Among the Faithful (15 page)

Her problem settled, Kalipha began, with Eltifa’s able assistance, to cast about for another wife. Never since I had known him had there been any confusion in his mind about the type. ‘She need not be young,’ he elaborated. ‘Youth –
phu
– I’ve had enough of it! She need not be beautiful – for if she be beautiful her value may reside only in her face. She must be a widow or a
divorcée
for they are acquainted with life – and they come cheaper. Let her be calm, clean, and thrifty – I do not demand much. But, most important of all, she must weave!’

The time for finding a gem of this description was short, because in two weeks I was to leave, and Kalipha was very anxious that I pass judgment upon his intended. There were three candidates for his bed. At the offset they were all ‘gazelles’, but, upon closer investigation, two were eliminated. Of the third, Turkia daughter of Sadoc, Eltifa had great hopes. I was urged to accompany her when she called upon the girl’s family to inquire into her qualifications. So one afternoon, a few days before my departure, I set out with Eltifa and Halima, her closest friend and the chief of her orchestra.

I was ready to be charmed with Turkia. First of all, she was not a
divorcée
, but a widow who had been married to the same husband fifteen years. Secondly, her name was favourably known among the local rug merchants. Upon her husband’s death, she had returned to the home of her parents who were having a little difficulty marrying her off again on account of her age – she was over thirty.

We were received by the women of the family as ordinary visitors, although, of course, the object of our call was clearly understood. Turkia was present, but her mother and sisters-in-law did all the
talking
. The conversation was easy and affable, while Turkia served us coffee and little date-stuffed cakes – of her own making we were told. For my part I liked her immediately, and I tried to tell her so when our eyes met. She looked so trustworthy, so wholesome and capable! She was not young, but certainly she wasn’t old; she wasn’t beautiful, but she was far from being ugly. She could cook; she could weave – that carpet on the loom was hers. What a wife for Kalipha! I only feared she was
too
good for him!

I could hardly wait to learn Eltifa’s opinion. ‘Well, Sherifa,’ she began, as, our visit over, we moved off down the lane, ‘What do you think of her?’ My eager praise caused her to chuckle under her veil. ‘Ah, yes,’ she sighed, ‘if my brother is not a dunce he will snatch this ruby!’

‘O Eltifa, he will!’ I cried. ‘She is all that he asks of a woman!’

A dry little laugh was her answer.

I went directly home with her for it had been arranged that Kalipha would be waiting for us there. He and Abdallah were drinking tea when we came in. Dispassionately, Eltifa delivered herself of her report as she slowly unwound her
haïk
. When she had done, I began. Unlike Eltifa, I could not contain my enthusiasm, and they all started laughing. Even Abdallah’s sober face shone like a jack-o’-lantern. ‘You are a born match-maker!’ Kalipha kept crying until I began to feel that he was much more amused than interested. Finally, I reproached him. ‘But,
ma petite
!’ he cried virtuously, ‘How can you say that! I am
listening
, I am impressed. Continue! She is about thirty you say, rather plain-looking – go on!’

‘But, as you yourself have said,’ I insisted, ‘these things are not important. For she can cook and weave and …’ Here I caught Kalipha smiling broadly across at Abdallah. Exasperated, I asked him point-blank. ‘Will you take her for your wife?’

‘Why of course, my little one!’ he declared, straightening his face with difficulty. ‘This Turkia bint Sadoc is the one wife for me. My search is at an end!’ But it was of no use – he couldn’t keep back his laughter. ‘What a little match-maker!’ he gasped through his fingers.

I
T WAS INCREDIBLE
that a short journey by sea and land could take one so far, far away. Kairouan – Concarneau – were ever two cities more strongly contrasted? Swift-moving skies, air like brine, steep streets, crowded harbour, coifs, sabots, peasants – grim and
self-contained
, one could fancy almost inimical: that was Concarneau. It stimulated, it invigorated me, but it could never endear itself to me as Kairouan had done.

I had not long to wait for Kalipha’s first letter, written in the
flourishing
penmanship of the public scribe. Its contents should have been no great surprise: ‘At last my sister has found me a wife! You well remember the nice little man, Sidi Mohammed, who shines shoes in the
souks
? This Kadusha is his stepdaughter. She is a virgin, very young, they tell me, and brown as a date. I like very much a brown skin. It is certain that Sherifa will love her! The marriage contract has already been signed, and I await only your return for the ceremony.’

So this was the result of our pains! Turkia’s talents, her long successful career as a wife – these things did not count. Nothing counted, in reality, except virginity – virginity and a brown skin! The patience, the sympathy I had wasted upon his bombastic tirades! Eltifa’s weary laugh came back to me; long ago
she
had learned. Well, he had doubtless got what he deserved – some silly little thing, all face and figure, of whom he would soon tire. His casual assumption that I would return for the marriage irritated me, but what really angered me was the fact that he had not even mentioned Fatma. She had evidently been divorced, if the contract had been signed, but was she in the hospital? I had not the patience for the hyperbolical
congratulations that Kalipha fondly expected. In one scant sentence I wished him well. The rest of my letter was devoted to urgent inquiries after Fatma.

Three weeks must have passed before I received his classic answer. ‘My dear sister, I am well, but my pocket-book is sick. That is to say, empty. First, there was the expense of buying the new wife. Then, during the fête my distinguished nephew from Salambo, with two of his friends, passed five days with me. This cost me dear, I assure you. Then Fatma died – another little expense. It was a great pity that you were not here for the birthday of our glorious Prophet.’

‘
Fatma est morte – encore une petite dépense
.’ No more than that. The mail was distributed as I was eating breakfast and I remember that, long after the dining-room was cleared, I sat there holding my letter, looking off to sea in the direction of Kairouan, trying to realize that Fatma was dead. I could search the White City over and I would not find the unfathomable little creature. That she was dead, at an expense to Kalipha, was all that I knew, all that I would learn from correspondence.
Fatma est morte – encore une petite dépense!
I could not get the words out of my mind. For days they swung in time to my movements, my conversation; at night they paced sombrely through my sleep. Fatma was everywhere, enigmatically smiling at me from the
paysage
across the harbour, from among the painted sails, the clouds in the sky. It was never the plump, tousled-headed little creature who had first welcomed us to Kalipha’s household, but a tiny wraith with dervish hair. The sea murmured
Fatma est morte – encore une petite dépense
, the wind took it up. And sometimes at night I heard them both moaning,
Mreetha y’Sidi! Mreetha!

There had been tears in her eyes when we said good-bye that morning in the court. ‘You will get well, Fatma,’ I told her. ‘The hospital will cure you.’

‘Inshallah,’
she had smiled mistily. As Allah wills. I think she knew that she would not get any better.

I could not be interested in this Kadusha. I supposed I would try to like her for Kalipha’s sake, but for the attempt even, I needed time. I advised him repeatedly not to postpone the wedding on my account, yet his letters continued to assure me that the nuptials attended my
return. So, as a sort of memorial to Fatma, or perhaps from innate perversity, I changed the date of my sailing and returned three weeks later than I had intended.

Kalipha was at the dock to meet us. As I stood near the bulwark scanning the crowd on the shore with eyes made clear and critical by absence, I spotted him with something like horror. Good God! I thought. Is that black diabolical-looking Arab, that hideous caricature of a villain, your friend! He was alternately wiping his eyes with and waving a large red and yellow handkerchief. It was only five days to his wedding, yet no man had ever looked less the bridegroom. He was unkempt, unshaven, and wearing what appeared to be a child’s white burnous. (Afterwards I learned that, having sold his own burnous for the price of the fare to Tunis, he had borrowed Abdallah’s for the
journey
and his dishevelment was due to the fact that he had spent the night on the wharves.)

His vociferous joy, my own happiness to be back, soon swept all that was unworthy and strange from my feelings and, by the time we were settled
vis-à-vis
in the train for Kairouan, I was seeing him in the old way – a lovable mixture of watchdog, father, brother, and child.

Now, as we rolled across Tunisian country, I heard the whole story of Fatma. If it was grim, it was, also, mercifully short. She was admitted into the hospital on the same day that she was divorced, and on the next, Kalipha, with an easy mind, took the family to Monastir, a village on the coast where they spent a fortnight with Jannat’s schoolmaster son Mohammed. Fatma was dead and buried by the time he returned. His account of her end, consequently, was patched together from hearsay.

Fatma was in the hospital less than a week. She was always stealing things, it seems. From the moment she entered, the ward was
demoralized
; the doctors went crazy trying to enforce order and quiet. Finally, when she was caught stealing biscuits from the patient
alongside
of her, ‘
ils la jettent la porte
’. The hospital is located about a mile from the city and it is a fact that early one morning some bedouins found Fatma lying by the road. They carried her with them to Kairouan and, after trying the sister, they left her at the Uncle’s. The very next day the women put her out. She went from door to door
after that, ‘but everybody feared her disease’. So she crept into a mosque where she was found insensible and sent back to the hospital. ‘It was several days before she could die, the poor thing. They said she was like a finger.’ She was buried, without funeral, in the cemetery of Sidi Arfah. That was all, except that her clothes – pretty things folded like new – reverted to Kalipha.

It is a seven-hour journey by train from Tunis to Kairouan, and, in all that time, Kalipha did not mention his fiancée unless I did, and then indifferently, as ‘the new one’ or ‘this Kadusha’. For fear of embarrassing him, I suppressed most of the questions that had been accumulating during my absence. One, however, simply shot past my guard. ‘But Kalipha, how could you
afford
the purchase price of a virgin?’

‘It was not high in this case,’ he explained placatingly. ‘Sidi Mohammed, who is my friend, was willing to let me have the girl at a bargain. She is only his stepdaughter, you know, and he has two children – and another
en route.
Two hundred francs is cheap for a virgin, but it was riches to Sidi Mohammed, poor man.’ There was quite a pause. ‘You know,’ he added self-consciously, ‘this Kadusha can weave. They say she is very strong at the loom. A veritable tigress, they say.’ As I gave no sign of being the least bit impressed, he pursued, ‘Demand of the rug merchants. They will tell you the prices her carpets bring. Ask Basheer or Mohammed el Mishri – ask any of them!’ I averted my head toward the window. ‘Ah, yes,’ he reproached me sadly, ‘I divine your thoughts. But you will see!’

Kalipha was to take possession of his wife on Thursday, the eve of the Sabbath, and he returned to Kairouan on the preceding Saturday, the second day of the momentous Marriage Week. There was nothing in his behaviour, however, to indicate that this was not just another week to him. I teased him a little about his indifference. ‘Oh, yes, you
seem
very calm, but one knows that your heart is jumping. It is not possible for a bridegroom to be calm!’

‘
C’est beaucoup possible
,’ he sighed with regret.
‘Mais qu’est ce que vous voulez? Après beaucoup de marriages – est surtout quand on n’est plus jeune.’
But, whether the groom be young or old, he said, the Marriage Week belongs principally to the bride. Which, of course, is
perfectly true. The sheltered girl has lived for this. It is her moment of triumph, debut-and consummation – the very summit of her existence. The strict seclusion in which she was reared is justified; her parents’ fondest hope for her is fulfilled. She is
larossa
, virgin bride, theme of lyric odes and romances, the plaint of every popular song. For her the beat of the drums, the
zaghareet
, the festal tapers and incense! For her the ancient honours! Never again in the course of her whole life will there be anything like it. For when the brief period is up, as the property of her husband instead of her father, she will step back into obscurity. She has had woman’s full measure of homage; of that sweet meed there will not be one more drop. Even at the birth of her children the praise will not be for her.

Continuously, for seven days, the bride’s home is filled with women come to celebrate her good fortune and to assist in the beautification of her body. The activity of the musicians and the beauty specialist keep the air glittering with ecstatic joycries. But, like the queen bee in her turbulent hive, the betrothed sits inscrutable amidst the noisy
jubilance
. Enthroned in her stiff finery she presides – never moving, never speaking, never opening her eyes. Custom has assigned her a heavy rôle for the duration of this week – the personification of Maidenly Modesty. She must not desecrate it by so much, it would seem, as the flicker of a lash.

Each night of the Marriage Week is sacred to its own ritual. On the first, The Night of the Henna, the bride’s feet and hands are stained with the virtuous leaf so beloved of the Prophet, on the second, she is conducted to the baths, the third is dedicated to another application of the henna. She is taken, on the fourth evening, once more to the
hammam
. On this occasion the minstrels accompany the bathers, and while she is being washed, shaved, perfumed, and whitened, they sing of the coming event, The Ineffable Entrance. On the fifth night her finger tips and the palms of her hands are blackened with
harcoos
, the sixth is simply the night of farewell. On the afternoon of the seventh day, The Night of the Entrance, she is finally given the traditional make-up and clothed in bridal raiment.

For reasons which have no place in this chapter, I did not see Kalipha’s bride until the afternoon of the great day itself. As Mohammed and I were on our way to her home. I discovered that I was really quite excited.

He was none too sure of our direction, but once in the right quarter we had only to follow the sounds of rejoicing that hung like an aureole above the roof-tops causing passers-by to shout, ‘
Salloo-annebee!
’ Bless ye the Prophet! The noise led us into a lane against the ramparts where we located the house by the Marriage Sign – a huge tree of life crudely described in whitewash on that part of the city wall opposite the door.

The little boy had to let the knocker fall sharply several times before it raised a splatter of hurrying pattens. To the accompaniment of the
zaghareet
, I was led into an exotic garden of women with kohled eyes, hennaed feet and hands, and breasts that swelled from tinselled bodices like rising dough. Raw, brilliant colours – as many to each costume as there were pieces of apparel – wove and intermingled in barbaric patterns. Above, the bright heads of the uninvited garlanded the parapet. A little grandstand of five or six tiers, a customary feature of such occasions, had been erected across one corner of the court, and upon it were seated the elect – young women who had, themselves, been wed within the last year. The splendour, if not the rank, of
larossa
was theirs again to-day, for they were wearing their gold and silver marriage costumes – the sack-like tunics and paunchy trousers of which gave them a chunky appearance suggesting bags of bullion ranged in rows. Their hair flamed uniformly with henna and perched over their ears were incongruous little caps – gilt or pearl-strung, flat or cone-shaped. While of amulets (notably fish and Hands of Fatma) and other jewellery, each wore at least a bushel. These exalted ones took no part in the merrymaking: they were the show-piece. Nobody attempted to distract them from the contemplation of their
magnificence
. They simply sat, their dyed hands, stiff with rings, one upon the other in their laps, looking benignly down upon the unmarried girls and worn matrons.

In another corner of the spacious court was the familiar ring of black mounds, the musicians. I recognized Eltifa by her heavy gold bracelets, but I could not expect her to greet me today or to be even
conscious that I had come in. Bundled guests kept coming, each new group a signal for vocal comets of rejoicing, the uninvited shrilling as generously as the guests themselves. But the real noise was coming from the chamber where the bride was in the hands of the
belláneh,
the beauty specialist. In there, the
zaghareet
was almost continuous, one bright burst succeeding and mingling with another.

Kadusha’s gentle-faced mother, Zorrah, who was portly with child, and her mother, a toothless, humorous old woman, had taken kind charge of me from the moment I entered. After I had been served coffee, they undertook the prodigious feat of getting me into the bridal chamber. It was jammed to the threshold, nevertheless I was pushed and propelled until I stood within a finger’s length of the bride. She sat with her back against the wall near the low grilled window. Her feet and hands were still tied up in plump moist bags of henna-meal. She looked like a doll with her eyes shut, her legs in lace-edged pantaloons stuck out in front of her, her arms loose at her sides. A
takritah
was snugly bound about her head to protect her hair and a piece of white material, wrapped around her under the arm-pits, served as an apron.