Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/95

were theirs and had set to work with improvised gear.

The catch had been huge; and for weeks, they had eaten their fill of khirli spiced with turmeric and sesame, while the people on the opposite shore had be moaned their fate and had rubbed empty wrinkled stomachs.

Only the hereditary chief of the Red Village, Yar Zaddiq, a shrewd, elderly man, over six feet in height, with gray hair that had once been reddish-brown, a biting tongue and doubting, deep set eyes, had suspected the hand of man and, late one night, when the water was very low, had swum over to the Black Rock at the risk of his life and had investigated.

He had called for help. The wheel had been torn out, and a few days later, four miles up the river, accompanied by several of his clansmen, he had chanced upon Sabihhudin Achmat and had beaten him terribly.

After that, there had been no more catching of khirli fish on the northern bank, and the old hate of White Village against Red had grown a thousandfold.

The days that followed were drab and listless.

Ebrahim Asif stalked through the village in his best, most braggart Kabuli manner.

But, for the first time in his life, he was aware of a strange sensation which, had he been a westerner, he would have correctly analyzed as self-consciousness.

He said to himself that these were his people, that they had put their grievances before his feet trusting to his wisdom and strength—and their greatest grievance was the matter of the khirli fish, the matter of the River of Hate. Willing and ready he had been to help them, he continued his thoughts angrily, but they had tied his hands with their babble about the