Among the Faithful

by Dahris Martin

  A little bedouin girl seemed to be the leader of the children. A black-figured takritah bound her short dark curls. She had a piquant face with a wide, humorous mouth and gleaming teeth. Her skin was the old gold of her tunic and as she romped, her drapery, held together at the shoulders with safety-pins, flew apart at the side revealing her lithe little amber body. There was the instinctive beauty of the dancer in all her movements. Breathless with running, at last, she sauntered into the room, caught sight of the sedate city girls, and pounced upon them. ‘Ya Ka-dee-dja!’ they protested, laughing in spite of themselves, pushing her away lest she spoil their finery. ‘Ya Ka-dee-dja!’ she mimicked them, dodging their blows. She baited the Pink Girl particularly until there were screeches for ‘Ummi! Ya Ummi!’ Laughing, Kadeja pirouetted a few times. Suddenly she dived, plucked out all the blue bows and showered them upon the outraged young lady! Then there was a tussle from which Kadeja emerged with ecstatic giggles and the Pink Girl with tears and unbecoming language.

  Dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum! At the beat of the drum the madcap whirled into the court and started to dance. The women stopped to watch her. Her bare feet scarcely moved, she swayed like a golden flower, her left arm arched above her head, her right hand cupping her ear. A young bedouin woman, who was watching her with amusement, pride and delight, tossed her a bright handkerchief. They were so much alike that I assumed her to be Kadeja’s sister; instead she is her mother. How she stood out among the city women! In her indigo drapery she might have stepped from an Etruscan vase. Her child has her body, the same freedom and elegance of step and gesture. Her red and yellow takritah was knotted carelessly over satiny crisp black braids, her silver car-hoops were strung with crude piebald beads. I think I shall never forget that intelligent quizzical face. It was good to hear her robust laughter!

  Most of the afternoon she held herself aloof from the merrymaking. Once I saw her unashamedly asleep in the passage-way, once, standing against the wall, relaxed, one knee bent, her blue drapery revealing a sculptured thigh. When she felt like it she danced, and when she danced the court was hers. Not even Kadeja could compete with Mabreeka! She was obviously a great favourite, but to me she seemed an alien, a roving Ceres among the blatant city women with their loose figures, grotesque make-up, and trumpery raiment.

  The trilling of the zaghareet now, announced that the asséedah was done. Massive bowls of it were being set upon the court and there was a mad rush for places. On the top of each snowy mound was a deep well of oil; to one side was a pile of powdered sugar. I quickly caught on to the trick of eating it. First you scoop up some with the first three fingers of your right hand, then you dip the hot lump into the oil, next into the sugar. It was delicious – like hominy in consistency, with a rich flavour as of crushed nuts. Over in a corner the blind musicians, who had been engaged for the afternoon festivities, had a kassar all to themselves.

  When they had finished, a fire-pot was brought and, after they had heated their drums and tomtoms, they got down to business. With seraphic bliss the women sat about as the minstrels shrieked the songs sacred to the return of the hahj. At frequent intervals everybody joined in a deafening chorus, ‘Hahja, hahja inshallah! Hahja, hahja inshallah!’ If it be the will of Allah, may each of us become a hahja! Just how, above this din, it was learned that Hahj Ali was at the door, I will never know. There was a prismatic whirlwind around the entrance-passage and the poor man, his turban askew, was strangled and wept over by forty or fifty hysterical women, while the musicians banged away at their drums! He stayed but a moment, for which I could not blame him; the men were to enjoy their asséedah in the mosque.

  The furore had not abated when a donkey bearing a sack of gifts from ‘the Holy territory’ was ushered into the court. Mohammed and his friends were honoured with the unloading. Nobody dreamed of prying into that mysterious sack, but it was the subject of excited conjecture for the rest of the afternoon. Kalipha has since told me all its contents – comerry, a perfumed wood for incense, frankincense or liban, prayer-beads of aloes-wood, pellets of dust from the Prophet’s tomb, phials of water from the sacred well of Zem Zem and, for the women, black powder or kohl for the eyes, and swek, a fibrous wood that, when chewed, colours the gums and lips. Kalipha, after quite a struggle with his conscience, finally gave up and told me a secret: Hahj Ali wants to make me a gift of a little of the incense. As it was to have been a surprise, I am cautioned to simulate astonishment, even to ‘cry with joy’ if I can. I don’t believe I shall be able to do that, but I can act as I feel, sincerely touched and pleased.

  August 13

  The relative calm of mid-afternoon had settled over the torpid street. I sat at my table trying to keep my mind off the rivers of perspiration that were coursing down my body, when a smothering sensation took hold of me. For one frightened moment I thought I had been overcome by the heat. I went to the window. Blasts of hot air were pouring in. The desert wind, the scericou! I thought, only this wasn’t a wind, it was like the emanations of some mighty invisible furnace. The street was deathly still, waiting, transfixed, for the thing that was about to happen. An unearthly light, a dense musk yellow, hung over the entire city.

  The sand-storm came with a terrific rush. It was all I could do to bolt my shutters. Through the mustard smudge I could see the bread merchants scrambling to cover their stalls, a man on the roof of the baths ripping frenzied towels from the lines, muffled figures dashing for shelter, objects flying down the street, the pepper trees writhing. In another moment everything is blotted out, the panes in my shutters are twin plaques of bronze. The heat strangles me, the shutters belly and strain at their lock, the yellow dust from the Sahara piles upon the sills, covers my table, my nose and throat are parched with it. I clap my hands to my face in order to breathe. Thunder-crash after crash – then the rain, a slanting drive of great drops that quickly puts out the dust. Once more I can see through my windows. Domes, minarets, and roofs are still coloured gold by the strange twilight, the pepper trees still rush with the wind, their feathery fronds, pink with berries, streaming like ragged banners. The rain comes down, but the sky in places shows a feeble blue. The street fills again, burnouses hang from the heads, faces shine, ‘Haneek elkeer!’ everybody tells everybody else, I felicitate thee upon the riches of the rain! One Arab, stepping high to avoid the puddles, carries a faded green umbrella. He looks somehow very comical. Kalipha comes stumping jubilantly up to discuss the scericou and together we watch from my opened window. This saffron light intensifies and sharpens every colour note and detail. The melons glisten, the pepper trees are sun-shot emerald, their grapes a riper rose, the ancient gate stands out as if embossed and I am aware, for the first time it seems, of its hoary beauty and grandeur. The White City is silver, fawn, smoke-grey, mauve, biscuit, cream, ivory, pearl, every shade of white. My eyes are delighted with the strawberry of the bobbing fezzes, the quick green of a head-shawl rippling in the wind, a purple vest, the chrome yellow of many pantaloons. The air, moist and vibrant, cleanses our lungs. ‘Ah, my little one,’ sighs Kalipha, ‘Allah is very good.’ The rain has been hardly enough to fill the furrows among the paving cobbles, but the street has an amazingly swept look.

  The beggars are hunched in their accustomed places awaiting the call of the muezzins, the vendors have tuned up; small girls, now that the rain has stopped, clatter by, bearing upon their heads covered vessels or bread from the public ovens; three boys dash down the street dragging behind them a fallen branch as big as a plough. The youth with the water-melon under his arm fits a wedge of it to his mouth.

  Across the street on the bench outside Sallah’s coffee-stall we watch the sun set upon the immaculate city.

  September 5

  Sheaves of golden dates, fresh from the oasis, are heaped upon the curb-stands, the virulence of the sun is nearly spent. In another two weeks or three I shall be moving back into my snug little room off the terrace.

  Our chief concern these days is Kadeja. In the spring Farrah took
her and Boolowi back to the plain and throughout the summer we heard of them only when we happened upon bedouins from the douar. Recently it has come to Kalipha’s ears that his niece is threatened with divorce, and my friend is more upset than I have ever seen him. He does not hear half of what is said to him; he walks, sits, smokes, and drinks his coffee in ponderous silence from which he rouses himself occasionally with pious utterances and sighs.

  It will not be the first time that Farrah has divorced Kadeja. Twice before he has done so, and twice he has taken her back. But ‘not every time the jar is struck doth it remain unbroken’, for if he divorces her again, the wife he loves, and there is no doubt in Kalipha’s mind that Farrah loves Kadeja, is lost to him. The Law, as set forth in the Koran, clearly states that a man may divorce his wife twice, but, if he divorce her a third time he cannot take her back unless she should marry another and be by him divorced. When I suggest that Farrah must know his danger, Kalipha shakes his head: ‘The bedouins are like children when it comes to these things. They are Believers, yes, but they do not know nor trouble themselves too much about the Law. However,’ he says with a show of resolution, ‘we must not despair. To Allah all things are possible.’ Yet, whenever he returns to the house he asks ‘Kadeja is not here?’

  CHAPTER 11

  The Story of Kadeja

  LIKE EVERY GIRL of decent family, Kadeja, daughter of Sallah, had been reared in the strictest seclusion. She had seldom set foot outside the threshold except to attend the baths or visit the cemeteries; it was a matter of course that no man outside her immediate family had seen her as a maiden. When she was thirteen years old a satisfactory match was made for her. The groom, although a friend of her father, was a stranger to her. She knew only that his name was Bombourt ben Hassan, that he was a coppersmith and the sheik of his guild. Further knowledge must await her bridal night.

  Sidi Bombourt proved on this occasion to be somewhat stricken in years, pockmarked and practically blind, but such was her lot – divinely ordained and predestined, to be accepted without question. Kadeja made him a thrifty, obedient wife. The traditional industry of the women of Kairouan is weaving, and a woman’s ‘value’ is commonly estimated to be the sum that the sale of her rugs puts into her good man’s pocket; because of Kadeja’s skill at the loom she was, also, a profitable investment.

  Sidi Bombourt, on his part, seems to have been an irreproachable husband. He had had three other wives, each of whom he divorced on the grounds of sterility, but as the years went by and Kadeja, also, failed to reproduce his image, Bombourt did not reproach her by taking another.

  Kadeja was still a young women when Sidi Bombourt died. Her parents were dead, too, by this time and her only brother, Mohammed, had married and settled in Salambo where he had raised himself to the position of steward on the estate of the Bey. Mohammed immediately besought his sister to make her home with him. He had ample means, a spacious villa among gardens that faced the sea; unless she chose she need never remarry.

  Kadeja’s good fortune was the talk of the hareems. A lifetime of ease and security! Was ever a woman so blessed! Her friends flocked to congratulate her, but Kadeja announced that she had declined her brother’s proposal. She wasn’t ready for paradise, she said. If she were to enjoy it on earth, how was she to endure it throughout eternity! She would remain with her Uncle Kalipha until he could secure her another husband.

  Now widows and divorcées are not easy to dispose of in the Moslem marriage market. It must be said in Kalipha’s favour that he did not oppose Kadeja’s decision, although he deplored the pride that had stood in the way of her welfare. He persisted among the coffee-houses until he found among his acquaintances one who professed to be looking for just such a woman. Beauty, dowry, virginity were not objects of Farrah ben Mustapha’s search. He had just divorced his wife and was temporarily through with women, but he needed a housekeeper and a mother to his infant son. If Kadeja bint Sallah was quiet and sensible, she would do.

  Sidi Farrah was a bedouin of the Souassi tribe. For generations his family had tenanted Elmetboostah, a douar of mud huts several miles out upon the plain. He was tall, even for a bedouin, powerfully built and his lean face was as brown as an antique coin against the snowy folds of his headdress. Kalipha knew him and his brothers to be plainsmen of the finest type, yet he would not have considered such a suit had Kadeja been less anxious to marry. A city girl, in his opinion, was scarcely fitted to endure the hardy, primitive life of the douar. But Kadeja made nonsense of her uncle’s scruples, so the purchase price was agreed upon, Farrah and Kadeja were married, and the next day, on donkey-back, they set out for Elmetboostah.

  It was not often that gossip fed upon such a meal! In the hareems, at the baths, in the cemeteries, wherever women congregate, they gorged themselves on Kadeja bint Sallah’s ‘misfortune’. Where was her pride now? Gone off on a donkey to live in a hovel! Where was her woman’s modesty? She could give her haïk to the moths now for the bedouin women have no shame among men. Their faces are naked, their blue draperies seemingly designed to flaunt their slim bronzed bodies. And what a life they lead, yarsulla! One relentless round of herding flocks, tanning hides, pitching tents, hauling water, gathering wood; of ploughing, threshing, spinning, milking, and weaving; of travail without assistance of midwife and of exhausting marches in caravan! To be sure, their headdresses, their arms and necks are loaded with ornaments of pure silver, but who would envy them their finery since it is but portable property to be pawned or sold should the crops fail!

  If the town women have their opinion of the bedouines, be sure they have their view of the fine ladies of the City. Defiant of hardship, contemptuous of indulgence, the women of Elmetboostah received Farrah’s bride with undisguised scepticism. For weeks they watched her for whims and city airs, but Kadeja gave them little cause for censure. She was humble, friendly and not afraid of work, she was a sensible wife and a kind mother to Boolowi. In the emergencies and adversities of the douar Kadeja was unfailingly on hand. She delivered a baby with the cool competence of a midwife, she watched with the sick, occasionally she washed the dead. The men liked her for her nimble wit and good sense. They sought her opinion on their affairs and because of her steadfast impartiality in disputes she came, in time, to be regarded as an arbiter.

  Farrah, like his father before him, was the village commissary for such small commodities as tea, salt, cigarettes, and spices. But Farrah’s easy nature had sadly involved his accounts and he readily turned over the management of the little business to his wife who ran it with an efficiency that was the despair of the casual debtors. When the stock needed replenishing, the intrepid Kadeja would don her haïk, mount the family donkey, and ride alone into town. Her city friends were scandalized. ‘What do you wish!’ she would laughingly protest when they upbraided her. ‘Am I the only daughter of Islam whose fate is not engraved on her forehead? For shame!’

  Her status as Farrah’s wife was exceedingly tentative. It is interesting that Elmetboostah never blamed Kadeja for their domestic difficulties. The douar recognized Farrah’s weakness, how the most trifling incident at times could provoke him to such nervous anger as knew neither limit nor reason. ‘The War put a djinn in Farrah’s head,’ they said of him, remembering the gentle boy that had left his father’s flocks to combat the unknown enemy. Farrah had fought with the bedouin troops throughout the Great War, winning every decoration that the Government of France has to bestow; later he had distinguished himself in the campaign against the Riffs. He had returned home unscathed, apparently, except for the loss of his left eye, but time revealed his scars. There was no counting the occasions when Farrah, goaded by his djinn, had thrown Kadeja upon the mercy of the douar. Twice he divorced her and Kadeja returned to her Uncle.

  Kalipha, on principle, always defended the husband. Kadeja must have provoked him – unwittingly, of course. The War had troubled Farrah’s head; she must bear with him. When she despaired, let her remember the Prophet’s promise. For had
not Mohammed – Allah bless and save him! – given his word that ‘When a woman has had more than one husband in this life, she will in the future state, be free to be the wife of him whose character she esteemed the most.’ Life is brief; Allah would help her.

  The procedure that followed each divorce was always the same. After a decent interval – a week at the most – a delegation from Elmetboostah knocked at Kalipha’s door. They were come on Sidi Farrah’s behalf to plead for Kadeja’s return. Kalipha would put on his dignity to admit them; in stern silence he would listen to their overtures. When he spoke it was to state that he had ‘other plans’ for his niece. Persuasions, promises, passionate oaths meant nothing to the obdurate Kalipha. For what reason should Kadeja return? To be thrown out again like a painted whore. Really, the gentlemen wasted their time.

  But they had come prepared for a long siege. Farrah’s guilt was denounced as vehemently as Kadeja’s virtues were extolled. This was Farrah’s last offence: he had sworn by all that was sacred to Allah. Dawn invariably sifted through the shutters before Kalipha could be prevailed upon ‘to relent’.

  One afternoon toward the middle of September Kadeja arrived, divorced for the third time. She had little to say as she unwound her haïk, but the indignant women were not long in finding the welts and bruises upon her shoulders. They kept at her, plying her with questions until wearily she brushed her hands signifying that she had done. Indeed there was not much to tell. A bottle of cheap French perfume, which Beatrice and I had given her, had precipitated this rupture. The scent had been lilac, cloying, insipid – but it was the mode among the women to disdain such old-fashioned fragrances as amber, musk, bergamot, and jasmine. Kadeja had tucked her treasure among the holiday garments in the painted chest, and so sparing was she of every drop that the perfume might have lasted her lifetime. On the previous morning, however, she had found the bottle empty. Farrah, splendidly apparelled, had ridden off at an early hour with the men of his tribe. That evening, when he returned, the strong odour of guilt was upon him. Tired, hungry, no doubt thoroughly sick of Haleine des Lilas, Farrah was in no mood for Kadeja’s reproach. Seizing a clog that stood by the door, he fell to beating her and the douar, from one end to the other, heard, for the third time, the awful shout, ‘I divorce thee! I divorce thee! I divorce thee!’