Small wonder that strong, personal interest is behind the prayers after sunset. Small wonder, furthermore, that all lights are extinguished—lest dark and evil djinn find their way up to Paradise and nudge the Archangel, startling him and causing him to shake down the wrong leaf.
Small wonder, finally, that on the preceding day there should be merry-making—a fit prelude to the Night of Honor, the Night of Fear, the Night of Repentance.
So here in Gulabad as in the rest of the Islamic world, gay throngs were everywhere, people of all High Tartary, with here and there men from the farther east and south and north and west—Persians, Afghans, Chinese, Siberians, Tibetans, even men from distant Hindustan and Burma, come across mountains and plains to fatten their purses on the holiday trade.
Doing well, making handsome profits.
For all were ready to spend what they could—and could not—afford. All were enjoying themselves after the Orient’s immemorial fashion, resplendently and extravagantly and blaringly.
The men swaggered and strutted, fingering daggers, cocking immense turbans or shaggy sheepskin bonnets at rakish devil-may-care angles. The women minced along, rolling their hips and, above their thin, coquettish face-veils,, their eyes. The little boys tried to emulate their fathers in swaggering and strutting; to emulate each other in the shouting of loud, salty abuse. The little girls rivaled the other little girls in the gay, pansy shades of their loose trousers and the consumption of greasy, poisonously pink-and-green sweetmeats.
There were jugglers and knife-tossers, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters and painted dancing-girls.
There were cook-shops and toy-booths and merry-go-rounds.
There were itinerant dervish preachers chanting the glories of Allah the One, the Prophet Mohammed and the Forty-Seven True Saints.
There were bear-leaders, ape-leaders, fortune-tellers, bards, buffoons, and Punch-and-Judy shows.
There were large, bell-shaped tents where golden-skinned gypsy girls trilled and quavered melancholy songs to the accompaniment of guitars and tambourines. There was, of course, a great deal of love-making—the love-making of Asia, which is frank and a trifle indelicate.
There were the many street-cries.
“Sugared water! Sugared water here—and sweeten your breath!” would come the call of the lemonade-seller as he clanked his metal cups, while the vendor of parched grain, rattling the wares in his basket, would chime in with: “Pips! O pips! Roasted and ripe and rare! To sharpen your teeth—your stomach—your mind!”
“Trade with me, O Moslems! I am the father and mother of all cut-rates!”
“Look! Look! A handsome fowl from the Khan’s chicken coop!”
“And stolen—most likely!”
Laughter then—swallowed, a moment later, by more and louder cries.
“Out of the way—and say, ‘There is but One God!’”—the long, quivering yell of the water-carrier, lugging the lukewarm fluid in a goat’s-skin bag, immensely heavy, fit burden for a buffalo.
“My supper is in Allah’s hands, O True Believers! My supper is in Allah’s hands! Whatever you give, that will return to you through Allah!”—the whine of a ragged old vagrant whose wallet perhaps contained more provision than the larder of many a respectable housewife.
“The grave is darkness—and good deeds are its lamps!”—the shriek of a blind beggarwoman, rapping two dry sticks together.
“In your protection, O honorable gentleman!”—the hiccoughy moan of a peasant, drunk with hasheesh, whom a constable was dragging by the ear in the direction of the jail, the peasant’s wife trailing on behind with throaty plaints of: “O calamity! O great and stinking shame! O most decidedly not father to our sons!”—her balled fists meanwhile ably assisting the policeman.
There was more laughter; and Fathouma, too, laughed as she followed Hossayn.
Only rarely she left the palace; and everything amused her. She decided she would tell Omar the Black all about it tonight when she saw him—and she progressed slowly through the throng, with the stranger still in back; then she stopped, a little nervous, as there was a brawl between a Persian merchant and a Turkoman nomad who disputed the right of way.
Neither would budge. They glared at one another. Presently they became angry, and anger gave way to rage—and then a stream of abuse, of that vitriolic and picturesque vituperation in which Central Asia excels.
“Owl! Donkey! Jew! Christian! Leper! Seller of pigs’ tripe!” This from the lips of the elderly Persian whose carefully trimmed, snow-white whiskers gave him air aspect of patriarchal Old Testament dignity in ludicrous contrast with the foul invective which he was using. “Uncouth and swinish creature! Eater of filth! Wearer of a verminous turban!”
The reply was prompt: “Basest of hyenas! Goat of a smell most goatish! Now, by my honor, you shall eat stick!”
The stick, swinging by a leather thong from the Turkoman’s wrist, was two pounds of tough blackthorn. It was raised and brought down with full force—the Persian moving away just in time and drawing a curved dagger.
People rushed up, closed in, took sides.
It was the beginning of a full-fledged battle royal—and Fathouma cried:
“Hossayn! Hossayn! Get me out of here!”
But Hossayn was not near her. All she saw of him, some yards away, was his red fez bobbing up and down in the mob, as if he were drowning.
“Hossayn! Oh, Hossayn!”
Farther and farther floated the fez; the mob seemed to be carrying the man away; and Fathouma became terribly frightened—jostled and pushed about—and everywhere the striking fists, the glistening weapons—everywhere the shrieks of rage and pain.
She wept helplessly, hopelessly. Almost she fainted.
Then she felt a firm grip on her elbow; heard a reassuring voice in her ear: “This way, Heaven-born!”
A moment later, a man, tall and broad-shouldered, tucked her under one arm as if she were a child, while with the other, wielding a sword, he carved a path through the crowd. They turned a corner; reached a back alley; his knee pushed open a door; and she found herself in the shed of a provision merchant’s shop.
There, in the dim light that drifted through a window high on the wall, she saw her rescuer: a man with an eagle’s beak of a nose, thin lips, small, greenish eyes. A man—she thought with a start—as like to her husband as peas in a pod, except that his beard was red and not black.…
She knew at once who he was:
“You—you are Omar the Red! Ah, the lucky, lucky day for me!”
“Luckier for myself!”
“My husband will be so grateful.”
“Doubtless. But this time, knowing my brother, I shall make sure, quite sure, of his gratitude.” A smile like milk curdling flitted across his face. “Tell me,” he asked, “how good are you at the riding?”
“The—riding?”
“Yes. On a horse. A horse, swift and powerful, to carry the two of us, and you on the saddle in front of me, and with one of my arms—wah! there have been plenty women in the past who liked the strength of it—around your waist to hold you steady.”
She looked at him.
“Oh,” she faltered, “but—”
“Listen!”
He spoke at length. And, he wondered, was that a laugh trembling on her lips? No, no! it must be the beginning of a cry of fear; and, at once, there was his sword to the fore.
“Be quiet!” he warned her. “Or