Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/109

THE SOUL OF A TURK

That night, with no hatred in his heart but with a Moslem's implacable logic guiding his hand, he killed the Prussian drill sergeant who, scarlet tarbush on yellow-curled, flat-backed skull, was breveted as major to his regiment, the Seventeenth Turkish Infantry.

His comrades saw him creep into the tattered, bell-shaped tent where the Prussian was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. They heard the tragic crack of the shot, and saw him come out again smoking revolver in his right hand. Calmly squatting on their haunches, they watched him go to the commissary, help himself to slabs of spongy, gray bread, dried apricot paste, and a bundle of yellow Latakia tobacco leaves, fill his water canteen, and take the road toward the giant breast of the Anatolian mountains, studded here and there with small, bistre-red farms, like brooches clasping a greenish-black garment.

"Allah's Peace on you, brother Moslems!" he said piously, turning, the fingers of his left hand opening like the sticks of a fan, then closing them again, to show the inevitability of what he had done.

"And on you Peace, Mehmet el-Touati!" came their mumbled reply, tainted by just a shade of envy, because they told themselves that soon Mehmet el-Touati would be in his own country while their homes were far in the South and West, and they did not know the roads.