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Updated: June 19, 2025
Was it not Selamlik Pasha also who whispered into the ear of the Mouffetish that a birth-tax and a burial-tax should be instituted? And had he not seen them carried out in the mudiriehs under his own supervision? Had he not himself made the Fellaheen pay thrice over for water for their onion-fields?
Sadik the Mouffetish saw the Khedive's face, and suddenly said in his ear: "Shall my slave seize him, Highness whom God preserve?" The Khedive did not reply, for at that moment he recognised the dervish; and now he understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to Mecca with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy city; and that his Englishman had lied to him.
"True, O beloved of Heaven, who shall live for ever," said Dicky, his lips lost in an odorous cloud of 'ordinaire. "But there be evil tongues and evil hearts; and if some son of liars, some brother of foolish tales, should bear false witness upon this thing before our master the Khedive, or his gentle Mouffetish "
Ismail's fury was great, for the blue devils had him by the heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the Mouffetish, and their cunning, cruelty, and soulless depravity, their present search for a victim to his master's bad temper, acted at once on Ismail's sense of humour.
But why should Imshi Pasha send the girl and his mouffetish on this miserable mission? Was not Imshi Pasha his friend? Quietly smoking his cigarette, he said to the man: "You may go, Mahommed Melik; I have had enough. Take your harem with you," he added quickly. The man scarcely stirred a muscle, the woman flushed deeply.
Even Sadik the Mouffetish Sadik, who had four hundred women slaves dressed in purple and fine linen Sadik, whose kitchen alone cost him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose cigarette ash-trays was equal to the salary of an English consul even Sadik, foster-brother, panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent and watchful to-day.
Because of it, Abdalla's command to the crowd to leave had been easier of acceptance. Their hunger had made them dangerous. Danger was in the air. The tax-gatherers had lately gone their rounds, and the agents of the Mouffetish had wielded the kourbash without mercy and to some purpose.
Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of an honest man.
For his genius had preceded that of Selamlik Pasha, the friend of the Mouffetish at Cairo, by one day only. Selamlik himself had collected taxes on dancing-girls all the way from Cairo to Khartoum; and to be hoist by an Arab in a foot regiment having no authority and only a limitless insolence, was more than the Excellency could bear.
If to the Soudan, well; if to remain, what conflagration might not occur! Dicky staked all. "Here, once more, among thy people, returned from conquest and the years of pilgrimage in the desert, like a prophet of old, thy zeal would lead the people, and once more Egypt should bloom like the rose. Thou wouldst be sirdar, mouffetish, pasha, all things soever.
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