爱莫大焉

      　I heard this story when I was in Vietnam, and it was told to me as fact. I have no way of knowing for sure that it is true, but I do know that stranger things have happened in war.

　　Whatever their planned target, the mortar rounds landed in an orphanage run by a missionary group in the small Vietnamese village. The missionaries and one or two children were killed outright, and several more children were wounded, including one young girl, about eight years old.

　　People from the village requested medical help from a neighboring town that had radio contact with the American forces. Finally, an American Navy doctor and nurse arrived in a jeep with only their medical kits. They established that the girl was the most critically injured. Without quick action, she would die of shock and loss of blood.

　　     ‘Gossip says you can keep all your stocks in all your stores in your head.’

     Yusef chuckled and beamed. ‘My memory is not bad. But it keeps me awake at night, Major Scobie. Unless I take a lot of whisky I keep thinking about Durban Street and Bond Street and Macaulay Street’

     ‘Which shall I drop you at now?’

     ‘Oh, now I go Home to bed, Major Scobie. My house in Sharp Town, if you please. Wont you come in and have a little whisky?’

     ‘Sorry. I’m on duty, Yusef.’

     ‘It is very kind of you, Major Scobie, to give me this lift. Would you let me show my gratitude by sending Mrs Scobie a roll of silk?’

     ‘Just what I wouldn’t like, Yusef.’

     ‘Yes, yes, I knew. It’s very hard, all this gossip. Just be-cause there are some Syrians like Tallit’

     ‘You would like Tallit out of your way, wouldn’t you, Yusef?’

     ‘Yes, Major Scobie. It would be for my good, but it would also be for your good.’

     ‘You sold him some of those fake diamonds last year, didn’t you?’

     ‘Oh, Major Scobie, you don’t really believe I’d get the bet-ter of anyone like that. Some of the poor Syrians suffered a GREat deal over those diamonds, Major Scobie. It would be a shame to deceive your own people like that.’

　　By John W. Mansur

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