Her little fingers were busily engaged in fashioning a skirt of
grasses for a much-disheveled doll which a kindly disposed slave
had made for her a year or two before. The head of the doll was
rudely chipped from ivory, while the body was a rat skin stuffed
with grass. The arms and legs were bits of wood, perforated at
one end and sewn to the rat skin torso. The doll was quite hideous
and altogether disreputable and soiled, but Meriem thought it the
most beautiful and adorable thing in the whole world, which is not
so strange in view of the fact that it was the only object within
that world upon which she might bestow her confidence and her love.
Everyone else with whom Meriem came in contact was, almost without
exception, either indifferent to her or cruel. There was, for
example, the old black hag who looked after her, Mabunu--toothless,
filthy and ill tempered. She lost no opportunity to cuff the little
girl, or even inflict minor tortures upon her, such as pinching,
or, as she had twice done, searing the tender flesh with hot coals.
And there was The Sheik, her father.
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