Oriental Encounters Part 24

'Be not offended if we speak our mind before you. We should not do so if we wished you ill. Here, among us, it is not an unheard-of thing for men to kill the creatures they love best on earth; nor do men blame them when, by so doing, they have served the cause of G.o.d, which is the welfare of mankind. Thus it was of old the rule, approved of all the world, that every Sultan of the line of Othman had to kill his brothers lest they should rise against him and disturb the peace of all the realm. Was it not like depriving life of all its sweetness thus to destroy their youth's companions and their nearest kin? Yet, though their hearts were in the bodies of their victims, they achieved it. And the victims met their death with the like fort.i.tude, all save a few of less heroic mould.

'Now, I have read some histories written by the Europeans. They do not understand these things at all. They think us merely cruel--just as we, in the same unperceiving manner, think them merely covetous. Yet I disagree with your good servant in the present case. I think that you were right to spare that Nuri.'

Rashid, who, with the rest of the a.s.sembly, had listened to the old man's speech with reverence, exclaimed:

'It is not just this Nuri or that bag of lentils, O my lord! My master is thus careless always. He never locks the door when he goes out during my absence, though all that we possess is in that room.'

'Thy lord is young.' The old man smiled upon me kindly, and proceeded then to read me a mild lecture on my carelessness, detailing to me the precautions which he took himself, habitually, when shutting up his house or place of business, including pious formulas which he made me repeat after him. While he was thus instructing me, Rashid went off, returning in about three minutes with a face of indignation strangely and incongruously mixed with triumph.

Taking his stand before me in the very middle of the seated crowd, he said:

'You left the door wide open even after you had seen that Nuri steal the bag of lentils. I have this minute been to look and I have seen.

With our revolver lying in the full light of the doorway! Merciful Allah! What is to be done with you?'

The old man, my preceptor, laughed aloud; and at the sound Rashid, whose desperation was not acted, wept real tears. The people round us tried in vain to comfort him.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE UNWALLED VINEYARD

One morning, as we rode along, we came to vineyards on a valley-side.

Rashid dismounted and began to pick the grapes. Suleyman dismounted likewise, and invited me to do the same.

'But it is stealing,' I objected.

'Allah! Allah!' moaned Suleyman, as one past patience. He hung his head a moment, limp all over, as if the spirit had been taken out of him; then called out to Rashid, who was devouring grapes:

'Return, O malefactor, O most wicked robber! Thou art guilty of a fearful crime. Thy master says so.'

Rashid came back to us immediately, bringing a purple bunch, which he was going to give to me when Suleyman prevented him, exclaiming:

'Wouldst dishonour our good lord by placing in his hands the fruit of infamy, as if he were a vile accomplice of thy crime? For shame, O sinful depredator, O defrauder of the poor!'

Rashid gaped at him, and then looked at me. I held out my hand for the grapes.

'Touch them not, for they are stolen!' cried Suleyman.

'I know not what thou wouldst be at, O evil joker,' said Rashid, with warmth; 'but if thou callest me a thief again, I'll break thy head.'

'_I_ call thee thief? Thou art mistaken, O my soul! By Allah! I am but the mouthpiece of thy master here, who says that to pluck grapes out of this vineyard is to steal.'

Rashid looked towards me, half incredulous, and, seeing that I ate the grapes with gusto, answered with a laugh:

'He does not understand our customs, that is all. By Allah! there is no man in this land so churlish or so covetous as to begrudge to thirsty wayfarers a bunch of grapes out of his vineyard or figs or apricots from trees beside the road. To go into the middle of the vineyard and pick fruit there would be wrong, but to gather from the edge is quite allowable. If we were to come with sumpter-mules and load them with the grapes, that would be robbery; but who but the most miserly would blame us for picking for our own refreshment as we pa.s.s, any more than he would stop the needy from gleaning in the fields when corn is cut. What your Honour thinks a crime, with us is reckoned as a kindness done and taken.'

'Aye,' said Suleyman, whose gift was for interpretations, 'and in the same way other matters which your Honour blames in us as faults are in reality but laudable and pious uses. Thus, it is customary here among us to allow the servant to help himself a little to his master's plenty in so far as food and means of living are concerned. The servant, being wholly given to his master's service, having no other means of living, still must live; aye, and support a wife and children if he have them; and it is the custom of our great ones to pay little wages, because they have but little ready money. Upon the other hand, they have possessions and wide influence, in which each servant is their partner to a small extent. No one among them would object to such small profits as that cook of yours, whom you condemned so fiercely, made while in your service. If the master does not care to let the servant gain beyond his wages, he must pay him wages high enough for his existence--certainly higher wages than you paid that cook.'

'I paid him what he asked,' I said indignantly.

'And he asked what he thought sufficient in consideration of the profits he felt sure of making in your service--a foreigner and a young man of many wants.'

'I had told him that thou art of all men living the most generous!'

put in Rashid. My dismissal of that cook had long been rankling in his mind. 'It is the custom of the country,' he subjoined, defiantly.

'It is a custom which I very heartily dislike,' I answered. 'It seems to me that people here are always grasping. Look at the prices which the merchants ask, the way they bargain. They fight for each para as if it were their soul's salvation. They are mad for gain.'

'Again you are mistaken,' answered Suleyman. 'They do not ask too much from avarice, but for the sake of pastime. Indeed, you will find sometimes that the price they ask is less than the real value of the object, and still they let the buyer beat it down--for mere amus.e.m.e.nt of the argument and for the sake of seeing what devices he will use.

In addition, they will give the buyer a nice cup of coffee--sometimes two cups of coffee if the argument is long--and as many gla.s.ses full of sherbet as he cares to drink.'

'And if the buyer will not pay the price, though much reduced, the merchant often will present the object to him, as happened to your Honour in Aleppo only the other day,' put in Rashid.

'That was only a device to shame me into buying it.'

'No, by your Honour's leave!'

'Rashid may well be right,' said Suleyman, 'although I cannot judge of the peculiar instance since I was not present.'

Just then we came around a shoulder of the hill, and saw some people, men and women, harvesting the grapes in a much larger vineyard.

'Now you shall see!' exclaimed Rashid exultantly. He got down off his horse and stooped over the nearest vines. The workers, seeing him, set up a shout of 'Itfaddalu!' (perform a kindness), the usual form of hospitable invitation. Since we refused to join them in the middle of the vineyard a man came wading towards us, bearing on his head a basket tray piled up with grapes. Suleyman picked out three monstrous cl.u.s.ters, one for each of us, with blessings on the giver. To my offer of payment the fellah opposed a serious refusal, saying: 'It would be a shame for me.'

'You see now!' said Rashid, as we resumed our way. 'It is not robbery for wayfarers to take refreshment.'

'And as for the custom of the merchants,' added Suleyman, 'in asking a much higher price than that which they at last accept, what would you have? Those merchants are rich men, who have enough for all their needs. Their aim is not that of the Frankish traders: to increase their wealth by all means and outdistance rivals. Their object is to pa.s.s the time agreeably and, to that end, detain the customer as long as possible, the more so if he be a person like your Honour, who loves jokes and laughter. The greatest disappointment to our merchants is for the customer to pay the price first asked and so depart immediately. I have a rare thing in my memory which hits the case.

'Everyone has heard of Abdu, the great Egyptian singer, who died recently. His only daughter met her death in a distressing way. It was her wedding night, and bride and bridegroom died of suffocation owing to the scent of flowers and perfumes in the bedroom where they lay. At sight of the two corpses Abdu broke his lute and swore a solemn oath never to sing again.

'He was rich--for he had earned much by his singing, often as much as a hundred pounds a night--and he sought some means to pa.s.s the time till death should come for him. He took a shop in Cairo, and hoped for pleasant conversation in the course of bargaining. But the Egyptians wished to hear him sing again, and men of wealth among them planned together to buy up his whole stock-in-trade immediately. This happened thrice, to the despair of Abdu, who saw his hope of pastime taken from him. In the end he was compelled to get the Cadi to release him from his vow, and sing again, although he would have much preferred to be a merchant. That shows the difference between a trader in our cities and one in any city of the Franks, whose sole desire is to sell quickly and repeatedly.'

'There is no accounting for tastes,' was my reply. 'For my part I detest this bargaining.'

'When that is understood by decent merchants they will not afflict thee. They will ask thee a fair price and let thee go--though with regret, for they would rather spend an hour in talk with thee,' said Suleyman indulgently. 'It is a game of wits which most men like.' He shrugged his shoulders.

'Your Honour was relating yesterday,' observed Rashid, with grievance in his tone, 'how an Englishman of your acquaintance in our country accused his servants of dishonesty. Doubtless he distrusted them and locked things up, which is the same as saying to them: "It is my locks and my vigilance against your wits." Few men of spirit could resist a challenge such as that, which is indeed to urge men on to robbery. But where the master trusts his servants and leaves all things to their care, only a son of infamy would dream of robbing him.'

'Let me propound the matter otherwise for understanding. Seeing that open vineyard, with a wall but two stones high, no man would think of plundering the crop of grapes. But surround that vineyard with a high, strong wall, and every son of Adam will conceive the project of clearing it of every cl.u.s.ter.'

'I should never think of such a thing.'

'That is because your Honour is accustomed to restraints and barriers,' said Suleyman. 'We, in the Sultan's dominions, have more freedom, praise to Allah! For us a high wall is an insult, save in cities.'

CHAPTER x.x.xI