Among the Faithful

by Dahris Martin

  ‘A marvellous idea!’ I agreed.

  Completely reassured, Kalipha humped off down the silent street to the jocund strains of Dilly-dilly. And for the thousandth time since making his acquaintance, I reminded myself of Fielding’s sage counsel: ‘Let me admonish thee not to condemn a character as a bad one because it is not perfectly a good one.’

  * This call of the women of Islam has no human sound to unaccustomed ears. It is the cry of a creature half-bird, half-woman – high, thin, weird and shrill.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Passing of Zinibe

  KALIPHA 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.’ Some
how 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!

  This would go on all night. Towards morning the washer of the dead would come and prepare Zinibe for her burial. She would be bathed, perfumed, painted like a bride, and finally clothed in her finest garments, bright silks that must have emphasized her loveliness.

  Mohammed and Kalipha called for me next morning. I was not at all sure that I should attend the funeral. A dread of giving offence filled me with misgivings, even though Kalipha insisted that I would unquestionably offend the family if I stayed away. Outside the mosque, waiting for the service to begin, stood a group of men. Sallah was among them. It was a brilliant morning, but rather cool, and he was wearing his white burnous over his head as bridegrooms do in the marriage procession. ‘May Allah bless the household,’ we said, pressing his hand. I felt painfully out of place. I would go home. Kalipha would have to explain that I had come only to give Sallah my sympathy. But Kalipha had taken him aside and as they talked both glanced my way. After a moment he called to me and the bereaved husband said very kindly: ‘You are a friend of the family, Mademoiselle; it is also commonly known that you are a friend of El-Islam. Go into my house without fear that you are an intruder.’

  Zinibe lay in state in the middle of the sun-flooded court. The bold green and red stripes of her winding-sheet mocked the austere draperies of the women who flowed in and out of the rooms, or huddled wailing about the bier. An arm shot out and pulled me down against the wall beside Kadeja. Boolowi, who must have been getting pretty bored sitting there, gave a rapturous crow of delight and climbed into my lap. I had some difficulty making him understand that I could not play. He kept laughing up at me, patting my face to get my attention, and my grave looks and motions, instead of sobering him, excited appreciative chortles, as if this were a new kind of game.

  Women kept coming in a steady stream, adding their shrill condolences to the mournful din. The two little boys, Hedi and Bashir, trailed drearily about like lost gnomes in their short white burnouses, the hoods framing their chubby faces. Awisha was everywhere – answering the door, rekindling the fire-pot for the nahwehe, holding the baby, passing the
water vessel.

  Zinibe’s face was uncovered from time to time. The jaw was bound up in cotton. It was not a face any more, it was a barbaric mask, for she had been given the traditional make-up of the virgin bride. The brows and lashes looked lacquered, the forehead was finely beaded with black arabesques – the work of painstaking hours – and upon each cheek was a large round patch of vivid pink. So Zinibe had looked on her wedding night when her face was uncovered that her husband might see what manner of woman he had married, so she had looked at the birth of each of her children. And now Zinibe was dead.

  ‘They will lower her into the curving bier,’ sobbed the nahwehe, ‘and singing they will bear her across the plain. Ah-Ah-Ah!’ When the women in the court were sufficiently aroused, she moved to the adjoining rooms and stirred up all impartially.

  We sat and sat. It seemed to me, at least, that the men would never come. Once again they were uncovering Zinibe’s face. The two oldest boys had come in, and now, one after the other, Zinibe’s children – Ali, Mohammed, Awisha, Bashir, and Hedi – laid a kiss upon her ornamented brow. The litter was carried in by Sallah and Kalipha. It was a trough-like barrow decorated with copper nail-heads. The women gave way to frenzied grief at sight of it. Shrieking, wailing, they lifted the body and laid it upon an oval mat of woven grass which had been placed beside the couch. In this it was lifted to the barrow. A wooden frame was then fitted across the middle and over this was flung, canopy fashion, a pall of many colours – gold, green, salmon pink and vermilion. It was gathered at the ends with large safety-pins and a broad velvet sash of bright purple was bound about the whole.

  When the hearse was ready, Sallah and Kalipha hurriedly spread mats about the court, and the women took themselves into the rooms. Boolowi and I remained in our places against the wall. When the women had closed themselves from sight, the men poured in, exultantly chanting. The various religious orders were all singing different chapters of the Koran, singing to burst their lungs. It was the powerful noise of the marriage procession – tumultuous, discordant, exhilarating. Four of them picked up the litter, the throng surged toward the street, followed by Zinibe in her brilliant palanquin borne high upon the shoulders of her carriers. The doors burst open and the prostrate women staggered after it to the very threshold. They needed no nahwehe now to muster their tears. This was sincere sorrow, as if they realized for the first time that Zinibe was gone.