said that Soada's mother was descended from an English slave with red
hair, who in the terrible disaster at Damietta in 1805 had been carried
away into captivity on the Nile, where he married a fellah woman and died
a good Mussulman?

Soada's mother had had red-brown hair, and not black as becomes a fellah
woman; but Wassef was proud of this ancient heritage of red hair, which
belonged to a field-marshal of Great Britain--so he swore by the beard of
the Prophet. That is why he had not beaten Soada these months past when
she refused to answer him, when with cold stubbornness she gave him
his meals or withheld them at her will. He was even a little awed by her
silent force of will, and at last he had to ask her humbly for a savoury
dish which her mother had taught her to make--a dish he always ate upon
the birthday of Mahomet Ali, who had done him the honour to flog him with
his own kourbash for filching the rations of his Arab charger.

But this particular night Wassef was bitter, and watched with stolid
indifference the going down of the sun, the time when he usually said his
prayers. He was in so ill a humour that he would willingly have met his
old enemy, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, and settled their long-standing
dispute for ever. But Yusef came not that way. He was lying drunk with
hashish outside the mosque El Hassan, with a letter from Mahommed Selim
in his green turban--for Yusef had been a pilgrimage to Mecca and might
wear the green turban.

But if Yusef came not by the cafe where Wassef sat glooming, some one
else came who quickly roused Wassef from his phlegm. It was Donovan
Pasha, the young English official, who had sat with him many a time at
the door of his but and asked him questions about Dongola and Berber and
the Soudanese. And because Dicky spoke Arabic, and was never known to