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Updated: June 2, 2025
That evening, as Wassef the camel-driver went to the mosque to pray, Fatima cursed him, because now all the village laughed secretly at the revenge that Wassef had taken upon the lover of his daughter.
As she staggered, stumbled, through the village, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, saw her. He did not dare speak to her, for had he not killed her father, and had he not bought himself free of punishment from the Mudir? So he ran to old Fatima and knocked upon her door with his naboot, crying: "In the name of Allah get thee to the hut of Wassef the camel-driver!"
The blood of the dead cries from the ground." He came a step nearer. "The blood of Wassef the camel-driver is upon my head," he said. "In the desert there came news of it.
He was lying drunk with hashish outside the mosque El Hassan, with a letter from Mahommed Selim in his green turban for Yusef had been a pilgrimage to Mecca and might wear the green turban. But if Yusef came not by the cafe where Wassef sat glooming, some one else came who quickly roused Wassef from his phlegm.
Soada's trinkets and bracelets were perhaps no better than those of her companions, but her one garment was of the linen of Beni Mazar, as good as that worn by the Sheikh-Elbeled himself. Wassef the camel-driver, being proud of Soada, gave her the advantage of his frequent good fortune in desert loot and Nile backsheesh.
Wassef laughed, and turned on his heel; and went out: for what should he know of the look in a woman's face he to whom most women were alike, he who had taken dancing-girls with his camels into the desert many a time? What should he know of that love which springs once in every woman's heart, be she fellah or Pharaoh's daughter?
"You had better have gone yourself, and left Mahommed Selim your camels and your daughter," continued Dicky, his eyes straight upon Wassef's. "God knows your meaning," said Wassef in a sudden fright; for the Englishman's tongue was straight, as he well knew. "They sneer at you behind your back, Mahommed Wassef.
But this particular night Wassef was bitter, and watched with stolid indifference the going down of the sun, the time when he usually said his prayers. He was in so ill a humour that he would willingly have met his old enemy, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, and settled their long-standing dispute for ever. But Yusef came not that way.
Hardly had the barber fled from the anger of Wassef, when a glittering kavass of the Mouffetish at Cairo passed by on a black errand of conscription. With a curse Wassef felt in his vest for his purse, and called to the kavass the being more dreaded in Egypt than the plague.
It would have been well for Wassef the camel-driver if he had not taken the turban from his head, for before he could reach Yusef with his dagger, he went down, his skull cracking like the top of an egg under a spoon. Thus it was that Soada was left to fight her battle alone. She did not weep or wail when Wassef's body was brought home and the moghassil and hanouti came to do their offices.
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