Veiled Women. Marmaduke William Pickthall
a smile, she grasped her hand and whispered, “Come!”
She led the English girl across the court where grew the orange trees, down a foul-smelling passage towards the kitchens, and up a flight of stairs into a corridor which served the chambers of the humblest servants. In its wall was a recess with a small window neither barred nor latticed. Here Gulbeyzah stopped.
The reason why that window had been left uncaged was plain, since it looked out upon blind walls and distant housetops. But one small angle of a terraced roof appeared within clear seeing range, and on that angle sat a man. When Gulbeyzah leaned her elbows on the window-sill, he sprang to his feet and made despairing gestures. She watched his antics for a moment, then drew in her head.
“It is a secret, mind!” she cautioned Barakah. “I spent an afternoon here once, when I was sulky, and he was walking on that roof by chance. Ever since then I see him every day. He always sits there. I sign to him to climb up, but I know he cannot.” She laughed scornfully. “I make romances in my mind about him. It is evident he dies of love. He has grown thinner.”
“How cruel! How can you torment him so?”
“He is a man, you understand. One does not feel compassion as one would for girls. Perhaps if he could climb up here I should reward him, but, thanks to God, he cannot, poor young man!”
“But are you not ashamed to think such thoughts—you, the pupil of Murjânah Khânum? So immoral!”
“It is my fancy, there! Morality is not our business. We are strictly guarded. One gets a conscience—what you call a soul—when one has children. How droll you are! You talk just like a man. God knows I love you, and should like to be your durrah.” (The word means colleague in the married state.)
Gulbeyzah flung her arms round Barakah. A sound of footsteps in the passage made them turn and peep.
“It is a eunuch!” the Circassian whispered. “He has been there all the time. He attends you like your shadow, have you noticed? How sweet to be so precious; and so respected, for he keeps his distance!”
Barakah preferred these confidences with Gulbeyzah to the endless fuss and noise about the trousseau. The hive was in commotion over the approaching marriage; angry, Gulbeyzah told her, with the Pasha for his wish to shear the festival of ancient ceremonies regarded as the woman’s right. When approached upon this subject in a crowded conclave, she said that she was anxious to conform to all their customs—an answer which was hailed with cries of triumph.
Mrs. Cameron appeared one afternoon, the Consul’s envoy, to ascertain that all was well with the perverted girl. She was shown to the state-room, and there regaled with tea in glasses and sweet biscuits, in what was thought to be the English manner. The ladies pestered her with eager questions, persisting, despite frank denials, in regarding her as a near and dear relation of the bride. She glanced reproachfully at Barakah from time to time. “You’re quite at home with them, I see,” she said at parting. “It sounds unkind, but I must say I wish you weren’t. It is a fall for any woman bred as you were. How can you put that kohl round your eyes? … Good-bye, my dear, and don’t forget our compact.”
The visit leaving an unpleasant, sad impression, Barakah withdrew to her own room, alleging headache. She was lying on her bed with eyes half closed, endeavouring to lay the ghost of former days, when some one entered without knocking, shut the door with care, and crept towards her. It was a strange old woman. She sidled up with much grimacing; whispered “Yûsuf,” laid her shrivelled cheek upon her hand; “Yûsuf,” again, and smacked her lips delectably; “Yûsuf Bey, thy bridegroom,” and made the motion of embracing with ecstatic grins.
Barakah grew interested. She longed to see the man she was to marry and, fresh from Mrs. Cameron’s reproach, was feeling reckless. She tried to question the old woman, but without result. The crone kept nodding, “Yûsuf Bey” and “Come.” She had brought with her a habbarah and mouth-veil, which Barakah put on by her direction. Then they stole forth, the temptress in high glee.
But they had not made ten steps in the hall before two eunuchs pounced on them and stared into their eyes. One beat the hag, whose screams were frightful. The other, smiling, dragged back Barakah, pushed her inside her room and locked the door.
The meaning of the whole adventure remained dark to her. Gulbeyzah, when informed of it, declared that the old woman could not have been employed by Yûsuf, who was much too honourable and obedient to his father to indulge in such low games. She ascribed the incident to machinations of the lady Fitnah, beheld a plot to lure the English girl to some lone place, there to be ravished if not slain. Barakah laughed at such wild fancies. That Yûsuf’s mother did not like her much was plain to see; she had doubtless cherished other projects for her first-born; but to impute the thought of crime to her was too absurd.
“I bring good news,” Gulbeyzah said to change the subject. “The Pasha has granted us the visit to the bath with you. He has engaged the best musicians and some famous dancers, and all the maidens of good houses are to be invited Oh, what joy!”
CHAPTER VII
The party at the bath with all its ritual was one of the ordeals which Muhammad Pasha had wished to spare the English girl. As a man he hated all the pranks that women play alone, and deemed them of necessity immodest. But the feeling roused in the harîm was too intense for him; and as Barakah, he was told, herself desired the entertainment, he could adduce no cogent reason for refusal. The place in the haramlik being ill adapted to a large assembly, he hired the finest of the public baths for the occasion. The dependants of the household clamouring for a procession through the streets, he gave them one, putting in place of Barakah a humbler bride whose nuptials would be celebrated at his cost.
About the first hour after noon, the bride of Yûsuf left the house, sped by the ululations of the whole harîm. In a carriage with the Pasha’s nieces and Gulbeyzah, she was driven through the streets to the Hammam. There, at the entrance, stood two eunuchs, and in the antechamber many women-servants of the Pasha’s house. The ladies on arrival were conducted to a second ante-room and there divested of all clothing. Each put on a pair of clogs and had her hair tied up in an embroidered kerchief. While they were disrobing, other veiled ones entered who laughed heartily at Barakah’s confusion. The procession of the humbler bride had arrived some minutes since, they were informed.
The elder of the Pasha’s nieces and Gulbeyzah took each a hand of Barakah and led her on from room to room, pausing in each to get accustomed to the growing warmth. Suddenly they came upon a noisy crowd. Two shiny negresses sprang forth, and, singling out the bride, lifted her up and bore her to a corner of the hall, beneath a tap. They flung her on her back. Seeing a razor flash, she uttered shriek on shriek the while they fell to rubbing, making her joints crack, kneading her very bones with their hard fingers. With eyes half blind with soapsuds, she beheld a wreath of naked figures moving round her in a kind of dance. The wall and vaulted ceiling of the building sweated. The windows were high up and gave no light; there entered not a whiff of outer air. A pulse beat at her temples. She felt suffocated.
At last the women stopped their rubbing, and by playful slaps informed her that her turn was ended. Like a sheep from the shearing she rose up, staggering, intent to flee. But she was caught again and made to sit down while her hair was plaited. Then some one—it was Gulbeyzah—grasped her hand and led her to the other end of the great hall, where were two tanks of water gently steaming. The hall presented a strange spectacle, for it was full of naked figures, ebon and mouse-brown, amber and snow-white. Singers, all naked, sat beside one wall, and hummed and droned and shrilled distractingly.
At a call, “The bride!” the whole crowd rushed on Barakah with ululations. Her shame became acute, an agony. Gulbeyzah led her up to one of the tanks. Some one behind administered a push, and she fell in; when some one else sprawled in upon the top of her. Her head was under water for some seconds. Spluttering, indignant, her throat choked with sobs, she