There was Yuhanna the dragoman, his old enemy, grinning down at him, for once quite friendly.
"Shrink not, O my son, fear nothing," he said, laughing, when Iskender half retreated. "Thou didst not perjure thyself, it seems, that time thou knowest, so I have no grudge against thee. And now thou hast joined the Church, thou art my brother. I heard the blessed news from one I met upon the road. Art thou not happy to be now a child of light, delivered from the prospect of everlasting damnation? Wallah, it is bad to be Brûtestânt."
He gave Iskender's arm a cunning twist, just enough to suggest the torture in reserve for heretics; and then, detaining his hand inquired the nature of his business in the city. Thus reminded of his errand which had quite escaped him, Iskender confessed that he was in search of the shop of one Ibrahîm abu Yûsuf, a painter of religious pictures. Yuhanna told him it was close at hand, and, having treated him to a cup of coffee and some sticky sweet-stuff, showed him the way, which could hardly have been found without direction. Through a deserted alley, down first one dark, stinking passage, then another, Iskender reached a crazy door and, knocking on it twice, was told to enter.
The room within was small and very dark. It had only one window, high up in the wall, and even that looked out upon a covered way. When Iskender entered, the artist was in the act of rising from his knees, having been on the floor at work upon a picture. He was a wizened elder with a fine white beard, clad in a soiled kaftan, black turban and big black-rimmed spectacles. Lighting a candle-end he read the letter of the priest Mîtri, and, having read, embraced his new disciple. He took off his spectacles, brushed them, wiped his eyes repeatedly, and then knelt again to his painting, bidding Iskender watch the way of it. When the youth suggested that more light was needed, Ibrahîm abu Yûsuf shook his head decidedly. This room, he explained, had been chosen precisely on account of its obscurity, which meant seclusion. Were he to ply his trade in the light of day, the Muslim zealots of the city would speedily tear him in pieces as an idol-maker. "Though some of them make pictures also," he explained, "not here but in Esh-Shâm and other places. They quote in excuse some fetwah of the learned. I have no appeal; for did I quote their fetwah they would call it blasphemy." The room, he said, possessed advantages for health as well as privacy. Its window gave upon the market of the shoemakers, and, when it stood open, admitted the smell of leather, than which nothing in the world is more wholesome and invigorating. Iskender was glad to learn that he was not required to sleep there, but in the private house of his master, whither he was conducted at the end of the day's work. The old man and his wife seemed pleased to have him in the room of their only son, an adventurous youth who had gone with merchandise to America to seek his fortune.
