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“It is well.... Yet not altogether well. After fifteen years of obeisance, now at last I am lord of something—a small thing, but earnest of more to come. That is good. Praise to Allah, I am blest in that!... But it has taken long to reach this little eminence, and has cost me—Merciful Allah!—how much money! My patrimony is all but spent. And this post is not worth the trouble unless as a step to something finer. A few rock-scraping fellahìn, a few wild-beast Circassians.... What profit, O Lord, in such a government? After six months or eight I shall return. Then, it may be, they will speak to me of a pashalik. Where—Allah pity!—can I touch the price of a pashalik? Without money I can go no farther. If Shems-ud-dìn, my brother, will not help me, I must borrow of the infidel. O Shems-ud-dìn! O my soul! Allah knows it has been my sin to neglect thee. How long since I embraced thee, O my dear!”

The boat came to land at a point where a huddle of colored dwellings on the sea’s brink and a mosque with needle-pointed minarets cast a shimmer on the smooth water. Milhem clambered out on to a landing stage and started to climb a path through orchards which led to his brother’s house.