Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/428

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HANNÊ, THE MAID-SERVANT.
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for the trip, the Vice -Consul found that he could not leave his post, and I was obliged to make up my mind to travel by myself, for loud voices were calling to me from my English home. All the Austrian steamers had been recalled, to swell the Austrian fleet; so my brother planned to take me to Beirût by a Russian steamer, and then to place me on board an English merchant steamship bound for England.

Hanné, my Arab maid-servant—a daughter of Angelina, the bride dresser—an affectionate girl of seventeen or eighteen, who had been with me nearly three years, begged earnestly to go with me; and when I explained that I could not take her, she said, with passionate and impetuous eloquence, "Why did you make me love you, if you meant to leave me? Why did you take me from my mother, and teach me to like the life of the Inglese, if you must send me away to live like an Arab again? I can not live with Arabs any more." I had not attempted to teach her English, and she had only acquired three or four words. She had not in any respect changed her mode of dress, but had learned to appreciate neatness and order, and could not bear the idea of the uneven floors of earth and the unplastered and smoke-blackened walls of the houses of the poorer class of Arabs. I reasoned with her, and showed her how happy she might make an Arab home, and how she could render me a much greater service by remaining in Hâifa than by accompanying me to England.

On June 2d she came to my bedside, before sunrise, and awoke me, saying, "Ana dakhaliek, ya habîbî!"—"The

    est against another, and affairs become very complicated when at one time the troops are fighting for and with a faction, and a few months afterward are employed to fight against it. The town of Arrabeh was not so much injured as we had at first been led to believe; the upper chambers only were demolished, and they were broken down by masons employed by the Turkish officers, because these upper chambers, with their battlemented terraces, which formerly made the town appear so picturesque, bad been used as fortresses by the besieged. (See p. 236.) The power of the Abdul Hady faction is for the present destroyed. The leaders are banished, but Saleh Bek and some others, who had not been active agents in the affair, have been restored to favor, and the children, my protégés, have been restored to their parents.