V

Whom do you think I met yesterday? Why, nothing gave me greater pleasure ever since I have been here than this: I was crossing the Square on my way to the Club, when someone plucking at my jubbah angrily greets me. I look back, and behold our dear old Im-Hanna, who has just returned from New York. She stood there waving her hand wildly and rating me for not returning her salaam. “You know no one any more, O Khalid,” she said plaintively; “I call to you three times and you look not, hear not. No matter, O Khalid.” Thereupon, she embraces me as fondly as my mother. “And why,” she inquired, “do you wear this black jubbah? Are you now a monk? Were it not for that long hair and that cap of yours, I would not have known you. Let me see, isn’t that the cap I bought you in New York?” And she takes it off my head to examine it. “Yes, that’s it. How good of you to keep it. Well, how are you now? Do you cough any more? Are you still crazy about books? I don’t think so, for you have rosy cheeks now.” And sobbing for joy, she embraces me again and again. She is neatly dressed, wears a silk fiché, and is as alert as ever. In the afternoon, I visit her at the Hotel, and she asks me to accompany her to the Bank, where she cashes three bills of exchange for three hundred pounds each! I ask her what she is going to do with all this money, and she tells me that she is going to build a little home for her grandson and send him to the College of the Americans here. “And is there like America in all the world?” she exclaims. “Ah, my heart for America!” And on asking her why she did not remain there: “Fear not; just as soon as I build my house and place my son in the College I am going back to