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What is honestly mine is eight feddans, and the rest, by the grace of God, is thine, O effendi." Every feddan he had he had honestly earned, but this was his way of offering backsheesh. And the Mudir had due anger and said: "No better are ye than a Frank to have hidden the truth so long and waxed fat as the Nile rises and falls. The two feddans, as thou sayest, are mine."
It was a nauseous draught from the bitterest waters of Islam. But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood in little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife, or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity.
That very night the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim, and by sunrise he was standing in front of the house of the Mamour with twelve others, to begin the march to Dongola. Though the young man's father went secretly to the Mamour, and offered him backsheesh, even to the tune of a feddan of land, the Mamour refused to accept it.
But presently the wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the streets came to an end; the "Balak" of the ass-driver was no more heard, the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air until all was still.
His fingers fumbled with his robe of striped silk. He cursed the Mudir in his heart for his bitter humour; but was not his son in prison, and did it not lie with the Mudir whether he lived or died? So he answered: "All-seeing and all-knowing art thou, O effendi, and I have reckoned the rentals even to this hour for the ten years fifty piastres for each feddan "
Near by the fellah worked in his onion-field; and on the khiassas loaded with feddan at the shore, just out of the current, and tied up for the night, sat the riverine folk eating their dourha and drinking black coffee. Now Dimsdale noticed that, nearer still, just below the Sefi, on the shore, sat a singing-girl, an a'l'meh, with a darkfaced Arab beside her, a kemengeh in his lap.
Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at tambourines and crying in wild discords, "God bless our Lord!" "God give victory to our Lord the Sultan!"
In the course of the afternoon Mohammed, Ali, mules, and baggage put in an appearance, and we found them waiting in the feddan, anxious to put our tents up in the middle of the noisy, crowded sok, where the wind, which had dropped but little, was whirling dust round in clouds, and where we should have been the centre of a staring throng at the same time, an ideal place in the servants' eyes, suggesting cafés and conversation the whole night through.
As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some standing.
Yet he had to pay a house-tax of five piastres, a war-tax of five piastres, a camel-tax of five piastres, a palm-tax of five piastres, a salt-tax of nine piastres, a poll-tax of thirty piastres, a land-tax of ninety piastres. The canal for which he was taxed gave his feddan of land no water, for the Pasha, the friend of the Government, took all the water for his own land."
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