Among the Faithful (17 page)

I
N THE SPRING
before I went to France Kalipha and I had gone house-hunting, and had found, overlooking the wool-market, a charming little apartment, which, though tenanted at the time, was to be available for me upon my return. We had arranged it between us that during my absence I was to send him money enough to cover the rent for the first quarter, the cost of whitewashing and the purchase of the few necessary pieces of furniture. I was to leave the rest to Kalipha. ‘You will have only to turn the key – and,
voilà
, you will be at home!’ All summer I had luxuriated in that promise. It was something of a shock, therefore, to find on arrival that nothing had been done. Kalipha had a thousand elaborate excuses, but he depended upon me to understand the real reason, namely, that burying one wife and marrying another had taken every sou he could lay his hands on. Consequently, instead of a leisurely home-coming, work, expense, and despair rushed hand in hand to meet me.

But when I was finally installed those things fell away, leaving me with the blissful conviction that I was at home. How much the prospect from the window has to do with one’s feeling for a place! The narrow road beneath me widened beyond to a diminutive common where the woolmarket convened on certain mornings each week. Road and common were faced with shops, in the doorways of which weavers sat at their looms talking and joking with one another.

The flat itself was light, compact, and small, though ample enough for Kiddypussy and me. The street door opened upon a flight of stone stairs leading up to a tiled entryway, at the far end of which was a commodious brick oven. There was but one room, red-tiled and lofty,
with a window alcove that accommodated my work-table. In the left wall of this pleasant recess was a shelf-like cavity, obviously designed for storage purposes, but so deep and high that Mohammed appropriated it for his bed and decided, despite my protestations of fearlessness, that I could not be left alone at nights.

Everything pointed to a good winter. My first book had been accepted while I was away, and I was at work on another. There was money for everything – money put aside for my return to America in May; money, at last, to help Kalipha in another strenuous attempt to get back his permit before I left Kairouan. My efforts on behalf of his reinstatement as a guide had failed. The local officials would not lift a pen to help ‘the brother of an assassin’, though every one of them grudgingly admitted that his record had been blameless. I had written letters to higher authorities in Tunis and in Paris, had even, it astonishes me to remember, addressed an appeal to the President of the French Republic himself! But I could find no one that would interest himself in the case. Now we were determined to try the Bey. Kalipha’s nephew, Mohammed, who was caretaker of his Salambo estate, professed to be on warm terms with his employer, and he had promised us that, at his first opportunity, he would intercede for his uncle. I was dubious as to what the Bey could do, even if he would – so little power remains him. Nevertheless, I tried to manufacture faith of scepticism since my friend was absolutely certain that Mohammed’s genius would work the miracle. During the winter Kalipha went twice to Tunis, each time in the hope of an audience with His Excellency. But nothing ever came of these negotiations, and to date, so far as I know, Kalipha has not regained his old title,
Le Guide Courage.

As for Kalipha’s domestic affairs, they had greatly improved with his marriage to Kadusha. His insistence that she could weave was not – what I feared – just a desperate attempt to justify his choice of a virgin. For her name was known among the rug merchants as one of their most qualified artisans. Moreover, she was fun-loving and
affectionate
, eager to be on good terms with all the family, and particularly Kalipha, of whom, wonderfully enough, she seemed genuinely
enamoured
. Kalipha, however, found much in her that called for correction: she was ‘giddy’, she was ‘headstrong’, she was ‘sometimes sullen’, but,
on the whole, he was not displeased with Kadusha, especially when he learned from the women that she was pregnant.
She
never mentioned her condition to him, even after it had become apparent. When I asked Kalipha if this was not unusual, ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘A wife has shame to speak of such things to her husband!’

In November, the joint household was called upon to find room for another family. Ever since the death of Zinibe, her husband’s fortunes had steadily declined. Sallah, in his discouragement, had taken to gambling, as a result of which his shop was closed most of the time. Sallah’s poor sister Ummulkeer was at her loom night and day to keep his children and his aged mother from starving. For two years the men of the family had done what they could to redeem Sallah. After they had given him up in disgust, it was Eltifa who kept him out of jail by secretly pawning her gold bracelets. The next thing we heard was that Sallah had absconded. Then, without hesitation or question as to how it could be done, Abdallah and Kalipha gathered into their home Ummulkeer, and old Ummi Sallah, Mohammed, Awisha, Hedi, Bashir, and little Sadoc.

It was wonderful to see that small house expand and adapt itself to seven additional persons, five of whom were children! Eltifa and Abdallah willingly bore most of the strain. Poor patient Abdallah could scarcely find the space to spread his prayer-rug, and they shared their bed with as many as could squeeze under the covers. Discomfort there was of necessity for everybody, yet with what good nature and patience all accepted the situation, what harmony was achieved, and what fun!

From the diary I kept that last winter I have culled, almost at random, a few of those little scenes and happenings that made it, of the three winters lived in Kairouan, the most precious.

Dinner is over. Out in the court Ummulkeer and Kadusha sit side by side at their loom in a wheel of lamplight. Eltifa is furnishing the yarn for the rug they are making; when it is sold all three will share the proceeds. There is the pleasant jing-a-jing of the
kulehlas
.
*
The two Mohammeds are carrying up water, stopping on the stairs for a
fist-fight
. Everybody flies to separate them, and the combatants emerge
with angry shouts and tears. But Kalipha and I refused to be exercised. The room is warm, we have eaten well, we recline smoking and quietly talking over the small happenings of the day. Baby Sadoc, the
tiger-faced
, wanders in. He sits himself beside the fire-pot, keeping his eyes upon Kalipha until he has ascertained his mood. Boyh Abdallah parts the curtains, stoops, and comes in to sit in his usual place against the wall. He has on his new burnous – a vast tent of rough wool – so much the brown of his face that, were it not for those shining eyes, one might be put to deciding where one leaves off and the other begins! Little Awisha follows with the tea-tray, which she places before him, then disappears for his brazier. She returns holding it high on one hand. The blue tea-pot is already simmering upon it. Eltifa comes next; she lowers herself ponderously beside us on the bed. Again I remark to her brother how the room invariably brightens with her entrance. She chuckles when he tells her this and pronounces her one French word, ‘
Merci!
’ The children swarm about her and she loves it, Hedi and Bashir, cute youngsters of maybe five or six, find shelter beneath
Abdallah’s
cloak. Eltifa begins winding the black yarn into balls. The tea is ready and Awisha takes a grave delight in passing out the cups. ‘To thy refreshment’ we bid one another. Eltifa and Abdallah are handed their evening cigarettes. They have no appetites to give them – they are simply a part of the little ritual. The girls are making so merry outside that Eltifa pretends to rail them for their lack of progress.

‘Ya
Ummulkeer!
Ya
Kadusha!’ she calls mockingly. ‘Is it that you have been pensioned by the Bey you can spend a lifetime on my carpet?’ Their saucy answer, which they would not have dared to make had she been really serious, makes everybody laugh. A tantalizing odour begins to steal into the room, and presently Awisha serves each of us a handful of toasted grain, a little salted. During the course of the evening Kalipha decides to put Hedi and Bashir through their paces, Koranically
speaking
. His idea of fun is often abysmally benighted. Protesting,
apprehensive
, first one, then the other, must sit before him and bawl out those
precepts with which Kalipha himself seems none too familiar since an amused Abdallah must occasionally prompt him. The little boys are soon in tears – for their blunders have apparently been enormous. Yet the pedagogue persists in cuffing and correcting them until he chances to ask for the parting song. Then – what relief – the pair, tear-stained and incoherent, awake a storm of claps for exactitude and vim! Over the next round of tea Abdallah tells us the story of Bueddam, The Father of the World, who lived alone on this earth for forty years ‘with nothing to eat or to wear’. Midnight comes too soon. Mohammed and I must wrench ourselves from the cheerful warmth. The streets are deserted under a cold starlight. When we enter the stairway, Mohammed recites the litany against djinns until I get the lamp lit.

No bedouin need starve nowadays. He has only to stuff a sack full of lush green grass, shoulder and trot it to Kairouan. There is five francs, anyway, in it for him. A good harvest is predicted; weeds grow
luxuriant
on the house-tops. What the country must be! One day soon, Kalipha says, we will hire donkeys and make our long-promised visit to Elmetboostah.

The
muezzins
had called, the after-sunset sky was rolling in rose. The air was still soft from the heat of the day as we walked out beyond the ramparts and along the road towards the ancient aqueduct, the favourite stroll of promenaders.

Kalipha was wearing my black sports-coat in which he cuts an absurd figure. It is a perfectly disreputable-looking old thing, and I passed it on to him thinking only that it would reinforce his burnous. But he thinks so highly of it that he wears it, as he says,
simple
. It’s much too small for him and buttoned into it he looks about to pop. Then, as it is modishly short, beneath the waving hem, there is a consternating display of skinny, bare, brown legs, lavender garters, green socks and huge, mustard-coloured shoes! ‘But it doesn’t become you!’ I tell him. ‘What is that to me?’ he says jauntily. ‘I like it.’ So he struts along, his hands stuffed deep in the sagging pockets. He assures me that no one suspects it of being a lady’s coat. Sometimes he tells them it belonged ‘to my brother’, sometimes, ‘to my fiancé’.

Well, to go on. When we had walked a little beyond the hospital, we turned around. Kairouan was by this time atwinkle. Kalipha abruptly excused himself ‘to consult’ the fence. I sauntered on, hoping he would catch up with me before two magnificent promenaders at some distance behind me had passed. He was unconscionably long. I turned, half expecting to see him hiking haltingly up, instead, he was at his wall and, having consulted it, was standing there engrossed in admiration of the last light – a mere quill of primrose laid upon the horizon. He summoned me to join him just as the white-turbaned ones were within a yard of me. How willingly I could have wrung the neck of my guide, philosopher and friend! How earnestly, after
innumerable
humiliations of this sort, how firmly and how, as I supposed, finally, have I told him that he must – simply must – wait till the coast is clear! The gentlemen swept by, courteously bidding me the salutations of the evening. As it was evident that I did not mean to join him, Kalipha came along, singing under his breath. I lit into him angrily. He stopped in surprise, regarding me – the brown old monkey – with his head cocked, eyes roguish, hands deep, chest robin-plump, spindly shanks ending in those outrageous clod-hoppers! And for the life of me, I couldn’t keep from laughter. There was nothing to do but remind myself that he is worth ten such polished sons of the Faithful – and hope for better luck next time.

At the coffee-house outside the city walls, we watched the night settle broodingly. Bedouins were shooing their animals into the
fondook
–
husky
voices, throaty gurgles, sibilant
zahhhs
, patient moos, a bedlam of baas. Then sudden silence, that wide silence, the far sad silence of the plain. White stars glimmered, there were footfalls somewhere off in the dark, from the road a voice, poignantly clear, and the tidy clip-clip of a donkey tripping homeward.

Yesterday was miserably cold, drizzling off and on until evening. At noon Kalipha brought in a fire-pot filled with new fire. I noticed that the edges of some of the coals were still black, but I was too grateful for the warmth to be concerned. He was to escort an English woman to the performance of the Aissaouas a little later, so he ordered a coffee
from the window and sat himself down for a cigarette. I went on
reading
. After a time I realized that, although I was turning the pages, I was following only strings of words. My head had begun to ache. I had a curious sensation of having left the body that was sitting at my table. Baba Kalenie had come in with Kalipha’s coffee and they were talking; their voices sounded miles below me. I was swimming high in far-off space. It was exhilarating, at the same time my head was thumping, my heart bounding with wild joy. Strange emotions lifted me to religious ecstasy at one moment, dropping me the next to hopeless
despondency
. Like the drowning, I reviewed my life, and my horror at its
selfishness
, its insincerity, melted into intense longing to make something finer of it. I would try harder, from that very moment regeneration was to be my grail. I was burning up with fervour, tears scalded my eyes. Yet, immediately after, the profound futility of striving, of living at all, overpowered me, and I dropped my head between my arms.