Veiled Women. Marmaduke William Pickthall
THE BOYS’ BOOK OF MODEL AEROPLANES
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY MAITLAND
THE MUMMY By Riccardo Stephens
THE INDISCRETIONS OF A LADY’S MAID
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SPORTS AND PASTIMES
CHAPTER I
“If good the news, O bird, alight and welcome;
If bad, draw up thy claws and hie away!”
At the corner of a lofty housetop overlooking a great part of Cairo, a woman stood with arms uplifted and solemnly addressed a crow which seemed about to settle. The bird, as if the meaning of the chant had reached him, turned in the air with clumsy flapping, and withdrew, rising to join the hundreds of his kind which circled high above the city bathed in early sunlight. The woman shook her fist at his receding shape, glass bracelets tinkling on her strong brown arm. She sighed, “The curse of God on thy religion, O thou faithless messenger!” then, with a laugh, turned round to join the group of slave-girls, her companions, sent up to lay out herbs to dry upon the roof. These had watched her invocation of the crow with knowing grins. But one, a young Circassian, who sat watching while the others worked, betrayed surprise and asked the meaning of the little ceremony.
At that there was much giggling.
“Knowest thou not, O flower? It is the woman’s secret!”
“Secret of secrets, all unknown of men!”
“By Allah, men know nothing of it. In sh´Allah, they will be astonished some day!”
“O Hind, relate the story! Our honey, our gazelle, Gulbeyzah, has not heard it.”
Thus urged, the one who had adjured the crow, a free servant of the house, obsequious towards the slaves, its pampered children, explained as she knelt down again to work:
“In the name of Allah, thus it is related: Know, O my sweet, that, in the days of our lord Noah (may God bless him), after the flood, the men and women were in equal numbers and on equal terms. What then? Why, naturally they began disputing which should have the right to choose in marriage and, as the race increased, enjoy more mates than one. The men gave judgment on their own behalf, as usual; and when the women made polite objection, turned and beat them. What was to be done? The case was thus: the men were stronger than the women, but there exists One stronger than the men—Allah Most High. The women sought recourse to Allah’s judgment; but—O calamity!—by ill advice they made the crow their messenger. The crow flew off towards Heaven, carrying their dear petition in his claws, and from that day to this he brings no answer. But God is everliving and most merciful; a thousand years with Him seem but an hour. Perhaps He does but hold our favour over, as might a son of Adam, till the evening for reflection, to grant it at the last. In sh´Allah!”
“In sh´Allah!” came the chorus of a dozen voices; followed by a general laugh when Gulbeyzah, the Circassian, yawned and sighed, “Four goodly husbands all my own! O Lord, give quickly!”
“That is the reason,” Hind concluded, “why good women have a word to say to crows who seek to settle. Any one of them may be the bearer of the blessed edict. The reason as related—Allah knows!”
“Good news and hopeful, by my maidenhood!—the best I ever heard!” chuckled Gulbeyzah, reposing with her back against the parapet. She then remained a long while silent, lost in day-dreams.
The hour was after sunrise of a spring morning in the twelve hundred and eightieth year of the Hegirah, the second of the reign of Ismaîl. The house was that of Muhammad Pasha Sâlih, a Turk by origin but born and bred in Egypt, who held a high position in the government. The girls, their task accomplished, sat down on their heels, each with her tray of basketwork before her, and sniffed the breeze, in no haste to return indoors.
“Praise to Allah,” one exclaimed with fervour, “we escape for an hour from that Gehennum there below. Never have I seen the lady Fitnah so enraged. Her wrath is not so much because her son desires the English governess, as because the Pasha sees no hindrance to the match. I tremble every time I have to go to her, lest in her fury she should damage my desirability.”
“Praise be to Allah, I am not her property,” replied another, “but that of her durrah, the great lady. Yet I know her for a good and pious creature, not likely to be so enraged without rare cause. They say this foreign teacher has bewitched the young man. He is mad. He flung himself before her in the passage as she came from driving. She spurned him, and they bore him, senseless, to his chamber, where for two days he weeps and moans, refusing nourishment. It is enchantment, evidently, for the girl is ugly.”
“Nay, by Allah, she is white and nicely rounded. But shameless! But an infidel!”
“She