I was in Cairo; I know.

It was the same bad old game--the corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died.

It didn't come off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it when he came back.

But Nahoumhe laid the blame on others, and the Saadat took his word for it, and, instead of a war, there came this expedition of his own.
Ten days later .-- Things have happened.

First, there's been awful sickness among the natives, and the Saadat has had his chance.