All this I learned third-hand from the same groomsman of El Hachemi who heard it from a cousin in the employ of El Hussein. Both were men of good reputation (though possibly the groomsman’s cousin was a woman; I did not quite catch the name when he said it), and I did not doubt the account.

Part of the journey toward the last naïb I witnessed myself.

The Arab Tale-Teller, 1883
(Oil on canvas, 99 x 136.5 cm)
BY Horace Vernet
The Wallace Collection

A week after his visit to the second brother’s home, Mahmoud, in the company of El Hachemi and his pilgrims, went to see the third sheik, Si Eliman, who then lived in Nafta, across the Tunisian border. Along the way, they stopped at the house of Si Brahim ben Larbi in the village of Béhima, some twenty kilometers to the north and east of El Oued. While El Hachemi accepted their host’s kind invitation to join him in prayers in his home, Mahmoud joined a half-dozen Arabs lazing in the courtyard that admitted, through an arched gate, onto the town’s central square and market place.

The courtyard was small and elegant, enclosed with high, rust-colored stone and mud walls. The walls were lined with small flower gardens shaded by well-watered palms, and in the center of the yard was a flowing fountain. Around the fountain were trunks and carpets for sitting, and the men — myself included — had arranged them comfortably in the shade of the south wall and two ample fig trees. The fountain bubbled gently, soothingly, and the men discussed the weather and business and, as always, the matter of the French; one of the men, a young trader from Touggourt, complained that he was having a difficult time making the colonials see a particular matter his way, and asked if Mahmoud, so obviously a young scholar, could translate three letters for him that he had received from an ancillary to the Governor-General. Of course, Mahmoud agreed, and took the first letter in hand, pulling his burnous a little tighter around his head and neck to keep out the sand borne over the walls by the wind from the desert.

Even now I see him so clearly: the soft face gone gaunt from want of regular food and the labors of trying to keep two alive, yet smiling, enjoying the conversation and glad to be of help to a fellow traveler.

I watched him as he puzzled through the letter, and as the others returned to their analysis of French ambitions, none of us noted the beggar in tattered, filthy robes who stepped into the courtyard through the arch from the market. The dark shape approached us from the far side of the fountain and drew, from among the trailing rags, an iron saber. Without a word, he raised it high over his head, using both hands, lunged forward and swung down at Mahmoud’s head with all his strength. The sword clipped a wire overhead, turning it from true, and the blade glanced off the side Mahmoud’s skull and cut viciously into his shoulder. Before we could react, before Mahmoud could do more than begin to turn toward his assailant, the blade went up and slashed down again, cutting into bicep and bone. Attempting to stand, Mahmoud took the third strike in the same spot as the second, the hissing blade all but severing, we learned later, his arm. Blood poured from the sleeve of his sliced-open burnous, yet he managed to stagger to the nearest wall and draw a sword from a heraldic display in order to defend himself. The rest of us, meanwhile, had managed to overcome our initial bewilderment, and had knocked the assailant to the ground.

In less than a minute, the attack was over, and Mahmoud, losing blood rapidly, collapsed. Around me, I could hear the others whispering:

— Al-da’wa al-jad_da!

— Hasashiyyin!