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Allah!" cried Mahommed Selim, for that was the sound which always waked the torpid brain of Yusef since Wassef the camel-driver's skull had crackled under his naboot. Yusef's wide shoulders straightened back, his tongue licked his lips, his eyes stared before him, his throat was dry. He licked his lips again. "Allah!" he cried and ran forward. The soldiers thrust Yusef back.
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.
"Nehar-ak koom said, Mahommed Wassef," said Dicky; and sat upon a bench and drew a narghileh to him, wiping the ivory mouthpiece with his handkerchief. "Nehar-ak said, saadat el Pasha," answered Wassef, and touched lips, breast, and forehead with his hand. Then they shook hands, thumbs up, after the ancient custom. And once more, Wassef touched his breast, his lips, and his forehead.
But Wassef was a hard man for all that, and he grew bitter and morose at last, because he saw that camel-driving must suffer by the coming of the railway. Besides, as a man gets older he likes the season of Ramadan less, for he must fast from sunrise to sunset, though his work goes on; and, with broken sleep, having his meals at night, it is ten to one but he gets irritable.
So it happened that one evening just at sunset, Wassef came to his hut, with the sun like the red rim of a huge thumb-nail in the sky behind him, ready beyond telling for his breakfast, and found nothing.
He had mischievously sent him into that furnace which eats the Fellaheen to the bones, and these bones thereafter mark white the road of the Red Sea caravans and the track of the Khedive's soldiers in the yellow sands. When Fatima cursed Wassef he turned and spat at her; and she went back and sat on the ground beside Soada, and mumbled tags from the Koran above her for comfort.
She must go down the Nile, hiding by day, travelling by night the homing bird with a broken wing-back to the but where she had lived so long with Wassef the camel-driver; back where she could lie in the dusk of her windowless home, shutting out the world from her solitude. There she could bear the agony of her hour.
Nor did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had cost him five piastres the second meal of meat in a week. As Wassef sat on the mastaba of the cafe sullen and angry, the village barber whispered in his ear that Mahommed Selim and Soada had been hunting jackals in the desert all afternoon.
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.
With a shameless delight Wassef went to the door of his own home, and, calling to Soada, told her that Mahommed Selim was among the conscripts. He also told her that the young man was willing to go, and that the Mamour would take no backsheesh from his father. He looked to see her burst into tears and wailing, but she only stood and looked at him like one stricken blind.
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