Interview With A Younger Brother
Asaad's brother Galed came again to-day, and discovered more feeling
than yesterday on the subject of his brother's leaving the English. He
said he had brought an insupportable shame upon the family. Asaad
insisted, that such shame was no argument whatever for his leaving us;
that all the disciples of Christ were to expect it as a thing of course.
Galed assured him, that nobody would think of molesting him, if he were
t Hadet. I asked Galed if his brother Mansoor did not threaten
yesterday to kill him. He turned away, colored, and muttered something
that I did not understand; but the whole was a full acknowledgment of
the fact.
Asaad said, "I cannot confide in you."
"But," said Galed, "if any one were disposed to take your life, could
they not do it as well here, as at home?"
I answered, "no; that the emir Beshir himself could not enter my house
without my permission, and that if the relatives of Asaad did not cease
from their threats, I should feel myself bound to shut them out of it."
After a long conversation, at the end of which he found Asaad as
inflexible as ever, he rose abruptly, and was going out without a
compliment, when Asaad started up, and asked, "Well, what do you
conclude to do? Do you really intend to send some assassin to take my
life in my room?" The youth, without deigning to look at him, closed the
door in sullen grief, and departed.
Asaad turning to me, said, "I cannot please these people. Whatever I
say, they are sure to be angry. Soft words, or hard words, it makes no
difference to them. They come as if I were under their kingly authority.
They lay hold of my cloak, and say, 'Give me this.' If I say, 'I will
not give it,' they are angry; and if I reason with them with all the
mildness of which I am capable, and say, 'Cannot you be accommodated
elsewhere? Can you not wait upon me in a few days?' &c. they are equally
angry."