I was the official medical officer of this human conglomeration, and the shumbāshī Busnina el Fituri was the mayor, or civil authority – a mayor, be it said, who wisely confined himself to the administrative field, because he knew full well that it would be difficult to attempt to impose his authority on his young and capricious wife, on his shrewd and sagacious mother-in-law, or on the Sanhedrin of older women who were the real rulers of the camp. Most of these dowagers were under forty-five, and only two were nearing sixty. In Europe they would have been considered still comparatively young. But these women, married as soon as they reached the age of puberty, exhausted by early and repeated confinements, often obliged to perform tasks beyond their strength, lost their youth and beauty early. In some of them there still lingered a vivacious smile, a certain spontaneity as a reminder of what they once had been. The Berber women in particular retained some semblance of youth, their slim, lithe bodies being preserved by their plain diet, which consisted largely of ground barley.
To compensate for their premature physical decay, however, these women enjoyed the authority and prestige which the Moslem world confers on those to whom years have added wisdom. They had, in fact, imposed a matriarchal regime upon the camp.
One of the most respected of these matrons was the mother of a non-commissioned officer called et-Turk because of his Ottoman origin. The old woman still insisted on her title of lālla which is Berber for ‘Mrs’, for although it was forty years since Lalla Saida had abandoned Southern Algeria to follow her husband, a bashi-bazouk sergeant, she still remained obstinately Berber, and even at that date could hardly conceal a certain disdain when speaking of an Arab.
Another attribute of her race which Lalla Saida possessed in marked degree was that unfortunate passion for the supernatural which has gained for the Moslems of the west – of the Maghreb – that solid reputation for witchcraft and sorcery, which causes them to be abhorred by all other followers of the Prophet.
I had been treating Lalla Saida for some time for sciatica, and when this cleared up she regarded me with high esteem and even benevolence. One day when I was drinking tea in her tent she honoured me with all kinds of compliments for, as she said, it was seldom that Allah conceded to mortal man – and especially to an infidel – the power to expel Tab’a.
Charmed to receive the benediction of Allah and honoured by so much favour, I was nevertheless obliged to confess that I had not the pleasure of Tab’a’s acquaintance. Lalla Saida shook her head sadly at my ignorance and handed me a third cup of tea full of roasted peanuts.
It was clear, she said, that I had not lived at Laghūat or at Ghardai, where every Berber child knew things which were hidden from even the oldest and wisest Arabs and other profane persons. In the Mzab, everyone knew that Tab’a, the Persecutrix, was the embodiment of all the malevolence of all the evil spirits that had ever troubled the seed of Adam, from the spiteful fairies to the pitiless, relentless fiends; that she was the cause of every misfortune, every disaster.
As far as I could gather, this monstrous incarnation of evil combined the cheerful malice of the Neapolitan munaciello – who amuses himself by upsetting saucepans, hiding the careful housewife’s knitting needles, tormenting lovelorn girls during the long, languid summer afternoons – with the limitless ferocity of Eblis, the prince of demons.
In any case, Lalla Saida assured me that Tab’a was no laughing matter; that she was indeed a most terrible being; sometimes she took pleasure in calling the timid and fearful by name, haunting them invisibly, so that when they turned round to look they found no one. But that was nothing: Tab’a also troubled people’s sleep and induced horrible nightmares. She might, for example, appear in the dreams of a respectable matron, taking the form of a negress or a witch, and, having insulted her, beaten her and thrown her down a ravine, she would disappear in smoke, carrying off with her the woman’s gold and silver ornaments, her sons and her husband. Lovers, said Lalla Saida, lived in terror of Tab’a, who was capable of rendering a bridegroom impotent on his wedding night; she had a particular predilection for deflowering maidens, implanting lacerating pains in the bones of older women, blinding adulterers, and covering the faces of the vain with horrid spots. There was no remedy in the ordinary sense of the word against Tab’a: you could only say prayers, have a spell cast over you, and hope to find ways of escaping the demon’s notice.
But I, continued Lalla Saida, had practised no exorcism – and yet Tab’a had definitely removed her attentions from her leg. At this point she slipped off one trouser leg and offered for my inspection a limb which thirty years ago must have provided considerable food for the imagination. ‘Perhaps there is magic in the injections?’ she suggested, still amazed at the success of my treatment. Well, however that might be, there was no doubt that I was one of Allah’s chosen vessels, since he had deigned to give me power over evil spirits; perhaps one day he might even permit me to talk with the genii who guarded the subterranean treasure. It would be a sign of great favour, leading to untold riches. ‘Allah’s will be done,’ said Lalla Saida hopefully.
Unfortunately, Allah has not yet seen fit to grant me that boon.
* * *
‘Whence come disease and healing?’ asked the Prophet Moses of God.
‘From me,’ was the reply.
‘What purpose then do doctors serve?’
‘They earn their living and cultivate hope in the heart of the patient until I either take away his life or give him back his health.’
Thus it was written in Nozhat el Majalis some centuries before Ambroise Paré said to the King of France, with superb humility: ‘Je t’ai pansé, Dieu t’a guéri …’
To the Moslem the physician is Allah’s instrument, and it is Allah who allows him to cure a patient when he, Allah, has decided that he shall recover. It is this, of course, that gives the physician his privileged status in Islamic society.
Nevertheless, without in any way questioning the Divine will, the believer may still enquire into the origin of the diseases to which he is subject and ask the reason for his suffering.
Disease, he is told, is sent from God for the expiation of sins, and it may also be taken into account in the final reckoning after death. But Allah does not always act directly, and the believer knows that sickness may be caused by one of three agents through which the Divine power may work: the stars, mortals, and the jinns. Heavenly bodies, it seems, have a great influence on the onset and course of disease; particular importance is attached to the phases of the moon and to its eclipses, and certain constellations – the Pleiads, for example – may bring sickness and death to your house. But man too can adversely affect his neighbour’s health. He may have the ‘evil eye’ and the power to invoke misfortune, or he may be able to summon up evil spirits and jinns and obtain the help of supernatural beings for the accomplishment of his malevolent designs. The good Moslem fears and worships the jinn and his consort the jinniyah; they, it seems, were the first inhabitants of the world, long before the appearance of man, and the sons of Adam are still under their occult influence. They abound in lonely places and are the cause of all phenomena for which natural laws provide no other explanation. The universe is so full of them that Ibn el Hajj Ettlemsêni affirms that if a needle fell from the heavens it could not fail to fall upon the head of a jinn or a jinniyah.
From the medical point of view it appears that there are three categories of jinn: the itinerant type, who cause epidemics, the stationary type, who cause endemic diseases, and the personal type who cause individual sickness and disorders.
Tab’a belongs to the last category; in her, I was told, all the powers of hell are united.
* * *
It was not until a month after I had ceased to treat little Selima bent Nuri et-Turk that I discovered that she was the grandchild of Lalla Saida. There was no reason to suppose they were related, as I had always visited the old woman in her tent, whereas the child, accompanied by a servant, came regularly to the dispensary for t
he injections which cured her of the Jacksonian epilepsy from which she suffered.
One day, however, on entering her grandmother’s tent I found Selima there, and Lalla Saida spoke to me with pride of this grandchild, daughter of her son Nuri et-Turk, who at that time was with his unit in the Mizda territory. The grandmother admitted to spoiling the child shamelessly; at the age of six she already possessed all the grace and coquetry of a woman.
Selima’s elegance when she presented herself at the dispensary was quite breath taking; she was always adorned with such an array of harmonious colours that she looked like some wondrous, exotic bird. There were pale blue trousers embroidered with darker blue, puffed sirwāl clasped into gold anklets, spotless white blouse under a stambulina, a long green velvet jacket embroidered with silver and reaching to the knees – all this finery beneath a pink and yellow holy which covered her from head to foot. A touch of rouge at the level of her cheek bones gave warmth to her amber skin, and her grandmother told me that the child had given them no rest until she had been allowed to wear her mother’s own necklace of gold coins and to spray herself with perfume when she visited the Christian doctor, for she was a little nervous of the tebīb and wished to make a good impression.
On entering the dispensary the six-years-old Selima would pause ceremoniously on the threshold and make a low bow, to which I replied with equal solemnity, subsequently inviting her to climb on to the bed. While I busied myself removing the pieces of the syringe from the sterilizer and unwinding the gauze in which they were wrapped, she would remove her hāik, loosen her trousers with the utmost dignity, and clamber on to the bed, dropping her sandals with a curious sound like the beating of a bird’s wing. If the old negress who accompanied her attempted to help her, Selima, with the proud and fretful air of a weary sultana, would dismiss her with the words: ‘Leave me, creature!’
By the time I approached the bed the sultana would be lying face downwards with a minute triangle of skin visible between the folds of the green velvet stambulina and the silver belt of the lowered trousers. She did not flinch as the needle penetrated the flesh or as the syringe emptied: only a convulsive contraction of the bare feet betrayed the pain.
She was completely dressed again almost before I had finished washing the syringe, standing before me enveloped once more in her pink and yellow holy.
‘May God be with you, my father.’
‘Allah’s blessing on you, O princess.’
As she reached the threshold, she paused in answer to my last ceremonial salutation, drew a corner of her hāik across her face, looked over her shoulder at me, and with great dignity murmured a word which unfortunately happened to be one of those used by accessible women to curb the enthusiasm of too audacious admirers. The servant clapped her hand to her mouth in horror, but nevertheless gave me a broad smile of pride in her prodigious charge, who was now proceeding gravely down the footpath between the tents, stepping over the stones as if she were executing a ritual dance.
Selima’s mother had been one of the most beautiful prostitutes in Benghazi. During an excursion to Tripoli she met Nuri et-Turk, fell in love with him, and married him.
In the Moslem world such marriages are not considered shocking, and they are no more unsuccessful than marriages to which the bride brings her virginity intact. Neither is a man who makes such a marriage cut by his friends. Women in this category are pitied rather than despised, for has not Allah, who orders all things, ordained that they shall follow that profession?
This fatalism with regard to individual destiny makes it unnecessary for the mother of a family who has been a prostitute before her marriage to conceal her past, and if she refers to it she does so without any false shame. A princess of the House of Savoy, when visiting the family encampment of a battalion of Libyan Askaris near Tripoli, once asked the sergeant’s wife who was acting as hostess how she came to speak such good Italian. The woman replied with a touch of pride: ‘Oh, your Highness, I went to bed with so many officers!’
It was certainly not these women who created problems for the excellent Busnina, whose task it was to maintain order and harmony in this harem of husbandless wives.
There were times when a wave of madness seemed to sweep through the camp, when Busnina cursed his fate and gesticulated with his great tattooed hands and called on Heaven to witness that he had never done anything to deserve this. On these black days the spirit of discord popped up from the infernal regions to sow trouble, and any slight and stupid question of precedence at the well, or a donkey which overturned a saucepan as it careered round the camp, or a slap given to a neighbour’s child by a woman tired of being pestered by it, was sufficient to fan the smouldering flames and to start savage fights which obviously served as an outlet after too much abstinence.
There might be a period of idyllic calm undisturbed by any incident – two or three weeks perhaps, when no invective was heard, when all was sisterly amiability, with endearments and respectful forms of address on everyone’s lips (ukhaytī, yummī – little sister, mother mine); and then the arrival of an Askari to spend a short leave with his wife would be sufficient to upset everyone and disrupt the whole camp.
When it was known that the husband of Fatma was arriving, her happy excitement was taken as shameless provocation; and when she braided her hair anew and applied fresh colour to her eyes, or shut herself in her tent and stopped up every little hole, or crouched over a brazier for hours at a time to impregnate herself with the perfume of lubān and of bhur for the greater delight of her husband, all this was too much. Every poisonous epithet to which the other women could lay their tongues was flung at her, defaming Fatma herself, her family and her whole race.
Was it not a crying shame that Ahmed ben Aissa was coming on leave when much more deserving husbands who had been longer away could not obtain so much as one day off? Had not even Hassuna el Jammâli, who had been awarded the bronze medal, written to his wife, saying that he would not be able to come to her until the autumn? Such injustice and favouritism were not to be borne.
Fatma’s bosom friends naturally had their own contributions to make. Had her husband not been a batman once? That explained it, of course; dear Fatma had obviously known how to obtain favours from the officer; was she not a woman of the Zintan? It really was hard – in this world, prostitutes had all the luck.
And so on.
But with her husband’s arrival the storm subsided. All the women welcomed the soldier with little shrieks of joy and clustered round him excitedly; his wife’s friends pressed hard upon him with the excuse of obtaining news of their husbands. They talked to him in low voices, their breath coming quickly, and they stretched their faces towards his like hounds on the trail. They blocked his way into the tent and commented indignantly on the shamelessness of Fatma, who refused to relinquish his arm for a moment and devoured him with the eyes of a bride fresh from her marriage bed.
‘Look at them!’ Busnina said to me. ‘Do you see how they smile at Fatma? And if they could, they would throttle her. The mere sight of a male is enough to make them lose their senses. Would you believe it – when they go to Dimadima Eshebâni on the pretext of dictating letters to their husbands they stand before him as petrified as owls in daylight? They scent the male even in that paralysed old scarecrow! May Allah curdle their blood!’
* * *
When the younger women wished to consult me at the dispensary they had to bring someone with them – either their children or their mother or mother-in-law or a woman friend. ‘You can’t be too careful with those she-devils,’ Busnina explained. So far as women were concerned, Busnina trusted only his wife and his mother-in-law.
So, when the women came to see me, they arrived in groups, chattering and pushing their children in front of them. They entered, murmured a greeting to those who had arrived earlier, and sat on the floor in the waiting-room, their hāiks drawn across their faces, leaving only one eye visible – but missing nothing of what went on.
I
n the early days I knew too little Arabic to be able to manage by myself, and in any case in dealing with women I thought it advisable to use an interpreter. One of the older women in the camp had been employed in the hospital at Tripoli when she was young and had learned Italian. She was a fairly good nurse, and would have been useful as an interpreter if she could have been persuaded to refrain from embellishing her translation with interjections of her own which bore no relation to what the patient said. Also, after every few words, she would throw in a few phrases such as, ‘Just imagine that!’ or ‘Allah’s curse upon it!’ or ‘Would you believe it?’ and other irrelevancies which made the whole thing unintelligible to me. The patient, always with her face covered, would describe her symptoms in a low voice, occasionally throwing me a glance to make sure I was following. Eventually, the old woman would interrupt the monologue with an authoritative gesture, turn towards me, stand to attention, and in stentorian tones begin her translation, which might run something like this: ‘As you know, this woman has the liver of a camel, Allah’s curse upon it, and, would you believe it?—her belly hangs down to her very thighs and if she breathes, why, without more ado she spits and dies on the very day of your lordship’s feast – and that’s the truth!’
With these delightfully accurate and lucid descriptions of the patient’s symptoms at my disposal, I was often obliged, with the little Arabic I could muster, to try to understand something of the torrent of words which the woman, pleased to be able to speak to me directly, let loose upon me.
They all started by being reluctant to undress. When I asked them to remove their clothes they looked appealingly at the nurse, their mother or their mother-in-law, as though calling upon them to witness that the sacrifice of their modesty was being forced upon them. However, once their virtue had been properly affirmed they offered no further resistance, and after undressing lay naked on the bed, covering their faces (that last defence of the virtuous woman) with hands enmeshed in a chemise.
A Cure for Serpents Page 2