To please the lady Fitnah, Barakah gave French and English lessons to the children in the mornings under the great tree, when many of the servants also gathered round and tried to learn. She was begged to be particularly strict with Hamdi, whom the lady Fitnah seemed to think the soul of wickedness, as indeed did everybody else, making his life a burden with perpetual scolding.
This boy, her husband’s younger brother, was attached to Barakah as the only one who never shook him by the neck or cursed him. He told her all his woes, and brought her offerings of curious things he found in his illicit rambles. He was always straying, though with no worse object, he asserted, than the wish to be alone. His lady mother called him “stupid Turk,” vowing that he was all his father’s child, and she herself had neither part nor lot in him; though Hamdi was the true Egyptian adolescent, still but half awake, a slave to every breeze, to every odour, and fascinated by the sight of gleaming objects. He would sit still for hours in contemplation of a sunlit blade of grass; at other times he would walk miles, drawn on invisibly, with great brown eyes which seemed to harbour visions. Barakah found him gentle and obedient. In truth, his only wickedness that she could see consisted in resentment of shrill interruptions. At such times he would battle blindly with assailants, cursing them, and crying out, in his despair:
“Am I not a man full-grown? Do I not sleep in the selamlik? Then let me be, or it shall be the worse for you, by Allah!”
“A man full-grown, thou sayest?” screamed the lady Fitnah one evening when he came home soaked in mud from head to foot. “Listen, O child of dogs, O malefactor! Knowest thou what I shall do on our return to town? I shall marry thee at once to Na’imah, thy uncle’s child. Thy clothes are in a filthy state, thy tassel gone. Thou hast been sprawling in some ditch, O piggish boy! By the Prophet, I shall do as I have said. Sure, matrimony is the only cure for one like thee. Thou shalt wed Na’imah.”
“Allah forbid!” exclaimed the lad with fervour; whereat the ladies and the servants burst out laughing; for Na’imah, Leylah Khânum’s youngest daughter, had been Hamdi’s chief tormentor there at home, disturbing his still dreams with impish glee, and quick to vanish.
“Is it not cruel thus to hound me?” the unlucky boy asked Barakah. “I do no wrong; they interfere with me. And now my mother threatens to unite me to the most hateful daughter of a dog that ever yelped and bit.”
The month of Ramadan came on them in their country life; and the long hours of heat without a bite or sup made everybody irritable except Barakah and the wife of Ghandûr, who were both exempt from fasting—the former as an invalid, the latter as a nursing-mother. The slave-girls lost their usual delight in birds and greenery. A gun fired in the distant market-town announced the moment of release in the first bloom of night; but the party failed to hear it sometimes, and looked out for the lighting of the lamps around a village mosque across the plain. At once arose vast sighs of praise to Allah; cigarettes, prepared in readiness, were seized and lighted; water was handed round and food set out.
It was at that blest hour upon a certain evening of the sacred month that a rapturous surprise befell the party. A little cavalcade was seen approaching on the dyke. It consisted of two donkeys and a baggage mule. A woman sat upon the foremost donkey; on the second rode two children, boy and girl; while the mule was led by a black-bearded, turbaned man of noble presence. The ladies, sitting in the garden, peered, then shouted:
“Tâhir! It is Tâhir! Tâhir, the great singer! O most blessed day! Enter, O son of honour! Deign to favour us!”
Learning that the master of the house was absent, Tâhir would not enter, but sought a lodging in the hovels of the fellahin, whither a rich meal was sent to him. But after supper he came up into the garden with his lute, followed timidly by all the population of the hamlet; and his wife and children stole into the room where all the women sat with windows open, looking forward to the concert. Once more his little daughter drew to Barakah, and, having kissed her hand, sat down and leaned against her. “I love thee,” she explained, with a soft look; and then with a wide yawn exclaimed: “I am so tired!” Barakah put her arm about her, and the child seemed happy. She did not go to sleep this time, however, but lay still, fondling her protector’s hand, and gazing up at the great stars.
“See, what a man he is!” exclaimed the Galla slave, Fatûmah, her hand upon the shoulder of her mistress, all respect forgotten in intense excitement. “He does not even stay to tune his lute. All that is for the common singers. He is much above it. By Allah, he would sing to a dog’s howl and make it musical.”
One twang of the lute, and then the magic voice arose from out the shadow of the trees. It gave a living spirit to the starlight, a soul to all the nights that ever were or would be. It seemed illumination, yet was all of mystery; it gave the listener a sense of floating disembodied.
Once when Tâhir paused to rest, the voice of Hamdi was heard in the garden, begging for leave to hold his lute and play it.
“That boy again! Cut short his life!” cried Fitnah Khânum. “Devoid of manners as of sensibility. Remove him quickly!”
But Tâhir answered pleasantly: “Here, O my son! Take it and play
