An Uncongenial Party
Unlike other races, we are bad at politeness unless we
happen to like people. Mrs. X. may have tried, but she
failed. If she had made one humanly friendly remark,
even about the weather, even after that unfortunate
beginning—she and I and the British in general would
not have made an extra enemy that day. A very small
crumb of interest would have sufficed. What she did
was to look straight before her as if the gentlemen on either
hand had become suddenly invisible and disembodied.
She looked at me and talked to me: they might have been
sitting in the moon, and that is no doubt what they felt
like, for the atmosphere was cold. Presently Najla brought
tea. Najla, prepared to smile upon the new lady and
recount my virtues—an infliction which she always
managed to draw out to great length for favoured visitors
—saw that the occasion was not auspicious and retired to
her room. Nuri talked. He took the opportunity to
tell Mrs. X. that her husband was a good man and that all
Baghdad thought him so. Mrs. X. evidently felt she could
find this out for herself. Instead of being pleased, she
considered Nuri an interfering insect, but tried not to
show it: she looked at him with a faint surprise not intended
to be offensive, and changed the subject. Nuri luckily
had been fortunate in earlier contacts with the British and
did not take the nuance as a sign of national malevolence.
[89]