Achmed Abdullah

“ It came with a dewless aurora rising from the waste hills, and never the voice of a living creature spotting the wilderness.
It came at last with the Jemla oasis, green and ruddy athwart the yellow swash of the sands, stippled with the nomad's felt houses, black as the tents of Kedar in Hebrew scripture; and his mother standing at the open flap of her tent, leaning upon a stick, looking with rheumy old eyes as he forced his camel to kneel and jumped from the saddle. ”

“ Hassan thought back.
He recalled childhood days; his mother squatting in front of the black felt tent, rocking the blown-up milk-skin upon her knees till the butter rolled yellow and frothing, and then the butter seething on the fire and flour added to thicken it and she calling to him to come and sup the pleasant, sweet skim with his fingers before she daubed the samm with date syrup and boiled and pressed it into great clots of Heytim curds.
"Eat, O my hero!" he remembered her rare terms of endearment. "Eat, O small piece of my soul! It will make you as strong as a camel-master." ”

“ There had been another man: Agra el-Mahjub, a young Moor of bluest Shareefian blood, who had talked to her one day when her veil had slipped in the bazaar. Once she had spoken his name to her father, who had laughed derisively:
"A fop! A fool! More ready to perfume his beard daintily before his women at home than to show his fine skin to the tribesmen's speary warring or soil his polished finger nails with honest barter. Wah—I want a man to carry on my breed, and not a gaudy, puffed-up carpet-knight!"
So, when el-Andalusi had mentioned Hassan and marriage, she had submitted. ”

“ And Zobeid—she must be among the ruins.
With the cry of a wounded animal Hassan stumbled through the battered, crumpled streets. As he passed the Mosque of Swords the whole side of it gave way and came tumbling down in a mad, twisting, smoking heap. A flaming beam grazed his face. But he brushed it aside as he would an insect. He kept on toward the ruins where his home had been, stepping here and there on black, shapeless things which squirmed and writhed and groaned as his feet touched them. The air was torn with the cries of animals, and of men and women and little children. ”

“ Years passed. The brick threshold of the back door was grooved and slippery with the treading of Agra el-Mahjub's feet. But Hassan knew him only as a casual acquaintance with whom he exchanged pleasant salaams when they happened to meet. And if the gray-beards in the bazaar, solid merchants of purse and paunch, rolled the choice scandal of it over their thick tongues; if, in the boisterous coffee-houses near the Burnt Gate, the young bloods of Fez made ribald comment over blond tobacco and rose-flavored sherbet ”

“ But he knew the desert. There was little use there for the glint and clink of gold. Only their camels the Bedawins reckoned profitable possessions, and, too, their small cattle, since a beast will bring forth a beast; but money they thought barren, passing away in the using, and breeding nothing except, belike, strife. Nor finally did he ask her to spend her remaining years with him. She was too old to travel; would have been frightened of the long road to the west.
Once a pilgrim of Fez, returning from Mecca, had passed through the Jemla oasis. ”

“ And weary their walking."
"What do you seek here—you, a Bedawin, a kalib el-khela—a hound of the wilderness?"
"Gold. Also freedom."
"Gold? Yes. I understand. But freedom?" The captain became suspicious. "This is the country of His Shareefian Majesty, where they hang men in chains from the Gate of Lions for babbling with leaky tongues." He thrust out his red beard like a battering ram. "What freedom, Bedawin?"
"Freedom from the clay, the soil."
"Ah!" The Moor appeared relieved. "Is the hound of the wilderness eager to turn into a gold-sniffling bazaar cur?" ”

“ For there were now no houses here, but only a broken, jumbled mass of wood and stone, with pink and scarlet flame tongues licking greedily over it, while behind the palm trees which screened the Mosque of Swords a high blazing, fuliginous whirl of smoke touched the skies.
Then he heard voices, screams. He saw people running about frantically. He stood quite still. ”

“ He was about to continue on his way, but the other put a restraining hand on his burnoose.
"Your house?" he asked, pointing at the ruins.
"It is no more," replied Hassan; and passionately: "Nor is my wife." He smiled bitterly. "There is nothing left me except my gold. The bazaar still stands."
"Ah"—came el-Toork's pious comment—"tawakkal al' Ullah—place thy reliance upon God, O Moslim! Will you come home with me? The earthquake only destroyed this part of town. I live the other way—near the Burnt Gate."
Hassan shrugged his shoulders. He would have to sleep somewhere, eat somewhere. ”

“ For they were Moslims and Semites, slightly hard, yet tolerant in their way, permitting each to look after his own fate, be it good or bad. Hassan was rich. So they admired him. He was just. So they respected him. But his life was his to make or mar.
"Let every man pull the weeds in his own garden," said Thashir el-Toork, the caravan-master.
"Indeed," agreed Zadiq Amin, the saddle-maker. "Rahmet Ullah—the Lord His mercy! These Bedawins are dangerous folk, as uncertain as a Negro's beard, quick to take offense and to give the swish of the sword when it is red. Warn him? ”

“ It could not rise above the tough facts of the soil. Nomads of meager living and prosy soul, bred to the frowning desert, where there was no foaming plenty of nature, their eyes were always fixed upon the cold congruities of the earth. ”

“ Momentarily she felt sorry for him. He had always been kind to her. But—she shrugged her shoulders—she did not love him. It was fate. She had been married off, thrust into this man's life, like a chattel. ”

“ But "O obese pig in Israel!" he muttered into his beard, and when she had walked away he said to his clerk: "There are no Jews in the desert, nor Christians—Allah's curse on all unbelievers! There we have only the Moslims—ahee!—a singularly blessed spot of the Lord God's creating!"
And that evening, on the roof-top of his great house, the harrow drove over his soul.
He thought of his mother; thought of the desert; thought, a little of Fathma, daughter of Daood. Curious thoughts they were, unemotional, unsentimental, but somehow tense and bitter and hurting ”

“ I would be afraid of the desert—the long road—the——"
She was silent. She glanced cautiously at her husband, wondering if he had heard what she had: a whistle brushing up from the back door that led into the Street of Sidi Busida—two high notes, followed by a fluting tremolo and ending in a throaty gurgle, exactly like a crane calling to its mate—Agra el-Mahjub's signal. She thought quickly; acted quickly. She put her hands on her husband's shoulders.
"You are nervous, Hassan. Why don't you go for a walk?" ”

“ She would look at him from beneath her dark, trailing lashes, silent, a strange smile curling her mouth, thinking of the day years earlier when her father had told her that she was to marry Hassan, the Bedawin.
"He is honest and energetic," he had said ”