So much about Khalid’s mother and cousin. A few days after, when he is able to leave his room, he goes to see them. His cousin Najma he would take with him to Cairo. He would not leave her behind, a prey to the cruelty of loneliness and disease. He tells her this. She is overjoyed. She is ready to go whenever he says. Tomorrow? Please Allah, yes. But—
Please Allah, ill-luck is following. For on his way back to the Hotel, a knot of boys, lying in wait in one of the side streets, cast stones at him. He looks back, and a missile whizzes above his head, another hits him in the forehead almost undoing the doctor’s work. Alas, that wound! Will it ever heal? Khalid takes shelter in one of the shops; a cameleer rates the boys and chases them away. The stoning was repeated the following day, and the cause of it, Shakib tells us, is patent. For when it became known in Baalbek that Khalid, the excommunicated one, is living in the Hotel, and with an American woman! the old prejudices against him were aroused, the old enemies were astirring. The priests held up