Oriental Stories/Volume 1/Issue 1/The Desert Woman

The Desert Woman
By Richard Kent
A modern Thais came out of the Great Desert and attemptedto lure a priest, with strange consequences
This is the story of a woman, a very beautiful woman; a woman as perfect as an orchid, as seductive as hashish. She was as tall and slender as the most graceful of the houris in The Thousand and One Nights. Her eyes were as black as jet in shadow; her hair was of the same intense blackness, which only served to bring out into more startling prominence the prime-ivory whiteness of her colorless cheeks.
At the tiny oasis city of Wadi-el-Gibli, far back from the coast of Tripoli, many strange, weird stories were told of the desert woman, Mes'oodeh. Some will tell of how Kasseeb, one of the richest Tuaregs of Ghadames, disappeared from the haunts of men. Then came a day, two years later, when a caravan from the far Soudan, laden with ivory, ostrich-feathers, and gold dust, brought back the broken body of the once famous Kasseeb. Mes'oodeh, on the back of a groaning camel, rode into the village, softly weeping by his side. What became of his great wealth, nobody ever knew, but many condemned Mes'oodeh.
"The woman was a friend to Kasseeb," said one, "and '

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