That night at sunset, as Soada lay upon the sheepskin spread for her,
with the child nestled between her arm and her breast, a figure darkened
the doorway, and old Fatima cried out:
“Mahommed Selim!”
With a gasping sound Soada gathered the child quickly to her breast,
and shrank back to the wall. This surely was the ghost of Mahommed
Selim--this gaunt, stooping figure covered with dust.
“Soada, in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, Soada,
beautiful one!”
Mahommed Selim, once the lithe, the straight, the graceful, now bent,
awkward, fevered, all the old daring gone from him, stood still in the
middle of the room, humbled before the motherhood in his sight.
“Brother of jackals,” cried old Fatima, “what dost thou here? What dost
thou here, dog of dogs!” She spat at him.
He took no notice. “Soada,” he said eagerly, prayerfully, and his voice,
though hoarse, was softer than she had ever heard it. “Soada, I have
come through death to thee--Listen, Soada! At night, when sleep was upon
the barrack-house, I stole out to come to thee. My heart had been hard.
I had not known how much I loved thee--”
Soada interrupted him. “What dost thou know of love, Mahommed Selim? The
blood of the dead cries from the ground.”
He came a step nearer. “The blood of Wassef the camel-driver is upon
my head,” he said. “In the desert there came news of it. In the desert,
even while we fought the wild tribes, one to ten, a voice kept crying in
my ear, even as thou hast cried, ‘What didst thou know of love, Mahommed
Selim!’ One by one the men of Beni Souef fell round me; one by one they
spoke of their village and of their women, and begged for a drop of
water, and died. And my heart grew hot within me, and a spirit kept
whispering in my ear: ‘Mahommed Selim, think of the village thou hast
shamed, of Soada thou hast wronged! No drop of water shall cheer thy
soul in dying!’”
Fatima and Soada listened now with bated breath, for this was the voice
of one who had drunk the vinegar and gall of life.
“When the day was done, and sleep was upon the barrack-house, my heart
waked up and I knew that I loved Soada as I had never loved her. I ran
into the desert, and the jackals flew before me--outcasts of the desert,
they and I. Coming to the tomb of Amshar the sheikh, by which was a
well, there I found a train of camels. One of these I stole, and again
I ran into the desert, and left the jackals behind. Hour after hour, day
and night, I rode on. But faintness was upon me, and dreams came.
For though only the sands were before me, I seemed to watch the Nile
running--running, and thou beside it, hastening with it, hastening,
hastening towards thy home. And Allah put a thorn into my heart, that a
sharp pain went through my body--and at last I fell.”
Soada’s eyes were on him now with a strange, swimming brilliancy.
“Mahommed--Mahommed Selim, Allah touched thine eyes that thou didst see
truly,” she said eagerly. “Speak not till I have done,” he answered.
“When I waked again I was alone in the desert, no food, no water, and
the dead camel beside me. But I had no fear. ‘If it be God’s will,’ said
I, ‘then I shall come unto Soada. If it be not God’s will, so be it: for
are we not on the cushion of His mercy, to sleep or to wake, to live or
to die?’”
He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands
drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched him on the
shoulder.
“Brother of vultures didst thou go forth; brother of eagles dost thou
return,” she said. “Eat, drink, in the house of thy child and its
mother.”
“Shall the unforgiven eat or drink?” he asked, and he rocked his body
to and fro, like one who chants the Koran in a corner of El Azhar,
forgetting and forgotten.
Soada’s eyes were on him now as though they might never leave him again;
and she dragged herself little by little towards him, herself and the
child--little by little, until at last she touched his feet, and the
child’s face was turned towards him from its mother’s breast.
“Thou art my love, Mahommed Selim,” she said. He raised his head from
his hands, a hunger of desire in his face.
“Thou art my lord,” she added: “art thou not forgiven? The little one is
thine and mine,” she whispered. “Wilt thou not speak to him?”
“Lest Allah should strike me with blindness and dry up the juice of my
veins, I will not touch thee or the child until all be righted. Food
will I not eat, nor water drink until thou art mine--by the law of the
Prophet, mine.”
Laying down the water-jar, and the plate of dourha bread, old Fatima
gathered her robe about her, and cried as she ran from the house:
“Marriage and fantasia thou shalt have this hour.”
The stiffness seemed to pass from her bones as she ran through the
village to the house of the Omdah. Her voice, lifting shrilly, sang the
Song of Haleel, the song of the newly married, till it met the chant of
the Muezzin on the tower of the mosque El Hassan, and mingled with it,
dying away over the fields of bersim and the swift-flowing Nile.
That night Mahommed Selim and Soada the daughter of Wassef the
camel-driver were married, but the only fantasia they held was their own
low laughter over the child. In the village, however, people were little
moved to smile, for they knew that Mahommed Selim was a deserter from
the army of the Khedive at Dongola, and that meant death. But no one
told Soada this, and she did not think; she was content to rest in the
fleeting dream.
“Give them twenty-four hours,” said the black-visaged fat sergeant of
cavalry come to arrest Mahommed Selim for desertion.
The father of Mahommed Selim again offered the Mamour a feddan of
land if the young man might go free, and to the sergeant he offered a
she-camel and a buffalo. To no purpose. It was Mahommed Selim himself
who saved his father’s goods to him. He sent this word to the sergeant
by Yusef the drunken ghaffir: “Give me to another sunset and sunrise,
and what I have is thine--three black donkeys of Assiout rented to old
Abdullah the sarraf.”
Because with this offer he should not only have backsheesh but the
man also, the fat sergeant gave him leave. When the time was up, and
Mahommed Selim drew Soada’s face to his breast, he knew that it was the
last look and last embrace.
“I am going back,” he said; “my place is empty at Dongola.”
“No, no, thou shalt not go,” she cried. “See how the little one loves
thee,” she urged, and, sobbing, she held the child up to him.
But he spoke softly to her, and at last she said: “Kiss me, Mahommed
Selim. Behold now thy discharge shall be bought from the palace of the
Khedive, and soon thou wilt return,” she cried.
“If it be the will of God,” he answered; “but the look of thine eyes I
will take with me, and the face of the child here.” He thrust a finger
into the palm of the child, and the little dark hand closed round it.
But when he would have taken it away, the little hand still clung,
though the eyes were scarce opened upon life.
“See, Mahommed Selim,” Soada cried, “he would go with thee.”
“He shall come to me one day, by the mercy of God,” answered Mahommed
Selim.
Then he went out into the market-place and gave himself up to the fat
sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel
came with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above
it was Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of dom-wood across his
knees.
“What dost thou come for, friend of the mercy of God?” asked Mahommed
Selim.
“To be thy messenger, praise be to God!” answered Yusef, swinging his
water-bottle clear for a drink.
V
In Egypt, the longest way round is not the shortest way home, and that
was why Mahommed Selim’s court-martial took just three minutes and a
half; and the bimbashi who judged him found even that too long, for he
yawned in the deserter’s face as he condemned him to death.
Mahommed Selim showed no feeling when the sentence was pronounced. His
face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But
when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to
be kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about
restlessly. For even as the sentence had been pronounced a new idea had
come into his mind. Over the heads of the Gippy soldiers, with their
pipestem legs, his look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully--then
suddenly stayed, for it rested on the green turban of Yusef, the drunken
ghaffir. Yusef’s eyes were almost shut; his face had the grey look of
fresh-killed veal, for he had come from an awful debauch of hashish.
“Allah! Allah!” cried Mahommed Selim, for that was the sound which
always waked the torpid brain of Yusef since Wassef the camel-driver’s
skull had crackled under his naboot.
Yusef’s wide shoulders straightened back, his tongue licked his lips,
his eyes stared before him, his throat was dry. He licked his lips
again. “Allah!” he cried and ran forward.
The soldiers thrust Yusef back. Mahommed Selim turned and whispered to
the sergeant.
“Backsheesh!” he said; “my grey Arab for a word with Yusef the ghaffir.”
“Malaish!” said the sergeant; and the soldiers cleared a way for Yusef.
The palms of the men from Beni Souef met once, twice, thrice; they
touched their lips, their breasts, their foreheads, with their hands,
three times. Then Mahommed Selim fell upon the breast of Yusef and
embraced him. Doing so he whispered in his ear:
“In the name of Allah, tell Soada I died fighting the Dervishes!”
“So be it, in God’s name!” said Yusef. “A safe journey to you, brother
of giants.”
Next morning at sunrise, between two dom-palms, stood Mahommed Selim;
but scarce a handful of the soldiers sent to see him die laughed when
the rope was thrown over his head. For his story had gone abroad, and
it was said that he was mad--none but a madman would throw away his life
for a fellah woman. And was it not written that a madman was one beloved
of Allah, who had taken his spirit up into heaven, leaving only the
disordered body behind?
If, at the last moment, Mahommed Selim had but cried out: “I am mad;
with my eyes I have seen God!” no man would have touched the rope that
hanged him up that day.
But, according to the sacred custom, he only asked for a bowl of
water, drank it, said “Allah!” and bowed his head three times towards
Mecca--and bowed his head no more.
Before another quarter was added to the moon, Yusef, the drunken
ghaffir, at the door of Soada’s hut in Beni Souef, told old Fatima
the most wonderful tale, how Mahommed Selim had died on his sheepskin,
having killed ten Dervishes with his own hand; and that a whole regiment
had attended his funeral.
This is to the credit of Yusef’s account, that the last half of his
statement was no lie.