Achmed Abdullah

“ And,” gently cooed Koom Khan, with a glance at the uneasy Armenian, “our Gulabian likes not the dice box, being a man faithfully mated to his swollen purse, and sacrificing daily to the swag-bellied god of compound interest. Nor does he care for ardent spirits, being in that respect—and in that respect only!—like a True Believer. But—ahee!—the desire of woman smells sweetly, pungently, intoxicatingly in his nostrils!” ”

“ The Sheik-ul-Islam rose and walked away, angry, mortified, throwing over his shoulder the Parthian shot that Al Nakia was setting up to be a warrior, a fighter, a swashbuckler, a leader of men, but that “the more we approach the enemy, the more the tiger in our heart becomes a lamb!”
“Thou hast made an enemy of the priest,” said Koom Khan to Hector, that night, as the two, in the company of the Armenian treasurer, were smoking peaceful hubble-bubbles on the balcony of the palace, looking out into the spring night where fire starlight drifted through budding boughs into budding earth. ”

“ He replied. “Let us be enemies, Al Nakia.”
“Agreed.” Hector rose and walked to the door. There he turned and added, quite gently, “But we shall not be enemies for long.”
“For as long as there is breath in my body!” burst out Koom Khan.
“That is just what I meant when I said that it would not be for long. For—I have never trusted a living enemy—and I have never feared a dead one!”
Koom Khan gave a slight start, but controlled himself almost immediately, and said, with the utmost, arrogant nonchalance:
“Death is not such a savory mouthful that one should gulp it down whole. ”

“ Yet a land that had once been a granary, that had once been green with wheat and yellow with pulse, that had once fed hundreds of thousands—and that would again bear fruit, given irrigation, development, the granting of—“concessions.”
And it was of “concessions” that, three days later, the stranger talked to Mr. Preserved Higgins, who was stretched at ease beneath the silken dome of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's tent of state, the Babu Bansi squatting at his feet and looking up at the eccentric Cockney millionaire with adoring eyes. ”

“ The masses, the people, are like sheep. If the governor of the western marches, with the help of Higgins saheb's money bags and the unknown saheb's war prowess, should make a sudden descent upon us and snatch victory out of our fingers, then, before we shall be able to rally for a counter-stroke, the masses will swing to him. They will say that, blade or no blade, thou art an impostor. ”

“ All that is needed is a little pluck, a little persistency, and a great deal of initiative—and I rely on thee, friend Gulabian, to supply all three!”—a broad flattery which fully served its purpose and sent the Armenian on his way, as pleased with Hector as Koom Khan had been.
“A clever man is Al Nakia,” the old nurse said that night to Aziza Nurmahal. “He does not draw the sword of foolish audacity, nor does he throw away the scabbard of precaution, and it has indeed been said by a very wise man that the brain, not the body, is the proof of love. The body? ”

“ Preserved Higgins knows a jolly lot about Tamerlanistan,” he said to himself, whimsically, “but he does not know the most important thing. He does not know that the little princess has the blackest eyes in all the world. The wooing of swords? The fulfilling of the old prophecy? ”

“ Now Hector used practically the identical tactics with regard to Koom Khan, the ex-commander-in-chief, whom Wahab al-Shaitan had put in jail during his term of office.
He visited him there and found him in decidedly bad humor. But he said to himself that this man who glared at him out of hasheesh reddened eyes without a word in answer to his courtly greeting, was an Oriental and, by the same token, a man hard to manage yet easy to inspire ”

“ The Armenian's final plea that the country needed the safety of the western road, that the caravan men were afraid of robbers, that traffic with Persia, Khiva, and Bokhara had practically stopped and with it the tax receipts. Hector dismissed by asking the other to develop the eastern trade.
“There is Afghanistan,” he said, “and India, both ready to buy our produce, and a good road leads there, the Darb-al-Sharki, 'The Eastern Highway,' and our kafilas can trade there as easily and as profitably as they used to with Persia. ”

“ The desire of woman! Our Gulabian knows not the truth of the saying that the beauty of the nightingale is its song, science the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a decent man steadfastness in love. ”

“ He appeals to his ruler loudly in the market-place, the mosque, or the hall of audience, expects that justice be dealt out then and there, that the decision may be inexorably, cruelly just, but must be reached irrespective of rules of evidence, precedent, customs or laws other than religious ones—and that all judgments must be made instantly executive and must under no conditions be subject to appeal. ”

“ Perhaps it is because they feel that, amongst foreign races, it is up to them to uphold the traditions of their own country; perhaps there is at the back of it some scientific or quasi-scientific reason not yet discovered, dissected, and codified ad absurdum by those enthusiastically illogical and intolerant atheists who call themselves biologists. ”

“ Hector raised an impatient hand. “The harm is done. Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy, knows enough of it at least to turn it to his advantage, and he will doubtless try and force our hands in the matter of the 'concessions.' All right. We'll make the best of a bad bargain.”
“A very bad bargain,” commented Koom Khan, with a sidelong glance at the treasurer.
The latter smiled.
“Fight poison with poison,” he suggested. “The Babu Chandra, too, represents European interests. ”

“ But it is a racial, almost a historical, phenomenon that these same younger sons who go under in the far places colonized by their own countrymen, make often supremely good when circumstance forces them to live and work amongst either inferior peoples, as in Africa, or a people of a different civilization and culture, as in Asia. ”