Page:Oriental Stories Volume 02 Number 01 (Winter 1932).djvu/6



''YWAH! Aywah! Aywah!" declaimed Silat sonorously, as he sorted the pebbles and bits of dirt from the beans of Abyssinian coffee that in Jerusalem was palmed off as the true berry from al Yemen. "There he goes, ya sahibi!'' Hamed Effendi. Strutting in his silks. Hamed Effendi. He's entirely forgotten that he ever was Hamed the Dragoman, Hamed who led tourists into my lokanda and wheedled them into buying him coffee and stuffing a pipe for him while he regaled them with outrageous tales. May Allah bear witness, the truth is not in him! And when he had drunk and gorged himself, he led them into the souk to be plundered by the dealers in spurious antikas."

Silat's mutterings mingled with the crackling of the beans as they smoked and reddened in the iron ladle in which he roasted them over the glowing charcoal.

"And the first thing we know, he'll be Hamed Bey—while I still grind coffee, and bring the sweet, and take the full."

Silat tossed the roasted beans into the brazen mortar, and with ringing strokes beat them to powder.

"Wallahi! In this very qahawat, and before my eyes, Hamed looted the infidel. And still I pound these accursed beans while Hamed strolls by with silver-mounted sword, and graciously emerges from his pious meditations long enough to offer the peace, and pass on."

And thus and thus, day after day, the tale of grief: until in the end, after uncounted cups of coffee, and pipes loaded with the best Djabali (Liberally adulterated, of course, with Suryani) I picked up the ultimate fragment of the tale of Hamed and the orphan, Sitti Nefeyda.

Hamed the Dragoman—not Hamed Effendi, with curled beard and embroidered djellah, but Hamed the predatory interpreter and tourist's guide—ushered his client into Silat's qahawat. The more coffee the infidel drank, the longer it would take to "do" Jerusalem, and the Rh