At seven years old Muhammad went to school. It was customary for the
scions of great houses to be taught at home by private tutors, but the
family council had decreed that so exceptional a child must feel the
yoke of public discipline and mix with other boys as soon as possible.
The school, just founded by the widow of a former ruler, was reckoned
modern, for the simple reason that the scholars learnt geography and
history, and handled other books as well as the august Corân.
Ghandûr led off Muhammad every morning, and brought him home at evening
through the perils of the streets. Barakah’s thoughts were with him all
day long; she liked to guess at his employment at a given moment; while
Umm ed-Dahak painted flattering pictures of his skill in learning, the
astonishment of all his masters at his brilliant genius.
When she was driven out to pay her calls, Barakah arranged beforehand
with the eunuch that the carriage should pull up before the school.
Then through the shutter she would watch the iron screen which filled
each window-arch and listen to the drone of children’s voices.
The school was an octagonal kiosk of marble, touching the wall of a
world-famous mosque. Its salient bulk half throttled an important
thoroughfare, forming a narrow strait where traffic battled, and on
each side a little bay or backwater where the carriage could draw
up without obstruction. There, underneath the windows with their
arabesques of iron screen-work, sat street sorcerers with trays of sand
before them, venders of sugar-cane and slabs of bread and divers nuts;
and holy beggars slumbered in the shade. Barakah knew exactly where
Muhammad had his seat and, waiting upon that side, watched a certain
opening in the iron-work, from which there presently emerged a little
hand. It fluttered for a moment and was then withdrawn. She waited for
a second signal and a third before she gave the order to drive on.
At school Muhammad’s aim was to excel by all means. The counsels of
Murjânah Khânum, who used religious and inspiring words, had fired his
brain. He had but one ambition now--to please his father. He would
prove the best of Muslims, the most zealous, the most learned, and
then his father would forget his former wickedness. In pursuance of
this end he chafed at every obstacle and was infuriated by stupidity
or sloth in others. He beat his foster-brother more than once through
mere impatience, and in the end put zeal into that vacant but receptive
youth. And Barakah, whose worship of her paragon extended to the son
of Ghandûr as his shadow, became the confidante of all their thoughts
and projects.
The report which the headmaster made to Yûsuf Bey after Muhammad’s
first few weeks at school was satisfactory.
“The boy, thy son,” remarked the reverend man, “is highly gifted and
extremely diligent. In sh´Allah, he will live to be a light to El
Islâm, a glory to this land of Masr, and a worthy slave of the Most
High. We have only one small fault to find with his behaviour, which is
that, in his eagerness, he answers questions we address to other boys,
and is inclined to argue with the teacher as if instruction were for
him alone.”
His mother was delighted with this verdict, whose one restriction
seemed to her the highest praise. She began to cherish visions of his
future greatness, and with the aid of Umm ed-Dahak built grand castles
in the air.
“In sh´Allah, he will rise to rule in Egypt; he will be the right hand
of the Khedive, the chief vizier, the leader of the armies; the sword
and shield of El Islâm, the scourge of Allah on the heathen and all
infidels.”
Thus Umm ed-Dahak, seated on the floor beside her mistress; who,
reclining on the dais at ease with her narghileh, removed the amber
mouthpiece from her lips to sigh, “In sh´Allah!”
In order to be worthy of her son’s magnificence, Barakah had evolved
a fine romantic history out of her own past. The transmutation of
that dross to gold took place so naturally that she was not aware of
lying when she told her crony that she was of royal birth. Gentility
being something inconceivable by Umm ed-Dahak, who knew of no inherited
prestige save that of an Emîr, she was obliged, in order to convey the
status of a governess, to compare it with the lot of fallen princes.
From thence to the invention of a principality was but a step. The
remonstrance of the Consul and of Mrs. Cameron against her marriage
became the rage of a fanatical and angry nation. The noise of her
conversion had disturbed all Europe, and nearly brought on a religious
war. Let Umm ed-Dahak ask the Pasha, if she doubted!
But Umm ed-Dahak was not of the kind who doubt. For her, romantic
fiction was more worth than fact. She accepted this, as she accepted
every tale, artistically, and even added likely details unperceived of
Barakah.
The servants came to know the weakness of their mistress and addressed
her as “Emîrah” with all kinds of ceremony. The disease was catching;
they themselves became infected. With the blacks illusion took the form
of demoniacal possession. Each one began to brag of “him who dwells in
me,” his power and jurisdiction over other demons. Barakah overheard
them talking of their inmates, discussing pedigrees and finding out
relationships which had existence only in the world of ginn. She once
complained of their insanity to Fitnah Khânum, and asked what could be
done to put a stop to it.
“I know one cure for devils as for every other illness of unmarried
girls, and that is matrimony,” was the answer. “Among us here it is a
sovereign remedy; among the Franks it seems less efficacious.”
“Among the Franks such foolish fancies are unknown,” laughed Barakah,
when Fitnah Khânum sniffed, but said no more.
“The poor one is herself possessed,” she told Murjânah afterwards. “The
servants say a princess of the ginn inhabits her; and she complains
because they also harbour inmates. She ought to see a proper exorcist.”
The ladies all agreed to pity her. But Barakah, unconscious of their
criticism, pursued her path of dreams with Umm ed-Dahak.
“May fire consume the infidels who thus dethroned thee, who robbed thee
of thy land and honours!” cried the latter. “O day of milk, when thou
didst fly for succour to the Muslimîn! They will avenge thy wrongs, in
sh´Allah, in the time to come. Thy son shall win his birthright back
with fire and sword.... Ma sh´Allah! Do I not behold his state? I see
him on a throne, with courtiers prone before him--Muhammad Yûsuf Pasha,
styled ‘the Great’--nay, what say I?--the Emîr, the King Muhammad in
virtue of his mother’s dignity!” cried Umm ed-Dahak with dilated
eyes. “By Allah, the most splendid scene I ever witnessed! He is Grand
Vizier!”
But the downfall of the Khedive’s favourite, occurring at this epoch,
dashed the ardour of the seers, and caused them in alarm to change
their vision. The man, whose pomp had served them for a measure of
Muhammad’s greatness, disappeared from life. The story ran that, having
grown too great, he had been trapped by order of his loving master,
accommodated with a weighted sack, and dropped into the Nile. The
tidings caused a flutter in the world of women like that of seafarers
beholding shipwreck. For the favourite’s death involved the ruin of a
great harîm, boasting its troupes of dancers and of trained musicians,
lavish of entertainment and of gay repute. Its members, far too many
to be all beloved, had, some of them, found vent in wild amours which
furnished thrilling stories to more lucky women. Now all the slaves
were scattered among other houses; the ladies, owning private property,
returned to their relations pending further marriage. The great man’s
children were reduced to mediocrity; his honours and emoluments divided
up among a score of courtiers; his name became a byword for pride’s
fall.
“Wallahi, our beloved must not follow in his steps too closely. Allah
forbid!” said Umm ed-Dahak solemnly. And forthwith she began to make
another forecast, with frequent “In sh´Allahs” and “Ma sh´Allahs,” to
rob it of all taint of boastfulness. “He goes up gently, rousing no
suspicion in the ruler, winning the people’s voice, as did Muhammad
Ali. Then, when the times are ripe, he asks the Sovereign and his
courtiers to a banquet and cuts all their throats. Then he ascends the
throne and does good deeds, till all men praise the Maker for his rare
benevolence. And thou, his mother, wilt reside in splendid state, and
when the great ones of the English come with gifts for thee, thou wilt
spit upon them and repel them with thy little foot. In sh´Allah!”
Barakah would be a widow in those days, by Allah’s mercy. A queen, she
would of course have many lovers. Did she desire a man--one word, and
he was hers as quick as lightning! And Umm ed-Dahak would be ever at
her call to spread the net for goodly youths and guard her secret.
“But I shall be too old by then!” laughed Barakah.
“Please Allah, no!” cried the old woman, a trifle vexed at being
brought to earth. “Thou wilt be still quite youthful. See thee now:
what beauty, what a youthful figure! By Allah, almost wicked in a
mother! Thou dost not grow old.”
In fact, her shape, though something fat, was not ungainly, like
that of younger women leading the same life. She took no care of it,
conforming to the harîm custom for women who bear children to let
beauty go. “The time and purpose of the bloom is past, the fruit
succeeds, more noble,” they assured her. She saw the rarest beauties,
like Bedr-ul-Budûr, already changing into fat old women. Compared with
them she felt still young and comely. But when, her carriage rolling
on the Gîzah road, she saw real Frankish women, riding, driving,
she felt a raddled and unwieldy hag. There was one Englishwoman in
particular who often passed her, driving a light dog-cart with a Nubian
groom behind--straight as a lance and trim of waist, with rosy cheeks
and bright eyes under grizzled hair. A creature of free air and open
sunlight, the shuttered, perfumed shade could not produce her like. A
jealousy near hatred stirred in Barakah.
One evening Yûsuf, thinking to amuse her, had sent her with his sisters
and Muhammad to the new opera-house which the Khedive had built to
please the European visitors, and also to provide His Highness with
relays of mistresses. There, in a harîm box behind a screen, she smoked
cigarettes and listened to what seemed mere senseless screeching to one
who had admired the voice of Tâhir. The opera was _Don Giovanni_. Never
had she witnessed a performance so stilted, artificial, and absurd.
She quite agreed with the remarks of her companions, who, after their
first wonder at the building and the lighted stage, yawned openly and
called it simple madness. Yet the entertainment was no bad one to
the taste of Europe, as she knew from the applause of people in the
unscreened boxes, where barefaced, brilliant women sat and stared about
them. The mere existence of those women there in Cairo, transgressing
every native rule of conduct, was an insult. The freshness even of the
old ones made her conscious of decay. When the girls after the second
act proposed to go, she agreed gladly. Muhammad screamed to stay, and
had to be transported bodily by Barakah, while one of his young aunts
held her hand upon his mouth. A very small boy at the time, he had
supposed the scene was laid in hell, and all the hideous screams of the
performers denoted pangs of tortured infidels.
Muhammad, for his mother’s sake, abhorred the English; and yet he loved
his mother, who was of that race. He reconciled these warring passions
by supposing the existence of a race of Muslims in the British Isles.
One day, when he was ten years old, he came home with a face of
indignation, demanding, “O my mother, is it not quite true that the
English nation is as strong and warlike as the French, and nowise
subject to the lord of Paris?”
“True, O my son.”
“By Allah, that is what I said. We were arguing, a dozen of us, after
school. They all opposed me, stating that the French were much the
greater and more civilized. I, sure of my contention, asked a master
who stood by. He foolishly asserted that the French were stronger. I
informed him of his error in all courtesy, when, to my horror, he began
abusing me, detained me in the school an hour against my will, and
himself remained to gloat on my imprisonment.
“Nor is that all. No sooner was I free than I went to the house of
the principal and made complaint of the injustice. He said--the
malefactor!--thus escaping from the question, that it was a sin for
true believers to quarrel for the sake of infidels. I told him there
were Muslimîn among the English, as witness my own mother, who is one
of them. He had the rudeness to declare thou art a convert. It was all
that I could do to keep from plucking at his beard. I shall ask my
father to remove me straightway from a school where lying insults and
oppression thus prevail.”
“The principal spoke truth. I am a convert,” murmured Barakah, hanging
her head through fear of her son’s shame.
“Merciful Allah!” cried Muhammad, greatly shocked.
But in a moment he recovered from the blow. Kissing her hand, he
murmured fondly:
“Be not downcast, O beloved, it is not thy fault. My comrades sneer at
converts; but no matter. I shall still maintain that thou wert born in
the right way. Thou art still my dearest mother, loved and honoured.”
The lover-like, protecting air became him rarely.