A jolly evening

p [416], line, Roberts, 84 x 130 mm

Signature, 'Roberts', brc, handwritten title, 'Songs of Selim el Jezaire', blc. Five men seated, two playing guitars.

p 213 [tr ed p 232] - 'Often, too, Nesib el Bekri would take out his manuscript of the songs of Selim el Jezairi, that fierce unscrupulous revolutionary who, in his leisure moments between campaigns, the Staff College, and the bloody missions he fulfilled for the Young Turks, his masters, had made up verses in the common speech of the people about the freedom which was coming to his race. Nesib and his friends had a swaying rhythm in which they would chant these songs, putting all hope and passion into the words, their pale Damascus faces moon-large in the firelight, sweating. The soldier camp would grow dead silent till the stanza ended, and then from every man would come a sighing, longing echo of the last note.'

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