This boy, her husband’s younger brother, was attached to Barakah as the only one who never shook him by the neck or cursed him. He told her all his woes, and brought her offerings of curious things he found in his illicit rambles. He was always straying, though with no worse object, he asserted, than the wish to be alone. His lady mother called him “stupid Turk,” vowing that he was all his father’s child, and she herself had neither part nor lot in him; though Hamdi was the true Egyptian adolescent, still but half awake, a slave to every breeze, to every odour, and fascinated by the sight of gleaming objects. He would sit still for hours in contemplation of a sunlit blade of grass; at other times he would walk miles, drawn on invisibly, with great brown eyes which seemed to harbour visions. Barakah found him gentle and obedient. In truth, his only wickedness that she could see consisted in resentment of shrill interruptions. At such times he would battle blindly with assailants, cursing them, and crying out, in his despair:

“Am I not a man full-grown? Do I not sleep in the selamlik? Then let me be, or it shall be the worse for you, by Allah!”