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Updated: May 22, 2025
Nowadays, on the mastaba before his grandson's door, Abdul Huseyn, over ninety "by the grace of Allah," still tells of the backsheesh he secured from the Two Strange People for his help on a certain day.
In this land they stayed; and even now far up the Nile you will hear of the Two Strange People who travelled the river even to Dongola and some way back only some way back, for a long time. In particular you will hear of them from an old dragoman called Mahommed Ramadan Saggara, and a white-haired jeweller of Assiout, called Abdul Huseyn.
The next afternoon a riot occurred around the house of the Two Strange People and the school they had built; and Shelek Pasha would have had his spite of them, and his will of the donkey-market, the school, and the cotton-fields, but for Abdul Huseyn and three Sheikhs, friends of his at a price who addressed the crowd and quieted them.
In this land they stayed; and even now far up the Nile you will hear of the Two Strange People who travelled the river even to Dongola and some way back only some way back, for a long time. In particular you will hear of them from an old dragoman called Mahommed Ramadan Saggara, and a white-haired jeweller of Assiout, called Abdul Huseyn.
But Mahommed Ramadan Saggara babbles yet of the time when, for one day, David threw away his shovel hat; and Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, tells how, on the same day, the Sitt that is, Hope bought of him a ring of turquoises and put it on her finger with a curious smile.
I then rode over to the house again, and with Rashîd planned out the changes we desired to make, the Sheykh Huseyn following us about gloomily, and his cheerful son bestowing on us his advice in broken French. They knew their tenancy was at an end.
That evening the Two Strange People went to Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, and talked with him for more than an hour; for Abdul Huseyn, as Egyptians go, was a kindly man. He had taught Arabic to David and Hope. He would have asked more than twelve pieces of silver to betray them.
He only achieved this at last, again on the advice of Abdul Huseyn, by giving the Khedive as backsheesh the Syrian donkey-market, the five hundred feddans of cotton, and Hope's new school. Then, believing in no one in Egypt any more, he himself went with an armed escort and his Quaker hat, and the Order of the Khedive, to Fazougli, and brought Shelek Pasha penniless to Cairo.
Besides this general belief, which, though not a positive dogma of their faith, is common to all Mussulmans, the Shiites, always prone to exaggerate and embellish, maintain that the Móhdy's duty is not limited to teaching, guiding, and purifying the law, but also that he shall revenge the blood unjustly shed of the Imams; and they cite in support of this a tradition of Ali ibn Abu Taleb, who thus addressed his son, Huseyn, the same who was afterwards martyred at Kerbela, "I swear to thee, O my son," he said, "I swear by my soul, and by my offspring, and by Kerbela, and by its temple, that the day shall come in which our beards shall be dyed with blood.
'It is the triumph of our enemy, that Sheykh Huseyn, he told me. 'I hate to think of him in comfort in our house. If we wished to stay in any place for more than a day or two, Rashîd, upon arrival, wandered through the markets and inquired what dwellings were to let, while I sat down and waited in some coffee-house.
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