Explore "Saïd the Fisherman" by Marmaduke Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Saïd recovered of his sunstroke, he was the honoured guest of the little household. Selìm's love for him, born years before of gratitude for the gift of a stolen garment, was now doubled with the respect for one of unsound mind. The whole house was Saïd's, the shop also and all it contained. Selìm or his wife would have waited on him all day long had Hasneh not forestalled them. Mûsa was told off to shadow him when he walked abroad, lest any evil should befall him. His head and the hair of his body were shorn duly according to the law, and he was arrayed in good clothes, which the master of the house bought for him at no small cost.
At the hour of the evening meal, when men are sociable in the relief of the day's task done, Selìm would often tell his children and any chance guest the story of his acquaintance with Saïd. He would lift the brown dressing-gown with the red braiding out of the chest where it was kept, and tears would stand in his eyes as he showed it to the little circle, handling it reverently as a priceless relic. He would glance ruefully at the fisherman where he sat cross-legged, muttering often to himself and making strange play with his hands.