey across rough country, hoping to hit the right trail in time. We found ourselves in the wildest and dirtiest of Arab encampments now and again, where infuriated dogs, unaccustomed to visitors, rushed out and almost bit us upon our mules, amidst a hail of stones from Omar and Saïd.
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