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Random documents with unrelated
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the blue of evening at the lattice, heard the murmur of the tired city
like a voice of waters, and, lulled by vast contentment, fell asleep.
 CHAPTER XIX
Never in her life had Barakah seen so many strange old women.
There were always four or five of them within her chamber,
squatting on mats along the wall, conversing in low tones, ready at a
breath to rearrange her pillows, or fetch some posset that was
ordered for her. They were all of apelike ugliness, and, going
barefoot, moved as noiselessly as ghosts.
The Frankish doctor—an Italian—had pronounced her much too frail
to nurse her baby—a decision which excited such dependants of the
house as were eligible for the post of foster-mother. This was a great
prize, kinship by milk, among the Muslims, being esteemed as
genuine and binding as by blood. The wet-nurse thus became a near
relation of the family, and all her race had claims upon its bounty.
Barakah felt jealous of the woman who usurped her function, till she
heard from Fitnah Khânum that the choice had fallen on the wife of
her old friend Ghandûr. The girl, a former slave of the harîm, was
then presented to her, the baby in her arms; and won her heart by
her excessive gratitude. She was touched, too, by the transports of
Ghandûr, who sang thanksgiving to her lattice in his simple way. His
chant was something in this manner:

“The sun is in my eyes! O happy day!

I grope as one half-blind. Behold the bounty of my lord!
I, the poor slave of Allah,
Am now the father of his son Abdallah,
My wife the mother of his son, by leave of Allah,
My little boy the brother of a child most blest, in sh
´Allah!
The gracious consort of my lord, istaghfar Allah!
Has granted to our lowliness a share in her good gift
from Allah.
 May Allah bless my lord and lady in their noble offspring,
and preserve his life to be the luminary of our
future days.”
She liked to hear him, his voice so near at hand produced a sense of
true devotion and security. Missing his chant upon the following day,
she inquired what had become of him. She was informed that,
consequent upon his wife’s preferment, he had been appointed to a
small position in the Government. It made her sad.
Her son was given over to the harîm midwives to fulfil no end of
ceremonies destined to frustrate the powers of evil. For a week he
was not left alone or in the dark a single second. They carried him in
a procession through the house, his future kingdom, and as each
door was opened, sprinkled salt mixed with the seven seeds to
exorcize the jinn who lurked within. Soon after birth his face had
been defiled with certain powders, which Barakah could not
persuade the women to wash off. It was a necessary precaution,
they assured her, against jealous powers of darkness who, if they
had an inkling of his beauty, would destroy him. Chief among these
was the discarded wife of Adam, alluded to as El Carînah (the
companion), the cause of man’s first fall, who hates Eve’s daughters
and resents their great fertility. Where a child seems lovely and the
mother shows delight in its appearance, she attacks them both; if,
on the contrary, she sees it ugly and hears words of disappointment,
she lets it live to spite the seed of Adam. For one so powerful, she
must be very stupid to be taken in by such pretences, Barakah
remarked; but they cried out that such was not the case, but Allah in
His mercy had set limits to her sight and hearing. Each day the
infant was the central figure in some ancient rite believed essential
to its welfare.
As Barakah lay in bed and watched the pattern of the lattice, her
whole existence passing like a dream before her, she sought to
reconcile her former English with her present Eastern life. Her son
was a fine boy, they all assured her. It saddened her that she had no
relations of her own to take a pride in him. In this mood she asked
Yûsuf to write a little note to Mrs. Cameron entreating her to come
one day and see the baby. He did so, and the answer was that she
would come with pleasure.
Elated by the prospect of this visit, Barakah wished to have her
offspring made presentable; but when she gave command to wash
his face and wrap him in nice clothes, the goodies screamed aloud,
and fetched the lady Fitnah to remonstrate with her. She gave way,
perforce; and Mrs. Cameron beheld the infant at his worst.
The visitor was very kind in her address to Barakah; but, when she
held the baby for a minute, looking down at it, the latter, watching
keenly, saw upon her face a quiver of extreme disfavour mixed with
pity. The whiteness of her hands and face showed the child yellow;
Barakah had thought him white as snow till then. A flush of anger
and humiliation reached her brain.
“His face is dirty, the poor little one! Our Lord preserve him!” the
visitor remarked in Arabic as she returned the baby to his nurse; at
which there was an outburst of applause from the onlookers. They
called down blessings on the lady’s head, desiring she might have
herself a thousand children, not like this one, puny and unpleasant,
but most beautiful.
Barakah, consumed with rage, murmured hoarsely in response to
Mrs. Cameron’s farewell. The moment she was gone she burst out
weeping.
“She did not like the child! She scorned my son, because he is not
altogether white as she is.”
“Thou mistakest, O my dear! Be comforted!” cried Fitnah Khânum,
while the other women round her exchanged pitying glances.
“Thou art not yet perfect in our prudent customs; but thy friend,
though not a Muslimah, has learnt them, having been much longer
in the land. Hast thou forgotten my instructions touching El Carînah?
Nor is she alone to be redoubted, since Allah Himself abhors a
boastful spirit, and dishonours those who make too much of any
creature....”
“O Lord! I know all that!” wailed Barakah. “But she disliked my child,
despised him! I—I saw it!”
Conviction that the portion of the human race from which she
sprang beheld her son as little better than a monkey, tortured
Barakah. She had looked upon him as a mediator, but now sought
revenge. Hot, feverish dreams of hate disturbed her rest; and when
a spell of khamsîn weather robbed the world of energy she grew as
weak and fretful as her thoughts were wild.
Already Barakah had kept her bed a fortnight longer than any
Eastern woman would have dreamt of doing after childbirth. The
lady Fitnah, seeing she did not gain strength, believed that some
debilitating vile afrît was in her. The Frankish doctor said there was
no cause for fear. She called him fool and worse, in her own circle;
since by his disregard or ignorance of pious formulas he had left the
door ajar for evil spirits. Resolved to stop the mischief, when no man
was by she hung a plant of garlic in the room, burnt potent odours
till its air grew suffocating, and dosed the patient with a paste
compounded of the dust of mummies mixed with human milk. When
these means failed to drive away the enemy, she sat down in despair
among her cronies, and braced herself to try the last resort of all.
This was the “zâr”—a very awful ceremony, of which she was
exceedingly afraid. Her wish to hold it in the house—risking the
Pasha’s favour, and her life through terror—was proof of her devoted
love for Barakah. The dear one must be healed at any price.
Accordingly, she summoned negresses of those who hold familiar
intercourse with demons, bought a kid and several fowls alive, and
made arrangements to secure the sick-room to herself and her
confederates for two good hours upon a certain afternoon.
Barakah was roused out of a troubled sleep by women moving out
the furniture from both bedchamber and salon, and covering the
floor with worn-out linen and the cheapest matting. They went, and
she lay wondering, when Fitnah Khânum came and bade her have
no fear. The ceremony she was going to witness was a potent
medicine, well calculated to restore her health completely. Many
servants, female children, and familiars of the household trooped in
with noiseless feet and squatted down along the wall. Then came a
group of half a dozen negresses, fantastically dressed in rags of
finery, with ringing anklets; one of whom embraced a struggling little
goat, while the others bore live chickens by the feet. Bold-eyed and
with a swaggering gait, they marched up to the bed, and seemed to
offer up the fowls and kid to Barakah, who could not understand the
words they uttered in a screeching chant. They then danced back to
the adjoining room, of which the door stood open. Upon the
threshold madness seemed to seize them. They fell upon the kid
with cries of glee. The creature, bleating piteously, was flung into an
earthen bowl placed there in readiness. Amid mad laughter knives
were brandished and brought down, hands helping to extract the
creature’s life. The fowls were likewise gashed and torn asunder; the
matting round grew foul with steaming entrails. Another minute and
the slayers reappeared, their black arms purpled to the elbow,
dripping blood, their faces and their lips defiled with it; and then
began a devilish dance of self-abandonment, all the more horrible
for its approach to beauty. The sleek skin of the dancers caught blue
lights; their fixed eyes gleamed enormous, like those painted on the
lids of mummies. Barakah believed herself in hell, for ever lost; it
was as if an iron hand compressed her throat. Her heart beat wildly.
One of the women, the most shameless, lurched towards her,
stretching out a blood-stained hand. Her heart gave one tremendous
beat and then stood still.
When she recovered consciousness it was to find the lady Fitnah
bending over her. The negresses had gone, the room was cleansed,
the furniture replaced exactly as before. She might have thought she
had been dreaming had not Yûsuf’s mother whispered eagerly:
“Breathe not a word to Yûsuf or our lord the Pasha. Deny by Allah
that thou sawest anything. If not, the afrît which we have with pains
extracted will return and kill thee.”
In her weak state of mind, oppressed with dreadful and disgusting
images, Barakah believed the words and shuddered. She was ill for
weeks.
 CHAPTER XX
During the heat of summer, part of the harîm, consisting of the
ladies Barakah and Fitnah, with their children and attendants, stayed
at a farm belonging to the Pasha, on the banks of the Nile, near
Benha. The journey thither was performed on donkeys in a long
procession with a eunuch at its head and tail, a eunuch boy leading
the donkey of each lady, that she might have freedom to hold up her
sunshade and munch nuts and sweetstuff. The slave-girls, some of
them, rode two together; they waxed hilarious, exchanging jests
with all who passed them on the dyke. Their going raised a goodly
cloud of dust. The house to which they went was large and formal,
none too clean, though very sparsely furnished. Behind it was a
filthy yard hemmed in by hovels, where dwelt the fellâhîn who
worked the farm. Before it was a garden of fruit trees, and beyond
that a plantation of young date-palms. There was also a big tree
beside a water-wheel, where the ladies took their pleasure in the
shade. The land was absolutely flat in all directions, but diversified in
hue by divers crops, broken here and there by clumps of trees and
squat mud villages.
Here manners were relaxed; for all the peasant women went
unveiled, and their example made the slaves less strict than in the
city. The lady Fitnah, being of the country, took delight in talking
with the villagers, both men and women, and thus, though most
correct in her apparel, set the fashion of unbending. Yûsuf, who had
now a Government appointment, and the Pasha came to see them
when they had the leisure; and Ghandûr also travelled down to see
his wife.
To please the lady Fitnah, Barakah gave French and English lessons
to the children in the mornings under the great tree, when many of
the servants also gathered round and tried to learn. She was begged
to be particularly strict with Hamdi, whom the lady Fitnah seemed to
think the soul of wickedness, as indeed did everybody else, making
his life a burden with perpetual scolding.
This boy, her husband’s younger brother, was attached to Barakah as
the only one who never shook him by the neck or cursed him. He
told her all his woes, and brought her offerings of curious things he
found in his illicit rambles. He was always straying, though with no
worse object, he asserted, than the wish to be alone. His lady
mother called him “stupid Turk,” vowing that he was all his father’s
child, and she herself had neither part nor lot in him; though Hamdi
was the true Egyptian adolescent, still but half awake, a slave to
every breeze, to every odour, and fascinated by the sight of
gleaming objects. He would sit still for hours in contemplation of a
sunlit blade of grass; at other times he would walk miles, drawn on
invisibly, with great brown eyes which seemed to harbour visions.
Barakah found him gentle and obedient. In truth, his only
wickedness that she could see consisted in resentment of shrill
interruptions. At such times he would battle blindly with assailants,
cursing them, and crying out, in his despair:
“Am I not a man full-grown? Do I not sleep in the selamlik? Then let
me be, or it shall be the worse for you, by Allah!”
“A man full-grown, thou sayest?” screamed the lady Fitnah one
evening when he came home soaked in mud from head to foot.
“Listen, O child of dogs, O malefactor! Knowest thou what I shall do
on our return to town? I shall marry thee at once to Na’imah, thy
uncle’s child. Thy clothes are in a filthy state, thy tassel gone. Thou
hast been sprawling in some ditch, O piggish boy! By the Prophet, I
shall do as I have said. Sure, matrimony is the only cure for one like
thee. Thou shalt wed Na’imah.”
“Allah forbid!” exclaimed the lad with fervour; whereat the ladies and
the servants burst out laughing; for Na’imah, Leylah Khânum’s
youngest daughter, had been Hamdi’s chief tormentor there at
home, disturbing his still dreams with impish glee, and quick to
vanish.
“Is it not cruel thus to hound me?” the unlucky boy asked Barakah.
“I do no wrong; they interfere with me. And now my mother
threatens to unite me to the most hateful daughter of a dog that
ever yelped and bit.”
The month of Ramadan came on them in their country life; and the
long hours of heat without a bite or sup made everybody irritable
except Barakah and the wife of Ghandûr, who were both exempt
from fasting—the former as an invalid, the latter as a nursing-
mother. The slave-girls lost their usual delight in birds and greenery.
A gun fired in the distant market-town announced the moment of
release in the first bloom of night; but the party failed to hear it
sometimes, and looked out for the lighting of the lamps around a
village mosque across the plain. At once arose vast sighs of praise to
Allah; cigarettes, prepared in readiness, were seized and lighted;
water was handed round and food set out.
It was at that blest hour upon a certain evening of the sacred month
that a rapturous surprise befell the party. A little cavalcade was seen
approaching on the dyke. It consisted of two donkeys and a
baggage mule. A woman sat upon the foremost donkey; on the
second rode two children, boy and girl; while the mule was led by a
black-bearded, turbaned man of noble presence. The ladies, sitting
in the garden, peered, then shouted:
“Tâhir! It is Tâhir! Tâhir, the great singer! O most blessed day! Enter,
O son of honour! Deign to favour us!”
Learning that the master of the house was absent, Tâhir would not
enter, but sought a lodging in the hovels of the fellâhîn, whither a
rich meal was sent to him. But after supper he came up into the
garden with his lute, followed timidly by all the population of the
hamlet; and his wife and children stole into the room where all the
women sat with windows open, looking forward to the concert. Once
more his little daughter drew to Barakah, and, having kissed her
hand, sat down and leaned against her. “I love thee,” she explained,
with a soft look; and then with a wide yawn exclaimed: “I am so
tired!” Barakah put her arm about her, and the child seemed happy.
She did not go to sleep this time, however, but lay still, fondling her
protector’s hand, and gazing up at the great stars.
“See, what a man he is!” exclaimed the Galla slave, Fatûmah, her
hand upon the shoulder of her mistress, all respect forgotten in
intense excitement. “He does not even stay to tune his lute. All that
is for the common singers. He is much above it. By Allah, he would
sing to a dog’s howl and make it musical.”
One twang of the lute, and then the magic voice arose from out the
shadow of the trees. It gave a living spirit to the starlight, a soul to
all the nights that ever were or would be. It seemed illumination, yet
was all of mystery; it gave the listener a sense of floating
disembodied.
Once when Tâhir paused to rest, the voice of Hamdi was heard in
the garden, begging for leave to hold his lute and play it.
“That boy again! Cut short his life!” cried Fitnah Khânum. “Devoid of
manners as of sensibility. Remove him quickly!”
But Tâhir answered pleasantly: “Here, O my son! Take it and play for
me. Observe the measure. Strike loudly in the pauses, softly while I
sing.” And Fatûmah, quite beside herself, exclaimed:
“Behold the man he is! He can dispense with all things. That which
would ruin the performance of another singer is a joy to him.”
Hamdi acquitted himself fairly well of the task of accompaniment
and won a word of praise from Tâhir, which so moved him that when
the singer was departing the next morning early, he stole out to him,
and, looking round to ascertain that he was heard of none save
Barakah, entreated:
“Take me with thee, O my uncle. Instruct me, let me play for thee
for ever. This girl, thy daughter, this little sugar-plum, shall be my
bride. Then we can all live happily together.”
“The honour is too high for us, O my small lord!” the singer
answered, with his charming smile. “Thy lot in life is better far, in sh
´Allah, than that of us poor players.”
“But they say that thou canst earn a hundred pounds a night.”
“Seldom as much as that, beloved. And my living is at Allah’s
pleasure. It is a gift from Him, to whom be praise. Come to me four
years hence, and we will think about it.”
With a dignified salute he started off; the children, on their donkey,
waved their hands and screamed farewell. Hamdi was left standing
disappointed and a trifle injured.
“O my misfortune!” he exclaimed to Barakah. “I would have given
my right hand to go with him. Like that I could escape from
persecution and accursed Na’imah, and dwell for ever in the sound
of music which transports my soul. Allah is greatest!”
And he heaved a mighty sigh.
When the month of fasting ended, there were mild rejoicings. The
fellâhîn fired guns and let off fireworks. The women smoked too
much and over-ate themselves, and felt aggrieved at being far from
Cairo, where the means of satisfaction were more varied and
abundant.
Then Yûsuf and the Pasha came and stayed a week; delighted,
coming fresh to it, with the unoccupied existence over which the
others had begun to yawn. At the end of the week they all returned
to Cairo, the procession of the ladies keeping half a mile behind their
lords. The first view of the citadel on one hand, the pyramids of
Gîzah on the other, called forth thankful shouts. The coloured, noisy
streets, the odours sweet and foul, the atmosphere of teeming life,
excited Barakah. She joined in exclamations of delight.
While she gazed with strange eyes at her gilded salon,
superintending the disposal of her baggage, a letter was presented
to her by Fatûmah. It had been given to the latter that same minute
by Sawwâb the eunuch, who had had it in safe keeping for two
months. It was from Mrs. Cameron.
Barakah, frowning, opened it and read:
 “It grieves me much to learn that you have been seriously ill. I
heard of this quite by accident from Doctor Torranelli, whom I
chanced to meet at a friend’s house. In some anxiety, I tried to
call upon you yesterday, but learnt that you are absent in the
country. I trust that the dear baby flourishes. He must be a
great comfort and delight to you. Please never forget that I am
your sincere friend.”

With an exclamation of annoyance, she tore up the note.

 CHAPTER XXI
The idea of seeing Mrs. Cameron again was quite intolerable. She
therefore wrote that lady a brief note, an asp for venom, designed to
terminate acquaintance and to rankle, and plunged into the harîm
pleasures with sensations of defiance.
One morning, as she lounged upon her cushioned window-seat,
smoking her narghileh and listening to the voices wafted with the
sunlight through her lattice, Fatûmah came and with a grin
announced that Hamdi Bey desired an audience of her Honour. She
gave the word, and in came Hamdi, knuckling his two eyes.
“O day of pitch!” he cried. “O vile nefarious day! O my beloved sister,
hide me, save me! My father has enforced my mother’s harsh
command. I am to be married to-day to that unholy child of dogs—
against my will. I wished to wait a thousand years. Ghandûr is
waiting at this minute to conduct me to the bath.”
As if in confirmation of his words, the voice of Ghandûr shouted in
the street without: “Make haste, O Hamdi! Lo, the sun is high! The
shadow is already on the stone thou fixedst for a limit when I let
thee enter.”
“Thou hearest,” snuffled Hamdi, “how they hound me? He has my
wedding garments in a bundle—O my hatred! Guests have been
bidden—may their fathers perish! Go to my mother (she will hear
thee); plead that I may be allowed a few months’ respite. It is
Na’imah who, through her mother, hastens on the match. She would
destroy my new-found freedom and torment me.”
Barakah could not help laughing, though she uttered words of
comfort. Na’imah was a very pretty girl, she pointed out, and not ill-
natured, though a great coquette. He would have none of it, but
shook his head with ominous frowns.
“I hate her!” he declared. “And knowest thou? I have a mind to
drown myself this morning at the bath.”
Then, as Ghandûr’s calls became insistent, he left the room with
slow, reluctant steps.
The wedding was a small affair, the parties being children of one
house, and their betrothal (which is legal marriage) having taken
place in infancy. The bride, enthroned, showed none of the
reluctance felt by Hamdi. A bright-eyed and determined little
maiden, she was wreathed in smiles; and when Barakah inquired if
she were truly happy, replied, “The praise to Allah!” with decision.
Next day the house was full of smothered laughter. Hamdi was
completely changed. He and his bride were now the fondest pair.
The lady Fitnah, who had always held that matrimony was a
panacea for the crotchets of young people, male and female,
rendered praise where praise was due. For many days, through
shame, the bridegroom hid from Barakah, and from every one else
to whom he had proclaimed his dread of marriage.
When she told Gulbeyzah of the case as of a kind of miracle, the
Circassian answered:
“I perceive no cause for wonder. The bridegroom had not thought of
her before in that relation, had not truly known her—that is all. Love
is a blessing that brings gratitude as surely as the Nile makes plants
to grow.”
Gulbeyzah and Bedr-ul-Budûr—nay, all her friends—viewed love,
apart from any individual man, as a material boon. Bred up to it and
ripened for it cunningly, they were ready to adore the man who gave
it, however unattractive from a European standpoint. This view of
love, when realized, explained to Barakah the happiness which every
girl of her acquaintance seemed to find in marriage, even where, as
in Gulbeyzah’s case, the husband was a greybeard thrice her age.
Those who possessed it were content and virtuous. In those who
had it not, or were deprived of it, all amorous crime was reckoned
pardonable.
Gulbeyzah and Bedr-ul-Budûr explained all this to Barakah in thrilling
tones, as if they uttered truths divine.
“Behold the wisdom of our Faith,” they said, “which grants to every
woman this delight in secret. Women can never truly be the friends
of men; their soul is different. If thrown with men for long, they feel
fatigue. They ask of men one thing—the gift of love. Here we
consort with women, true companions, all day long; and in the night
the bridegroom comes, and we are blest. Is not this better than the
way of Europe, which sets at nought apparent truths—as that most
men love more than one of us, whereas most women need but love
itself, the hope of children?”
That was one of the occasions when Barakah would have given
anything to have an Englishwoman present, and to watch her face.
Another came a few days later when she called upon Gulbeyzah.
Alighting from her carriage at the palace door, she saw a baby’s
coffin being carried out, and thought at once of turning home again.
But already smiling eunuchs stood before her bidding welcome,
beseeching her to deign to follow them to the haramlik. Gulbeyzah
met her with a kiss on either cheek.
“Come, help us to console Nasîbah,” she exclaimed. “Her baby died
this night. She is distracted.”
She drew her friend into a chamber where the childless mother lay,
face downward, moaning, while the others tried to soothe her.
“It is no matter,” was the burden of their consolations. “It is not as if
thou wert left altogether desolate. Are we not one, we four? Thou
hast two children left, since ours are thine, and in a day or two
Gulbeyzah will present thee with a third, in sh´Allah!”
“In sh´Allah!” cried Gulbeyzah. “And it shall be thine entirely. Directly
it is born it shall be sent to thee to nurse. I will forget it. And when it
is thy turn again, thou wilt repay me. Is not that a good idea?”
Oh that English people, who regard polygamy as something
dreadful, could have witnessed that small scene! The wish, escaping
Barakah at unawares, begot a heartache, as she realized that all she
saw and heard for their instruction was thwarted of its natural vent
for evermore.
She told herself that she was happy in this life; and so she was upon
the surface, where she kept her thoughts, not daring to pry down
into the depths. In the early days she had desired more knowledge
of the Muslim faith, and a woman learned in religion had been hired
to teach her. But the fury of that faith, the scathing nature of its
truths, appalled her, awaking recollections of a creed more
sentimental, with distressing doubts. She very soon gave up her
lessons, closed the eyes of her intelligence, and resolutely sought
her pleasure in the passing hour.
Still there were moments when vague fears oppressed her. When, in
the third year of her marriage, she brought forth a still-born child,
frightful abysses seemed to yawn around her, and for days she was
afflicted with a kind of nightmare of misgiving, derived from
recollection of the “zâr” and other horrors.
The Eastern ladies were so calm and strong compared with her; they
flinched at nothing except impropriety. The slaughter of a thousand
sheep at Curban Bairam, turning the kitchen court into a shambles,
caused them no disgust. It was ordained of God, they told her, and it
fed the poor. They had no horror of disease or death or filthy
persons, and, though most cleanly, looked on vermin philosophically.
The Turks and the Circassians, with their grand ideals, appeared
more dreadful than the Africans, whose faith was childlike. Barakah
preferred the latter. Her pleasure was in feasts and little outings, in
story-tellers, dancers, and musicians who beguile the time; her only
rapture was in adoration of her small Muhammad.
Her hidden yearnings and beliefs clung round the boy. She dwelt in
longing for the days when he should be her friend. He was her hope,
the product of both parts of her divided life; giving it sense and
sequence, and, in the end perhaps, if Allah willed, consistency. She
dreamt of a great future for him, to astonish Europe. But in the
meanwhile, being sometimes dull, she felt the need of an intelligent,
discreet companion.
 CHAPTER XXII
On the recurrence of certain anniversaries, at the two Bairams and
in the month of Ragab, all Muslim Cairo left the city of the living for
the cities of the dead adjoining it upon the east and south. Mothers
of sorrow like Murjânah Khânum, whose heart was with her children
in the grave, inhabited the mausoleums for a week or more; but the
majority performed a one-day visit.
Blue night alive with stars was at her lattice when Barakah was softly
roused by her attendants and arrayed in proper garb. She found
Leylah Khânum and her daughters waiting for her by the mabeyn
screen, where the eunuch had a heap of roses and of henna-flowers
to give them, as well as branches of palm and sweet basil. With
these they made their way out to the carriage.
The principal streets were thronged with people going in the same
direction: men in clean robes, who yawned, still half asleep; women,
black-shrouded, bearing palm-branches, with trays of eatables upon
their heads; small girls in tinselled gauze of divers colours, and boys
in stiff new clothing—all with earnest faces, pressing out towards the
cemeteries. Barakah kept peeping through the shutter at the solemn
crowd, to which the fitful gleam of swinging lanterns added
weirdness. The concourse gave forth a dull clatter, above which was
heard the rumble of the carriage wheels upon the stones, the shouts
the coachman raised to clear a way. Then suddenly all noise of going
ceased, although their wheels still rolled and the besetting throng
was even denser than before. They were on sand. The people
murmured like a shell. The desert hill rose imminent against the
stars. On all sides spread a wilderness of humble graves, each with
its family group encamped beside the headstone. Then came a steep
incline, up which the horses struggled under whip and cursing; and
lo! they were once more in city streets. On every hand rose shadowy
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