A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  Busnina was sitting next to me and was a head taller; some slight admixture of Negro blood gave him an already darker skin, but when he grasped his wife’s meaning his face turned quite black. For a moment he remained as if turned to stone, and then, raising his enormous hand, he aimed a blow at his wife that would certainly have broken her neck if it had reached her. But Farha was quicker than he; she ducked, and her husband’s hand passed over her head and caught the tent pole fair and square just where one section fitted into the next. Before we realised what was happening the whole structure was about our ears and we were buried in a mountain of tent cloth.

  After frantic efforts to extricate myself from the enveloping canvas, to disentangle my feet from the ropes, and find a way out over cases, cushions, water bottles, mats, saddles, carpets, etc., without burning myself on the cinders from the overturned stove, I eventually emerged into the open.

  People came running from all corners of the camp. The shumbāshī, raving and shouting that he would strangle his wife, was being held back by the men, while the women shepherded the mother and daughter into an empty tent, where I joined them.

  The mother still retained her autocratic air, but was unable completely to control her amusement. Farha, her hāik gone, and dressed now only in a very low-necked shift, with her hair tumbling over her forehead and neck, was helpless with laughter.

  ‘Busnina is so jealous,’ her mother whispered. ‘You can’t imagine what trouble there would have been if the poor girl had acted otherwise!’ Then she raised her voice, cast a tender look at her daughter, and said, ‘There, now you can examine her in peace. And you will give her some medicine, will you not? Look at her, tebīb – is she not a true daughter of the Karughli?’

  She produced a packet of cigarettes, offered me one, put one in her own mouth, lighted both, and began to talk. Busnina, it seemed, was as strong as a bull – ‘but in the arms only’, added his mother-in-law with a sigh. He was thirty years older than Farha, poor child, and, as if that were not sufficient, when the unit was camping at Tiji he had had the misfortune to sit on a chameleon – one of the large kind – and everyone knew what happened to the man who touched one of those. She would admit, however, that he had a heart of gold; he shouted and threatened, but would not hurt a fly. Now she would go and soothe him; her tiresome daughter had really been too insolent …

  Farha, half-naked, huddled on the mat, kept her eyes downcast. But she was watching me out of the corner of her eye, and the shadow of a smile flitted across her mouth.

  * * *

  The seasons change in the Gulf of Sirte according to the prevailing winds, which bring in turn humidity, the infrequent rains, cold weather, and finally the warmth of spring, when the desert rats emerge from their holes, leaping like kangaroos, and the dunes are covered with grass which soon withers in the scorching sun.

  The only unchanging element in the course of the year is the sea, and the rare appearances of the ship ‘Gina’ seemed something of an anachronism; it seemed out of place on those ancient waters, where the sails of Ulysses had spread and over which the purple and saffron-painted galleys of the Phoenicians had once passed.

  The months slipped by. The Very Tall Young Man worked hard and astonished everyone by his prodigious memory; the camel corps officer was silent and spent his time shooting at empty tomato-sauce tins; the young aide-de-camp waited impatiently for the arrival of the ‘Gina’ with letters from the object of his affections and meanwhile gazed at the full moon thinking how many full moons had been wasted. On the whole we forgot our personal problems during interminable camel excursions to Tmed Hassan or into the salt plain of Taworga.

  ‘Know ye that this world’s life is only a sport, and pastime, and show,’ says the Sūra of Iron in the Koran, and we all had the feeling that the wheel of fate which had brought us together was about to give another turn which would separate us.

  Before it broke up, however, our unit was transferred to Mizda, deep in the desert, where the men of the Mishasha tribe were arriving to make their act of submission to the Government. At that time Mizda was the extreme limit of the area under our control beyond the mountains, and the submission of such a large body of Arabs as the Mishasha meant that the policy of the Southern Territory command had been eminently successful.

  The fort of Mizda stood isolated in the empty plain. Around its massive towers a group of huts, built of earthern bricks, straw and dung, formed a village famous in Tripolitania because it contained the house sacred to the Sunni and a Senussite zāwiya.

  An Eritrean battalion was encamped round the fort; headquarters were installed in the tower, as was also the commander’s wife, a quiet, docile woman who did not dream that her legs fired the imagination of the young officers, so that they took it in turns to go and stand where they could contemplate them while this amiable and unsuspecting creature sat taking the air on her balcony.

  But to return to the Mishasha – drawn up and patiently waiting in front of the fort. They inhabited a part of the desert called Ghebla, south of Tripolitania, and they had given a lot of trouble. It might be said that their submission was the result of the persevering and intelligent work of a Christian, a Jew and a Mohammedan, each of whom contributed to the successful outcome according to the measure of his responsibility, his personal ability and his native sagacity. The resistance of the whole area had been undermined by General Graziani’s military action, which had made possible Colonel Carrara’s peaceful penetration and Captain Khalifa’s direct contacts with the tribal authorities.

  The Mishasha listened respectfully to the act of submission read by their chief, Mohammed Shushan. He was a man of small stature, with the pointed features of a ferret, and he read slowly in a voice unsteady with emotion; from time to time he cast a furtive glance from the Prince (the Tall Young Man) to the General, from Colonel Carrara to Captain Khalifa. The minor chiefs then stepped forward and recited the first line of the fatha, the first chapter of the Koran, to consecrate the oath. They stood erect, their arms outstretched at shoulder level, palms upturned as though they carried the sacred book, their eyes following the lines of the imaginary page.

  At the time the whole thing seemed to me a hypocritical farce – and perhaps even a trap set for the ingenuous Christians – seeing that no oath can bind a Moslem to keep faith with an infidel. In theory I was right, but in practice events proved me wrong. The Mishasha kept their oath, made possible the reconquest of the Fezzan, and fifteen years later, when French armed columns from the Sahara advanced to the coast, they behaved no worse than a great many Italians.

  Mizda is reputed to be a country of sorcerers, weavers of spells, and holy men. It was perhaps this tendency towards the supernatural which gave that inscrutable expression to the faces of the Mishasha drawn up in front of the fort and caused the voice of Mohammed Shushan to tremble. The Arabs call Mizda blād el asrar, the land of mysteries. This is probably in part due to the existence of the Senussite zāwiya and to the presence of Negro families who brought with them superstitions and tribal practices from equatorial Africa.

  It was Mahdi, the fort’s medical orderly, who first told me about the scorpions. Mahdi could read and write and he talked to me about scorpions with something of the air of a specialist. However, he was inclined sometimes to get a little out of his depth, and it was obvious that he was repeating fragments he had heard from someone else who had studied the subject.

  In any case, it was from Mahdi that I learned that although many fanatical Moslems condemn the use of magic because it involves diabolical intervention, nevertheless the Prophet himself permits the use of spells to protect the faithful against the stings of scorpions – on condition that the spell, the roqia, is pronounced in comprehensible language and contains the sacred name of Allah.

  When I expressed some doubt about the existence of magicians nowadays, Mahdi assured me that they did exist. He told me about Fusúda, a negress who handled the most poisonous scorpions as though they were harmless cri
ckets. When therefore he offered one evening to take me to see Fusúda, so that I might witness her extraordinary powers for myself, curiosity got the better of me and I agreed to go.

  The zāwiya is in the lower Gontar district and behind it, hidden in a labyrinth of narrow, earth-coloured walls, under a few ragged palm trees battered by unceasing winds, we came upon a hovel with crumbling walls, discoloured by smoke.

  The only light in the interior, which was without windows, came from a brazier; people and objects were only vaguely discernible, and the darkness magnified the sound of whispering and the shuffling of bare feet on mats, so that when an invisible hand lit a lamp in a niche on the wall I was surprised to find that there were only four of us: Mahdi, two old black women from the Fezzan, and myself.

  The negresses were perfectly aware of the object of my visit, but they insisted on Mahdi’s explaining all over again that the tebīb had come because he wanted to see Fusúda. The sly smile of the brothel-keeper sat firmly on each wrinkled, ape-like countenance; they pressed around me and seized me by the arms to force me to sit down. Tea had to be taken with solemn ritual before Fusúda appeared before us.

  The hut had a low roof made of palm trunks; the wind whistled outside, and from a distance came the sound of boys’ chanting in the zāwiya – young voices which trailed off into a confused murmur when the teacher began in a nasal voice to intone a new verse.

  The teapot was now singing on the brazier and the tea was poured first into the cups and then back again into the pot to obtain the right infusion of bitter tea and sugar. I was required to drink three cups – the first only slightly sweetened, the second flavoured with mint, and the third full of roasted peanuts.

  The Arabs say that tea-drinking was introduced among them only two centuries ago. A Moroccan, while on a journey to Mecca, was given some of the precious leaves by a Chinese pilgrim, and on his return he taught his countrymen how to make the infusion. It chanced that a sultan’s son, whose system had been poisoned by alcohol, was cured by tea, and the sultan straightway decided that this innocent drink, which revives and stimulates the intellectual faculties, should become the popular beverage throughout the Moslem countries of Africa.

  When I had emptied the third cup the old woman threw some bhur, dear to the nostrils of negroes, on the fire, and as its perfume began to fill the hut Fusúda entered like a shadow, enveloped from head to foot in a hāik so dark in colour that it was almost invisible.

  She sat herself in front of me and looked me over with the one eye which the hāik, twisted over her head and drawn across the face, left uncovered.

  ‘God save you. You are the tebīb?’

  The chanting from the zāwiya rose and fell, and Fusúda swayed to and fro to the obsessive rhythm.

  ‘You have come to see the scorpions?’

  Her voice was slow and a little husky, and she spoke with an accent that distorted the words.

  ‘Do you know the spell that charms the scorpions?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  A malicious smile played round her mouth, and there was a passing light of mischief in the one visible eye.

  ‘You know many things, tebīb, yet you do not know how to charm scorpions.’

  She shook her head and continued musing.

  ‘I think you wish to see the scorpions because you do not know the medicine for them.’

  She became silent and relaxed her posture, closing her eyes; she seemed to fall asleep, but her shoulders continued to move to the rhythm of the distant chanting. On the brazier the bhur continued to smoke and made a slight sizzling sound. Suddenly, the girl shook herself and with a slow movement of head, breast and hips threw off her hāik. Seated cross-legged, erect from the hips, she remained covered by the surīya, the sleeveless, low-cut Arab shift.

  She was a young negress with thick, purplish lips and a short, only slightly flattened, nose. She must have been a native of the Wadhai, or perhaps of some more distant region. Her forehead was strongly convex, her eyes coffee-coloured with yellowish whites; her tight black curls clung closely to her head and left her ringless ears uncovered; her arms and hands were bare of bracelets or rings. Beside her the ugliness of the two old Fezzanese women was repulsive.

  She took a wicker basket which they handed to her and lifted the multi-coloured lid. In the bottom of the basket a large scorpion was lashing about in a fury, its tail erect like a sword.

  Fusúda looked at it, her lips half-open, her eyes half-closed, and then took it between two fingers and placed it on her shoulder. The creature stumbled there, scrabbling upon the buckle of her chemise, then lost its foothold and slipped down into the hollow of her collar-bone. She threw back her head and the scorpion climbed up her neck, across her lower jaw and made its way slowly along her cheek. She closed an eye and it passed over her eyelid on to her forehead and attached itself to her woolly hair.

  Fusúda took it in her hand again, stroked it, murmured some words I could not catch, tickled its belly and suddenly popped it in her mouth. Only its tail, quivering and lashing out in every direction, protuded from between her thick lips, its poisonous sting striking the girl’s chin and nostrils. A moment later the scorpion, covered in saliva, was frantically twisting about, wild with excitement, in the palm of her hand; she smiled at the little monster, and laid it in her armpit. Then with a swift movement she unfastened her shoulder buckle and let fall her surīya so that she was naked to the thighs. She thrust the scorpion between her legs, leaving only the tail obscenely protruding.

  Fusúda threw back her head and laughed – with silent, ghoulish laughter, her mouth wide open, her glazed eyes nearly closed.

  Meanwhile she started playing with another, yellow-striped scorpion, smaller but more poisonous than the other. She poked it with her fingernail and blew on its head, and when it lashed out in fury she put out her tongue and used it to fence with the deadly tail, which struck but did not wound her. Both scorpions were now on Fusúda’s crossed arms. She watched them. Antediluvian monsters in miniature, they faced each other with all their members and weapons ready. Slowly and clumsily they approached each other; they grappled each other by the legs, their tails lashing and quivering in a frenzy which communicated itself to the girl, who shivered as if she were suffering from a tertian fever. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth and her eyes converged on the combatants in a ferocious squint.

  Suddenly she emitted the shrill, piercing notes of the zaghārīt, the war-cry which incites men to battle, and the two monsters in miniature seemed to understand and to respond. Locked together, they wrestled and struggled, clawing at each other, their arched tails waving, seeking the adversary’s vulnerable spot; their stings beat against each other’s backs as they had beaten against Fusúda’s face and tongue and lips. All at once they were still. The thrusts had gone home; the poison had struck them motionless. There was a spasm or two in the tails still inserted in the wounds; a pincer let go, slowly, painfully; a leg stretched out in a last spasm, and the two reptiles, still interlocked, rolled dead on to the mat.

  Fusúda’s body slumped forward, and she clasped her hands round her knees, shuddering; she was foaming at the mouth, and her breasts and belly were running with sweat.

  By this time the room was full of bhur smoke. The two old women crouching in the corner began coughing. The faces seemed distorted through the perfumed smoke; Mahdi’s was a livid yellow, as though swollen with pus, and his eye-sockets seemed empty. Fusúda’s face was lifeless; she remained motionless, with closed eyes. The only sign of life was a quiver that now and then mounted across her abdomen. I touched her arm; it was cold, like that of a corpse.

  ‘Truly this woman knows the Koran,’ said Mahdi, this being apparently the only conclusion he had been able to arrive at. For myself, I could draw no conclusion at all.

  When we emerged into the darkness the zāwiya was asleep; night had fallen, the wind had ceased, the silence was complete.

  * * *

  It was Mahdi, too, who
introduced me to the faqīh Hajj Belgassem ben Said.

  The title faqīh no longer means a lawyer, a student of canonical law; it has become more modest in its claims, and in Libyan Arabic may signify a student of the Koran, a schoolmaster, or even a good calligraphist. But to ordinary people the faqīh was also a magician with the power to command spirits, so that Mahdi, when speaking to me of Belgassem, told me that he was wāhed sahhār men assahhārá – a king among sorcerers.

  In appearance he was a dried-up little old man with crossed and rheumy eyes and a sharp, protruding chin covered with a curly beard – a creature with nothing whatever of the necromancer about him. He spoke in an idiotic, high-pitched voice and, presumably from nervousness, never ceased from smoothing a crease in the corner of his hāik.

  When I met him, being under the impression that a faqīh of Misda must be connected with the Senussite institution, I introduced a serious topic of conversation and asked him how long he had worked at the zāwiya. This was a most unfortunate opening. He fixed me with his cross-eyes and asked angrily if I took him for a dog, and without giving me time to reply began abusing and cursing all sects, founders of sects, followers of sects, and all their works. Sidi Hajj Belgassem, he informed me, belonged to no sect, but he knew the mysteries and could command spirits.

  He used a great many words I did not know and was so upset by my opening question that he gabbled incoherently and at a great rate and, what with this and his lack of teeth, I found it quite impossible to follow him.

  Mahdi explained to me that the faqīh was a physician in his way – a physician who cured without medicine by provoking curative convulsions in sick people; Hajj Belgassem, moreover, only treated women. When I asked him if the reverend gentleman was a gynæcologist he said he was nothing of that sort: the faqīh cured the souls of women by liberating them from the spirits that caused disease.

  One Friday after the mid day prayer Mahdi came for me and took me into the courtyard of the magician’s house. According to him I was going to witness the cure of a girl suffering from what I suppose we would call extreme melancholia, a condition, said Mahdi, caused by some dark and evil spirit.