The Shereef asked me to lend him the New Testament, it was a pretty copy and when he admired it I said, ’From me to thee, oh my master the Shereef, write in it as we do in remembrance of a friend—­the gift of a Nazraneeyeh who loves the Muslimeen.’  The old man kissed the book and said ’I will write moreover—­to a Muslim who loves all such Christians’—­and after this the old Sheykh of Abou Ali took me aside and asked me to go as messenger to Haggee Sultan for if one of them took the money it would be taken from them and the man get no good by it.

Soldiers are now to be quartered in the Saeed—­a new plague worse than all the rest.  Do not the cawasses already rob the poor enough?  They fix their own price in the market and beat the sakkas as sole payment.  What will the soldiers do?  The taxes are being illegally levied on lands which are sheragi, i.e. totally unwatered by the last Nile and therefore exempt by law—­and the people are driven to desperation.  I feel sure there will be more troubles as soon as there arises any other demagogue like Achmet et-Tayib to incite the people and now every Arab sympathises with him.  Janet has written me the Cairo version of the affair cooked for the European taste—­and monstrous it is.  The Pasha accuses some Sheykh of the Arabs of having gone from Upper Egypt to India to stir up the Mutiny against us! Pourquoi pas to conspire in Paris or London?  It is too childish to talk of a poor Saeedee Arab going to a country of whose language and whereabouts he is totally ignorant, in order to conspire against people who never hurt him.  You may suppose how Yussuf and I talk by ourselves of all these things.  He urged me to try hard to get my husband here as Consul-General—­assuming that he would feel as I do.  I said, my master is not young, and to a just man the wrong of such a place would be a martyrdom.  ’Truly thou hast said it, but it is a martyr we Arabs want; shall not the reward of him who suffers daily vexation for his brethren’s sake be equal to that of him who dies in battle for the faith?  If thou wert a man, I would say to thee, take the labour and sorrow upon thee, and thine own heart will repay thee.’  He too said like the old Sheykh, ’I only pray for Europeans to rule us—­now the fellaheen are really worse off than any slaves.’  I am sick of telling of the daily oppressions and robberies.  If a man has a sheep, the Moodir comes and eats it, if a tree, it goes to the Nazir’s kitchen.  My poor sakka is beaten by the cawasses in sole payment of his skins of water—­and then people wonder my poor friends tell lies and bury their money.

I now know everybody in my village and the ‘cunning women’ have set up the theory that my eye is lucky; so I am asked to go and look at young brides, visit houses that are building, inspect cattle, etc. as a bringer of good luck—­which gives me many a curious sight.