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The word Firengi, however, passed around the deck that word so flattering to a great race, which once meant Frank but which now, in one form or another, describes for the people of western Asia the people of Europe and their cousins beyond the seas. Among the friends of the jinn, of whom as it happened only two were Europeans, there also passed an explanatory word.
Within the city wall was a people well disposed as angels; without, a band of tigers. After which he asked if the young Firengi were of the company of those who dug for the poisoned water of Bakhtiari Land, or whether perchance he were of the People of the Chain. These figures of speech would have been incomprehensible to Matthews, if Abbas had not hinted something about oil rigs.
It contained, Abbas informed him with some mystery after one of his prolonged visits to the bazaar, another firengi. This firengi's servant, moreover, had given Abbas explicit directions as to the whereabouts of the firengi's house, in order that Abbas might give due warning, as is the custom of the country, of a call from Matthews.
But if Abbas was able to resign himself to this new proof of the eccentricity of his master, the unknown firengi apparently was not. At all events, Matthews soon made another discovery as to the possibilities of Dizful. An evening or two later, as he loitered on the bridge watching a string of loaded camels, a respectable-looking old gentleman in a black aba addressed him in French.
The Englishman in Matthews permitted him a second smile. "The Father of Swords," he said, "speaks a word which I do not understand. I am a Firengi, but I have never heard of a Shah of the Shahs of the Firengis. In the house of Islam are there not many who rule? In Tehran, for instance, there is the young Ahmed Shah.
There where the trim-white jinn-boat of the Firengi had been was now a blazing mass of wreckage, out of which came fierce cracklings, hissings, sounds not to be named. As he stared at it the wreckage fell apart, began to disappear in a cloud of smoke and steam that lengthened toward the southern gateway of the basin.
Then among the Bakhtiaris there is an Ilkhani, at Mohamera there is the Sheikh of the Cha'b, and in the valleys of Pusht-i-Kuh none is above the Father of Swords. I do not forget, either, the Emirs of Mecca and Afghanistan, or the Sultan in Stambul. And among them what Firengi shall say who is the greatest? And so it is in Firengistan.
Luckily it was not altogether so to Abbas, that underling long resigned to the eccentricities of the Firengi, whose accomplishments included even a sketchy knowledge of his master's tongue. It appeared that the law of Bala Bala forbade the door of the Father of Swords to open before sunrise.
The peasant watched it all silently, as if waiting for some new magic of the Firengi, from his high bank of the Karun that snow-born river bound for distant palms, that had seen so many generations of the faces of men, so many of the barks to which men trust their hearts, their hopes, their treasures, as it wound, century after century, from the mountains to the sea.
He thereupon inquired if Matthews were acquainted with another friend of the prince among the merchants of Shuster, himself a Firengi by birth, though recently persuaded of the truths of Islam; and not like this visitor of good omen, in the bloom of youth, but bearded and hardened in battles, bearing the scars of them on his face.
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