Among the Faithful

by Dahris Martin

  After sundry inquiries about our health, our work, our pleasure in Kairouan, he invariably had ready some irresistible proposal for our entertainment. We were undeniably the richer for these encounters, for with the good guide’s unerring instinct he knew exactly the things that would interest us most. He took us to inaccessible coffee-houses where professional story-tellers held men spell-bound for hours, or where sloe-eyed youths performed the ribald stomach-dance to the noisy enthusiasm of their audiences. We walked outside the ramparts – the Holy City glamorous in the moonlight, our low voices trumpeting across the vast stillness of the plain. We visited the Street of the Courtesans, along the whole length of which our friend seemed decidedly well known.

  Although Kalipha had the most solemn respect for our working hours, his knack of appearing just when we needed him testified to a constant vigilance. If Beatrice set up her easel in town he would stroll up as the curious onlookers threatened to block her vision and, without offence to anyone, keep the crowd moving. If he caught her in search of a model he scoured the marketplace until he rounded up dozens of idle bedouins for her to choose from. He was the mediator in our altercations with Madame. For every perplexity and annoyance, in fact, Kalipha had the solution. Kind, courteous, intelligent, infinitely entertaining, the only fault we could possibly find with him was his over-anxiety to be useful. There seemed no way to prevent him from becoming indispensable.

  It must be confessed that my friend’s sense of honour was more acute than mine. It would never have occurred to me that in accepting Kalipha’s hospitality I was incurring an obligation that I could not possibly pay. Her anxiety quickly communicated itself to me, and we strove to make our position quite clear to him, feeling sure he would lose interest when he realized at last that his pursuit was unprofitable. He accepted our hints, explanations, and apologies, however, with a gusty sigh: ‘Ah, yes, my friends, I tell you, the beggar in the shadow of the Great Gate is often better off than the artist.’

  Who in God’s name was this villainous-looking Arab who had appointed himself our squire? If he did know our circumstances, what was his motive in befriending us? How did he earn his livelihood? Although he had no visible means of support, Beatrice had to get really angry in order to pay for the coffee; if we stopped to purchase something he always succeeded in beating a franc or two from the price. Why was it that he, a born guide, no longer followed his profession? For over thirty years he had conducted tourists through the ancient City, held sacred by Islam still as One of the Four Gates of Paradise. His work had been his life. ‘In those days,’ he would say, taking off his well-worn fez, ‘I wore the head-coils – cloth of gold, such as is brought back by the pilgrims from Mecca. It is not the poor man, you know, who can wear such a turban. As to gondorrah,’ he fingered his robe, ‘it was of the pure silk, a different colour for every day in the week, but always white in summer. I had not one burnous, but four of them. Camel’s hair, you understand, very rich with embroidery. Oh, I tell you, my friends, when I walked down the street with my gold-headed cane, one might have mistaken me for the vizir to the Bey!’ What had put an end to such affluence?

  We were helpless to solve the enigma. Of only one thing we felt sure – he had been deprived of his license, whether justly or unjustly, by the French authorities. It was painfully apparent that he had no friends among them. Within the ramparts, he was surrounded by good will and affection. Men of all walks and stations – expensively dressed merchants, white-turbaned scholars and religious dignitaries, tradesmen and spahis, the Arab police, paused for the exchange of florid greeting. Wherever we went he was welcome, and as his guests we were bewildered with kindness. ‘You are the friends of my friend,’ we were constantly being told, ‘therefore, you are, also, my friends.’ But outside the walls – what a difference! The general attitude of the Tunisian French toward the subject Arabs scarcely accounted for the lack of respect that he, particularly, was accorded. If he was saluted at all, it was with a kind of cold contempt that used to infuriate me. Not that Kalipha was humbled! He always carried his head high, but when he stumped through the French town it was with a dignity that was downright majestic.

  It was a compatriot – the only resident American in Kairouan – who explained away some of the mystery surrounding Kalipha ben Kassem. The year before Beatrice had met Mr. Bemen in Brittany where he spent his summers in order to be among artists. Off and on for the last fifteen years he had lived in Kairouan, where he had invested in land, olive groves, sheep, and camels. He was reputed, among the Arabs at least, to be very wealthy.

  We met him on the street one day and he invited us to his villa. It was on the plain just outside the ramparts, a pretty blue cottage fortified by a high barbed-wire fence and a notoriously vicious bedouin sheep-dog. It was apparent at a glance that Mr. Bemen’s hobby was native beds. The house was smothered with great nuptial bedsteads glittering with gold leaf and embellished in bright paint with all the symbols of fecundity.

  After showing us his portfolio of dancing girls, he made an opportunity to warn us against our native companion. This was the story he told us. Two years before the president of the bank had been murdered. Kalipha’s brother, Mohammed, and his friend, both porters, were found guilty and condemned to the guillotine. At the last hour their sentence was commuted, and they were dispatched to Devil’s Island.

  The Arab population, to a man, believed the prisoners innocent. Great numbers of them testified to their presence at an all-night stag-party at the time the crime was committed. The feeling against the French had been very strong, not only because of the conviction, but because Kalipha had lost his guide’s permit for having steadfastly refused to testify against his brother. Bemen, himself, lightly admitted the probability that the pair had been victimized as scapegoats. But what was done was done. Whether innocent or guilty, the wretches were as good as dead now, and a couple of Arabs more or less, didn’t make a whole lot of difference, eh, what? The point was, that Beatrice and I could not expect to curry French favour by associating with Kalipha ben Kassem.

  It took me nearly a week to realize that I simply couldn’t work. I tried desperately to get back to the story I had started in Cavalaire, but Kairouan had come between us. What with the need to justify my move to Africa in production, and the unsuppressible impulse to abandon myself to the exotic city, the drone of whose voice reached me in my quiet room at the back of the hotel, I was paralyzed. When the folly of the struggle struck me, I bought myself several thick notebooks and made for the market-place like a gnat for the light.

  I was in the ring around a fantastic old tumbler when Kalipha found me. ‘But, my little one, why are you not at work!’ he cried accusingly. I felt, unaccountably, as if I had put something over on him. While I was explaining, he guided me to our coffee-house alongside the basket-weavers. ‘But you are right!’ he exclaimed, applauding my decision until I was amazed at myself for having wasted a week. ‘The things we will see! For it is not by drinking coffee in the market-place or the souks that one learns the City! First we will visit the homes of my relatives and friends. I assure you, since you are come, my nieces, Kadeja, Fafanie, Zinibe, and the rest, break my head with their reproaches. Only yesterday Eltifa, my sister, demanded, ‘What is your fear, O my brother, that you hide your friends from me? Search the house. Have I a secret cage where I could fatten them for the fête ‘Here, then, is what I propose. Each afternoon, between the calls to prayer, we will distribute visits among them. That there may be no jealousy, it will be necessary to make the grande tour. And when they see you coming into the court, by Allah, it will be like the ascent of the full moon!’

  I gave way with such spontaneous delight that Kalipha was jubilant and expatiated at great length upon our programme. In the meanwhile, I drank my coffee thoughtfully. He paused, at last, to sip his own and I became conscious that he was studying me. After a time he drew a finger across his brow. ‘What is the meaning of that seam upon your forehead? What is it that troubles you, hein
?’ Confused, I did not answer. He hunched forward, ‘I will tell you. To you and Mlle Beatrice I am a riddle: not a guide, but still a guide. A thousand times you ask yourselves: “With what are we to pay him? With the gold from our teeth, perhaps?” Listen,’ he went on earnestly, ‘my head is not a dry gourd. I was at the station the day you arrived. I am able to tell you, my friend, that when one has been a guide for half one’s life one recognizes people. I knew you at once. Every mendicant that cries Ya krimtallah! for his supper is not destitute, nor is every traveller a tourist. This,’ he said, picking up my change purse, ‘does not interest me. I swear,’ he raised his hand with impressive solemnity, ‘as Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, I swear that I do not want your money!’

  ‘But, like us, you are poor,’ I protested, ‘we must all live somehow.’

  ‘It is nearly three years,’ he continued bitterly, ‘since they saw fit to deprive me of my livelihood. I was guilty of nothing. Their own records prove the truth of what I am telling you. By Allah, there exists no man in this world – or in the world beyond – that I cannot look in the eye. Yet they condemned me and my family to penury, and but for the grace of Allah, who has blessed me with loyal friends, we should have starved.’ He went on to explain that the merchants continued to pay him a commission upon the purchases of tourists that he inveigled into their shops. It was a dangerous practice, he admitted, for the authorized guides, who had long resented his supremacy, were only too ready to report him to the French authorities. By deceit and stealth, therefore, he contrived to exist, but Allah, the judge of the French as well as the Arabs, does not condemn a man for the sins forced upon him. To the present day, He had extended His merciful protection over Kalipha that he might gain his daily bread.

  ‘And you permit us to rob you of your time,’ I remonstrated, at which he threw back his head with such a roar that I had to laugh with him, in spite of my earnestness. ‘My pockets are full of it! The Basha, himself, I believe, is not so rich as I when it comes to that! Ah, no, ma petite, you must not trouble your head. If I show you the things you would not otherwise see, it is because I have a pleasure in the company of artists. While you remain among us you are musàfir, which is to say, our guests. He who honours you finds certain favour with Allah, the All-seeing, but Unseen. And the face of him that dishonours you is blackened in His sight. See here! This night you and Mlle Beatrice are to dine with me.’ He raised a warning hand against objection. ‘I require it of you. As I myself will prepare the dinner, my son Mohammed will be at the hotel at half-past six to escort you to the house. Once we have shared the same bowl, my friend, there can be no question of money between us.’

  ‘We will be happy to come,’ I assured him from a full heart. I tried to add that it needed no dinner to confirm the friendship I felt for him, but, my French failing me, I gave him my hand. ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘from now on, we are friends!’ I was never to regret that impulsive gesture.

  We supposed that Kalipha’s son would be a young man. Promptly at the appointed time we were told that he had come. To our surprise it was quite a small boy who waited upon us. ‘I am Mohammed, the son of Kalipha,’ he announced himself, his dark eyes dancing, his broad mouth widened into the most engaging smile. He couldn’t have been more than ten, and his chubby face in the peaked white hood of his burnous reminded one of a Rackham elf. Of his age he was not at all sure. Some said he was nine, his father said ten, but maybe he was eleven, even twelve. No, he did not go to school. He was learning to be a basket-weaver from Sidi Hasseen in the market-place. Our efforts to converse further with him were not altogether successful for, although he understood French, his inability to speak much constrained him to smiling silence as he slapped along in slippers many sizes too big for him.

  From the main thoroughfare we turned off into a dark lane. ‘Rue des Chasseurs à pieds!’ Mohammed announced with quite an air. A short, steep flight of steps led abruptly from the road to a narrow landing. At the fall of the knocker, there was a clack-clack of clogs descending stone stairs and the door was opened a crack to admit us. A girl held a lamp above her head. ‘Asslemma!’ she murmured, smiling and patting her chest. As Mohammed seemed disinclined to introduce us, we asked him if she was his sister. ‘She is Fatma, the wife of my father,’ he said, unceremoniously preceding us up the stairs.

  It was the first time that we had seen beneath the veils. Fatma’s curly black hair was bound in a violet kerchief, over a kind of long-sleeved jersey she wore a set of embroidered jackets and vests. Her legs were clothed in full white trousers, a wide strip of striped silk wrapped her hips, skirt-fashion, and her feet in the pattens were bare. She lit our way to the court that was dark save for patches of light from pairs of low windows on either side. Mohammed opened a door upon a snug little whitewashed room in the midst of which, on the floor, sat Kalipha, before a fire-pot, busy with the supper. We left our shoes outside and, stooping to enter, we seated ourselves on a wide mattress that filled the end of the room. The stone floor was laid with matting, a strip of matting covered the lower half of the wall around the bed; under the shuttered window that faced the street stood a garishly painted wooden chest, there was no other furniture. And yet, as we afterwards learned, this one small room was dining-room, kitchen, bedroom and salon – in short the entire ménage.

  Fascinated, we watched Kalipha in the rôle of chef. He was no novice; the deftness and precision of his movements suggested experience and skill. His street-robe hung from a peg on the door, surrounded with smoking pots he sat in his shirt sleeves, his legs, in voluminous white bloomers, pleated under him. Haroon er Rashid in the council chamber was no more the potentate than Kalipha ben Kassem in his own household. Mohammed jumped to his bidding, and with a jar in each hand, flew to the public fountain. Fatma, in constant attendance upon his commands, glided barefoot to and from the court. She was a strange silent little thing. Under an exceedingly low brow her eyes were deep-set and narrow, her complexion was pale, rendered more so by the black of hair and brows. She kept her face averted from us. Once or twice she stole a glance our way, but when we smiled she flushed, dropped her eyes, and covered her face in confusion.

  ‘Ya Fatma!’ Kalipha shouted at her, calling her to answer for some misdemeanour. Her mild reply from the court twisted his face into a horrible leer. Laying down his spoon, he folded his arms, and wagging his head, he gave a hideous caricature of her words and the tone of her voice, then, hurling the spoon into the court, he denounced her until I was wretched for her humiliation before us. But Fatma seemed not in the least put out, she came and went, serving him with the utmost composure.

  ‘Ah, women, women!’ groaned Kalipha as his wrath subsided. ‘Verily they are devils! The source of all misfortune!’

  When Mohammed returned, Fatma placed before us a tray on low legs, father and son took places opposite us and cous-cous in a great wooden bowl was set in our midst. Lumps of lamb and boiled vegetables – pumpkin, turnip, and chick-peas – were arranged upon the top. Although we were provided with large spoons, obviously purchased for the occasion, they were not displeased when we chose to eat in the Arab manner and showed us how to scoup up the savoury cereal with the thumb and first two fingers of our right hands. Kalipha warned us that it would be very ‘piquant’; it was like eating fire. There was no restraining our coughs and tears, but the tantalizing flavour and the hot bite of the pepper excited our appetites, and we kept at it. Kalipha’s swarthy face shone with perspiration and approval. Mohammed, delighted, exclaimed: ‘But you are true Arabs!’

  We had scarcely made a dent in the great mound of cous-cous when Kalipha took the grass covers from several dishes alongside him. In one there was an omelette decked with parsley, in another a little ragout, both of which he had prepared lest the spices should prove too much for our untutored palates. In still another dish was a roasted fowl stuffed with rice, almonds, and raisins, delicately perfumed with amber. There was a crisp salad besides, and the dessert was an Arab sherbet, a pale-gr
een, translucent pudding, tart with lime and full of blanched almonds.

  Fatma did not appear until we had finished eating when she replaced the table with another and set the fire-pot before her master. For the next few minutes he devoted himself to the making of the coffee, an exceedingly delicate performance. Through the shutters of the window that gave upon the court we could see into the chamber opposite where Kalipha’s sister Eltifa and her husband had their household. A still form in white sat against the wall; the frame of the grilled window, together with the soft glow of lamplight, gave the illusion of a reliquary in which reposed a priceless figurine in amber. It was Abdallah, master tea-maker and devout student of the Koran. Several years before, we were told, he had made the pilgrimage to Kairouan on foot from Morocco. The dearest wish of his heart had been to end his days in the Holy City, and as a reward for his zeal, Allah had instilled in the populace a thirst for Abdallah’s tea, thus enabling him to settle here where he eventually married the widowed Eltifa, and was become a venerated practitioner of all illnesses brought on by the djinns.

  We lounged luxuriously, it seemed we had never dined so well. ‘Is it always the men that make the meals?’ I inquired.

  ‘Never!’ he said with scornful emphasis. While Arab men choose the bill of fare and invariably do the marketing, sometimes even superintending the preparation of a dish, they never, never demean themselves, as he did, with the cooking. But what could he do? When he divorced Hanoona, the mother of Mohammed, he had made an oath that he would never remarry. For three years he had managed with the help of his sister. It had been a foretaste of paradise, a halcyon period during which he had enjoyed all the delights of women without responsibility or bedevilment. But Eltifa, who was blind, found his celibacy more of a burden, and urged her brother to take another wife. At first he would not listen, but she kept at him, like a flea in his garments, until in desperation he charged her, ‘Search the city, only carry cotton with you wherever you go. And when they tell you that the daughter of so-and-so is a virgin with the beauty and form of the houris, stop up your ears. If, on the other hand, they tell you that she is neat, thrifty, and sober, that she can cook, clean, and weave, let her parents name their price, for though she be a divorcée and as ugly as a toad, this woman is my choice.’