Many Fronts

Many Fronts

My grateful acknowledgments are due to the several magazines in which these stories and sketches have appeared:The Cornhill Magazine, Land and Water, and The Worlds Work in England; and in America, The Atlantic Monthly, The Worlds Work, and The Outlook. I had known F through years of hunting and sports in India, but never until the night that our old British-India coaster lay off the Shat-el-Arab bar waiting for the turn of the tide to run up to Bassorah, did I hear him speak of the things that were really next his heart. Then it was that I was vouchsafed transient vision of the outer strands of the previsionary web England was weaving beyond the marches of India against events to come. I will give his story, as nearly as I can remember, in his own words. For the best part of the last five years [said he], I have been coming to Arabia and Mesopotamia on language study. In all of that time I have not been back to England, and I am almost a stranger to the officers of my own[Pg 8] regiment. I talk like an Arab, I am beginning to think like an Arab, and, what with sunlight and dirt that have gone so deep under my epidermis that they will never come out, I shall soon look like an Arab. Perhaps in timeyoud never believe the appeal of the Koran till youve bowed toward Mecca, with a Bedouin on either side of you, morning and evening, for six months at a stretchI shall pray like an Arab. I have had smallpox, dysentery,which has become practically chronic,and a dozen varieties of fevers and skin diseases, and Im mottled from head to foot with Aleppo button scars, two of which have never healed. Ive been alone so much that I talk to myself even in Calcutta and Simla. The Persians in this region distrust me, the Russians and Germans hate me, and the Turks are perfectly frank in saying that they will send me on the long pilgrimage if ever a fair chance offers. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 42446
Author: Freeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
Release Date: Mar 31, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English