Chapter XIV

THERE had been a complete change in the officials of the oasis since we had last been there. The new doctor—Wissa by name—came round to call the day after my arrival. He was a Copt.

He belonged to a rich family, owning large landed estates in the neighbourhood of Assiut.

He spoke English almost perfectly, for like so many Egyptians he was a born linguist. He was, I believe, almost equally at home with French and German. His people being very well-to-do had given him an excellent education, part of which he had received in England and other European countries.

Like all the Egyptians who have been educated in Europe, he was an interesting mixture of East and West—and a very curious compound it was. He talked most learnedly on the subject of medicine, and appeared to have especially studied such local diseases as “dengue” and “bilharsia.” Whenever I allowed him to do so, he gave me most racy accounts of his life as a medical student in Europe.

But he was an ardent treasure seeker, and his favourite topic of conversation was occultism and magic, in all of which he had the native Egyptian’s profound belief. He, the Senussi sheykh, Ahmed el Mawhub, and the _’omda_ of Rashida, had formed a sort of partnership to search for treasure, agreeing to divide equally between them anything that they found.

He told me a good deal about the Mawhub family of the Senussi _zawia_ at Qasr Dakhl. He said they were entirely neglecting their religious work in order to make money, and had then only got five pupils left in the _zawia_ at Qasr Dakhl, where formerly they had had great numbers. Old Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, who was well over seventy, had just started, he said, for Kufara with one servant and three men, who had been sent from that oasis to fetch him.

Wissa professed to have collected information from some unknown source of treasure that was hidden in many places in or near the oasis. One place in which he said it was to be found was in a stone temple eighteen hours’ journey to the west of the village of Gedida. I afterwards met a native who said he had ridden out and found this place, so probably it exists—the temple, not the treasure. He was clearly badly bitten with the treasure-seeking mania.

He was, of course, the possessor of a “book of treasure.” In the triangle between Mut, Masara and Ezbet Sheykh Mufta there is, he said, an old brick building on a white stone foundation covered by a dome, known as the Der el Arais—I saw this place afterwards. In it, under the dome, the book said, is a staircase with seven flights of steps, at the bottom of which is a passage seven cubits long. At the end of the passage is a monk—painted, Wissa thought, on the wall. The book said that there is an iron ring let into the floor near his feet, and that by pulling the ring a door would be caused to appear—this Wissa concluded to be a trap-door. Below is a flight of steps, which the book said must be descended without fear. At the bottom of the stair is a small chamber in which a king is buried.

The king has a gold ring with a stone in it on his finger. This is a magic ring, and if it is immersed in water, which is then given to a sick person, he will at once be cured, no matter what the nature of his malady may be. In the chamber there is also a clock that goes for ever, and in addition a _sagia_ (wheel for raising water) that contains the secret of Zerzura.

After I had got to know him better, he one day suggested that “as I was looking for Zerzura,” we should join together to search for the Der el Arais. He offered to let me keep the wonderful clock and _sagia_, and any treasure we might find, if I would only let him have the ring. With the help of that magic ring he felt certain that he would become the greatest doctor in the world—yet this was a man who had taken a diploma at the Qasr el ’Aini Hospital, spent a year at St. Thomas’s, six months at the Rotunda, and another six studying medicine between Paris and Geneva—and he wanted to cure his patients with a magic ring!

On leaving Dakhla, as he was an unusually capable native doctor, he was appointed to Luxor. Here he got into trouble. His sister contracted plague, and Wissa, without notifying the authorities, as he should have done, took her into his house, where he seems to have neglected the most elementary sanitary precautions. The last I heard of him he was, perhaps naturally, again in disgrace, and was on his way to take up an appointment at Sollum, where delinquents of his kind are sent when there is no room for them in the oases.

All this just shows what inestimable benefits an unusually intelligent native will reap from a highly expensive European education!

I had several times noticed in Mut a man dressed like a Tripolitan Arab in a long woollen blanket, but had never been able to get a good look at him, as he always avoided meeting me. On one occasion, when he saw me approaching, he even turned back and slunk round a corner to get out of my way.

Meeting Wissa one day, I asked him if he knew this Maghrabi Arab. He replied that he was not really an Arab at all, but a native of Smint, in Dakhla, and that he was a local magician he had often spoken to me about, who only wore the Tripolitan dress for effect, as the Western Arabs are noted as being the best sorcerers.

This man was a member of the Senussi—or as it was usually expressed “he followed the Sheykh.” I found that he was staying with Shekyh Senussi, the Clerk in Mut, and by a curious coincidence Qway also happened to be living in the same house.

I gathered that Qway was in the position of an honoured guest, for nearly every time I saw him he dilated upon Sheykh Senussi’s kindness to him. At times he became almost sentimental on the subject, declaring that he was like a brother to him. The reason for Qway’s affection evidently being that his camel, of which he was so proud, was being fed on the fat of the land and that he apparently was getting unlimited tea. This rapprochement between Qway and the Senussi, added to the rather secretive manner in which it was going on, made me suspect that this lavish hospitality had some ulterior object, though it was difficult to see what they were planning.

There were signs, too, that the Senussi were endeavouring to get round my other men, for when I went one morning to look at the camels, I saw an unpleasant-looking, pock-marked Arab skulking about in the yard to which Abd er Rahman had moved them to protect them from the wind—or the _afrit_. He kept dodging about behind the beasts and making for the entrance to the yard, evidently trying to avoid being seen. When I called him up and spoke to him, he told me he had come from “the north,” and tried to give the impression that he had recently left Assiut.

But on questioning Abd er Rahman about him afterwards I found that he was one of Sheykh Ahmed’s men, who had come down from his _ezba_ in charge of two camels on some mysterious errand, the nature of which was not quite clear. Abd er Rahman, when I told him that he looked a disreputable scoundrel, was loud in his praise.

I managed to elicit one useful piece of information from him, as he told me that, owing to most of the camels belonging to the Senussi having gone with old Mawhub, on his journey to Kufara, they only had three left in the oasis. This was rather welcome news, as I was afraid that they might go out and tamper with the depots I was intending to make in the desert.