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Updated: May 3, 2025
The Armenian had occasionally reverted to the subject of the translation of the Haik Esop, which he had still a lurking desire that I should execute; but I had invariably declined the undertaking, without, however, stating my reasons.
It was more horrible than anything you can imagine. I suffered all that it is humanly possible to suffer in the desert. But already I began to observe with infinite pity that my man's strength was outlasting the nervous force of my little companion. The poor child walked on without saying a word, chewing feebly one corner of her haik which she had drawn over her face. Galé followed.
But all of a sudden I remembered that the Armenian appeared to have altered his intentions towards me: he appeared no longer desirous that I should render the Haik Esop into English for the benefit of the stock- jobbers on Exchange, but rather that I should acquire the rudiments of doing business in the Armenian fashion, and accumulate a fortune, which would enable me to make a figure upon 'Change with the best of the stock- jobbers.
What those bundles, which bent their backs half double, had inside them it was impossible to certify: often part of it was a baby, judging by a round shape like a head under the haik, and the fact that, when it had a knock, there was a cry: the rest might be chickens, oranges, vegetables, baskets of eggs, baskets of coos-coosoo, heads of brooms made of bamboo, honey, and so on.
Batouch looked grave as he listened to the wind and the creaking of the palm stems one against another. Sand came upon his face. He pulled the hood of his burnous over his turban and across his cheeks, covered his mouth with a fold of his haik and stared into the blackness, like an animal in search of something his instinct has detected approaching from a distance.
"Why not?" said I, "I know a little French." "Anything else?" "Yes, a little Welsh, and a little Haik." "What is Haik?" "Armenian." "I am glad to see you in my house," said the old man, shaking me by the hand; "how singular that one coming as you did should know Armenian!" "Not more singular," said I, "than that one living in such a place as this should know Chinese. How came you to acquire it?"
His white haik floated round limbs fit for a Colossus: and under the snowy folds of his turban the olive-bronze of his bold forehead, the sweep of his jet-black beard, and the piercing luminance of his eyes had a grand and kingly majesty. A glance of recognition from him on the lascar, who had so often crossed swords with him; and he waved back the scroll with dignified courtesy. "Read it me."
I reflected, for I made a virtue of necessity, that, after all, such an employment would be an honest and honourable one; honest, inasmuch as by engaging in it I should do harm to nobody; honourable, inasmuch as it was a literary task, which not every one was capable of executing. it was not every one of the booksellers' writers of London who was competent to translate the Haik Esop.
‘Do I not?’ said I. ‘Well, what has the tide to do with the matter?’ ‘Much,’ said I; ‘what is the tide?’ ‘The ebb and flow of the sea,’ said the Armenian. ‘The sea itself; what is the Haik word for sea?’
At the helm stood the Jew; his whole figure enveloped in a gabardine, the cowl of which, raised above his head, gave him almost the appearance of a spectre in its shroud; whilst upon the deck, mixed with Europeans in various kinds of dresses, all of them picturesque with the exception of my own, trod the turbaned Moors, the haik of the hadji flapping loosely in the wind.
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