Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. difference. Author of “Absent Without Leave,’ “By Imperial Post,” etc. this: In the East, when a man dies they hold a funeral; in the West, they hold a post-mortem. It will be seen that this is a very great In one case the dead is dead and the matter is finished, while in the other the matter is just begun, and there must be endless futile inquiries into the reasons actuating Allah in sending for such and such a one. This is not only unseemly, but profitless; it annoys the living and benefits the dead in no way. Besides which, it is irritating to Allah. 4 This is shown clearly by the affair of Fat’mah, the dancing girl, and the Basha of Arzila and some other persons, as the story was told to me by Utair, my gardener, apropos of the recent murder of a French- man at his home in the Suani. And it is also shown that rise is thus given to per- plexities and questions which are not healthy in any manner. Now, Morocco, where Kaid Bushta Bargas ruled as basha, or governor, in the walled city of Arzila, is a very, very old country, and has therefore forgotten many things of which Europe and America are just beginning to learn. Such, for example, as the more practical forms of psychic phenomena, and soviet government. It is built upon Hebrew and Arabian history and superstition, with the customs and beliefs of bronze and black thrown in for good measure, and is frosted like a cake with a “A Stone In The Pool," copyright, 1922, by George E. Holt. V4 yQNE of the chief differences be- Be tween the East and the West is mixture of all the modern civilizations of the world. Which, of course, results in a confusion fully as Oriental, and a hundred times more unreasonable, than the Bagdad of Haroun-al-Raschid. The beginning of the matter was simpli- city itself. Kaid Bargas had paid five hun- dred dollars, native currency, to a man who called himself Herr Langmann, and, Herr Langmann had delivered to the eunuch who presided over the destinies of Kaid Bargas’ harem, a young girl, one of whose names was Fat’mah; the other had been forgotten when she was stolen from her tribe by the native agents of Herr Lang- mann. Fat’mah had not only refused to dance for Kaid Bargas, but called him a fat halloof, or swine, and had tried to mur- der him while he was drunk. This, of course, was quite irregular. Native girls as a rule are very well pleased to become inmates of the harems of bashas—even if they be fat. The immediate result was that the basha choked her until she died, and his eunuch supervised her burial behind the palace. There were ten purple marks on her neck, which was very white, now that she was dead. Thus, in normal course of events, should the matter have ended. Fat’mah was not the first girl to be choked to death by a Moorish basha by any manner of means; not even the first to be buried hastily behind the gubernatorial palace at Arzila. But it was ordained that the unwise custom of the West should here interfere to muddy the waters. Fat’mah, just before she died, had 108 / GEomichbooks com ee - - - - 7, 2, ~< a a ew ee el ae ge : — st. — er a > - > es =<