Among the Faithful (7 page)

K
ALIPHA COULD TAKE
or leave most of his women relations. He was perfectly content to be their mainstay in sickness, chief comforter in their sorrow, magistrate in any serious domestic difficulty and, once things were going smoothly again, to leave them strictly alone. The frequency of his visits since I had come to Kairouan was, therefore, immensely gratifying. They reproached him playfully when they told me: ‘B’Araby, Sherifa, stay with us for ever because if you depart, it is unlikely that we will ever see him again!’

Although he was thus indifferent to most of the women in his family there were a few exceptions. He disliked his sister Jannat and never willingly went near her, while he detested Saida, her eldest daughter. Eltifa, the matriarch of the family since the death of his mother Mench, he loved and revered; Kadeja, also, was a favourite, and there could be no doubt that Zinibe shared with these two first place in his affections.

She was the only one of his nieces I had not met. Shortly after I came, Zinibe had fallen ill, and in the expectation that she would soon be better, our visit was postponed from week to week. It would pain her, Kalipha said, to be unable to receive her uncle’s friend fittingly. It might do her even actual harm. I could not oppose such an argument.

‘She is like a
bijou
,’ he said, cupping and examining his hands as if they held her preciousness. ‘Always laughing, always gay! Everybody’s troubles are heavier than her own –
mon dieu
, she has a heart for all the world! And beautiful! You think my niece Fafanie beautiful. She is beautiful only until you have seen Zinibe!’

At my age, twenty-seven, Zinibe had six children, the oldest a boy
of thirteen, and she had lost – to the best of Kalipha’s recollection – at least three. On the subject of her talents Kalipha was exuberant. There was a taste to her cooking, ‘A taste!’ He kissed his finger-tips for want of any adequate description. I could have no conception of Arab hospitality until I had been entertained by Zinibe. Weaving, too, was her
forte
. Her loom was never vacant, as soon as one rug was cut down another was started, for she clothed the children with her own
earnings
. Kalipha had so little to say of Sallah, her husband who operated a barber shop on the marketplace, that I was quite ready to believe him blessed far beyond his deserts.

But management and thrift, the prime requisites of a good wife, were not the qualities that endeared her most to Kalipha. She was generous, loving, and gay. How the family would celebrate her
recovery
! ‘I assure you,’ he cried, ‘it will be as if my niece were returned from the Pilgrimage. Another fortnight – by the grace of Allah!’

At last there came a time when Kalipha announced: ‘This afternoon we are going to visit Zinibe.’ Only the day before when I had asked about her he had answered: ‘Man is like an ear of wheat shaken by the wind – sometimes up, sometimes down! We must have patience.’

In my surprise now I exclaimed: ‘Then she is really better.’ But Kalipha shook his head: ‘Sallah has gone to fetch the
Roumi
doctor.’ He had no need to say more. To seek the help of an unbeliever was an admission of desperation and defeat.

A little girl admitted us to the court. She looked about seven, she may even have been eight, but she had the grave sweet eyes of a woman. ‘And how is Ummi?’ asked Kalipha in a low voice.

‘Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the universe,’ Awisha said with a shrug and a pious glance at the sky.

‘There is no strength nor power but in Allah, the high, the great,’ murmured Kalipha as we followed her into the sick-room. A lamp burned uncertainly in the chamber-niche. Zinibe lay across the middle of the great bed and on either side of her sat the watchers. They greeted us with tearful grimaces, gestures of resignation, as they crowded closer, making place for us. Zinibe’s dark cheeks were flushed, there was a
frightened
look in her large eyes. ‘May Allah restore thee,’ we told her. Zinibe spoke in little gasps, ‘How are you, my uncle?’ and to me: ‘Welcome
in the name of Allah.’ Her voice was plaintive, like that of a child.

The room was crowded with her suffering and the august,
overpowering
presence of Allah. They were speaking of Him as ‘merciful’ and ‘compassionate’, but it was only flattery to stay His dreadful hand. Eltifa was weeping inaudibly. Fafanie’s pretty face was so disfigured I hardly recognized her. Kadeja in her black robes opened her mouth only to sigh, her eyes were swollen and red. Zinibe’s baby lay in the lap of her sister-in-law and whenever her mother-in-law, old Ummi Sallah, caught my eye she would point to the sleeping child and then to the ceiling, the tears trickling down her withered cheeks. But Zinibe’s mother was not crying. Her face was as grey as stone. God knows what was passing through her mind as she sat, her arms around one knee or her hand upon her cheek. I was dumb, stupefied. There was absolutely nothing to say that would not have sounded empty, hypocritical. Words of hope or encouragement would have smothered under the weight of such anguish.

The lamp was held for us to see the bottle of medicine which the French doctor had left. Although Kalipha could not read, he feigned to study the label. He had something of a reputation in his family for medical knowledge, having served as apprentice to the French druggist for a short time in his youth. He put a few questions to his niece, then lifted her green gingham chemise and professionally probed her torso. The prints of his fingers on her bloated abdomen melted as if upon soft wax. ‘
Le mal c’est dans le rognon
,’ he told me, ‘
il y a cinq jours qu’elle n’as pas pissé du tout.
’ Zinibe was watching him. ‘What is your opinion, my uncle? Have I a chance?’ It was very difficult for her to speak. Casting up his eyes, Kalipha raised one finger and answered her with a single word ‘Allah!’ Zinibe made eager little sounds of
agreement
and she, too, held up a finger. ‘
Aywah!
’ That is right! said her uncle approvingly, as he pulled the covers over her again. ‘Allah has willed the recovery of sicker persons than you. Our sole help is in Him, the Mighty, the Merciful.’

There were gusts of agreement from the women. ‘Praise be to Allah, Lord of the universe!’ ‘He aideth whom He will!’ ‘He is the First and the Last! There is no god but Allah!’ Eltifa took the handkerchief from her eyes and said brokenly: ‘No one can die except by His permission!’

‘“According to the Book that fixeth the term of life.”’ Kalipha finished solemnly.

Two chubby little fellows in outgrown burnouses kept wandering in and out of the room. The knocker fell from time to time and Awisha would leave her place near her mother’s dark head and run with a clinking of anklets to open the door. Each newcomer, after being shown the bottle of medicine, sat herself down to sigh among her wrappings. Just as we were about to go, the two oldest boys, Ali and Mohammed, came in from school. They glanced fearfully toward the bed and then, looking greatly relieved, greeted us with exquisite
courtesy
. Now Kalipha instructed me to repeat after him, word for word, a ceremonious parting speech. But that must not be. ‘Just tell her,’ I interrupted him eagerly, ‘that when she is better I will come often – we will spend whole days together.’ She turned soft eyes upon me and when Kalipha had finished she said, barely above a whisper: ‘Come, and be sure of a welcome. May Allah cherish thee.’

I was eating my breakfast next morning when Kalipha came in. From the window he shouted to Hamuda for a cup of coffee and then sat down heavily and lit a cigarette. ‘My niece died at six o’clock this morning,’ he said as casually as if he were mentioning an incident of no great importance. ‘The public mourner is at the house and the women are wailing and scratching their faces.’ Somehow I had not thought that Zinibe would really die; I only half-believed that she was dead. Presently, I thought, he will tell me that it is all a mistake. Hamuda came in with the coffee. ‘May Allah preserve the survivors!’ he said.

Everybody knew, then, that Zinibe was dead, but I did not believe it, even though I cried, ‘So young! And her children! What will become of them? Oh, Kalipha, why did it have to be Zinibe! Her mother, or old Ummi Sallah could so much better have been spared!’ But Kalipha would not listen to such blasphemous talk. Did I presume to question the will of Allah?

Early that evening Kalipha, Mohammed and I went to the house to offer our respects. Kalipha left us at the door and repaired to a little mosque across the street where the men of the family were gathered.
Sallah’s sister Ummulkeer admitted us. She tried to acknowledge our condolences, but grief choking her, she gestured despairingly with the lamp. There was the buzz and drone of many voices, a soughing of unmistakable sorrow. The court was dark, save for the light that came from the windows, and eerily patterned with black and white draped figures. The room itself was jammed, gabbling with women. They sat three or four deep against the walls. The chamber-niche, which
yesterday
had been a sombre bed of pain, was a brightly lighted catafalque for the quiet body. It was wrapped in brilliant silk – long stripes of red and green – and the women were solidly banked on either side of it. No one seemed conscious that we had come in. We stood on the threshold looking for a place to sit down when Kadeja, catching sight of us, beckoned us to the bed where the relatives were seated. I did not see how there could be room for us, indeed I hoped there was not, but by crowding a space was made right alongside the corpse. I had never been so near one in my life.

In contrast to the vociferous grief of those on the floor, the women on the bed were composed, emotionally exhausted after a day of
strenuous
mourning. For, as soon as Zinibe had expelled her last breath, they had begun, and all morning they had danced, beating and clawing their faces in frantic grief. Their eyes were puffed and swollen, the faces of some of them were hideously scratched. Kadeja bared her arms to show me the livid welts that ran from her wrists to her shoulders.

Awisha drew the silken pall aside that we might view her mother’s face. Yesterday I had seen only the vivid cheeks, the large frightened eyes, but fever and fear were gone now. Zinibe knew for a certainty what the rest must accept on faith. It was a lean sensitive face,
luminous
as amber in the lamplight. The cheek-bones were high, the arched brows and long lashes very black. So calm, so remote she looked. It was as if she would say: ‘See, it is not difficult.’ She had been conscious, they said, even when they turned her over toward the East and closed her eyes; she had given herself up like a child. The women fell to weeping at the sight of Zinibe’s face and with a faint smile of pride the little girl covered it again, then settled herself, her hands in her lap, a deep bewilderment in her roving eyes.

Zinibe’s mother, Ummi Kadusha, was not among the chief
mourners on the bed. It was some time before I found her for she was off at the other end of the room. Her head was bowed, she sat with one leg under her, her hands clasping her knee. The women around her were all crying convulsively, as they rocked back and forth,
combing
their cheeks with their finger-nails. But the brooding figure stirred only to change her position.

Mohammed nudged me: ‘Look, the
nahwehe
!’ A middle-aged woman in white had come in from the court. She seated herself near the fire-pot, applied her knuckles to the tambour, and began a
dolorous
chant, half-wail, half-song, extolling the perfections of Zinibe. Not much of this was needed to set the women off. They broke into wild inconsolable weeping – shrieking, moaning, imploring Zinibe to get down from her bier. It seemed almost wonderful that she could sleep through such a din. After every few lines a violent paroxysm seized the
nahwehe
and she could not go on. The grief which had been gathering in her heart as she sang burst in a sob that shook her entire body. The women sobbed with her, an ancient wail of unutterable desolation. ‘Who was so generous as she?’ the
nahwehe
took up her cadenced lament, ‘The beggars had a path worn to her door.
B’Araby,
she would take the food from her mouth to feed the hungry. Oh, the kindness of that heart! Alas, it beats no more! Ah-Ah-Ah!’ The hopeless yearning of that cry was more than I could bear, my eyes flooded with tears. ‘She must have loved Zinibe like a sister,’ I said to Mohammed.

‘What do you mean?’ he sobbed. ‘The
nahwehe
didn’t know her.’

I realized with a start that I had been completely taken in,
hoodwinked
by the drama of it all. That very morning Kalipha had patiently explained the function and
modus operandi
of the public mourner. I was half-ashamed of my tears, the lump in my throat. This, after all, was her job. She did not have to know the deceased. In seven cases out of ten she had never laid eyes on her. But to the expert wailing woman this is no handicap. She knows all the secret springs of melancholy, she knows that the stricken will mourn the loss of qualities which the deceased did not possess. Thus she can generalize for hours and, by keeping one ear up, the cunning
nahwehe
can also particularize, and weave into her dirge specific instances of the dead woman’s kindness and devotion.

After I had straightened things out in my mind, I became aware that there was a definite melody and measure to the throbs that had seemed so terribly sincere. They served as a chorus to each impromptu stanza, a conventional refrain in which the women joined her with apocryphal passion. If I had tears, therefore, let me shed them – for Zinibe’s mother over there, or for little Awisha, who didn’t understand that she was motherless.

At long intervals the
nahwehe
would let up and everybody would relax, almost thankfully, I thought. A rational sobriety would have begun to settle when she would start them up again. She was very business-like, almost too conscientious, in fact, for once, during a particularly long and harrowing recital, the women cried out: ‘
Ezzy yellalah!
’ For God’s sake, sister, enough!