It almost never turns up blind.

You sit down and wait for luck, and it all goes to the other fellow.

But start to use your wits, even clumsily, and the luck comes along and squanders itself on you.
"He is certainly from Damascus," laughed one of the customers.
"The price is a half-piastre in Damascus at the meaner shops." I did not know anything about Damascus then--had never been there; but from that minute it never entered the mind of one of those men to doubt that Damascus was my home-city, so easily satisfied by trifling suggestions is the unscientific human.
Yussuf went back to his charcoal stove grumbling to himself in Turkish.
But there was still one question in doubt.

They seemed satisfied that I was really deaf and dumb, but in that land of countless mission schools and alien speech there is always a chance that even children know a word or two of French.

They tested Suliman with simple questions, such as who was his mother and where was he born; but he did not need to act that part, he was utterly ignorant of French.
So they proceeded to ignore the two of us and turn their political acrimony loose in French, discussing the maddest, most unmoral schemes with the gusto of small boys playing pirates.
There seemed to be almost as many rival political parties as men in the room.