Arabesque Read Online Free Page B

an order, and he never howled for the maître d’hôtel. While you were engaged with Madame or looking at the sea or criticizing
the Assyrian curls of Lebanese women, miniature gestures of thumb and forefinger played between Nachmias and the nearest waiter, and what you wanted appeared.
    “How do you manage it?” she asked Abu Tisein.
    She had never waited less than a quarter of an hour for a drink when sitting with anyone else.
    “I am a Turk,” he said solidly. “I understand them.”
    “
Mais, ch
é
ri!”
screeched Madame. “He is mad, my husband! He is no more a Turk than I am.”
    “But everyone knows you were educated in France, my dear,” replied Abu Tisein with lazy irony—whether true or not, Madame took good care that it should be known. “Whereas
I am a child of the Ottoman Empire.”
    Armande was affectionately amused by Mme. Nachmias’s excellent imitation of a Parisian lady who had been dragged to the Middle East against her will and only longed to return to Europe; it
might even have deceived her if she had not heard Madame deal with an offending chambermaid in a screaming flow of invective which left no doubt that Arabic was her mother tongue. Abu
Tisein’s wide Palestinian culture did not appeal at all to his wife. It smelled too much of humble origins.
    “The Lebanese,” Armande remarked, “say that they preferred the Turks to the French.”
    “Just because those were the good old times. All the world looks back to the days before 1914. Myself, I prefer Palestine and the Lebanon as they now are. But I admit I was content under
the Turks.”
    “You were also younger,” Madame reminded him sharply.
    “Yes, but it is not only that. In those days we were left in peace. So long as my people are left to multiply in peace, I do not care who governs—Turks or English or
Arabs.”
    “David!” Madame protested. “One would think you passed your life in chewing melon seeds or smoking a nargileh!”
    “I like to do both,” murmured Abu Tisein.
    “He is impossible, Mme. Herne! Do not believe a word he says! Everyone knows that the Jewish Agency could not exist a moment without my husband. And to say that he would not mind being
ruled by Arabs! That, David, when you saw what the Arabs did in Safad!”
    She tore the white, spotted scarf from her head with a sweep of the arm that expressed tragic exasperation, and fanned herself impatiently.
    “Dear Mme. Herne, it was horrible! I, I who am speaking to you, I was nearly violated!”
    “But you were not,” said Abu Tisein peaceably, “for one recognised you in time. No, Mme Herne, do not misunderstand me. As things are, we must trust the Arabs to the Jews,
rather than the Jews to the Arabs. We are excitable, I admit, but we do not cut women and children into little pieces. I am a Jew and I live and work for Jewish Palestine—but I permit myself
to regret the days when my country was not full of Poles and Germans, and the Arabs were more friendly. Like a good civil servant in England, I do what I am told but I do not always approve of
it.”
    Mme. Nachmias, implying her opinion that the conversation had become impolitely deep for the presence of two fashionable women, began to prattle trivialities. A French officer invited Armande to
dance; when she refused on the grounds of heat and headache, he showed a tendency to hang about the table in the hope of being invited to sit down. To Armande’s annoyance, Abu Tisein welcomed
him and Madame sparkled with conversation, playing the witty Frenchwoman of uncertain age. Such rapid fire would have overwhelmed Armande even if she had wished to compete.
    As soon as Madame and her officer had, inevitably, reached the dance floor, David Nachmias said:
    “I suppose that you will be going to Cairo soon?”
    This was an obvious invitation to talk of her plans. Armande realised that she had watched unsuspectingly one of Madame’s disappearing acts, by which, without any collusion between husband