CHAPTER XXIX. Concerning Crime and Punishment

CONCERNING CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

If we wished to stay in any place for more than a day or two, Rashid, upon arrival, wandered through the markets and inquired what dwellings were to let, while I sat down and waited in some coffee-house. Within an hour he would return with tidings of a decent lodging, whither we at once repaired with our belongings, stabling our horses at the nearest khan.

My servant was an expert in the art of borrowing, so much so that no sound of disputation on that subject reached my ears. It seemed as if the neighbours came, delighted, of their own accord to lend us pots and pans and other necessaries. He also did the cooking and the marketing without a hitch, giving a taste of home to the small whitewashed chamber, which we had rented for a week, it might be, or a month at most.

When obliged to go out upon any errand, Rashid was always worried about leaving me alone, regarding me as careless of my property and so untrusty from the point of view of one who idolised it.

'If your Honour should be seized with a desire to smell the air when I am absent,' he would say, 'do not forget to lock the door and place the key in the appointed hiding-place where I can find it. There are wicked people in the world. And while you sit alone, keep our revolver handy.'

He told me that in cities robberies of private dwellings are oftener committed at high noon, when many houses are left empty, than at night, when they are full of snoring folk. I did not doubt the truth of this assertion, but differed from him in believing that we harboured nothing likely to attract a thief.

'I would not lose the buckle of a strap, a single grain of sesame, by such foul means,' he would reply with vehemence.

One morning--it was in Damascus--he went out, after imploring me as usual to take care of everything. The room we occupied was at the end of a blind alley, up a flight of nine stone steps. The alley led into a crowded, narrow street, bordered with shops of many-coloured wares, which at that point was partly shaded by a fine old ilex tree. From where I sprawled upon a bed of borrowed cushions in the room, reading a chap-book I had lately purchased--The Rare Things of Abu Nawwas--I saw the colour and the movement of that street as at the far end of a dark kaleidoscope, for all the space between was in deep shadow.

When a man turned up our alley--a most rare occurrence--I noticed his appearance. It was rather strange. He wore an old blue shirt, and on his head a kind of turban, but of many colours and, unlike any I had ever seen upon the natives of the country, with an end or streamer hanging loose upon one side. In complexion, too, he was a good deal darker than a Syrian, and yet had nothing of the negro in his looks. Something furtive in his manner of approach amused me, as suggestive of the thief of Rashid's nightmares. I moved into the darkest corner of the room and lay quite still. He climbed our steps and filled the doorway, looking in.

It happened that Rashid had left a bag of lentils, bought that morning, just inside. The thief seized that and, thinking he was unobserved, was going to look round for other spoil, when I sat up and asked to know his business. He gave one jump, replied: 'It is no matter,' and was gone immediately. I watched him running till he vanished in the crowded street.

Rashid returned. I told him what had happened in his absence, but he did not smile. He asked me gravely to describe the man's appearance, and, when I did so, groaned: 'It is a Nuri (gipsy). Who knows their lurking-places? Had it been a townsman or a villager I might perhaps have caught him and obtained redress.' He said this in a manner of soliloquy before he turned to me, and, with reproachful face, exclaimed:

'He stole our bag of lentils and you watched him steal it! You had at hand our good revolver, yet you did not shoot!'

'Why should I shoot a man for such a trifle?'

'It is not the dimensions or the value of the object stolen that your Honour ought to have considered, but the crime! The man who steals a bag of lentils thus deliberately is a wicked man, and when a man is wicked he deserves to die; and he expects it.'

I told him that the gipsy was quite welcome to the lentils, but he would not entertain that point of view. After trying vainly to convince me of my failure to perform a social duty, he went out to the establishment of a coffee-seller across the street, who kept his cups and brazier in the hollow trunk of the old ilex tree, and set stools for his customers beneath its shade, encroaching on the public street. Thither I followed after a few minutes, and found him telling everybody of the theft. Those idlers all agreed with him that it was right to shoot a thief.

'All for a bag of lentils!' I retorted loftily. 'God knows I do not grudge as much to any man.'

At that there rose a general cry of 'God forbid!' while one explained:

'It were a sin to refuse such a thing to a poor man in need who came and begged for it in Allah's name. But men who take by stealth or force are different. Think if your Honour had destroyed that thief, the rascal would not now be robbing poorer folk, less able to sustain the loss! Suppose that bag of lentils had been all you had! There may be people in the world as poor as that.'

'Why should I kill a man who offered me no violence?' I asked defiantly.

'Why should you not do so, when the man is evidently wicked?'

'Why do the Franks object to killing wicked people?' asked the coffee-seller with a laugh. 'Why do they nourish good and bad in their society?'

'It is because they are without religion,' muttered one man in his beard.

An elder of superior rank, who overheard, agreed with him, pronouncing in a tone of gentle pity:

'It is because they lose belief in Allah and the life to come. They deem this fleeting life the only one vouchsafed to man, and death the last and worst catastrophe that can befall him. When they have killed a man they think they have destroyed him quite; and, as each one of them fears such destruction for himself if it became the mode, they condemn killing in their laws and high assemblies. We, when we kill a person, know that it is not the end. Both killed and killer will be judged by One who knows the secrets of men's breasts. The killed is not deprived of every hope. For us, death is an incident: for them, the end. Moreover, they have no idea of sacrifice. Killing, with them, is always the result of hate.'

'What does your Honour mean by that last saying?' I inquired with warmth.

The old man smiled on me indulgently as he made answer sadly:

'Be not offended if we speak our mind before you. We should not do so if we wished you ill. Here, among us, it is not an unheard-of thing for men to kill the creatures they love best on earth; nor do men blame them when, by so doing, they have served the cause of God, which is the welfare of mankind. Thus it was of old the rule, approved of all the world, that every Sultan of the line of Othman had to kill his brothers lest they should rise against him and disturb the peace of all the realm. Was it not like depriving life of all its sweetness thus to destroy their youth's companions and their nearest kin? Yet, though their hearts were in the bodies of their victims, they achieved it. And the victims met their death with the like fortitude, all save a few of less heroic mould.

'Now, I have read some histories written by the Europeans. They do not understand these things at all. They think us merely cruel--just as we, in the same unperceiving manner, think them merely covetous. Yet I disagree with your good servant in the present case. I think that you were right to spare that Nuri.'

Rashid, who, with the rest of the assembly, had listened to the old man's speech with reverence, exclaimed:

'It is not just this Nuri or that bag of lentils, O my lord! My master is thus careless always. He never locks the door when he goes out during my absence, though all that we possess is in that room.'

'Thy lord is young.' The old man smiled upon me kindly, and proceeded then to read me a mild lecture on my carelessness, detailing to me the precautions which he took himself, habitually, when shutting up his house or place of business, including pious formulas which he made me repeat after him. While he was thus instructing me, Rashid went off, returning in about three minutes with a face of indignation strangely and incongruously mixed with triumph.

Taking his stand before me in the very middle of the seated crowd, he said:

'You left the door wide open even after you had seen that Nuri steal the bag of lentils. I have this minute been to look and I have seen. With our revolver lying in the full light of the doorway! Merciful Allah! What is to be done with you?'

The old man, my preceptor, laughed aloud; and at the sound Rashid, whose desperation was not acted, wept real tears. The people round us tried in vain to comfort him.