Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/13

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FEUD

To-day he lives in Bokhara, in the old quarter of the desert town that the natives call Bokhara-i-Shereef. He has a store in a bazaar not far from the Samarkand Gate, where he sells the gold-threaded brocades of Khiva and the striped Bokhariot belts that the caravan-men exchange for brick-pressed tea across the border in Chinese Turkestan, and where, methodically filling his pipe with tobacco from the carved pumpkin-shell at his elbow, he praises the greatness of Russia and the wisdom of the czar.

There, at noon every day, his ten-year-old son comes to him, bringing clean and well-spiced food from the market.

"Look at him!" he says often, proudly pinching the supple arms of the lad, and exhibiting him as he would a pedigreed stallion. "Sinews and muscles and a far-seeing eye, and no nerves—none at all. Because of which I give thanks to Allah the Wise-judging, the opener of the door of knowledge with the key of His mercy. For one day my son will wear a plaited, green coat and a tall chugerma cap of white fur, and serve the czar. He will learn to shoot straight, very straight, and then," he adds, with a meaning smile, if he happens to be speaking to one of the three men whom he trusts,—"then he will desert. But he will return, perhaps,"—rapidly snapping his fingers to ward off misfortunes,—"he will return to his regiment, and he will not be very much punished."

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