The news was broken gently to the stricken mother. Yûsuf, overcoming
his own grief, came in at noon and sat an hour with her, leading her
up by little steps to view the glory that their son had died a martyr
for the Faith. When the announcement came at length, the fortitude he
had assumed gave way. He wept profusely. But Barakah was tearless. She
sat rigid, with pale eyes staring vaguely in a face of stone. She asked
that Ali, as soon as he arrived, might be sent in to her; and that was
all. Umm ed-Dahak came and mumbled on her hand, moaning endearments
which she did not hear. Then Ali was announced. At the same instant
dreadful wailing filled the house. She drew her head-veil round her
face (the movement had become instinctive) when he fell before her,
pouring forth his awful story, concluding with the words: “The funeral
sets forth this minute, O my lady. His body will not keep with all
those wounds.”
And then her anguish passed the bounds of suffering; she moved and
looked and spoke, but felt no more.
Her women, half demented, danced around her. They tore their flesh
with finger-nails, defiled their faces, and raised an endless chant,
reviewing all the charms and virtues of the dear one, his mother’s
love, the blackness of the world, each verse concluding with a shriek
of “O calamity!” It was the triumph-song of death.
Robbed of the corpse, the funeral over, they thronged her chamber,
keeping up the ghastly round, the death-chant, in the hope to give her
tears. Her petrifaction filled them with dismay. To women who accept
with rapture all life’s chances, whose custom is to celebrate each blow
that strikes them and magnify it as a witness to the power of God, her
stony apathy appeared uncanny. They increased their efforts, while Umm
ed-Dahak poured into her ear a song of memory designed to loose the
frozen fountain of despair.
“She was the fairest daughter of the seed of Adam. See her now! Her
feet, her finger-tips dropped perfume. She had the grace of flowers,
the voice of turtles. Now behold her! In a moment blind and deaf and
dumb and paralyzed. And why? Alas, O thou who askest! it is because
the sunshine of her life is fled. We saw her follow his dead body to
the grave. As the cow pursues the calf that has been reft from her,
so did she follow blindly with a noise of lowing. She has not even
strength to beat her face. Her breath is painful, husky like the voice
of doves; its sound is all the sobbing of the childless mother. Say,
O beloved, what is in thy mind? Dost thou remember his tarbûsh, his
yellow slippers, the loveliness of all that touched his body, which was
perfumed amber? There was a little mole upon his breast well known to
thee. O Allah, waken memory, or grief will slay her!”
Barakah saw and heard as in a trance. She thought herself in Hell,
bound fast and gagged while devils taunted her. She was tortured by
the memory of English winter evenings, of walking back from church in
the long train of orphans, the patter of their feet resounding sadly.
That dreariness appeared a state of bliss compared with this luxurious
life enclosed in heat. She longed for a cold wind, with rain in it.
Remembrance of a garden under sunset came to her; she saw once more a
cool verandah with long windows open on an English drawing-room, and
heard the earnest voice of Mrs. Cameron entreating her to stay and save
her soul. This was God’s punishment. Her life from then till now had
been all frowardness and self-indulgence. While basking in it she had
been aware that it was baneful. A thousand awful faces rose to sneer,
“We warned you!” The glimpses she had had of horrid depths, the scenes
of bloodshed and the tales of cruelty, seemed now emphatic warnings of
this end. She had sunk downward till she had no faith nor virtue more
than beasts have. Her all was in her son, whom God had killed. Crushed,
maimed, defrauded, she was flung upon the earth, the scorn of men and
angels and the sport of fiends.
As by degrees her sense returned to her, she looked about her with
strange eyes and tried to think. But every effort was a sword that
pierced her heart. One morning, peering dully through her lattice, she
saw a gay pavilion in the yard, and leading to it rows of masts with
lanterns hung between. They were erected for the meytam, or reception
for the dead. She had seen them often when she visited great houses;
but now her mind attached no meaning to them. It was two hours later,
in the middle of the function, that her sense returned. A mighty gust
of grief, a cry of “O calamity!” swept through the crowd of black-clad
women in her great reception-room. It roused her mind. She saw, and was
alarmed. What was she doing? What was all this crowd of people? Were
they human?
The great saloon was full of women. The ladies sat up on the dais
with flourished handkerchiefs, beating their breasts, their faces,
at each burst of woe. Dependants crouched upon the ground and rocked
incessantly, with foaming lips. Some faces wore a hideous fixed grin;
some mouthed continually. The hired performers stood and chanted with
obscene contortions, or squatted on a mat and wailed in chorus. The
words “O my calamity,” recurring in a sort of running chant without
coherence, shook the assembly like a tempest-blast. And all the while
dainties were being handed round by weeping servants, and accepted by
the mourners as fresh cause for grief.
An ague of intense repugnance seized on Barakah. She felt that she
must fly from this inferno, must keep the hope of flight before
her resolutely, or her soul was lost. It was as if a hostile hand
compressed her throat. She struggled, was determined to get free.
Towards that end she battled with instinctive cunning.
After the meytam, when she seemed exhausted, her brain, enamoured of
this hope, was planning madly.
“Take heart, O moon of moons,” the servants told her. “In sh´Allah thou
shalt bring forth sons instead of him.”
She strove to smile.
Her resolution was to leave her husband and her little daughter, the
comfortable house, the easy life, to stray alone and homeless, back to
Christian lands. There she would enter some religious order, and spend
the residue of life in prayer for Muslims.
Every one was kind. The tender sympathy of Yûsuf, though himself hard
stricken, might well have won her heart had she possessed one. Her
heart was dead and buried in the grave. The ladies and her servants
tried at first to cheer her; but when they found their efforts useless,
let her be. Only Umm ed-Dahak remained with her constantly. Discreet
as ever, she kept silence for long hours, watching her mistress with a
doleful mow. They thought her too depressed to take a step unaided, had
not the least suspicion of her wish to flee. It was, besides, a time of
national anxiety, when every one who could went out to seek the news,
and those imprisoned listened to the noises of the street.
One day, in the full heat of noon, when men are sleepy, she sent out
the old woman on an errand; and went and kissed her child, Afîfah, who
was fast asleep. Then, having made sure that the slave-girls were not
moving, she returned to her own room and donned a common habbarah,
which she had sometimes worn when she went out with Umm ed-Dahak. From
the store of money Yûsuf had entrusted to her she took sufficient to
defray her fare to France, and hung it in a bag around her neck.
Thus furnished, she stole out through the selamlik hall. No eunuch
challenged; the doorkeeper was snoring on his couch within the entry.
Beside him lay the best part of a water-melon.