My new little Darfour boy is very funny and very intelligent.  I hope he will turn out well, he seems well disposed, though rather lazy.  Mabrook quarrelled with a boy belonging to the quarter close to us about a bird, and both boys ran away.  The Arab boy is missing still I suppose, but Mabrook was brought back by force, swelling with passion, and with his clothes most scripturally ‘rent.’  He had regularly ‘run amuck.’  Sheykh Yussuf lectured him on his insolence to the people of the quarter, and I wound up by saying, ’Oh my son! whither dost thou wish to go?  I cannot let thee wander about like a beggar, with torn clothes and no money, that the police may take thee and put thee in the army; but say where thou desirest to go, and we will talk about it with discretion.’  It was at once borne in upon him that he did not want to go anywhere, and he said, ’I repent; I am but an ox, bring the courbash, beat me, and let me go to finish cooking the Sitt’s dinner.’  I remitted the beating, with a threat that if he bullied the neighbours again he would get it at the police, and not from Omar’s very inefficient arm.  In half an hour he was as merry as ever.  It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about nothing at all.  As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic; and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; that was all.

I wish you could have heard (and understood) my soirees, au clair de la lune, with Sheykh Yussuf and Sheykh Abdurrachman.  How Abdurrachman and I wrangled, and how Yussuf laughed, and egged us on.  Abdurrachman was wroth at my want of faith in physic generally, as well as in particular, and said I talked like an infidel, for had not God said, ’I have made a medicine for every disease?’ I said, ’Yes, but He does not say that He has told the doctors which it is; and meanwhile I say, hekmet Allah, (God will cure) which can’t be called an infidel sentiment.’  Then we got into alchemy, astrology, magic and the rest; and Yussuf vexed his friend by telling gravely stories palpably absurd.  Abdurrachman intimated that he was laughing at El-Ilm el-Muslimeen (the science of the Muslims), but Yussuf said, ’What is the Ilm el-Muslimeen?  God has revealed religion through His prophets, and we can learn nothing new on that point; but all other learning He has left to the intelligence of men, and the Prophet Mohammed said, “All learning is from God, even the learning of idolaters.”  Why then should we Muslims shut out the light, and want to remain ever like children?  The learning of the Franks is as lawful as any other.’  Abdurrachman was too sensible a man to be able to dispute this, but it vexed him.