hinking
of Ruth, when I started to hear the soft Egyptian lips utter the very
words which the Egyptian girl spake more than a thousand years ago:
'Behold my mother! where she stays I stay, and where she goes I will go;
her family is my family, and if it pleaseth God, nothing but the
Separator of friends (death) shall divide me from her.' I really could
not speak, so I kissed the top of Omar's turban, Arab fashion, and the
Maohn blessed him quite solemnly, and said: 'God reward thee, my son;
thou hast honoured thy lady greatly before thy people, and she has
honoured thee, and ye are an example of masters and servants, and of
kindness and fidelity;' and the brown labourers who were lounging about
said: 'Verily, it is true, and God be praised for people of excellent
conduct.' I never expected to feel like Naomi, and possibly many English
people might only think Omar's unconscious repetition of Ruth's words
rather absurd, but to me they sounded in perfect harmony with the life
and ways of this country and these people, who are so full of tender and
affectionate feelings, when they have not been crushed out of them. It
is not humbug; I have seen their actions. Because they use grand
compliments, Europeans think they are never sincere, but the compliments
are not meant to deceive, they only profess to be forms. Why do the
English talk of the beautiful sentiment of the Bible and pretend to feel
it so much, and when they come and see the same life before them they
ridicule it.

[Picture: Omar, 1864, from a photograph]

_Tuesday_.--We have a family quarrel going on. Mohammed's wife, a girl
of eighteen or so, wanted to go home on Bairam day for her mother to wash
her head and unplait her hair. Mohammed told her not to leave him on
that day, and to send for a woman to do it for her; whereupon she cut off
her hair, and Mohammed, in a passion, told her to 'cover her face' (that
is equivalent to a divorce) and take her baby and go home to her father's
house. Ever since he has been mooning about the yard and in and out of
the kitchen very glum and silent. This morning I went into the kitchen
and found Omar cooking with a little baby in his arms, and giving it
sugar. 'Why what is that?' say I. 'Oh don't say anything. I sent
Achmet to fetch Mohammed's baby, and when he comes here he will see it,
and then in talking I can say so and so, and how the man must be good to
the _Hareem_, and what this poor, small