Nakib el Askar (_Commandant de place_), Mohammed Umar el Hamumi. This is
one of those Hazramaut adventurers so common in all the countries
bordering upon Arabia: they are the Swiss of the East, a people equally
brave and hardy, frugal and faithful, as long as pay is regular. Feared by
the soft Indians and Africans for their hardness and determination, the
common proverb concerning them is, "If you meet a viper and a Hazrami,
spare the viper." Natives of a poor and rugged region, they wander far and
wide, preferring every country to their own; and it is generally said that
the sun rises not upon a land that does not contain a man from Hazramaut.
[8] This commander of an army of forty men [9] often read out to us from
the Kitab el Anwar (the Book of Lights) the tale of Abu Jahl, that Judas
of El Islam made ridiculous. Sometimes comes the Sayyid Mohammed el Barr,
a stout personage, formerly governor of Zayla, and still highly respected
by the people on acount of his pure pedigree. With him is the Fakih Adan,
a savan of ignoble origin. [10] When they appear the conversation becomes
intensely intellectual; sometimes we dispute religion, sometimes politics,
at others history and other humanities. Yet it is not easy to talk history
with a people who confound Miriam and Mary, or politics to those whose
only idea of a king is a robber on a large scale, or religion to men who
measure excellence by forbidden meats, or geography to those who represent
the earth in this guise. Yet, though few of our ideas are in common, there
are many words; the verbosity of these anti-Laconic oriental dialects [11]
renders at least half the subject intelligible to the most opposite
thinkers. When the society is wholly Somal, I write Arabic, copy some
useful book, or extract from it, as Bentley advised, what is fit to quote.
When Arabs are present, I usually read out a tale from "The Thousand and
One Nights," that wonderful work, so often translated, so much turned
over, and so little understood at home. The most familiar of books in
England, next to the Bible, it is one of the least known, the reason being
that about one fifth is utterly unfit for translation; and the most