Travel Tales in the Promised Land (Palestine)

A decorated Arabian saddle recalls a friendship formed in Jerusalem between a visiting narrator and Mustafa Bustani, a merchant who serves customers of different faiths. Karl May's travel tale follows the narrator and his wife as they arrange saddles for excursions in Palestine. Mustafa's lively eleven-year-old son, Thar, brings a different kind of energy to the story: his name means vengeance, and he eagerly imagines himself a hero capable of settling every slight.

The scenes move from a busy shop, where an assistant plays a camel in a practical joke, to the hospitality of Eppstein's home during an excursion. Descriptions of rooms, meals and planned visits to religious sites sit alongside conversations about family estrangement, trust and tolerance. Thar's boasts and impulsive behavior give these encounters a comic edge. Readers interested in travel fiction can find both everyday details of the setting and a story concerned with how people treat one another across religious differences.