As I understand it, it is only when the sprite settles in the brain itself that his victim succumbs. Be this as it may, most of the women that died while I was living in Kairouan were taken of djinns. When death. occurs criers from the mosques broadcast the obituary through every quarter of the city. ‘Hark!’ Kalipha would say at sound of that sombre chant; then, when he had gathered its purport, he would sigh: ‘There is no strength or power but in Allah! Sidi Bombourt’s daughter, a girl of fifteen, has just died of a djinn.’ Another sigh and he would add laconically: ‘This afternoon she leaves her father’s dwelling without the veil.’
There were many things about djinns that perplexed me. Why, for instance, when given the choice of various forms of entertainment, did they generally demand the fokkarah? Kalipha accounted for this with a hunch of the shoulders. ‘It’s a matter of taste, that’s all. You like chicken, I prefer lamb. It is the same with the djinns.’ Altogether, as my mentor on this subject, Kalipha was about as inchoate as I would have been had I attempted to explain for his complete satisfaction the holy trinity. ‘Tiens,’ he said, perceiving that his answer left me still in doubt, ‘the next time there is a fokkarah in the family, you shall attend.’
We had not long to wait. The following week there was one at the home of his niece, Kadeja, a household almost as familiar to us by now as Kalipha’s own. Kadeja was married to a bedouin, and though they made their home among his tribe far out upon the plain, they were spending this winter in Kairouan. It was Kadeja’s neighbour, Shelbeia, who was giving the fokkarah. The same dwelling housed both families, who shared the common court, but Kadeja’s apartment being the larger, was to be used for the occasion.
We hardly knew what to expect. It was the tenth anniversary of Shelbeia’s spirit marriage, and, in accordance with the covenant, she must celebrate the bridegroom’s return. This we understood, yet reasoned it must, of necessity, be quite a serious affair. We were as nervous as cats when we arrived at the house. Lighted windows and doorways illumined the court across which Kadeja hastened to greet us. We had never seen her dressed in such finery, her hands and wrists were dyed with henna, her brows and lashes blackened with kohl. She positively sparkled with gaiety and excitement. Boolowi, her little stepson, came running to meet us, and Sidi Farrah, her husband, towered smiling in the doorway.
The room, which may have been twice the size of Kalipha’s, looked spacious to-night. The painted chest, the loom, and the kitchen utensils had been removed to the court and Kadeja’s rug, cut from the frame only a few days ago, was spread upon the bed. In a row against the wall facing the door sat the black shrouded figures of the musicians. Kadeja’s mood on the one hand and these sombre presences on the other created in us an even greater uncertainty as to the exact nature of the occasion. With restraint we acknowledged our welcome. We were composing ourselves upon the bed when one of the black bundles chirruped to us in Eltifa’s voice, ‘Welcome, O Rose! In Allah’s name be welcome, O Sultana!’ A standard feature of our evenings at Kalipha’s was a little game in which each side made extravagant attempts to out-compliment the other. Eltifa’s startling salutation solicited from us like rejoinders. ‘Eltifa is like the jasmine,’ we told her hesitantly, hardly daring to smile. ‘Eltifa is the golden date.’ Her sister performers came to her assistance now and it needed all Kalipha’s ingenuity for Beatrice and me to hold our own in so unequal a contest. The vociferous merriment which it provoked relieved us of any further constraint.
Suddenly Shelbeia, bedizened with bright silks and party make-up, appeared on the threshold. It was something of a shock to find her in such high spirits! There was not the slightest indication that she housed a rampaging djinn. I appealed to Kalipha, ‘Then this is not really such a serious occasion?’ He seemed at loss for an answer.
‘Serious, yes,’ he replied, ‘but not too serious.’
Shelbeia summoned the musicians to dinner and they filed out in lock-step murmuring and laughing among themselves. Kadeja then deposited the kassar before us and while Kalipha, Farrah, Beatrice and I devoted ourselves to the excellent macaroni, Boolowi, not yet of an age when he might eat with the men, sat patiently by in his high Egyptian fez. When the bowl was removed and the coffees were served, Kadeja and the little boy, their backs towards us, ate their own supper at the opposite end of the room.
Now and then as she turned her head I saw that Kadeja’s profile was singularly pure. Smallpox had long ago cheated her of any claim to beauty, it was doubtful whether she could see from one eye, but the warmth of her character, her ripe personality endowed even her ravaged countenance with a kind of beauty. How different she was from the spineless neurotic women I had met and yet she had been conditioned to the same inviolable seclusion that had made them what they were. ‘Ah, Kadeja. She is another thing,’ was her uncle’s way of putting it, ‘she is like a man!’
The supper things had been cleared away when the thud of the knocker followed by Shelbeia’s shrill melodious joy-cries sent Kadeja flying into the court. The guests had arrived. ‘Alla-la-cen! Alla-la-cen!’ Again and again the zaghareet* pierced the confused greetings and solicitous inquiries. ‘In Allah’s name, be welcome!’ ‘How are you, my sister!’ ‘And Baba Mohammed?’ ‘Well, thanks be to Allah!’ ‘And Fatma?’ ‘And thy maternal grandmother?’ ‘May the occasion profit thee!’ ‘And the little ones?’ ‘Welcome in the name of Allah!’ ‘There is no ill?’ ‘To Allah be the praise!’ During the flurry, Shelbeia’s husband, a grave kindly fellow, slipped in and was invited to sit with us on the bed.
Chattering, laughing, unpinning their veils, ten or twelve women entered. Most of them, being old friends, doffed their haïks without shame before the three men, the exceptions remained cocooned, one in white, the other in black wrappings – a state which, as the evening progressed, appeared not to incommode them in the least.
From our vantage seat at the far end we watched the long narrow room transformed into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colours – rose, peacock blue, green, orange, cerise, gold and purple – shifting and glittering in the murky lamplight. Kalipha’s other sister Jannat was there, a short, plump woman with the face of a clean little pig and we were pleased to see that Fatma had been allowed to come. She was already apart from the guests busying herself with preparations for tea looking as if she desired nothing so much as to be unobserved. The women made cushions of their haïks and produced from bodices and handkerchiefs their little hoards of toasted pumpkin seeds. While Fatma and Kadeja were passing the mint tea the musicians with their instruments crept back; Shelbeia leading the chef d’orchestre, the others tailing in lock-step. They seated themselves like witches in a ring, Kadeja placed before them a fresh fire-pot and they began beating the tomtoms and pottery drums, sounding them from time to time, a tuning up that added an anticipative tremor to the gaiety. Behind them stood a large authoritative drum, obviously the bangha. I looked with wonder from it to the radiant Shelbeia, to her husband who seemed just as indifferent to the significance of the occasion.
A draped arm now held up a tambourine, gave it a warning shake. There was a brief silence. Then the minstrels let loose, bawling the songs of the day with novel variations of their own invention. The guests had to scream to make themselves heard and although shoulders had begun to ripple only the men seemed consciously listening. They reclined comfortably smoking, now and then a particularly hot passage evoking from one of them a gusty sigh, a groan of pleasure. At the first beat of the tom-toms Boolowi, close beside me, started to sway. At length, unable to bear it any longer, he stepped off the bed and began to undulate, his arms extended, one bare foot beating the rhythm. His chubby brown face was expressionless, his lids were lowered, the tall fez had toppled to one ear. In his comical absorption he was as unconscious of the mirth he provoked as if he were hypnotized. Assaulted with merry directions, he attempted first one movement, then another. Kadeja snatched off her pink takritah and twisted it about his waist. Boolowi beaming as he watched her nimble fingers. ‘T
here, so! May Allah aid thee!’ laughed Kadeja and he began again with new verve. Shelbeia, too, had started to dance. Four or five joined her, while the others clapped the metre.
It was an implacable sort of ‘dance’ for they simply stood, their arms rigid or dangling, their hennaed feet marking the time of the drum beats. The only variety was in the accompaniment. Faster or slower, it was always the same purposeful jig, no grace, no ardour, no sign of pleasure even when they were panting and prancing to keep up with the wild pounding of the drums. One of the performers was of such an enormous size it seemed that nothing short of a miracle could keep this party from becoming an accouchement.
Kalipha confirmed what we surmised: they were not dancing for the love of it, but for the good of their djinns. There is nothing, he said, like the tom-toms and particularly the bangha for rousing a dormant djinn, creating in him such a terrible yearning to dance as to make the best-intentioned forget his bargain. And if his protégée does not indulge him he will see that she pays for his disappointment.
‘How! What will happen?’
‘Headaches, rashes, boils, eye-trouble – if nothing worse. That woman au gros ventre does well to dance, for the djinn of a certainty would destroy the child in her womb. But this is nothing,’ Kalipha waved a belittling hand toward the surging figures. ‘Presently you will see Aisha dance!’ He pointed out an angular young woman in a lavender takritah. Her black hair hung in strings about her pale, sharp, almost gaunt face, a restive gipsy quality in her had fascinated us from the moment she had stepped into the room. Kalipha called to her and she glided over and crouched near the bed. Her face brightened when Kalipha told her that we hoped she would dance for us. ‘Mleah,’ very good, she said, studying us curiously.
The musicians paused for rest and refreshment. They had no more than finished their tea, however, when they were tautening their drums. The intermittent thud of the bangha – ominous and hollow – warned that we were down to the real business of the evening. The women were compressing themselves in a radiant panel against the walls. Instinctively I searched for Shelbeia. Surely by now some sign would betray the heroine, but she was squeezed among the others laughing and gesticulating as if the bangha was for anybody’s djinn but her own. The musicians fell upon their instruments with terrific force and fury. The clash-bang of tambours, the thud of tom-toms were almost lost beneath the accented beat of the jungle-drum. It seemed as if the walls could never contain the primordial booming! Kalipha must have passed the word around that Aisha was to dance, for every eye was upon her. She sat near us, her own eyes closed, her hands loose in her lap. I wanted to run from the abhorrent pounding as I watched her head and sinewy back weave the rhythm. All at once she leapt to her feet and slithered down the room, her magnificent body, lithe hips, long feet, angular arms, at one with the sensuous beat of the bangha. ‘God’ gasped Beatrice leaning forward, ‘Good God!’ The fire, the archaic beauty, the furious abandon! Wilder, more impassioned became her movements with the increasing violence of the beat. She shook her head free of the kerchief, her hair streamed about her rapt face, she tore off her jackets uttering shrill ecstatic cries, writhing and swaying until in a swoon she would have fallen if the women hadn’t sprung out to grab her.
Simultaneously, the room was clamorous with confusion, the bangha stopped abruptly, Aisha was dumped in a corner and the noisy women were milling in and out of the court, cawing and bleating Shelbeia-Shelbeia-Shelbeia. I had a confused recollection of having seen a person in bright blue dart from the room toward the climax of the dance. The women, screaming like cormorants, were bringing something in. Beatrice and I rose upon our knees but the women had massed themselves about their burden. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ smiled Kalipha. ‘Hark!’ he lifted a finger. It sounded as if someone was being strangled to death. ‘C’est le djinn qui parle,’ he said casually, and we realized that, in spite of the hysteria, the women did not seem really alarmed, as for the men they smoked on, unconcernedly. ‘But what happened?’ we demanded.
‘It is nothing. The bangha excited Shelbeia’s djinn and she quit the room from a too great a desire to dance.’ The frightful gasping and blubbering gradually subsided to tearful moans. ‘Hear that djinn!’ exclaimed Kalipha, whacking his thigh, ‘comme il est furieux!’
A few minutes more and Shelbeia, looking somewhat dazed, was stood upon her feet. For some, obscure reason, they threw a burnous over her shoulders and drew the great hood down over her face. The drums began again, more moderately, and the weird white cone, bowed with exhaustion, marked the time. Everybody, with the exception of Kadeja and Fatma, was dancing. The dusky room was a frenzy of agitated colours, the shimmer, flash and shine of bangles, tinselled braid and embroidery. Even the pair voluminously masked in their haïks bobbed away like truant spooks at a carnival. Boolowi had fallen asleep at last, literally on his feet, and was deposited behind us where he sat cross-legged, his eyes glued shut, gently rocking.
Aisha, who had recovered by this time, came of her own accord to sit alongside us. She was addressing Kalipha with such earnestness, glancing at us so meaningly that we waited with impatience for an interpretation. When she had done Kalipha heaved a deep sigh, ‘Life is very difficult!’ Aisha, unhappy with her husband, sick of her existence, had appealed for our help to get to America. I think Beatrice would have given a year of her life that night to be able to assist that gifted dancer. ‘There is nothing you can do,’ Kalipha admitted. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I will not tell her that.’ Aisha’s famished eyes travelled from face to face as she waited for our answer. ‘Leave it to me,’ said Kalipha after a little thought, and before we realized what he meant, he was telling Aisha that Beatrice was resolved not to close her eyes that night until she had written to her relatives, all of whom had barsha fluss, he rubbed a thumb against his fingers suggestively. Aisha had only to bide the time with patience. Colour crept over her cheekbones, a wan smile flickered about her lips and she patted her chest with heart-rending gratitude. Kalipha turned to us complacently. ‘Now she will hope for a time.’ Beatrice was speechless with anger. I felt all the futility of railing against anything as subtle as Kalipha’s code of honour, nevertheless I protested. ‘She will know at last that she has been deceived. What then?’
‘Ah, then,’ he said, ‘she will accept her fate. If it be the will of Allah that Aisha should go to America, my friend, she will go to America. How many times have I explained that if a man is destined to die on the land, he can be bound and thrown into the sea yet he will not drown, and if it is decreed that he shall be drowned, he will drown though he be cast upon a desert.’
Beatrice started to say something, instead she shrugged her shoulders with a ‘Hell – what’s the use!’
The hour was late, the air a smothering compound of smoke, incense, perfume, and body heat. Perspiring dancers, their hair leaping to the lurid boom-boom of the bangha, divested themselves of their outer garments. Shelbeia’s hooded form still indefatigably footed it, like a heart that continues to throb long after life is extinct. Occasionally someone crumpled and was dragged to the sidelines where others were being revived or crouched apathetically until they were sufficiently recovered to start in again. Aisha pulled Kadeja to her feet insisting that they dance together. Kadeja laughingly protested, looking to her husband for permission. ‘Let her! Let her!’ shouted Kalipha for Farrah had given a grunt of disapproval. ‘Ya Kadeja!’ he barked above the hilarious laughter that applauded their version of the stomach-dance. Kalipha turned on him with anger and Farrah, his handsome face quite stern, relapsed into silence. Kadeja, taking no more notice of her husband, strode into the room in his street-robe, her takritah was bound turban-wise about her brow, her face blackened to resemble moustache and beard. Even Farrah’s face relaxed at her gruff mimicry.
Apparently it struck neither of the men as inconsistent with Kalipha’s behaviour that his wife had not danced all evening. I could not but feel that she must want to dance, that only a nod from her husband wa
s needed to set her jogging. His genial smiles vanished as I offered the suggestion, though he affected not to hear me. ‘Just this once,’ I coaxed. ‘What is good for Kadeja must be equally good for Fatma.’
‘She cannot dance,’ he hedged, Fatma’s good being a matter of perfect indifference to him.
‘Nonsense! Every Arab woman can dance.’
‘She does not want to, then. Ask her if she doesn’t prefer minding the tea.’
‘There, she is looking this way! Make a sign to her!’
He shrugged impatiently, muttering, ‘She has shame in dancing before her husband.’
‘She does not dance because you will not trouble yourself to give her permission. If you –’
‘Oh, let me alone!’ he cried with an angry flounce.
The party would go on until daybreak, but by three o’clock Beatrice and I had had enough. Kalipha piloted us, drunk with fatigue, through the dark streets. Our little tiff – not the first of its kind – was bothering him. He did not venture to take my arm, but stumped along between us, his forehead knotted with gloom. I knew from experience that he would not bid me good night until things had been put right between us, and that he was pondering how best to go about it. Nothing was attempted, however, until he fitted the great key into the lock of the street-door. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said resolutely, ‘I am going to buy Fatma a bag of those lozenges – you know, the square green kind, very strong with mint. It is true they are not cheap, but no matter! She is so fond of them. She will be pleased, won’t she! Tell me, ma petite,’ he beseeched, almost shyly, ‘is this not a good idea?’
Among the Faithful Page 6
