The Beirut people are famous for their fighting
spirit, but this spirit was not manifested after a few weeks of intimate
acquaintance with the American blue-jackets.
My inspection of the devastation caused by the locusts completed, I
returned home. The news that greeted me there was alarming. I must
narrate with some detail the events which finally decided me to leave
the country. About one hour's ride on horseback from our village lives a
family of Turkish nobles, the head of which was Sadik Pasha, brother of
the famous Kiamil Pasha, several times Grand Vizier of the Empire.
Sadik, who had been exiled from Constantinople, came to Palestine and
bought great tracts of land near my people. After his death his
sons--good-for-nothing, wild fellows--were forced to sell most of the
estate--all except one Fewzi Bey, who retained his part of the land and
lived on it. Here he collected a band of friends as worthless as himself
and gradually commenced a career of plundering and "frightfulness" much
like that of the robber barons of mediaeval Germany. Before the
outbreak of the war he confined his attentions chiefly to the Arabs,
whom he treated shamefully. He raided cattle and crops and carried off
girls and women in broad daylight. On one occasion he stopped a wedding
procession and carried off the young bride.
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