That my reason did not give way during my first period of imprisonment I have but to thank Father |116| Ohrwalder and the friends mentioned. Each one of them risked his or her comparative freedom, if not life, to help me. Even during the worst nights in the Umm Hagar, when Hell itself might be defied to match such a scene, when Madness and Death stalked hand-in-hand amongst the struggling mass, and when, jammed in tight with a number of the more fanatical prisoners, I fought and struggled, bit and kicked, as did they for bare life, the thought of having friends in adversity, suffering almost as much as I did, kept that slender thread from snapping; but the mental strain caused me most violent headaches and periods of forgetfulness or loss of memory, which even now recur at times. But it was during the famine that the Christian—more than Christian—charity of my friends was put to the severest tests and never faltered. Food was at enormous prices, but, day after day, Catarina brought her scrap of dourra or wheaten bread; every day Youssef Jebaalee sent his loaves of bread, unmindful of how much the guards stole, provided that I got a mouthful.
All the food sent for the prisoners did not, of course, reach them; what little passed the gates of the Saier was fought for; those having longer chains, or bars, connecting their anklets stood the best chance in the race for food, as they were able to take longer strides. Had it been under other circumstances, the scenes enacted might have provided endless amusement for the onlookers, for they had in them all the elements but one of a sack-race and old country sports. Seeing thirty or forty living skeletons shuffling, leaping as |117| far as their weight of chains and strength would allow, you knew, when one fell, that it was the weakness caused by starvation which had brought him down. There he would lie where he fell, given over to despair, whilst those who did reach any messenger with food, rather than resenting the stripes given by the guards with the courbash, would almost appear glad of the open wounds these caused, so that they might caress the wounds with their hands and lick the blood from their fingers. This picture is not _over-_ but _under_drawn; but I have been advised to leave out minute details and other scenes, as unnecessarily harrowing.