United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"O Lella Saïda, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced. A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veil with fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Noura had obeyed instructions. For ten years Victoria had been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it at night, picturing it by day. Now it had come.
She wasted the flower of her youth in sadness, and though the master was noble, and splendid as the sun to look upon, I think she had no love to give him, perhaps because he was grave and seldom smiled, or because she was a Roumia and could not suit herself to the ways of true believers." "Did she keep to her own religion?" asked Stephen. "That I cannot tell. I was too young to understand.
The name of the prettier twin was Zorah, and she had black curls which fell straight down over her brilliant eyes, under a scarlet head-dress. "Dost thou love Si Maïeddine?" she asked the Roumia, with a kind of innocent boldness. "As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered. "Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic. "No.
The girl was escorted upstairs, perhaps to show her how much more important was the favourite wife of the marabout than a mere Roumia, an unmarried maiden.
"My girls are so pretty," she said, "and it is a picture to see them at their embroidery frames, or the carpet making, their fingers flying, their eyes always on the coloured designs, which are the same as their ancestresses used a century ago, before the industry declined. I love them all, the dear creatures, and they love me, though I am a Roumia and an unbeliever.
Victoria sat beside her, Maïeddine opposite, and Fafann waited upon them as they ate. After supper, while the Bedouin woman saw that everything was ready for her mistress and the Roumia, in their tent, M'Barka spread out her precious sand from Mecca and the dunes round her own Touggourt.
"Thine advice is of the value of many dates, even of the deglet nour, the jewel date, which only the rich can eat." The old man laid his hand, still strong and firm, on his son's shoulder, and together they went into the great tent, that part of it where the women were, for all were closely related to them, excepting the Roumia, who had been received as a daughter of the house.
Honey could be no sweeter than the words of welcome translated by Ourïeda, and when Sanda's answers had been put into Arabic, Lella Mabrouka received them graciously. Soon aunt and niece and servant were all chattering and smiling, offering coffee and fruit, and assuring the Roumia that her host was eagerly awaiting permission to meet her.
It would not save my conscience to let you slip a letter into an open envelope, and pretend to myself that I knew nothing about it; because I would know, and I think I'd almost rather be hypocritical with other people than with myself." "I told you," exclaimed Ourïeda, "that Roumia girls were different from us even in their secret thoughts!
"How horrible!" the girl exclaimed. "Dost thou really believe such a thing?" He feared that he had made a mistake, and that she would look upon him as an alien, a pagan, with whom she could have no sympathy. "If I am more modern in my ideas than my forefathers," he said tactfully, "I must not confess it to a Roumia, must I, oh Rose of the West? for that would be disloyal to Islam.
Word Of The Day