It is in accordance to custom that the Shaykh be attended by a half-witted fanatic who would be made furious by seeing gold and silks in the reverend presence so coyly curtained.
In English, “God damn everything an inch high!”
Burckhardt notes that the Wali, or chief police officer at Cairo, was exclusively termed Al-Agha and quotes the proverb (No. 156) “One night the whore repented and cried:—What! no Wali (Al-Aghá) to lay whores by the heels?” Some of these Egyptian by-words are most amusing and characteristic; but they require literal translation, not the timid touch of the last generation. I am preparing, for the use of my friend, Bernard Quaritch, a bonâ fide version which awaits only the promised volume of Herr Landberg.
Lit. for “we leave them for the present”; the formula is much used in this tale, showing another hand, author or copyist.
_i.e._ “Thou art unjust and violent enough to wrong even the Caliph!”
I may note that a “donkey-boy” like our “post-boy” can be of any age in Egypt.
They could legally demand to be recouped but the chief would have found some pretext to put off payment. Such at least is the legal process of these days.
_i.e._ drunk with the excess of his beauty.
A delicate way of offering a fee. When officers commanding regiments in India contracted for clothing the men, they found these douceurs under their dinner-napkins. All that is now changed; but I doubt the change being an improvement: the public is plundered by a “Board” instead of an individual.
This may mean, I should know her even were my eyes blue (or blind) with cataract and the Bresl. Edit. ix., 231, reads “Ayní” = my eye; or it may be, I should know her by her staring, glittering, hungry eyes, as opposed to the “Hawar” soft-black and languishing (Arab. Prov. i. 115, and ii. 848). The Prophet said “blue-eyed (women) are of good omen.” And when one man reproached another saying “Thou art Azrak” (blue-eyed!) he retorted, “So is the falcon!” “Zurk-an” in Kor. xx. 102, is translated by Mr. Rod well “leaden eyes.” It ought to be blue-eyed, dim-sighted, purblind.
Arab. “Ká’ah,” their mess-room, barracks.
So in the Brazil you are invited to drink a _copa d’agua_ and find a splendid banquet. There is a smack of Chinese ceremony in this practice which lingers throughout southern Europe; but the less advanced society is, the more it is fettered by ceremony and “etiquette.”