Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/177

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THE LOGICAL TALE OF THE FOUR CAMELS

In Sidi-el-Abas it was spring, white spring, and the pale peace of perfumed dawn.

We were smoking and dreaming, too indolent to speak, each waiting for his neighbor to open the trickling stream of soft, lazy conversation. At last, Ibrahim Fadlallah, the Egyptian, turned to the young Englishman and said:

"Soon, oh my dear, you will return to your own country, so listen to the moral tale I am about to tell, so that you can take back to your own people one lesson, one small lesson which will teach you how to use the manly virtues of honor, self-restraint, and piety—all accomplishments in which you unbelievers are sadly deficient. Give me a cigarette, oh my beloved. Ah, thanks; and now listen to what happened in Ouadi-Halfa between Ayesha Zemzem, the Sheik Seif Ed-din, and Hasaballah Abdelkader, a young Bedouin gentleman, who is very close to my heart.

"The Sheik was a most venerable man, deeply versed in the winding paths of sectarian theology—he had even studied the Sunna—and of a transcendent wisdom which his disciples declared to be greater than that of all the other Sheiks.

"But even in your own country it may be that

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