DESERT DRAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 97, 27 April 1938, Page 16

DESERT DRAMA.

ARAB CHIEF'S DEATH. INFIDELITY OF PRINCESS. ALEXANDRETTA (Syria). Out of the ancient Djezireh desert of north-eastern Syria came a. tragic story of infidelity in the household of Prince Farhat Al-Hussein, chief of the Ghazali tribe of Arabs, and his beautiful wife, Princess Bahija Hancni. In measured, simple terms the desert people's version of what happened on Sunday morning, February 20. revealed almost forgotten tenets of the Arab's creed. Prince Farhat, it was said, had suspected his wife and a servant in their home. Yet, when he rode away early that Sunday morning, ostensibly for a shooting party some 20 miles distant, there was no hint of his worry. He would be back, he indicated, at the usual time. Hardly a half-hour later, however, Prince Farhat—who, by the way, was 47 years old though his wife was but 31 —returned home afoot, climbed a garden hedge, and went quietly towards his wife's room.

At the entrance, so it -was said, the prince met —as he had feared—the servant, who was coming from the princess' room. No sooner did the prince perceive his servant than he fired on him, and rirehed into the room—the Arabs said he intended to kill his wife.

Moustafa, the servant, however, had escaped the master's shot, and in turn fired on his master, seriously wounding him. Prince Farhat was carried hurriedly to the nearest doctor, but he was destined to live but four hours.

A short time before he died Sheik Nawaf Al-Kurd, 25 years old and a brother of Princess Bahija Hanem, having heard of the tragedy, hurried to the prince's bedside, where Farhat told him in gasping sentences: "Nawaf . . . your sister . . . is . . . a . . . concubine. By the name . . . of Mohammed the prophet . . . kill her . . . save your honour." These words stirred the Arab blood of the young brother, it was related, and he rushed at once to his sister's house, where he found her pretending to weep for her husband. Without a word Nawaf approached his sister and slew her like a lamb, the Arabs asserted. He then filled two cups with her blood, leaped upon his horse, and galloped to the house of the doctor. There he hoped to give one cup to the prince, saving the other for himself, that together they might drink the toast of the princess. But he found the prince already dead.

Kawaf, casting the two cups of blood from the window, knelt before the corpse of hie brother-in-law, and wept bitterly. Then, slowly, he &rew forth his weapon, fcadly looked one last time at Far hat's body, and took his own life.