distemper, the zouave communicates to his superior behind the cotton sheeting, who presently comes out, his anger somewhat abated, and, taking me for a monk—my jubbah is responsible for the deception—invites me to the sitting-room in the enormous loophole of the citadel.
He himself was beginning to complain of the litigants who pester him at his home, and apologise for his ill humour, when suddenly, disabused on seeing my trousers beneath my jubbah, he subjects me to the usual cross-examination. I could not refrain from thinking that, not being of the cowled gentry, he regretted having honoured me with an apology.
“But after knowing somewhat of the pilgrim stranger, especially that he had been in America, Excellency tempers the severity of his expression and evinces an agreeable curiosity. He would know many things of that distant country; especially about a Gold-Mining Syndicate, or Gold-Mining Fake, in which he invested a few hundred pounds of his fortune. And I make reply, ‘I know nothing about Gold Mines and Syndicates, Excellency: but methinks if there be gold in such schemes, the grubbing, grabbing Americans would not let it come to Syria.’ ‘Indeed, so,’ he murmurs, musing; ‘indeed, so.’ And clapping for the serving- zabtie —the mudirs and kaimakams of the Lebanon make these zabties , whose duty is to serve papers, serve, too, in their homes—he orders for me a cup of coffee.
And further complaining to me, he curses America for robbing the country of its men and labourers.—‘We can no more find tenants for our estates, despite the fact that they get more of the income than we do. The shreek (partner), or tenant, is rightly called so. For the owner of an estate that yields fifty pounds, for instance, barely gets half of it; while the shreek , he who tills and cultivates the land, gets away with the other half, sniffing and grumbling withal. Of a truth, land-tenants are not so well-off anywhere. And if the land but yields a considerable portion, anyone with a few grains of the energy of those Americans, would prefer to be a shreek than a real-estate owner.’