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Updated: May 18, 2025
The fellah gave labour and taxes and backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him, under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his barber, or to some slave who had his ear.
"A hundred eyes failed to search him out. Ten thousand piastres did not find him; the kourbash did not reveal him." Kaid's frown grew heavier. "Thou shalt bring Nahoum to me by midnight to-morrow!" "But if he has escaped, Effendina?" Achmet asked desperately. He had a peasant's blood; fear of power was ingrained. "What was thy business but to prevent escape?
His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me, For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse, And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes. His friendship, it was like a shady wood Whither has he gone? Who shall speak for us? Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes? Who shall proclaim us in the palace? Who shall contend for us in the gate?
The only acute differences they had were upon two points the cleaning of the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But it was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands of Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have broken, or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding.
The Eastern habit of always having a cavass to walk in front of one in the public thoroughfares suited me very well; for modesty is seasoned by a display of force. It is agreeable to have under one's orders a man armed with a kourbash which one does not allow him to use.
When the Saadat was in England there was a bad time in Egypt. I was in Cairo; I know. It was the same bad old game the corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died. It didn't come off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it when he came back.
Fielding laughed a little uneasily. "Never mind. You see, it isn't the old scores only that bar him. He's been a sweep out here. Nothing he hasn't done. Gone lower and lower and lower. Tax-gatherer with a kourbash for old Selamlik the beast. Panderer for the same. Sweep of the lowest sort!" Dicky's eyes flashed. "I say, Fielding, it would be rather strange if he hadn't gone down, down, down.
He wondered when these monsters would have vented their spite sufficiently; he wondered if he would be alive at the end of the castigation, or if they would flay the flesh from his body. He thought of the ignominious ending it would be to his brief career with the fighting line. His head was buried in his arms, and he was becoming indifferent to how frequently the kourbash fell on his shoulders.
He remembered the last time he had used it in the desert: two days of forgetfulness to the world, when it all moved by him, the swarming Arabs, the train of camels, the loads of ivory, the slimy crocodile on the sandbanks, the vultures hovering above unburied carcasses, the kourbash descending on shining black shoulders, corrugating bare brown bodies into cloven skin and lacerated flesh, a fight between champions of two tribes who clasped and smote and struggled and rained blows, and, both mortally wounded, still writhed in last conflict upon the ground and Mahommed Hassan ever at the tent door or by his side, towering, watchful, sullen to all faces without, smiling to his own, with dog-like look waiting for any motion of his hand or any word.... Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he!
He had fought for his uncle's fortune, and had got it at last yesterday without a penny of backsheesh. Kaid chuckled to himself at that. To make the rich poorer would suit him well, so long as he remained rich. And, if riches could be got, as this pale Frank proposed, by less extortion from the fellah and less kourbash, so much the happier for all.
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