"What is it to you?" he said one day; "you have rich relations, kind friends, and a just Government. If you are robbed, justice is done to you. But what can I expect but more abuse and ill-treatment?--and I have a wife and small children into the bargain!"
When he was not posing as a hero, he was posing as a feature in the landscape. This was particularly exasperating, for no amount of pity for his condition would turn him into a picturesque martyr, even in the foreground of ancient ruins. No sooner was my camera produced than Arten produced himself. The only occasion on which I knew him keep out of sight was when I was trying to get a snap-shot of the band of Kurds who held us up on the Tigris. He seemed to have no desire to show himself, although I was considerate enough to invite him to occupy a prominent position for once. His appearance was not calculated to enhance the effect of any picture. He was like a starved black scarecrow dressed up in tight and clerical garments, with a fez on the top--and then there was the nose. He would have made any warm desert scene look cold, as it would not be obvious that he was perspiring, and in any group of picturesque natives he would look ludicrous.
I recall, as I write, isolated moments of exasperation--when, for instance, he sat, singing a hymn, kicking up the dust with his heels, when we were trying to inflate ourselves with worthy feelings on the contemplation of Babylon, awed by the silence and desolation of the scene around us. Or again, how in a fit of nervousness he hurled the whole of our dinner in agitation on the floor, while we, after an unusually long fast, could have cried for food.
But reviewing him calmly at a distance, one remembers a man that one alternately laughed at and pitied; who annoyed one by his transparent faults, but who commanded one's sympathy by his tragic condition, and one's admiration by his cheerful willingness in trying circumstances. A man who was meant by nature to be light-hearted and happy, kind to his fellows, energetic and interested in his work, ambitious for his children; but who fate dictated was to have his spirit quenched, his nature hardened, and mean and cowardly qualities developed owing to the fear, injustice, and poverty in which, like the rest of his countrymen, he was condemned to live.