Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/60

Suk-en-Nahassim, that often something like a veil of discontent would fall over the older man's shrill greed.

"Gold buys this—and that—and this," he would say, in a hushed voice, pointing at some rich Pasha's silent, extravagant house, with its projecting cornices, its bulbous balconies of fretted woodwork supported by gigantic corbels and brackets, and the dim oil lamp glimmering above the carved gate—"gold buys this—and no more!"—and when a woman of the Egyptians—a woman swathed from head to foot, with only the eyes showing—crossed his path, he would cry, "They do not wear veils, at home, in the hills."

Then, quite suddenly, he would break into harsh laughter and add, "But veils cost gold. Yar Khan, and we sell veils … thou and I—in the Gamalyieh!"

Yar Khan understood that his father was homesick. But when he begged him to return to the hills Ali Khan would reply with the proverb which says that the cock leaves home for four days only—and returns a peacock. He would add, with a crooked smile: "Of what use the peacock's green tail on the dung-hills? Of what use the gold of Egypt on the barren rocks?"—and then again the talk would he of seasons and of the gold which comes with the shifting seasons' swing.

But Yar Khan would not understand why his father did not return to the hills, why he preferred to live in Cairo—between the dusty shop, and the tiny whitewashed living-house—up and down, up and down, like a buffalo putting his shaggy back to the water-wheel—heavy and slow and blind. He only knew that his father was eating out his heart with longing for the chill, dark pines; and his own homesickness—though his memories were vague—would be upon his shoulder like a stinging brand.