[p.163](his wife), a perfect specimen of the town Arab.  His poll is crowned with a rough Shushah or tuft of hair[FN#1]; his face is of a dirty brown, his little goatee straggles untrimmed; his feet are bare, and his only garment is an exceedingly unclean ochre-coloured blouse, tucked into a leathern girdle beneath it.  He will not pray, because he is unwilling to take pure clothes out of his box; but he smokes when he can get other people’s tobacco, and groans between the whiffs, conjugating the verb all day, for he is of active mind.  He can pick out his letters, and he keeps in his bosom a little dog’s-eared Ms. full of serious romances and silly prayers, old and exceedingly ill written; this he will draw forth at times, peep into for a moment, devoutly kiss, and restore to its proper place with the veneration of the vulgar for a book.  He can sing all manner of songs, slaughter a sheep with dexterity, deliver a grand call to prayer, shave, cook, fight; and he excels in the science of vituperation:  like Sa’ad, he never performs his devotions, except

[p.164]when necessary to “keep up appearances,” and though he has sworn to perish before he forgets his vow to the “daughter of his uncle,” I shrewdly suspect he is no better than he should be.  His brow crumples at the word wine, but there is quite another expression about the region of the mouth; Stambul, where he has lived some months, without learning ten words of Turkish, is a notable place for displacing prejudice.  And finally, he has not more than a piastre or two in his pocket, for he has squandered the large presents given to him at Cairo and Constantinople by noble ladies, to whom he acted as master of the ceremonies at the tomb of the Apostle.

Stretched on a carpet, smoking a Persian Kaliun all day, lies Salih Shakkar, a Turk on the father’s, and an Arab on the mother’s side, born at Al-Madinah.  This lanky youth may be sixteen years old, but he has the ideas of forty-six; he is thoroughly greedy, selfish, and ungenerous; coldly supercilious as a Turk, and energetically avaricious as an Arab.  He prays more often, and dresses more respectably, than the descendant of the Clarified-Butter-Seller; he affects the Constantinople style of toilette, and his light yellow complexion makes people consider him a “superior person.”  We were intimate enough on the road, when he borrowed from me a little money.  But at Al-Madinah he cut me pitilessly, as a “town man” does a continental acquaintance accidentally met in Hyde Park; and of course he tried, though in vain, to evade repaying his debt.  He had a tincture of letters, and appeared to have studied critically the subject of “largesse.”  “The Generous is Allah’s friend, aye, though he be a Sinner, and the Miser is Allah’s Foe, aye, though he be a Saint,” was a venerable saying always in his mouth.  He also informed me that Pharaoh, although the quintessence of impiety, is mentioned by name in the Koran, by reason of his liberality; whereas Nimrod, another monster of iniquity, is only alluded to, because