"Do whatever the leader of the escort tells you."
I never learned exactly how Jim Grim got word to ben Nasir. My
suspicion is that he took the simple course of getting the
American Colony to send one of their men; but as they never
referred to it afterwards, and might have their own reasons for
keeping silence, I took care not to ask them. We have most of us
seen harm done by noisy gratitude for kindness, better covered up.
I kept close to the hotel for three days, studying Arabic. By
the fourth afternoon discouragement set in. I began to believe
that the whole affair had petered out; perhaps on reflection the
Administrator had decided I was not a proper person to be turned
loose out of bounds, and nobody could have blamed him for that,
for he knew next to nothing about me. Or Grim might have been
called off for some other important business. The chances seemed
all against my going after all.
But on the fourth evening, just at sunset, when the sandwiches I
had ordered in advance were all thoroughly stale and I had almost
decided to unpack the small hand-grip and try to forget the whole
affair, I noticed an Arab standing in the door of the hotel
scrutinizing every one who passed him. I watched him for five
minutes. He paid no attention to officers in uniform. I left my
chair in the lobby and walked past him twice.
He had one eye, like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned
it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his
head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with it
in the dark.
I started to pass him a third time. He held his hand out and
thrust a small, soiled piece of paper into mine. The writing on
it was in Arabic, so I went back to the seat in the far corner,
to puzzle it out, he standing meanwhile in the doorway and
continuing to quiz people as if I had meant nothing in his life.
The message was short enough:
Bearer will accompany you to a place where the escort will
be in readiness. God give your honour a good journey. Mustapha
Ben Nasir.
I went to the Governorate and phoned for the car to come and pick
me up outside the Jaffa Gate. The Arab followed me, and he and I
were both searched at the gate for weapons, by a Sikh who knew
nothing and cared less about Near East politics. His orders were
to search thoroughly. He did it. The man whose turn was next
ahead of mine was a Russian priest, whose long black cloak did
not save him from painstaking suspicion. He was still
indignantly refusing to take down his pants and prove that the
hard lump on his thigh was really an amulet against sciatica,
when the car came for me.
It was an ordinary Ford car, and the driver was not in uniform.
He, too, had only one eye in full commission, for the other was
bruised and father swollen. I got in beside him and let the Arab
have the rear seat to himself, reflecting that I would be able to
smell all the Arab sweat I cared to in the days to come.
We are governed much more by our noses than we are often aware
of, and I believe that many people--in the East especially--use
scent because intuition warns them that their true smell would
arouse unconscious antagonism. Dogs, as well as most wild
animals, fight at the suggestion of a smell. Humans only differ
from the animals, much, when they are being self-consciously
human. Then they forget what they really know and tumble
headlong into trouble.
The driver seemed to know which road to take, and to be in no
particular hurry, perhaps on account of his injured eye. He was
an ex-soldier, of course: one of those under-sized Cockneys with
the Whitechapel pallor overlying a pugnacious instinct, who make
such astonishing fighting-men in the intervals between sulking
and a sort of half-affectionate abuse of everything in sight.
Being impatient to begin the adventure, I suggested more speed.
"Oh!" he answered. "So you're another o' these people in an
'urry to get to Jericho! It's strynge. The last one was a
Harab. Tyke it from me, gov'nor, I've driven the very last
Harab as gets more than twenty-five miles an hour out o' me,
so 'elp me--"
He tooled the car out on to the road toward Bethany, and down the
steep hill that passes under the Garden of Gethsemane, before
vouchsafing another word. Then, as we started to climb the hill
ahead, he jerked his chin in the direction of the sharp turn we
had just passed in the bottom of the valley. "Took that corner
las' time on one wheel!"
"For the Arab?"
"Aye. Taught me a lesson. Never agayn! I ain't no Arabian
Night. Nor yet no self-immolatin' 'Indoo invitin' no juggernauts
to make no pancykes out o' me. 'Enceforth, I drives reasonable.
All Harabs may go to 'ell for all o' me."
He was itching to tell his story. He was likely to tell it
quicker for not being questioned; your Cockney dislikes anything
he can construe into inquisition. I remarked that the road
didn't seem made for speed--too narrow and too rough--and let it
go at that.
He said no more until we reached the village of Bethany, and drew
abreast of Lazarus' reputed tomb, where a pack of scavenger-dogs
awoke and yelped around the wheels. He did his best to run
over one of them, but missed. Then he could not hold his story
any longer.
"Two nights ago," he said, "they gives me orders to take a Harab
to a point near Jericho. After dark, I starts off, 'im on the
back seat; engine ain't warm yet, so we goes slow. He leans
forward after a couple o' minutes, an says 'Yalla kawam'!" * So
I thinks to myself I'll show the blighter a thing or two, me not
bein' used to takin' orders from no Harabs. Soon as the engine's
'ot I lets rip, an' you know now what the road's like. When we
gets to the top o' that 'ill above Gethsemane I lets extry
special rip. Thinks I, if you can stand what I can, my son,
you've guts. [*Hurry up.]
"Well, we 'its all the 'igh places, and lands on a bit o' level
road just often enough to pick up more speed--comes round that
sharp bend on 'alf a wheel, syme as I told you--kills three pye-
dogs for sure, an' maybe others, but I don't dare look round--
misses a camel in the dark that close that the 'air on my arms
an' legs fair crawled up an' down me--'it's a lump o' rock that
comes near tippin' us into the ditch--an' carries on faster an'
ever. By the time we gets 'ere to Bethany, thinks I, it's time
to take a look an' see if my passenger's still in the bloomin'
car. So I slows down.
"The minute I turns my 'ead to 'ave a peer at 'im. 'Kawam!' 'e
says. 'Quick! Quick!'
"So it strikes me I weren't in no such 'urry after all. Why
'urry for a Harab? The car's been rattlin' worse 'n a tinker's
basket. I gets down to lave a look--lights a gasper*--an' takes
my bloomin' time about it. You seen them yellow curs there by
Lazarus' tomb? Well, they come for me, yappin' an' snarlin' to
beat 'ell. I'm pickin' up stones to break their 'eads with--good
stones ain't such easy findin' in the dark, an' every time I
stoops 'alf a dozen curs makes a rush for me--when what d'you
suppose? That bloomin' Harab passenger o' mine vaults over into
my seat, an' afore I could say ''ell's bells' 'e's off. I'd left
the engine runnin'. By the luck o' the Lord I 'angs on, an'
scrambles in--back seat. [*Anglice--canteen cigarette.]
"I thought at first I'd reach over an' get a half-nelson on 'im
from behind. But, strike me blind! I didn't dare!
"Look where we are now. Can you see the 'air-pin turn at the
bottom of this 'ill, with a ditch, beyond it? Well, we takes
that turn in pitch-dark shadow with all four wheels in the air,
an' you'd 'a thought we was a blinkin' airplane a doin' stunts.
But 'e's a hexpert, 'e is, an' we 'olds the road. From there on
we goes in one 'oly murderin' streak to a point about 'alf-way up
the 'ill where the Inn of the Good Samaritan stands on top.
There we 'as two blow-outs simultaneous, an' thinks I, now, my
son, I've got you! I gets out.
"'You can drive,' I says, 'like Jehu son o' Nimshi what made
Israel to sin. Let's see you make bricks now without no bleedin'
straw'! I knew there weren't no tools under the seat--there
never are in this 'ere country if you've left your car out o'
your sight for five minutes. 'You take off them two back tires,'
I says, 'while I sit 'ere an meditate on the ways of Harabs!
Maybe you're Moses,' I says, 'an know 'ow to work a miracle.'
"But the only miracle about that bloke's 'is nerve. 'E gets out,
'an begins to walk straight on up'ill without as much as a by-
your-leave. I shouts to 'im to come back. But 'e walks on. So
I picks up a stone off the pile I was sittin' on, an' I plugs 'im
good--'its 'im fair between the shoulder-blades. You'd think, if
'e was a Harab, that'ud bring 'im to 'is senses, wouldn't you?
But what d'you suppose the blighter did?
"Did you notice my left eye when you got in the car? 'E turns
back, an' thinks I, 'e's goin' to knife me. But that sport could
use 'is fists, an' believe me, 'e done it! I can use 'em a bit
myself, an' I starts in to knock 'is block off, but 'e puts it
all over me--weight, reach an' science. Mind you, science!
First Arab ever I see what 'ad science; an' I don't more than
'alf believe it now!
"Got to 'and it to 'im. 'E was merciful. 'E let up on me the
minute 'e see I'd 'ad enough. 'E starts off up'ill again. I
sits where 'e'd knocked me on to a stone pile, wishin' like 'ell
for a drink. It was full moonlight, an' you could see for miles.
After about fifteen minutes, me still meditatin' murder an'
considerin' my thirst I seen 'em fetch a camel out o' the khan at
the Inn o' the Good Samaritan; an' next thing you know, 'e's out
o' sight. Thinks I, that's the last of 'im, an' good riddance!
But not a bit of it!
"The men what fetched the camel for 'im comes down to me an' says
the sheikh 'as left word I'm to be fed an' looked after. They
fixes me up at the inn with a cot an' blankets an' a supper o'
sorts, an' I lies awake listenin' to 'em talkin' Arabic,
understandin' maybe one word out of six or seven. From what I
can make o' their conjecturin', they think 'e ain't no sheikh at
all, but a bloomin' British officer in disguise!
"Soon as morning comes I jump a passing commissariat lorry. As
soon as I gets to Jerusalem I reports that sheikh for arson,
theft, felo de se, busting a gov'ment car, usin' 'is fists when
by right 'e should ha' knifed me, an' every other crime I could
think of. An' all I gets is laughed at! What d'you make of it?
Think 'e was a Harab?"
I wondered whether he was Jimgrim, but did not say so. Grim had
not appeared to me like a man who would use his fists at all
readily; but he was such an unusual individual that it was
useless trying to outline what he might or might not do. It was
also quite likely that the chauffeur had omitted mention of, say,
nine-tenths of the provocation he gave his passenger. What
interested me most was the thought that, if that really was
Jimgrim, he must have been in a prodigious hurry about something;
and that most likely meant excitement, if not danger across the
Dead Sea.
We caught sight of the Dead Sea presently, bowling past the Inn
of the Good Samaritan and beginning to descend into the valley,
twelve hundred feet below sea level, that separates Palestine
from Moab. The moon shone full on the water, and it looked more
wan and wild than an illustration out of Dante's Inferno. There
was no doubt how the legends sprang up about birds falling dead
as they flew across it. It was difficult to believe that
anything could be there and not die. It was a vision of the land
of death made beautiful.
But the one-eyed Arab on the rear seat began to sing. To him
that view meant "home, sweet home." His song was all about his
village and how he loved it--what a pearl it was--how sweeter
than all cities.
"'Ark at 'im!" The driver stopped the car to fill his pipe.
"You'd think 'e lived in 'eaven! I've fought over every hinch o'
this perishin' country, an' tyke it from me, guv'nor, there ain't
a village in it but what's composed of 'ovels wi' thatched roofs,
an' 'eaps o' dung so you can't walk between 'em! Any one as
wants my share o' Palestine can 'ave it!"
We bumped on again down a road so lonely that it would have felt
good to see a wild beast, or an armed man lurking in wait for us.
But the British had accomplished the impossible: They had so
laid the fear of law along those roads that, though there might
be murders to the right and left of them, the passer-by who kept
to the road was safe, for the first time since the Romans now and
then imposed a temporary peace.
At last, like two yellow streams glistening in moonlight, the
road forked--one way toward Jericho. The other way appeared
to run more or less parallel with the Dead Sea. At that point
the one-eyed Arab left off singing at last and clutched the
driver's shoulder.
"All right! All right!" he answered impatiently, and stopped.
"Out you get, then!"
He did not expect the tip I gave him. He seemed to think it
placed him under obligation to wait there and talk for a few
minutes. But my one-eyed guide waved him away disgustedly with
the hand that did not hold my bag, and we stood in the road
watching until he vanished up-hill out of sight. Then the guide
plucked my sleeve and I followed him along the righthand road.
We walked half a mile as fast as he could set foot to the ground.
At last we reached a pretense of a village--a little cluster of
half-a-dozen thatched stone huts enclosed within one fence of
thorn and cactus. Everything showed up as clearly in the
moonlight as if painted with phosphorus. The heavy shadows only
made the high lights seem more luminous. A man and two donkeys
were waiting for us outside the thorn hedge. The man made no
remark. My guide and I mounted and rode on.
Presently we turned down a track toward the Dead Sea, riding
among huge shadows cast by the hills on our right hand. The
little jackals they call foxes crossed our path at intervals.
Owls the size of a robin, only vastly fluffier, screamed from the
rocks as we passed them. Otherwise, it was like a soul's last
journey, eerie, lonely and awful, down toward River Styx.
Long before we caught sight of the water again, through a ragged
gap between high limestone rocks, I could smell a village. The
guide approached it cautiously, stopping every minute or so to
listen. When we came on it at last it was down below us in
abysmal darkness, one light shining through a window two feet
square in proof we were not hesitating on the verge of the
infinite pit.
The donkeys knew the way. They trod daintily, like little
ladies, along a circling track that goats made and men had
certainly done nothing to improve. We made an almost complete
ellipse around and down, and rode at last over dry dung at the
bottom, into which the donkeys' feet sank as into a three-pile
carpet. You could see the stars overhead, but nothing, where we
were, except that window and a shaft of yellow light with
hundreds of moths dazzled in it.
We must have made some noise in spite of the donkeys' vetvet
foot-fall. As we crossed the shaft of light a door opened within
six feet of the window. A man in Arab deshabille with a red
tarboosh awry, thrust out his head and drew it in again quickly.
"Is that the American?" he asked. He held the door so that he
could slam it in our faces if required.
The guide made no answer. I gave my name. The man opened the
door wider.
"Lailtak sa'idi, effendi! Hishkur Allah! Come in, mister!" The
guide led the donkeys away to some invisible place. I crossed
the threshold, my host holding his tin lantern carefully to show
the two steps leading down to a flag-stone floor. He bolted the
door the moment I was inside. He seemed in a great state of
excitement, and afraid to make any noise. Even when he shot the
bolt he did it silently.
It was a square room, moderately clean, furnished only with a
table and two chairs. There were other rooms leading off it, but
the stone partitions did not reach as high as the thatch and I
could hear rustling, and some one snoring. I sat on one of the
chairs at his invitation, and rather hoped for supper, having had
none. But supper was not in his mind; it seemed he had too much
else to worry him. He looked like a man who worried easily, and
likely enough with good reason, for his long nose and narrow eyes
did not suggest honesty.
"There was to be an escort to meet me here," I said.
"Yes, yes. Thank God, mister, you have come at last. If you had
only come at sunset! Ali has gone to bring them now."
"Who is Ali?"
"He with one eye. He who brought you. Your escort came at
sunset. Because I am Christian they would not listen to me or
wait for you in my house. There are twenty of them, led by
Anazeh, who is a bad rascal. They have gone to raid the
villages. There has been trouble. I have heard two shots fired.
Now they will come back to my house, and if the Sikh patrol is
after them they will be caught here, and I shall be accused of
helping them. May the fires of their lying Prophet's Eblis
burn Anazeh and his men forever and ever, Amen! May God curse
their religion!"
That was a nice state of affairs. I did not want to be caught
there by a lot of truculent Sikhs under one of those jocularly
incredulous young British subalterns that Sikhs adore. In the
first place, I had nothing whatever in writing to prove my
innocence. The least that was likely to happen would be an
ignominious return to Jerusalem, after a night in a guard-house,
should there be a guard-house; failing that, a night in the open
within easy reach of Sikh's bayonets. In Jerusalem, no doubt,
Sir Louis would order me released immediately. But it began to
look as if the whole mystery after all was nothing but a well-
staged decoy, using me for bait. Not even tadpoles enjoy being
used for live-bait without being consulted first. I began to
spear about for remedies.
"If you're an honest man," I said, "you'd better simply deny all
connection with the raid."
"Hah?"
He shrugged his shoulders. He did not look like an honest man.
He wasn't one. He knew it. He retorted gloomily:
"Anazeh's scoundrels will have raided sheep, and perhaps cattle.
If any one has resisted them, there will be wailing widows crying
out for vengeance. They will put the sheep and cattle in their
boats in which they came over the sea this afternoon. The boats
will be found by the Sikhs, hauled up on the sand-pit just below
my house, with my motor-boat beside them. I am ruined!"
Well, my own predicament was better than that. Nobody was likely
to accuse me of having stolen sheep. But I could not feel sorry
for my host, because he was so sorry for himself. He was one of
those unfortunates who carry the conviction of their own guilt in
their faces. I gave up all idea of relying on him in case the
Sikhs should come.
My next idea was to ask for the loan of one of the donkeys, and
to start back toward Jerusalem. But I had not more than thought
of it when men's footsteps pattered on the yard dung, and an
indubitable rifle-butt beat on the wooden door.
"For God's sake!" hissed the owner of the place. He ran to the
door to open it as the thumping grew louder. As he drew the bolt
somebody kicked the door open, sending him reeling backwards.
For a second I thought the Sikhs had come.
But he was nothing like a Sikh who strode in, with a dozen
ruffians at his tail and one-eyed Ali bringing up the rear. He
was one of the finest-looking Arabs I had ever seen, although
considerably past fifty and wrinkled so that his face was a net-
work of fine lines, out of which his big, dark eyes shone with
unaged intelligence. He was magnificently dressed, perhaps in
order to do me honour. Except for the fact that he carried a
modern military rifle on his elbow, in place of a shepherd's
crook or a spear, he looked like one of those historic worthies
who stalk through the pages of the Pentateuch. The dignity and
charm with which he bowed to me were inimitable--unconveyable.
But he turned on my Christian host like a prophet of old
rebuking blasphemy.
Arabic when the right man uses it sounds like tooth-for-a-tooth
law being laid down. Hebrew is all music and soft vowels;
Arabic all guttural consonants. The Sheikh Anazeh (there was no
doubt of his identity; they all kept calling him by name)
fulminated. The other bleated at him. I learned his name at
last. Ali of the one eye pressed forward, took him by the
sleeve, and called him Ahmed. Ali seemed to be adding persuasion
to Anazeh's threats. Whatever it was they were driving at, Ahmed
began to look like yielding. So, as I could not untangle more
than one brief sentence at a time from all those galloping
arguments, I pulled Ahmed away into a corner.
"What do they all want?" I asked him. "Tell me in ten words."
But he was not a brief man.
"They say the Sikhs are after them. They have put the stolen
sheep into their boats, as I told you they would, mister. Now
they order me to tow them with my motor-boat. But it cannot be
done, mister, it cannot be done! I tell them there is government
launch near Jericho that the Sikh patrol can use to overtake us.
I have a swift boat, but if I take in tow two other loaded boats
we shall be caught; and then who will save everything I have
from confiscation?"
"How close are the Sikhs?" I asked.
"God knows, mister! They can come fast. Unless I consent to let
them use my boat, Anazeh will order his men to kill me, and then
they will take the boat in any case! There is only one thing:
they must leave the sheep behind and all crowd into my boat, but
I cannot persuade them!"
At that moment another of Anazeh's party burst in through the
door. He evidently bore bad news. Catching sight of me, he
lowered his voice to a whisper, and, whatever he said, Anazeh
nodded gravely. Then the old sheikh gave an order, and four of
his men came without further ado to seize Ahmed.
"Bear me witness!" the wretched man called back to me as they
dragged him off. "I go under protest--most unwillingly!"
Somebody struck him with a butt-end. A woman's head appeared
over the top of the partition, and began to jabber noisily.
Several of Anazeh's men hurled jests: the highest compliment
they paid her was to call her Um-Kulsum, the mother of sin.
Anazeh beckoned to me. He did not seem to doubt for an instant
that I would follow him.
I was in no mind to wait there and be arrested by the Sikh
patrol. I wondered whether they were coming in open order,
combing the countryside, or heading all together straight for a
known objective; and whether in either case I could give them
the slip and head back toward Jerusalem. In that minute I
recalled Grim's advice:
"Do whatever the leader of the escort tells you and you'll be all
right. You needn't be afraid to trust him."
That settled it. I did not suppose for a minute that Grim had
contemplated any such contingency as this; but he had
volunteered the advice, so the consequences would be his affair.
I followed Anazeh into outer darkness, and one of his men pulled
the door to after me.
There was something very like a panic down by the waterside,
three hundred yards away from the house. It needed all Anazeh's
authority to straighten matters out. There were divided
counsels; and the raiders were working at a disadvantage in
total darkness; the shadow of the hills fell just beyond the
stern of the boats as they lay with their bows ashore.
They had already forced Ahmed into his own motor-boat, where he
was struggling vainly to crank a cold engine. Some of the others
were trying to push off a boat full of bleating sheep. One man
was carrying a fat sheep in his arms toward the motor-boat,
splashing knee-deep in the water and shouting advice to everybody
else, and in the end that was the only piece of plunder they got
away with. Suddenly one man, who had been left behind to keep a
look-out, came leaping like a ghost among the shadows, shouting
the one word "askeri!" (Soldiers!) He jumped straight into the
motor-boat. Anazeh bullied all the rest in after him. I climbed
in over the bow. By that time you could not have crowded in one
more passenger with the aid of a battering ram.
"Yalla!" barked Anazeh. But the engine would not start. Blood-
curdling threats were hurled at the unhappy Ahmed. Some e of the
men got into the water and began to shove off, as if the engine
could be encouraged by collaboration.
I was just as keen to escape as any one. I could not imagine a
Sikh or subaltern stupid enough to believe me innocent. It was a
military government. Soldiers have a drum-head method of leaving
nothing to discuss except where the corpse is to be buried.
I forced my way aft--got some gasoline out of the tank into a tin
cup--thrust aside Ahmed and two other men--and primed the engine
liberally. The engine coughed next time they moved the wheel,
and in thirty seconds more we had it going. Ahmed came in for a
volley of mockery for having to be shown the way to start his
engine; but from the sour way he looked at me I was nearly sure
he had stalled deliberately.
We backed away from shore, and Anazeh steered the boat's nose
eastward. Then somebody at the reversing lever threw it forward
too suddenly, and the still chilled engine stopped. It took
about another minute to restart it. We were just beginning to
gain speed when some one shouted. All eyes turned toward the
shore, the overloaded boat rocking dangerously as the crowd bent
their bodies all in one direction together.
Down near the shore-line an electric torch flashed on the
uniforms of half-a-dozen Sikhs, and we could hear an unmistakably
British voice shouting an order.
We were out in the moonlight now, a perfect target. Bullets
chanced at us could hardly fail to hit somebody. Two or three
well-placed shots might sink us. But Anazeh had presence of
mind. He changed helm, so as to present us end-on to the shore.
Low in the water though the boat was, we were beginning to make
good headway.
The Sikhs lost no time. Shots began to whizz overhead and to
splash the water around us. But the boat was painted gray; as
we increased the distance we must have looked like a moving patch
of darker water with a puzzling wake behind us. The sea was
still. The stars were reflected in it in unsteady dots and
streaks. The moon cast a silver patch of light that shimmered,
and confused the eye. Sikhs are not by any means all marksmen.
At any rate, the shots all missed. Though some of our party,
Anazeh included, returned the fire, none boasted of having hit
any one. And an Arab boasts at the least excuse.
In a few minutes we were out of range and, since there was no
pursuing launch in sight, could afford to jeer at the Sikhs in
chorus. There were things said about their habits and their
ancestry that it is to be hoped they did not hear, or at any rate
understand, for the sake of any Arab prisoners they might take in
future. It always struck me as a fool game to mock your enemy.
If you fall in his power at any time he would be almost more than
human if he did not remember it. It seemed to me unlikely that
those Sikhs would forget to avenge the Arab compliments that must
have sizzled in ears across that star-lit sea. After that the
only immediate danger was from the wind that sometimes blows down
in sudden gusts from between the mountain-tops. It would have
needed only half a sea to swamp us. But the Dead Sea was living
up to its reputation, quiet, inert, like a mercury mirror for the
stars--a brooding place of silence.
The Arabs' spirits rose as we chugged toward their savage hills.
They began to sing glorious songs about women and mares and
camels. Presently Anazeh improvised an epic about the night's
raid, abortive though it had been. He left out all the
disappointing part. He sang first of the three shore-dwelling
fools whose boats they had stolen. Then of the baffled rage of
those same fools when they should learn their property was lost
forever. Presently, as he warmed to the spirit of the thing, he
sang about the wails of the frightened villagers from whom they
had plundered sheep and goats; and of the skill and
resourcefulness with which the party had escaped pursuit under
his leadership, Allah favoring, "and blessed be His Prophet!"
Last, he sang about me, the honoured stranger, for whom they had
dared everything and conquered, and whom they were taking to El-
Kerak. He described me as a prince from a far country, the son
of a hundred kings.
It was a good song. I got Ahmed to translate it to me
afterwards. But I suspect that Ahmed toned it down in deference
to what he may have thought might be my modesty and moralistic
scruples.