When a gynæcological examination was necessary they protested more vigorously, but they submitted in the end, and were often convulsed with laughter at some remark made by the nurse. On one occasion I had to examine the wife of the unit’s bugler. She was a superb creature from the Ulad Mahmud; her skin was like polished bronze and she leaned against the wall in the attitude of the Medici Venus, staring wide-eyed at the speculum I held in my hand. ‘For the love of God,’ she stammered, ‘surely you are not going to look inside me with a telescope?’ She was trembling from head to foot, but when the old nurse, wagging her head, croaked at her, ‘You are beautiful, very beautiful, Khadigia, but even you won’t have stars in your belly,’ she laughed and lay down on the bed with her arms over her face, and went on laughing behind them throughout my examination.
They had great respect for medicines and drugs. Pills, powders and decoctions possessed for them a magic which could not fail to cure them. But their greatest veneration was reserved for the scalpel which ‘cut out the pain’ and for the syringe which immediately ‘put the lost health back into the blood’.
Accustomed to being treated with fire-balls, scarifications and blood letting, they found modern medical methods exceedingly tame, and were astonished at the results. In fact, having had so little recourse to modern drugs, very little resistance had been created, so that amazing cures were obtained. The strength and rapidity of the reactions were such that the manifestations of advanced syphilis and painful arthritic symptoms cleared up on a second injection of bismuth and after the first doses of salicylate, and it was necessary to insist with great firmness on the continuation of the treatment, since the patients, believing themselves cured, naturally saw no further need for it.
The unexpected cures it was possible to obtain engendered a blind faith which sometimes tore at the heartstrings. Once I was at the bedside of an old woman who was dying. The eyes of her daughters were fixed on me, expecting a miracle, and when I repeated to them the words of the Koran: ‘All is sent from God’, they calmly replied: ‘And healing also’ – meaning that, as the physician is Allah’s instrument, healing can be bestowed however grave the malady.
There was also the mother who, on a night of Ramadān, held out to me in mute appeal the body of her dead son, expecting me to bring him to life again.
On another night, also during Ramadān, while the women were busy preparing the meal which would make up for the day-long fast a child of two fell into one of the fires. When I reached the tent I found the mother, in the light of the flames, rocking the dying child to and fro with the rhythmic movement of an automaton. She was only a child herself. As I ran my fingers lightly over the frightful burns with which the child was covered, the mother’s eyes – terrified and imploring – never left my face. She said nothing, but at every moan from the child’s lips her eyebrows twitched spasmodically. Busnina was beside me, interpreting my gestures, and when he saw that the child had died, and muttered the usual words of resignation, the child-mother broke into such frightful, sickening laughter that the little crowd around us instinctively drew back.
She went on laughing, and, pressing the body of the child against her breast, began in a gay voice to talk to it rapidly, feverishly, in a way that made one’s blood run cold. She called the child by name, asked why it was sleeping, promised it a sweet, a new embroidered vest. She bent close over it, and her talk ran on and on. Her hāik had slipped from her head, and the pierced silver pieces on her forehead jangled together. In the crook of her arm the little head lolled inert, the dull, unseeing eyes wide open to the stars. Suddenly she stopped rocking the child and looked closely into the little face, which death had turned into a dark mask. Then her voice began to falter; she looked again, and her speech became slower, until at last it died away in a dry sob which escaped through lips which still smiled into the face of her son.
The women had withdrawn into their tents; the men had gone away. In the midst of the now neglected and dying fires the child-mother sat alone, crouching low like a wounded animal, rocking her dead child to and fro.
* * *
All the women of the camp doted on their children and illustrated to perfection the old Arab proverb which says that in the eyes of its mother a cockroach is a gazelle. The children were dirty, unkempt, and ragged, and the most elementary rules of hygiene were neglected – but nevertheless their mothers were their most humble, willing slaves. I never detected any difference between the treatment of boys and of girls; their mothers worshipped them irrespective of their sex, and were as worried over the girls as over the boys when they were ill, though in their attitude to the latter there was perhaps already something of that subjection to the male which Islam imposes on its women. They were proud of their daughters’ beauty, and would talk of how the men would fight for them in later years; and in the precocious exploits of their sons they detected with satisfaction the future bandit, the terror of the caravans.
One young mother of the Magharba tribe whom I had treated became exultant when she thought she had discovered the mark of a brigand in the son at her breast. Shut in a tent in the vast encampment, with the Sirte wind blowing furiously outside, she held up her naked son before her, supporting him under the armpits and, ignoring his whimpering, kicking and writhing, she danced him up and down on her lap to the accompaniment of endearments and shrill exclamations of delight. – ‘Ah! … you will be taller than them all; Sef en-Nàsser will pay you tribute; the arms of your women will be weighed down with bracelets; you will raid all the tents from the mountains to the Fezzan! O tebīb, this man will make off with the camels and leave no trace! …’
In general the Arab woman judges a man by primitive standards. It is the strong man to whom she gives her unstinted admiration – the man who tolerates no injury, rebels against authority, takes savage revenge upon his enemies and fearlessly commits robbery and murder. I was therefore not surprised at the pride with which an old woman of the camp informed me one day that she had five sons, and that all were in gaol – three in Tunisia and two in Tripoli. ‘So you see,’ she confided to me, ‘all my sons are true Rogebans. Do you know what happens when we Rogeban women give birth? When the pains begin, they remove our ear-rings, bracelets, rings and necklaces – otherwise the child would make off with them as soon as he was born! Our lads are strong. Ask anyone. Anyone will tell you about the Rogebans!’
The warrior spirit and courage of their sons is the women’s pride, and Hamîda Fargiani, who had two sons serving as Askaris with the unit and two others among the Salem el Atayoush rebels, was not at all disturbed at the thought that they might meet in battle on opposite sides and slaughter one another. She felt only pride and satisfaction in the knowledge that her sons were warriors. ‘My sons are born with a gun in their hands,’ she told me, ‘and they shoot in whatever direction they choose.’
In addition to the great love which Moslem parents have for their children they also believe that children who have acquired merit in the eyes of Allah and die professing their faith can save their parents from eternal damnation.
The Arabs tell a story of a twelve-year-old orphan who fell ill and died. He had recited the Koran so well and had praised Allah with such fervour that he was received into heaven and acclaimed with joy by all the angels.
Seeing himself so honoured and glorified, the boy became proud; he paraded up and down the pathways of the celestial gardens, compared himself with the unfading flowers of paradise, and gazed at his reflection in the crystal fountains, murmuring to himself, ‘Is there anyone in paradise as beautiful as I?’
An angel surprised him at this vainglorious amusement and said to him, ‘How can you be so self-satisfied while your parents burn in hell?’
At these words the boy was smitten with remorse, and realised that in his exclusive concern with his own eternal bliss, he had not taken the trouble to discover what had become of the souls of his parents.
‘Oh God,’ he prayed, ‘if you cannot give me back my father and
mother, let me at least go and suffer with them.’
God sent the Archangel Gabriel to him with the reply, ‘Seek your parents throughout the infernal regions, and when you have found them bring back with you to paradise whichever one of them you will.’
The boy immediately set off to the regions of the damned. He searched the whole gehenna in which Moslems burn, but found neither father nor mother; and in the Christian and the Jewish hells he had no better fortune. He descended into the Saqar where sorcerers purge their sins and picked his way among the dark holes inhabited by worshippers of the stars; he combed the abyss where the polytheists groan, and continued his way down until, in the lowest pit of all, the hāwīya, he found his mother.
But when he asked her to leave with him she refused. ‘I was disobedient,’ she said. ‘I did not recite the prayers. I drank wine. I did not observe the fast of Ramadān. I did not keep myself pure. It is your father you must save; he worked in the sun and the rain to earn us bread.’
The boy was beside himself with grief at these words, and when at last he found his father he cast himself into his arms, weeping.
But his father also refused to be saved by his son. ‘Go back to your mother,’ he said. ‘It is she you must redeem. She bore you for nine months in the womb, gave you milk from her breast for two years, cradled you upon her knees, kept watch against vipers and scorpions, lay awake at night to warm you with her body. I am too great a sinner; I have offended too much against Allah; I am unworthy to enter paradise.’
Then the son threw himself to the ground, and wept, and tore his face with his fingernails. ‘Oh God,’ he cried, ‘what shall I do? Let me remain here, I beseech Thee, in the fire with my father and mother.’
And at that moment he heard the voice of Allah saying, ‘Take your father and your mother and seventy of their companions, and bring them with you into the kingdom of the blessed.’
The heretical Berbers also believe that a dead child can gain eternal salvation for its parents, but the form of their belief differs slightly from that of the four orthodox sects. They do not believe, for instance, that dead children can save parents who have wept at their death, or even those who have continued in their hearts to mourn their loss. This stern rule is interpreted as a punishment for believers who have not learnt to submit to the divine will and lack the courage to purge their hearts of sorrow which Allah sends to test the piety of good Moslems.
A flute-player had a little daughter who died. He was an ignorant man, a poor sinner who drank wine and committed adultery, but he never rebelled against the will of God, and accepted with humility the trials that were inflicted upon him. He therefore did not weep when his child slept her last sleep, but uttered the words of resignation and continued quietly playing his flute. Some years later, when he was playing at a wedding, death overtook him suddenly, and the angel Israfil received his soul.
He found himself on the dry and stony bed of a river, and as he walked among the stones he became aware that an enormous serpent was following him. He tried to run, but his legs were as heavy as lead. At the edge of the river-bed he saw a little old man walking slowly along. ‘O my father,’ he cried, ‘save me from this monster!’ The old man replied, ‘I cannot; I am too weak’, and went on his way.
The serpent was gaining upon him, and when it had almost reached him he suddenly came upon a man with a body all covered in feathers and with two enormous wings attached to his shoulders, who said to him, ‘Climb that mountain.’ And in fact there was a mountain, the peak of which was shrouded in golden mist, and the flute-player made a supreme effort to scramble up it, with the serpent still at his heels. At last he reached the summit, and there the mist cleared and the sky was blue, and the sinner found himself in the midst of thousands and thousands of children. Some were throwing rosebuds at each other, some were twining themselves wreaths of stars, others were running races with young stags or playing with snow-white doves. A chorus of young boys sang the praises of Allah, while others wrote lines from the Koran on sheets of silver at the dictation of old men with shining faces.
And here the flute-player was greeted by his daughter, who dismissed the serpent with a gesture of her hand. Overcome with emotion, he embraced his child and told her of his adventure with the serpent; and she, being versed in the secrets of the realms beyond, explained its meaning. ‘The serpent you feared so much represented your sins; the old man was the embodiment of your good actions, which were too negative to overcome your faults; the bird-man was Israfil in one of his many forms – and this is our children’s paradise, where God allows us to intercede for our parents when they have not wept for our death.’
* * *
As for the Arabs’ attitude to women: Giâmi in his Spring Garden warns men to be on their guard against them – ‘even if they belong to the right tribe’. He asserts that their intelligence is deficient, and that they are faithless: ‘Do not trust her; if she is bad, show her no respect, but even if she is good, do not trust her.’ However, this cynicism does not extend to a man’s mother. The most rascally Arab respects his mother, and even a man of mature age, usually proud and overbearing, will become meek and timid in her presence.
Great respect is also paid to a man’s mother-in-law, whom, as if to strengthen the family connection, he calls ‘aunt’. Busnina el Fituri had an enormous respect for his mother-in-law, and when he spoke of her it was with the utmost awe and reverence; when he said ‘my aunt, Khalti’ he pursed his lips and lifted his eyebrows as though to say, ‘What a woman!’
Busnina’s mother-in-law was indeed a most exceptional person. She was, of course, no longer young and had lost all pretensions to beauty. She dressed differently from the other women. Her face was nearly always uncovered and she wore a silk shift which was not the traditional surīya. Her small mouth was set in a fixed smile, her florid, though not obese, features were set off by heavy gold ear-rings; and she waved her arms a great deal to show off her bracelets and her beautiful, henna-tinted hands. Her skin was as white as that of a European and this made her dark eyes, with their heavy brows joined together by a brush stroke, even more remarkable.
When she talked it was immediately apparent that she was somebody; in fact, to her family, relatives and friends she was the ‘chief’, the shekka. She served tea with an unusual lack of formality, laughing and talking freely, and she did not hesitate to offer me a cigarette, lighted at the brazier on which the tea-kettle was singing.
She belonged to the Karughla people. Two centuries ago, in order to get rid of them the Turks sent a number of janissaries to defend their North African territories. The janissaries married native women, and their descendants in Tripolitania, the Karughla, still follow the Hanefite rite of their country of origin. Even today they still display certain physical and psychological characteristics which distinguish them from the pure Arabs.
When this woman of the Karughla spoke of her daughter Farha, wife of the shumbāshī, she lifted her shoulders and sighed to indicate how unkind fate had been to that lovely young creature. ‘A flower in the hands of a monkey,’ she whispered to me in a confidential moment.
One day Busnina informed me that his wife was unwell, and asked if I would go and see her in her tent after dispensary hours.
The shumbāshī’s tent was one of the ‘plundered’ variety, a military bell-type, sustained by a single central pole and high enough to stand up in. Being of double material and lined with green fustian, it also offered protection against cold in winter and heat in summer.
In the tent, with her mother, I found Farha – completely covered in her hāik, huddled on the floor with her back to the central pole and looking more like a bundle of old clothes than anything else. Her husband sat in front of her, and between them was a cushion for me.
The three ritual cups of tea having been consumed, some camp gossip exchanged, and a cigarette smoked, the formal part of my visit was accomplished and it was time to pass on to professional matters. But the patient did not wish
the Christian tebīb to touch her, and she refused categorically to uncover her face.
Farha was a fanatical Moslem and, although she uttered no word, the gestures of a hand through the folds of her haīk made abundantly clear her refusal to have anything to do with me.
In vain her mother tried to persuade her to allow herself to be examined. ‘O Farha, my daughter, here is the doctor come especially for you, and you do not wish him to see you. But why? Do you not wish to be cured? Must your mother continue to weep for your lost health, my treasure?’
The husband added his exhortations. He had been secretly delighted with his wife’s exemplary modesty, but now her continued refusal to obey him seemed like an affront to his marital prestige.
‘But this is the tebīb,’ he insisted. ‘The tebīb is our father. Do you not see how many white hairs he has? Allah has given him wisdom and the years have brought him experience. He will certainly cure you.’
But even the allusions to my physical deterioration were powerless to move the woman. By this time she had hidden herself completely in her garments and confined herself to obstinately shaking her head.
‘But how can he cure you if he does not see you?’ cried Busnina, beginning to lose his temper. ‘I am your husband, and it is I who command you to uncover yourself. God grant me patience!’
Farha only shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and then, leaning suddenly towards her husband, she hissed through her veil, ‘And how much did the Nazarene give you to see my face?’
A Cure for Serpents Page 3