Among the Faithful

by Dahris Martin

  In truth, there was nothing I felt less equal to that afternoon than the Aissaouas. After two hours of their mad drums, my head was blinding me with its pain. It was dinner-time before the séance was over, but I went directly home, too ill to care whether Kalipha was dead or alive.

  I was asleep, lying across my bed in the darkness, when Mohammed came in tears to tell me that, although his father was ‘very, very sick’, if I needed someone, Eltifa would come. I was feeling a lot better – I found when I got to my feet – so I went back with him.

  My poor friend! He was as yellow as saffron under a great mound of covers, his head wrapped in a turban-like bandage, also yellow. His voice was feeble, full of sighs and groans – and curses for Kadusha whenever she changed the applications. The whole family was gathered dismally around, Mohammed crying silently. Abdallah had burned one of the preservative chapters of the Koran – to no purpose, I saw by the frightened faces. The life of the house was stopped, as if the last sacrament had been administered, and we were waiting for the death-rattle.

  Presently Kalipha went off to sleep. All of us – even the littlest – kept very still, hardly daring to whisper for fear of disturbing him. When he awoke we knew, without his telling us, that he was better. Nevertheless, Ummi Sallah took as much salt as she could hold in each hand and, while her fists travelled slowly over his entire body, she was murmuring the prayers for driving out djinns. Pretty soon, one after another of us started to yawn: the remedy was taking effect.

  Kalipha felt, oh, ever so much better when Ummi Sallah had done! He sat up and even consented to take that hideous thing off his head. Ummi Sallah – bless her – went away motioning to me with cast-up eyes that there was nothing to beat this panacea.

  Today Mohammed confided in me that last evening, before he came to fetch me, his father was convinced that he was dying. So, like a true Mohammedan, he summoned Eltifa and Abdallah that he might arrange his worldly affairs. He told them the exact sums that were owing him by the merchants; of his own small debts. If he was spared, he would praise Allah as never before. But if he was, as he suspected, ‘for the other world’, he was never one to question the divine decree. He advised them to get an advance from his debtors to give him a good funeral; what money remained they were to keep. Mohammed and Kadusha, and his child in her womb, he bequeathed to them! But what worried him was Sherifa. Who was there to look out for her when he was gone? Abdallah and Eltifa were both weeping as they pledged with the most solemn oaths to be my guardians.

  Mohammed told all this merrily, as something to amuse me. He was dumbfounded when he discovered that I was crying.

  December 28

  For almost a week now Ummulkeer has had bad eyes. When I first noticed them, I got some boracic powder in the French town and showed her what to do. Kalipha put some of the solution in a bottle which he gave her with instructions to bathe them several times a day. Last night her eyes were worse – so swollen she could hardly see. They wouldn’t be any better, she told me despondently, until she had attended a fokkarah; she had the same trouble last year and the drums had been the cure. It was no good asking whether she had been using the boric solution since everybody, including Kalipha, was agreed that it was no sickness per se, but a djinn holding out for a party.

  Tonight, however, her eyes were so much better that I was plainly astonished. Ummulkeer laughed with delight and showed me the hegab sewed to her handkerchief. Abdallah had taken over the case.

  She related how he had studied his holy books and was finally enabled to tell her the exact nature of the malady: during the night one of the children must have struck her without, of course, the word that is the dread of djinns. An immediate ‘Bishmella!’ would have averted the evil. As it was, ‘the djinn’s power was in that blow’, or, as Kalipha elucidated, ‘The eyes smelled the djinn’. This much, at any rate, I understand: Unimulkeer has a djinn in her eyes, or maybe one in each eye, and it, or they, will not be routed except by a fokkarah. Until it is convenient for the family to give her one, she must wear, as a sort of stopgap, the amulet Abdallah made for her. When I saw how her poor eyes had cleared, I could only agree that a hegab, at least faith in a hegab, is a better cure than boracic.

  With Ummulkeer her gay self again, the whole household is wonderfully restored. While the women were busy with supper preparations, Ummi Sallah regaled the children with one of her quaint little stories – this time of a louse whose name was Din-Din ben Din-Din. Kadusha’s spirits were soaring; she and Ummulkeer were finding no end of things to laugh about. ‘Their heads are full of fokkarah,’ said Kalipha with a grim smile, but he did not check them. When Abdallah came in from his rounds, he had peanuts for the children. Eltifa sputtered at his extravagance, but even little Sadoc knew that she was teasing.

  * The kulehla is an iron comb for pushing down stitches. To it are attached metal amulets of fish and Hands of Fatma, which serve a double purpose: protecting the work against the Evil Eye and providing a brisk little tune without which they say weaving becomes tedious.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Last Winter—continued

  January 7

  A VISIT FROM Sidi Mohammed of Salambo is always a tremendous event in the family. He arrived unexpectedly yesterday afternoon and left this morning for a few days with Kadeja in Elmetboostah.

  We dined very sumptuously last night – nothing is too good for Mohammed. There was soup to begin with, then cous-cous, such as only Kalipha can make, a magnificent dish of burrol besides, as well as a little leg of lamb, prettily spiced, and wearing a pantalette of frilled paper. For dessert there were oranges, dates, and roasted chestnuts. Everything had been ordered for Mohammed’s comfort. The women, excepting Eltifa, and the children did not come into the room all evening. Yet for all the awe with which he is regarded, for all his fine clothes, his smooth turban and cultivated speech, Mohammed is as unaffected as Kalipha or Abdallah.

  The evening was devoted to discussion of many things, the principal subject being religion, which was inevitable since Mohammed and Abdallah are both, each in his own way, authorities in El-Islam. Most of the time Mohammed talked and the others listened as respectfully as if he had been the Bash Mufti sermonizing from the Friday pulpit in the Mosque of Sidi Okba. He spoke and gestured with scholarly precision and, although I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, I felt that I could listen all night to the beautiful cadences of his voice. He questioned me concerning the religions of America; unfortunately there was not much I could tell him that he did not already know. This was a rare opportunity, I thought, to clear up some of my perplexities about djinns. Instead of answering my questions, however, Mohammed put others to me. Where do these demoniacal beings live? Of what are they made? What is their nature? Who is their chief? How do they appear? Wishing to do credit to my teachers, especially Abdallah, I explained as carefully as I could, my understanding of djinns, efreets, and sheytans. ‘Have you ever seen one of them?’ Mohammed inquired with his kindly smile. ‘Has anybody that you know actually – and with his own eyes – seen a djinn?’ I realized then that, far from being pleased at my precocity, Mohammed was deeply disturbed. Leaning forward in his earnestness, he assured me that there were thousands of modern-thinking Arabs like himself, who found it impossible to believe in the djinns and ‘such superstitions’. As Mohammed does not speak French, Kalipha had to translate, passage by passage, all that was said in refutation of his firmest beliefs. I glanced apprehensively at Boyh Abdallah from time to time to see how he was taking such heresy. His eyes were twinkling with amusement, but he let his nephew talk on. A smile flickered across his gentle face when Mohammed explained that the only reason why Allah permits the practice of exorcism is because it furnishes many an innocent soul like Abdallah a means of livelihood! ‘If you have power over djinns,’ Mohammed turned to Abdallah, ‘why do you not direct them to beneficial deeds? Why do you not command them to increase my fortunes and cure my accursed sciatica!’

  His uncle laughed
and from the paper cone in his hand poured a few toasted chick-peas into each cup. The reply that he made, when he had passed us our tea, was not really an answer. He never undertakes to treat a person, he said, until he has first ascertained whether his patient is ‘sound in faith’. He professes no supernatural gift of healing: such power as he has is derived only from the word of Allah set forth in the blessed Koran and revealed by His prophet.

  Sidi Mohammed said nothing to this, but during the course of the evening he told us several stories that substantiated his disbelief in djinns and djinn seizures. One particularly impressed me. There was once an Eastern prince. He had among his slaves a negress who took the opportunity, each time her master was absent, to have a djinn fit.

  It was all that the terror-stricken women could do at such times to keep her from throwing herself into the well. Her tantrums were notorious before the Prince himself heard of them. But when he did, he gave orders that the next time she performed he was to be sent for. One day shortly after this, as soon as he had left the palace, the negress began to swoon and jabber and foam at the mouth. Accordingly the Prince was summoned. He came into the court at the climax, just as she was fighting her way toward the well. He looked on for a moment, then he fetched his walking stick and beat her until she shrieked for pardon.

  Although Sidi Mohammed cautioned me against credulity in djinns, he impressed upon me the importance of the word bishmella. It is a positive force, he said, in warding off danger. It is on the lips of the Faithful at all times, in all places. Before eating one utters Bishmella, upon entering a dark room, before crossing the street, even before cuffing the cat. ‘For it is,’ he declared with eyes and finger upraised, ‘the principal word!’

  January 17

  Some of our nicest evenings this winter have been those spent with Kadusha’s parents, Sidi Mohammed and Lella Zorrah. Last night Kalipha and I were there for dinner. It was an excellent meal – even Kalipha, who does not hesitate to say that he seldom eats food as good as his own, complimented Mohammed upon his wife’s cous-cous.

  Afterwards we drew close to the fire for the evening was cold. Their little son, Ali, an alluring baby, sat under his father’s arm, gravely listening and watching. He is already jealous of his successor, still but a pod upon his mother’s stomach. We were told of how he punches it scornfully, and when Zorrah complains of her burden he will say, ‘My dear mother, my sweet, gentle mother, does thy stomach distress thee?’ Zorrah smiled across at him. ‘May Allah keep thee, for who have I but my son Ali?’ He clambered earnestly to his feet, in answer to this, and planted kisses upon her face.

  It was a delightful evening, as is always bound to be the case when Kalipha finds himself in congenial company. The conversation embraced aeroplanes, Kalipha’s trip to Nefta when he was a guide, American sky-scrapers, and the perils of infancy. Sickness, it appeared, is the very least of these. It was agreed that the thing most feared during the first six months of a child’s life is the owl. For weeks after Ali was born their nights were full of terror. The wailing cries of the demon – the heart stops at the thought! It would knock against the shutters sometimes as it flew about trying to get in. Mohammed, seeing that I didn’t understand, explained that the owl was once a woman, Lillith, the first wife of Adam. Some claim she was incarnated in this form, but it is generally believed that she strangled her child, and for punishment was turned into an owl. Be this as it may, the dreadful bird lives by infanticide. She fastens her talons into tender nurslings and sucks their blood.

  Kalipha shook his head sententiously. ‘It is no bird – this thing in feathers. Wood, mortar, bricks – nothing prevents her from smelling her prey. No good stuffing the key-hole and barring the shutters! Through a crack too small for a mouse or even an ant, she can get in if she wills! Ah, yes, my friend,’ he nodded to Mohammed, ‘I know what you suffered. When my son was born, didn’t I sit up holding him tight in my arms night after night until dawn! While the spell was upon him the child was shrunken and yellow. But Allah preserved him, and the very instant the fiend lost interest and flew away, my son was entirely well!’

  The fascinating subject was put an end to at this point by the entrance of a little boy who came to Sidi Mohammed several evenings a week for tutoring in the Koran. Our host excused himself and, in about half an hour, when the lesson was over, he resumed the conversation by telling us of a strange spell that is being exerted upon his pupil’s family by the house in which they live. Ever since they moved in, six months ago, they have had nothing but trouble. First the boy fell ill of a mysterious malady; now the mother is languishing and unless they quit the house at once it is to be feared that she will die. The dwelling has an aura, heavy, like that of a tomb. Kalipha asked its location; my thoughts, like his, were back in the house we had lived in last spring and for a moment I felt the clammy dread that had hung over us there. ‘Do you hear, Sherifa!’ exclaimed Kalipha. ‘I am not surprised! It is the same! Let us thank Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, that we are out of that place!’

  When we had done marvelling over the coincidence and our deliverance, I asked the men what caused such a malevolent atmosphere. In Mohammed’s opinion, murder was committed there; djinns linger about the scene of a crime. Or, Kalipha suggested, it might be an efreet, the ghost of a dead person. He said that in former times a saint was often interred beneath the pavement of his own court. Then he told us this curious story.

  A number of years ago, Sallah Kablutie unknowingly moved his family into such a house. One night when Ummulkeer and Zinibe were seated at their loom, someone passed behind them. It was a distinguished old man with a long white beard and eyes – proud and fierce – beyond all imagining. Ummi Sallah saw him, too. After that the apparition appeared – but only to Ummulkeer – again and again. Once it spoke to her. ‘You must leave this house. You must leave this house.’ It was repeating the words as it faded and mingled with the air. Naturally the women were terrified. Wherever they went they talked of their experience and some strange facts were thereby revealed. They were told that the house stood vacant most of the time; tenants moved in – and moved out telling the same story. Those were wise that left as soon as they were warned; for disasters rained down upon them that didn’t.

  The women carried these tales back to Sallah and begged him to move, but he dismissed them as idle talk. ‘Mister Sallah,’ said Kalipha with a scornful toss of the head, ‘was above believing myths. Well, my friends, his trade fell off. His children died at birth – one, then another, and still another. After the death of the third – his first son, at that – Sallah was frightened and they moved. But the spell was upon them. Calamity followed calamity – sickness, business reverses, accidents, and finally the death of Zinibe. That was the worst, but it was not the last. Now the barber-shop is closed, Ali, the oldest son, has gone to the devil, Sallah has followed him, and his little ones are orphaned. The curse of a house, my friends – I tell you there is nothing worse!’

  I suggested that maybe it has worked itself out by now; maybe, when the worst that can happen has happened, the curse dissolves? Kalipha looked dubious, ‘Who knows? All we can say is, Mektoub.’

  January 22

  Kalipha left this morning for Tunis to be gone at least a week, and Mohammed has assumed his place at the head of the household. Tonight the two of us ate in lonely state, Kadusha submitting to his commands with little grace – for which I could not blame her. While we were having our coffee, a wedding procession passed the house and the girls rushed to peep through the shutters. I thought Mohammed had suddenly gone crazy, he was waving his arms and shouting at them, ordering them with dire threats away from the window. Not knowing what it was all about, I begged him to calm himself. ‘It is not possible!’ he cried angrily. ‘You know nothing of these women! Once before when my father was absent I permitted her a look. You should have seen her! It was as if she would eat the honey and lick the pot as well!’ He made an airy scoop with his fingers and stuck one in his mouth, by
way of illustration.

  ‘But surely one little peep –’

  ‘Oh, no, Sherifa! Oh, no, oh, no!’ he shook his head emphatically. ‘One cannot permit such things. You do not know the Arab woman.’

  ‘Mohammed is right,’ said Abdallah. So laughing, but regretful, the girls sobered down to their tasks and pretty soon Ummulkeer was telling a story of a sultan’s son – always a sultan’s son.

  January 24

  Authority has made Mohammed insufferable. He has a new voice, very loud and shrill, and when Kadusha fails to please him, or, succeeds in displeasing him, as he would have it – he puts on Kalipha’s famous manner with remarkable accuracy: the leer, the head-wagging, the oily insinuation and mockery. Dinner was a stormy scene over the fish soup she had made. When the others came in for the evening he was still reviling her for having left in the bones. Eltifa said something to him in mild reprimand that caused him to rear like a charging bull, and when Abdallah, too, expressed displeasure, Mohammed got into his shoes and dashed out of the house. However, we managed to get through the evening without him. Eltifa spun the soft brown wool, Abdallah made tea, the girls were very gay and the children played Dome of the Sultan and Where goes the Caravan? Later, Ummulkeer and Kadusha left their work to entertain us with a play. Ummulkeer was the Wife of the Bey’s Son; she was supposed to be a little Fey. Over her high headdress (a bunch of wool) she wore a silk shawl (Kadusha’s hip-scarf) and her stomach was distended with royal fruit (also wool). She comes in, simpering and chittering, to pay a visit on her friend. After the usual formalities have been parried back and forth, Kadusha gives the half-wit a pail to sit on. The audience yell with glee. The Wife of the Bey’s Son is scandalized and threatens to report the breach of respect. Nevertheless, the conversation shuttles very merrily between them. Friend Kadusha is treated to all the gossip of the Bey’s household – what his wife has to put up with, what they have for their meals, to all of which she listens with the most ardent attention, plying for more. When her fine guest gets up at last to go, the royal progeny falls – to the mild horror of both. Kadusha picks it up and hands it to the Wife of the Bey’s Son who hurries off crying that she must take the tidings to the Bey!