When Gently
Reproached For This Omission, He Declared It To Be His Way—That He Never
Called Upon Strangers Until Sent For.
He was a perfect Saudawi
(melancholist) in mind, manners, and personal appearance, and this
class of humanity in the East is almost as uncomfortable to the
household as the idiot of Europe.
I was frequently obliged to share my
meals with him, as his mother—though most filially and reverentially
entreated—would not supply him with breakfast two hours after the proper
time, or with a dinner served up forty minutes before the rest of the
household. Often, too, I had to curb, by polite deprecation, the
impetuosity of the fiery old Kabirah’s tongue. Thus Abdullah and I became
friends, after a fashion. He purchased several little articles
required, and never failed to pass hours in my closet, giving me much
information about the country; deploring the laxity of Meccan morals,
and lamenting that in these evil days his countrymen had forfeited
their name at Cairo and at Constantinople. His curiosity about the
English in India was great, and I satisfied it by praising, as a Moslem
would, their politike, their evenhanded justice, and their good star.
Then he would inquire into the truth of a fable extensively known on
the shores of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea. The English, it is
said, sent a mission to Mohammed, inquiring into his doctrines, and
begging that the heroic Khalid bin Walid[FN#4] might be sent to
proselytise them.
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