Achmed Abdullah

“ For the negro recalled him to his senses with loud-mouthed abuse that—by Allah!—these were wretched manners, manners of infidels and bad Moslems, to ogle thus a woman in the bazaar.
“A foreigner you seem! An eater of dried fish from the North—of stinking fish.”
Mohammed ibn Rashid flared up.
"Better dried fish in the North than a naked blade in the South!” he cried while the dagger leaped to his hand.
But the girl’s sudden, mocking laughter stopped his hand. “Have you no other use for your weapon,” she asked, “than to stain it with a woolly one’s blood? No other use for your strength?” ”

“ Paris was his home. He would return there.
No, came the next thought, he hated Paris, the French, all the West. And the Ouled Sieyda were blood of his blood. He had been willing to ask them for the strength which he needed. Now it appeared it was they who needed strength. His impersonal attitude became untrue. He saw his duty. He would go to them. He was sure of only one thing: that before he could regain his own strength he must find in himself the strength to give to his tribesmen. For they needed him.
“They need me,” he said aloud.
Habeebah bowed her head. ”

“ The Ouled Sieyda are mine own people, blood of my blood and bone.”
"Aye, my lord. But—" she slurred, and continued: “They cannot give you strength. They need strength of another's giving—strength of seed and strength of sword.” ”

“ If you love a woman and she loves you, ask neither brother nor father nor Allah nor the devil. Take her! If you love her and she loves you not, take her by force. Woman—wah—was made for love. Now—as to this girl I spoke to you about—”
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed.
Habeebah shrugged her shoulders. “Very well, my lord. Then return to Paris and bring me this other woman.” ”

“ He jumped sideways, catching the man’s frenzied camel around the neck. He swung himself half up with one hand while the other drew the dagger. The Bedouin’s long lance was useless in a body-to-body fight and, before he could reach for his own dagger, Mohammed ibn Rashid had slashed wickedly. The man fell to the ground, bleeding profusely, and in the twinkling of a second Mohammed ibn Rashid drew himself fully into the saddle, letting the reins drop loose, relying on the pressure of his knees, and turned to meet the shock of the other two nomads, revolver in hand. He shot ”

“ She was out again like a small brown whirlwind, drawing him across the threshold.
“Home!” she said. “You have had enough of life among those swine-fed northerners? You will now stay here and take a wife and make for yourself stout men-children?” ”

“ Are you not an Arab and a Shareef?”
“It is also,” he went on, “that I lost my strength. So I came here to regain it. And then ...”
“You will take the woman?”
“I do not know. Perhaps I have already forgotten her. But the man—”
“You will kill him. Very proper! I shall feed you well and make your body fat and your sword-arm strong.”
He gave a little laugh. “It is not the strength of my arm which I lost, Habeebah.”
“What then?”
“My strength of will. I need the desert and the sweep of the desert. I shall return to my own people, to the Black Tents of the Ouled Sieyda. ”

“ A hawk in pouncing, a fox in slinking. ... Be pleased not to go, my lord.”
Suddenly she rose and motioned toward the curtain spanning a doorway in back of Mohammed ibn Rashid’s chair whence came a rustle of silken garments and faint, fluting laughter, then the sound of bare feet pattering away as Habeebah broke into shrill vituperations, winding Tip with: “Begone, O daughter of a noseless she-camel!”
She turned to the Arab. “A kitchen wench,” she explained, “curious to behold her young master’s face.” ”

“ He pulled into Wargla, white as a leper with the dust of the road, traded his stallion for a racing-dromedary, and was off again, alone, riding down the clearly defined caravan trail which leads toward Timbuktu. He reached the heart ot the desert on the seventh day out of Tunis, and he stopped for a long time on a little hillock, watching the spawning eternities of the sands. ”