Among the Faithful (6 page)

The supper things had been cleared away when the thud of the knocker followed by Shelbeia’s shrill melodious joy-cries sent Kadeja flying into the court. The guests had arrived. ‘Alla-la-cen! Alla-la-cen!’ Again and again the
zaghareet
*
pierced the confused greetings and solicitous inquiries. ‘In Allah’s name, be welcome!’ ‘How are you, my sister!’ ‘And Baba Mohammed?’ ‘Well, thanks be to Allah!’ ‘And Fatma?’ ‘And thy maternal grandmother?’ ‘May the occasion profit thee!’ ‘And the little ones?’ ‘Welcome in the name of Allah!’ ‘There is no ill?’ ‘To Allah be the praise!’ During the flurry, Shelbeia’s husband, a grave kindly fellow, slipped in and was invited to sit with us on the bed.

Chattering, laughing, unpinning their veils, ten or twelve women entered. Most of them, being old friends, doffed their
haïks
without shame before the three men, the exceptions remained cocooned, one in white, the other in black wrappings – a state which, as the evening progressed, appeared not to incommode them in the least.

From our vantage seat at the far end we watched the long narrow room transformed into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colours – rose, peacock blue, green, orange, cerise, gold and purple – shifting and
glittering
in the murky lamplight. Kalipha’s other sister Jannat was there,
a short, plump woman with the face of a clean little pig and we were pleased to see that Fatma had been allowed to come. She was already apart from the guests busying herself with preparations for tea looking as if she desired nothing so much as to be unobserved. The women made cushions of their
haïks
and produced from bodices and
handkerchiefs
their little hoards of toasted pumpkin seeds. While Fatma and Kadeja were passing the mint tea the musicians with their
instruments
crept back; Shelbeia leading the
chef d’orchestre,
the others
tailing
in lock-step. They seated themselves like witches in a ring, Kadeja placed before them a fresh fire-pot and they began beating the
tomtoms
and pottery drums, sounding them from time to time, a tuning up that added an anticipative tremor to the gaiety. Behind them stood a large authoritative drum, obviously the
bangha
. I looked with wonder from it to the radiant Shelbeia, to her husband who seemed just as indifferent to the significance of the occasion.

A draped arm now held up a tambourine, gave it a warning shake. There was a brief silence. Then the minstrels let loose, bawling the songs of the day with novel variations of their own invention. The guests had to scream to make themselves heard and although
shoulders
had begun to ripple only the men seemed consciously listening. They reclined comfortably smoking, now and then a particularly hot passage evoking from one of them a gusty sigh, a groan of pleasure. At the first beat of the tom-toms Boolowi, close beside me, started to sway. At length, unable to bear it any longer, he stepped off the bed and began to undulate, his arms extended, one bare foot beating the rhythm. His chubby brown face was expressionless, his lids were lowered, the tall fez had toppled to one ear. In his comical absorption he was as unconscious of the mirth he provoked as if he were
hypnotized
. Assaulted with merry directions, he attempted first one
movement
, then another. Kadeja snatched off her pink
takritah
and twisted it about his waist. Boolowi beaming as he watched her nimble fingers. ‘There, so! May Allah aid thee!’ laughed Kadeja and he began again with new verve. Shelbeia, too, had started to dance. Four or five joined her, while the others clapped the metre.

It was an implacable sort of ‘dance’ for they simply stood, their arms rigid or dangling, their hennaed feet marking the time of the
drum beats. The only variety was in the accompaniment. Faster or slower, it was always the same purposeful jig, no grace, no ardour, no sign of pleasure even when they were panting and prancing to keep up with the wild pounding of the drums. One of the performers was of such an enormous size it seemed that nothing short of a miracle could keep this party from becoming an
accouchement
.

Kalipha confirmed what we surmised: they were not dancing for the love of it, but for the good of their djinns. There is nothing, he said, like the tom-toms and particularly the
bangha
for rousing a dormant djinn, creating in him such a terrible yearning to dance as to make the best-intentioned forget his bargain. And if his protégée does not indulge him he will see that she pays for his disappointment.

‘How! What will happen?’

‘Headaches, rashes, boils, eye-trouble – if nothing worse. That woman
au gros ventre
does well to dance, for the djinn of a certainty would destroy the child in her womb. But this is nothing,’ Kalipha waved a belittling hand toward the surging figures. ‘Presently you will see Aisha dance!’ He pointed out an angular young woman in a
lavender
takritah
. Her black hair hung in strings about her pale, sharp, almost gaunt face, a restive gipsy quality in her had fascinated us from the moment she had stepped into the room. Kalipha called to her and she glided over and crouched near the bed. Her face brightened when Kalipha told her that we hoped she would dance for us. ‘
Mleah
,’ very good, she said, studying us curiously.

The musicians paused for rest and refreshment. They had no more than finished their tea, however, when they were tautening their drums. The intermittent thud of the
bangha
– ominous and hollow – warned that we were down to the real business of the evening. The women were compressing themselves in a radiant panel against the walls. Instinctively I searched for Shelbeia. Surely by now some sign would betray the heroine, but she was squeezed among the others laughing and gesticulating as if the
bangha
was for anybody’s djinn but her own. The musicians fell upon their instruments with terrific force and fury. The clash-bang of tambours, the thud of tom-toms were almost lost beneath the accented beat of the jungle-drum. It seemed as if the walls could never contain the primordial booming!
Kalipha must have passed the word around that Aisha was to dance, for every eye was upon her. She sat near us, her own eyes closed, her hands loose in her lap. I wanted to run from the abhorrent pounding as I watched her head and sinewy back weave the rhythm. All at once she leapt to her feet and slithered down the room, her magnificent body, lithe hips, long feet, angular arms, at one with the sensuous beat of the
bangha
. ‘God’ gasped Beatrice leaning forward, ‘Good God!’ The fire, the archaic beauty, the furious abandon! Wilder, more
impassioned
became her movements with the increasing violence of the beat. She shook her head free of the kerchief, her hair streamed about her rapt face, she tore off her jackets uttering shrill ecstatic cries, writhing and swaying until in a swoon she would have fallen if the women hadn’t sprung out to grab her.

Simultaneously, the room was clamorous with confusion, the
bangha
stopped abruptly, Aisha was dumped in a corner and the noisy women were milling in and out of the court, cawing and bleating Shelbeia-Shelbeia-Shelbeia. I had a confused recollection of having seen a person in bright blue dart from the room toward the climax of the dance. The women, screaming like cormorants, were bringing something in. Beatrice and I rose upon our knees but the women had massed themselves about their burden. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ smiled Kalipha. ‘Hark!’ he lifted a finger. It sounded as if someone was being strangled to death. ‘
C’est le djinn qui parle,
’ he said casually, and we realized that, in spite of the hysteria, the women did not seem really alarmed, as for the men they smoked on, unconcernedly. ‘But what happened?’ we demanded.

‘It is nothing. The
bangha
excited Shelbeia’s djinn and she quit the room from a too great a desire to dance.’ The frightful gasping and blubbering gradually subsided to tearful moans. ‘Hear that djinn!’ exclaimed Kalipha, whacking his thigh,
‘comme il est furieux!
’

A few minutes more and Shelbeia, looking somewhat dazed, was stood upon her feet. For some, obscure reason, they threw a burnous over her shoulders and drew the great hood down over her face. The drums began again, more moderately, and the weird white cone, bowed with exhaustion, marked the time. Everybody, with the
exception
of Kadeja and Fatma, was dancing. The dusky room was a frenzy
of agitated colours, the shimmer, flash and shine of bangles, tinselled braid and embroidery. Even the pair voluminously masked in their
haïks
bobbed away like truant spooks at a carnival. Boolowi had fallen asleep at last, literally on his feet, and was deposited behind us where he sat cross-legged, his eyes glued shut, gently rocking.

Aisha, who had recovered by this time, came of her own accord to sit alongside us. She was addressing Kalipha with such earnestness, glancing at us so meaningly that we waited with impatience for an interpretation. When she had done Kalipha heaved a deep sigh, ‘Life is very difficult!’ Aisha, unhappy with her husband, sick of her
existence
, had appealed for our help to get to America. I think Beatrice would have given a year of her life that night to be able to assist that gifted dancer. ‘There is nothing you can do,’ Kalipha admitted. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I will not tell her that.’ Aisha’s famished eyes travelled from face to face as she waited for our answer. ‘Leave it to me,’ said Kalipha after a little thought, and before we realized what he meant, he was telling Aisha that Beatrice was resolved not to close her eyes that night until she had written to her relatives, all of whom had
barsha fluss,
he rubbed a thumb against his fingers suggestively. Aisha had only to bide the time with patience. Colour crept over her cheekbones, a wan smile flickered about her lips and she patted her chest with heart-rending gratitude. Kalipha turned to us complacently. ‘Now she will hope for a time.’ Beatrice was speechless with anger. I felt all the futility of
railing
against anything as subtle as Kalipha’s code of honour, nevertheless I protested. ‘She will know at last that she has been deceived. What then?’

‘Ah,
then
,’ he said, ‘she will accept her fate. If it be the will of Allah that Aisha should go to America, my friend,
she will go to America
. How many times have I explained that if a man is destined to die on the land, he can be bound and thrown into the sea yet he will not drown, and if it is decreed that he shall be drowned, he will drown though he be cast upon a desert.’

Beatrice started to say something, instead she shrugged her
shoulders
with a ‘Hell – what’s the use!’

The hour was late, the air a smothering compound of smoke, incense, perfume, and body heat. Perspiring dancers, their hair
leaping
to the lurid boom-boom of the
bangha
, divested themselves of their outer garments. Shelbeia’s hooded form still indefatigably footed it, like a heart that continues to throb long after life is extinct. Occasionally someone crumpled and was dragged to the sidelines where others were being revived or crouched apathetically until they were sufficiently recovered to start in again. Aisha pulled Kadeja to her feet insisting that they dance together. Kadeja laughingly protested, looking to her husband for permission. ‘Let her! Let her!’ shouted Kalipha for Farrah had given a grunt of disapproval. ‘Ya Kadeja!’ he barked above the hilarious laughter that applauded their version of the stomach-dance. Kalipha turned on him with anger and Farrah, his handsome face quite stern, relapsed into silence. Kadeja, taking no more notice of her husband, strode into the room in his street-robe, her
takritah
was bound turban-wise about her brow, her face blackened to resemble moustache and beard. Even Farrah’s face relaxed at her gruff mimicry.

Apparently it struck neither of the men as inconsistent with Kalipha’s behaviour that
his
wife had not danced all evening. I could not but feel that she must want to dance, that only a nod from her husband was needed to set her jogging. His genial smiles vanished as I offered the suggestion, though he affected not to hear me. ‘Just this once,’ I coaxed. ‘What is good for Kadeja must be equally good for Fatma.’

‘She cannot dance,’ he hedged, Fatma’s good being a matter of perfect indifference to him.

‘Nonsense! Every Arab woman can dance.’

‘She does not want to, then. Ask her if she doesn’t prefer minding the tea.’

‘There, she is looking this way! Make a sign to her!’

He shrugged impatiently, muttering, ‘She has shame in dancing before her husband.’

‘She does not dance because you will not trouble yourself to give her permission. If you –’

‘Oh, let me alone!’ he cried with an angry flounce.

The party would go on until daybreak, but by three o’clock Beatrice and I had had enough. Kalipha piloted us, drunk with fatigue, through
the dark streets. Our little tiff – not the first of its kind – was bothering him. He did not venture to take my arm, but stumped along between us, his forehead knotted with gloom. I knew from experience that he would not bid me good night until things had been put right between us, and that he was pondering how best to go about it. Nothing was attempted, however, until he fitted the great key into the lock of the street-door. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said resolutely, ‘I am going to buy Fatma a bag of those lozenges – you know, the square green kind, very strong with mint. It is true they are not cheap, but no matter! She is so fond of them. She will be pleased, won’t she! Tell me,
ma petite,
’ he beseeched, almost shyly, ‘is this not a good idea?’

‘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.’