The Eye of Zeitoon | Page 4

a foreign-language play and understanding some, but
missing most of it.
There was a man who drew my attention at once, who looked and was
dressed rather like a Russian--a man with a high-bridged, prominent,
lean nose--not nearly so bulky as his sheepskin coat suggested, but
active and strong, with a fiery restless eye. He talked Russian at
intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the room on our
right, but used at least six other languages with any one who cared to
agree or disagree with him. His rather agreeable voice had the trick of
carrying words distinctly across the din of countless others.
"What do you suppose is that man's nationality?" I asked Will, shouting
to him because of the roar, although he sat next me.
"Ermenie!" said a Turk next but one beyond Will, and spat venomously,

as if the very name Armenian befouled his mouth.
But I was not convinced that the man with the aquiline nose was
Armenian. He looked guilty of altogether too much zest for life, and
laughed too boldly in Turkish presence. In those days most Armenians
thereabouts were sad. I called Will's attention to him again.
"What do you make of him?"
"He belongs to that quieter party in the opposite corner." (Will puts two
and two together all the time, because the heroes of dime novels act
that way.) "They're gipsies, yet I'd say he's not--"
"He and the others are jingaan," said a voice beside me in English, and
I looked into the Persian's gentle brown eyes. "The jingaan are street
robbers pure and simple," be added by way of explanation.
"But what nationality?"
"Jingaan might be anything. They in particular would call themselves
Rommany. We call them Zingarri. Not a dependable people--unless--"
I waited in vain for the qualification. He shrugged his shoulders, as if
there was no sense in praising evil qualities.
But I was not satisfied yet. They were swarthier and stockier than the
man who had interested me, and had indefinite, soft eyes. The man I
watched had brown eyes, but they were hard. And, unlike them, he had
long lean fingers and his gestures were all extravagant. He was not a
Jew, I was sure of that, nor a Syrian, nor yet a Kurd.
"Ermenie--Ermenie!" said the Turk, watching me curiously, and
spitting again. "That one is Ermenie. Those others are just dogs!"
The crowd began to thin after a while, as men filed out to feed cattle
and to cook their own evening meal. Then the perplexing person got up
and came over toward me, showing no fear of the Turk at all. He was
tall and lean when he stood upright, but enormously strong if one could
guess correctly through the bulky-looking outer garment.
He stood in front of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming
between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and
went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the
self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they
were all feigning sleep.
"Eenglis sportmen!" said the man in front of us, raising both hands,
palms outward, in appraisal of our clothes and general appearance.
It was not surprising that he should talk English, for what the British

themselves have not accomplished in that land of a hundred tongues
has been done by American missionaries, teaching in the course of a
generation thousands on thousands. (There is none like the American
missionary for attaining ends at wholesale.)
"What countryman are you?" I asked him.
"Zeitoonli," he answered, as if the word were honor itself and
explanation bound in one. Yet he looked hardly like an honorable man.
"The chilabi are staying here?" he asked. Chilabi means gentleman.
"We wait on the weather," said I, not caring to have him turn the tables
on me and become interrogator.
He laughed with a sort of hard good humor.
"Since when have Eenglis sportmen waited on the weather? Ah, but
you are right, effendi, none should tell the truth in this place, unless in
hope of being disbelieved!" He laid a finger on his right eye, as I have
seen Arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselves unfathomable
cunning. "Since you entered this common room you have not ceased to
observe me closely. The other sportman has watched those Zingarri.
What have you learned?"
He stood with lean hands crossed now in front of him, looking at us
down his nose, not ceasing to smile, but a hint less at his ease, a shade
less genial.
"I have heard you--and them--described as jingaan," I answered, and he
stiffened instantly.
Whether or not they took that for a signal--or perhaps he made another
that we did not see--the six