The party at the bath with all its ritual was one of the ordeals which
Muhammad Pasha had wished to spare the English girl. As a man he hated
all the pranks that women play alone, and deemed them of necessity
immodest. But the feeling roused in the harîm was too intense for
him; and as Barakah, he was told, herself desired the entertainment,
he could adduce no cogent reason for refusal. The place in the
haramlik being ill adapted to a large assembly, he hired the finest
of the public baths for the occasion. The dependants of the household
clamouring for a procession through the streets, he gave them one,
putting in place of Barakah a humbler bride whose nuptials would be
celebrated at his cost.
About the first hour after noon, the bride of Yûsuf left the house,
sped by the ululations of the whole harîm. In a carriage with the
Pasha’s nieces and Gulbeyzah, she was driven through the streets to
the Hammam. There, at the entrance, stood two eunuchs, and in the
antechamber many women-servants of the Pasha’s house. The ladies on
arrival were conducted to a second ante-room and there divested of
all clothing. Each put on a pair of clogs and had her hair tied up in
an embroidered kerchief. While they were disrobing, other veiled ones
entered who laughed heartily at Barakah’s confusion. The procession of
the humbler bride had arrived some minutes since, they were informed.
The elder of the Pasha’s nieces and Gulbeyzah took each a hand of
Barakah and led her on from room to room, pausing in each to get
accustomed to the growing warmth. Suddenly they came upon a noisy
crowd. Two shiny negresses sprang forth, and, singling out the bride,
lifted her up and bore her to a corner of the hall, beneath a tap.
They flung her on her back. Seeing a razor flash, she uttered shriek
on shriek the while they fell to rubbing, making her joints crack,
kneading her very bones with their hard fingers. With eyes half blind
with soapsuds, she beheld a wreath of naked figures moving round her in
a kind of dance. The wall and vaulted ceiling of the building sweated.
The windows were high up and gave no light; there entered not a whiff
of outer air. A pulse beat at her temples. She felt suffocated.
At last the women stopped their rubbing, and by playful slaps informed
her that her turn was ended. Like a sheep from the shearing she
rose up, staggering, intent to flee. But she was caught again and
made to sit down while her hair was plaited. Then some one--it was
Gulbeyzah--grasped her hand and led her to the other end of the great
hall, where were two tanks of water gently steaming. The hall presented
a strange spectacle, for it was full of naked figures, ebon and
mouse-brown, amber and snow-white. Singers, all naked, sat beside one
wall, and hummed and droned and shrilled distractingly.
At a call, “The bride!” the whole crowd rushed on Barakah with
ululations. Her shame became acute, an agony. Gulbeyzah led her up to
one of the tanks. Some one behind administered a push, and she fell in;
when some one else sprawled in upon the top of her. Her head was under
water for some seconds. Spluttering, indignant, her throat choked with
sobs, she found herself among a group of laughing girls, all colours,
who were ducking one another as they splashed about. Gulbeyzah cried,
“The butterflies! Look! Look!” and pointed to the smooth stone marge,
where all the ripples in the light of smoky cressets were reflected
like a thousand fluttering moths. The stir subsiding when all stopped
to look, the moths united into one great butterfly, dimly perceived,
whose wings beat faint and fainter as the water stilled.
“She has eaten them all! Behold, how fat she is!” cried out Gulbeyzah.
“I believe she is just going to have some others. Look!” She plunged,
and made fresh ripples. Laughter hailed this sally. A brown girl,
lissom as a snake, sprang hard on the facetious one and promptly ducked
her.
Angry, humiliated, feeling lost eternally, Barakah scrambled out to
face a row of grinning, dancing hags. They and the shameless girls,
the fiendish music, the sweating walls, the fumes of incense hiding
the high roof, combined to make her fancy she was underneath the earth
assisting at an orgy of malignant jinn.
Some one smote her from behind. She turned round angrily. A fair-haired
girl was running. She ran after her. Another struck her lightly as she
ran. She turned again. A third sprang on her, pinioned both her arms
and kissed her on the mouth, amid applause. Then first she realized
that it was all a game; the girls were friendly. In the magnitude
of her relief, her shyness vanished. She soon led the romp. It was
one long dancing game of follow-my-leader, varied with moods of
hide-and-seek and leapfrog. All the while the singers kept up their
wild din, the hired dancers never ceased their weird contortions.
Afterwards, when they were all rubbed down and clothed again, there
was a feast of most delicious dainties in the ante-rooms, and Barakah
was introduced to her late playfellows, transformed as if by magic
to polite young ladies. Every one of them, she found, had brought a
present for her. She chattered merrily in French, and ate and drank
with appetite unknown before. Driving home in the carriage with three
delicately perfumed maidens, whose soft hands caressed her, she
experienced a blissful languor, like thanksgiving.