THIS SHEIK-STUFF

NZ Truth, Issue 1018, 30 May 1925, Page 8

THIS SHEIK-STUFF

■ ■ • '• i . I cannot be called dissatisfied by even the bitterest of my- enemies. I aril content with my lot. I could be just as contented with : anybody else's lot, providing it was a whole lot. I can sit on my humble porch and, humbly sipping my humble beer from the humble barrel beside me, watoh the glittering Fords flash luxuriously past me, without the .slightest envy. The simplest rose that 'is my own is. more to me than all the tiaras of Fortune's favorites. .'-' I seek them. not. I am full content. I am content, to be fujl. ' '■: •Yet once, I have to admit (I don t really have' to, but that's x the Avay we great writei-s always put it; Poetic License, you know; License No. 43256798 is mine.) \I have to admit, I say, that I did feel a yearning tugging at my jolly old heart strings or words to that effect. Qnce, indeed, it grew ;'s=o strong I ; could hardly rest. And all because ambition had me m its' clutches. ■ • What was this ambition? Ah, gentle reader, have you not already guessed what secret so perturbed my tender heart? Let me whisper, then. • I wanted to be a Sheik — a regular, seductive, sybaric, sawny old Sheik! And m my mind what fiery visions rushed hither and thither and thither and hither! . •: I saw myself sweeping grandiloquently among the tents and the tarts and the Tartars, the folds of my burnous (you know what si burnous is, oC course — the striking old striped effect like a cross between jazz window shades and Grandpa's nightie) whipping about my splendid limbs and flopping beneath my floundering feet. I heard my voice ring out m imperious accents "Ha, Abu! Da-oysta, Abu!" .(I . learn languages so quickly) and saw- -the jolly .old negroes or bashi-bazoucks-or whatever they are fall over themselves and their cousins to do my bidding.' Bidding was' brisk. And. how, I imagined, I would receive the mysterious note from, my- spy written ■apparently on the -paper the sausages came m "(the note, not the spy) and ; having rapidly glanced through it, dodging the grease spols with glittering eye and knitted, even crocheted bvow, spring to my snow-white camel that had the hump affectionately beside met ahd; like a flash of light from a bike lamp,, race madly across the burning desert. , . . Just why, though, I should tear across the desert I don't know, but they always do it m the pictures when they get a sausage paper — these things iire done, you know, as the bootmaker says when you take your patents to' him. J OC course, lots and lots of people have wanted to be Sheiks. The signers for sheikdom "are legion. But sheiking like everything else requires a. special aptitude. If ever a mans was destined from his birth to run a harem m the backyard oC a sand-pit, that man is me- — I. I have studied the system methodically. I admire it immensely. It would save such a beastly lot of bother,' you know. There would be noye of this uncomfortable business of explaining to Maud how Mimi's hairpins got into your breast pocket and to Mimi- how Maud's powder made such a mess of your blue xerge. There would be no sleepless nights poitdering over the calamitous consequences of proposing to and being accepted by both 'Maud 'and Mimi on the same evening, you being a trifle blotto at the. time. No, for a person with an artistic temperament there is only one way. He must sheik it — or shut his -ayes. Why, a blessed old camel cavorter, being taken with a tab,, merely picks her up and pops her m 'the jolly old harem with the rest of his poultry. And when you reckon out that they live mostly on dates and cushions and that their ■ apparel is , a very minor matter it can't cost so much, either. Anyhow, when the family got too large

you could always. dispose of a chorus or so to the movies. Ah, no, me for Romance! '

• So. I was wont to soliloquise. The thing's I imagined! I can't tell you here' all I imagined, but you can imagine what you would imagine if you were imagining, along the lines I was imagining and then you, can imagine what I imagined. (Seems to be something wrong' "'with sentence — • perhaps I've used too many "ands.") And now all my dreams are shattereel. My idols have dirty feet — I mean, feet of clay. It is all over. Disillusionment has dished me. The gentleman responsible for the dishing is Mr. J. G. Millais. F.Z.S. (that means Fellow of the Zoological Society m English but Upsetter of Sheiks m Arabic.) Millais has been on a hunt for Sheiks m the places where they grow. He has trailed them to their lairs, fall over North Africa. Then he wrote a ..book about them, called -''Far -Away up the Nile," and he said that all the Sheiks .he ever saw "seemed to be quiet, inoffensive people, addicted to, begging, and having a distinct aversion to soap and water. Millais tarried for. a while Avith the : Sheik of the " Niam-Niams, cannibals who file their teeth, wear bark clothing, stain their bodies, and where the price: of a nice, young woman is 40 spears. This was-' a very nice Sheik, but he declined to believe that applications of soap.: and water to ihe human' frame would not produce agonised and awful death. The Sheik had a translator named nbdul, who once appealed to Millais thus: '■■•■■ '.- "Sir: — I desire intensively to make home-warming' to-day with Johnnie Walker, which reputation became known .these regions, -and I thank you kindly borrow me one large bottle. Being ashamed to ( ask, but circumstances obliged me. Yours truly obedient Abdul, Translator." What disillusionment! The teethfiling, -body-staining, soap-- dodging, bark-wearing and cousin-chewing I can stand; and I like Johnnie Walker myself. But, oh cruel Fate! where I thought for so long you got them for nothing, merely picked them off the plain like plums off a plate, here this Zoological Yahoo bursts m on my dreams with the dynamiting news that they cost forty spears apiece! I intend to. sue Valentino for/ false pretences. v ~ C.H.O.