Doubtless our prosperous fellow-traveller knew all about it, doubtless he
realised that the Sultan's authority was only nominal, but he knew that
his immediate master, the Basha, still held his people in an iron grip
while, above and beyond all else, he knew by the living faith that
directed his every step in life, that his own fate, whether good or evil,
was already assigned to him. I heard the faint echo of the greeting
offered by the dogs of the great douar into which he passed, and felt well
assured that the protests of the village folk, if they ventured to
protest, would move him no more than the barking of those pariahs. The
hawks we saw poised in the blue above our heads when small birds sang at
sunsetting, were not more cheerfully devoid of sentiment than our khalifa,
though it may be they had more excuse than he.
On another afternoon we sat at lunch in the grateful sombre shade of a
fig-tree. Beyond the little stone dyke that cut the meadow from the arable
land a negro ploughed with an ox and an ass, in flat defiance of Biblical
injunction. The beasts were weary or lazy, or both, and the slave cursed
them with an energy that was wonderful for the time of day.
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