"
"Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom
and anger. "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in
the way of another. Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou
wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!"
"That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim. Nor dost thou
think so, Effendina," David answered gravely. "A dark spirit is on thee.
Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou and
I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?"
"Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer. "Nation after nation
ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them
down. The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti. Go
back. Egypt will travel her own path. We are of the East; we are Muslim.
What is right to you is wrong to us. Ye would make us over--give us
cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and cleanse the
cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all? How many of
your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ? Yet all Egypt
would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the mud-hut, and
would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik knew, as
Harrik knew! Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the curtains of your
beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us--in the street,
in the market-place, where the house is building, the horse being shod,
or the money-changers are.
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