Achmed Abdullah

“ It is thus that Mohammed Yar, once a ragged, thin-mouthed, hook-nosed Kurd tribesman, dresses to-day in the height of fashion and lords it gloriously over Krelekian's Armenian clerks, spending Krelekian's money.
It is thus that, when the mood or the passion takes him, he crushes Aziza in his great, muscular arms and kisses her on the pouting, crimson lips.
Always he smiles when he kisses her. And always he gives thanks to Allah. Always he snaps his fingers derisively in the direction of the closed shutters behind which Zado Krelekian shivers. ”

“ Clear across Zado Krelekian's livid realization of the present slashed the picture of the little town, Khinis, on the way to Erzerum, and what had happened there between him, not then a well-fed, rosy, prosperous New York shop-keeper, Mohammed Yar, not then dressed in the slops of the New York water front, and Aziza, the blue-haired girl with the henna-stained feet and the anklets that tinkled, tinkled mockingly. ”

“ Remember I have sworn a most solemn oath never to take toll with steel or blood or pain for what happened that day, back home in Khinis, between him and me!"
"Rest assured," laughed the Arab. "Your oath is inviolate. There will be neither blood nor pain—except perhaps a pain of the mind, which"—he shrugged his shoulders—"is beyond the probing of human ken, being entirely a matter of Fate, thus sealed to us."
"There will also be pain on Aziza's crimson lips when I crush them with the strength and the desire of mine own lips!" replied the Kurd from the threshold. ”

“ You must swear on the Koran, by your own salvation and that of your parents, by the honor of your mother and your sisters, by the blood of the Prophet and the horns of the Archangel Gabriel—you must swear a most sacred oath that, as long as you live, there shall be no killing nor beating in revenge of what I shall ask of you, that never for what is happening to-day between you and me will you take toll with steel or bullet or whip or fist—with blood—nor with pain—neither you nor your tribesmen nor your friends! ”

“ El-Touati, the Arab, had said. "You say he has gone there. It will not be hard to find him. Armenians are a clannish folk, herding together like sheep."
And thus Mohammed Yar became cook, bottle-washer, valet, and half a dozen other useful things to the smiling, bearded Arab, receiving in exchange a small wage and certain lessons in medicine—certain lessons which, when first mentioned, had sent both the Arab and the Kurd into fits of high-pitched, throaty laughter. ”

“ There were bolts of silk and linen and wool; wooden boxes filled with Syrian and Greek sweets; figs and dates, raisins from the isles of Greece, and brittle, yellow Persian tobacco tied up in bundles; pyramids of strange, high-colored vegetables; slippers of flimsy red and orange leather. Dried fish there was, and incense in crystals; oil of rose and jessamine and geranium in slim bottles picked out with leaf gold; carved walking-sticks from Smyrna; inlaid metal work from Damascus; black and white veils heavy with twisted silver and gold, rugs from many lands, coffee and tea and what-not. ”

“ Mohammed Yar had not lied when he had told Zado Krelekian about his relations with the Arab doctor. The latter, a graduate of the University of Paris, had come to New York to take a special course un4er Professor Clinton McGarra, the great skin specialist, and had picked up the Kurd in Smyrna. For Mohammed Yar had left his native village shortly after Krelekian and Aziza had departed for America, drifting on the trail of the Armenian with the instinct of a wild animal, serene in his belief that presently Fate would send him across the other's path. ”

“ Does your body itch? Have you fever?" And always Mohammed Yar would study his hand intently, then release it with a flat, sympathetic sigh, until Krelekian one day lost his temper and made an ill-natured remark that the Kurd's association with the Arab doctor seemed to have developed in him a positively ghoulish instinct. ”

“ Therefore, tell me, or"—with a significant back sweep of his right hand—"I may think too much of this being a land of brothers, and, being older than you, may feel morally forced to chasten your reck less spirit with many and painful beatings, as be comes an elder and loving brother solicitous of his younger brother's welfare. ”

“ He does not know you personally. But I told him about you, of the fact that you and I, Armenian and Kurd, Christian and Moslem, enemies once, became friends in this strange land of America. And he says even as I say: you must shut yourself up where none may see you except I, your very good friend. For these Americans fear—it! ”