“It is no matter,” chuckled Umm ed-Dahak, whose optimism triumphed over every obstacle.
“A girl comes not amiss; she has her uses. Since some are bound to die in early childhood, it is as well in every family to have a few who can be spared. And Yûsuf Bey will thank thee for this gift. The fathers always like to have a girl or two.”
“Why should some die? Inshallah, both of mine will be preserved!” wailed Barakah.
“Inshallah! Yet if all the children born were to survive, there soon would not be room to move in our great houses. For example, take the palace of our lord the Pasha, thy good father. Let me see!” She sat in thought and counted on her fingers: “Murjânah Khânum bore him twenty at the least—all dead; Fitnah Khânum more than that—say thirty—of whom six alive. The mother of Ali—she that was a slave—ten at the least, three living. Then there was another concubine …”
“Stop, stop! It is not true! It cannot be,” cried Barakah, with a hysteric laugh.
But Umm ed-Dahak answered, “True, wallahi. What dismays thee? A woman’s task is to produce. We leave the rest to Allah.”
And to console her hearer she went on to tell of broods of thirty, even forty, reared successfully; when Barakah’s dismay was turned to laughter.
In her moments of depression she was haunted by two terrors on her son’s account. One was ophthalmia, a disease so prevalent in Egypt that half the population was composed of blind and one-eyed persons. The other was the plague, of which the women told grim stories with a strange complacency. Many of her friends had been through epidemics of the pestilence and, by their own report, had known no panic. It was a swift and cruel illness, by which they had lost dear ones in despite of careful nursing; it was from Allah; no one’s thinking could avert or cure it. The horror the mere thought of it inspired in Barakah, her futile worry, filled them with a placid wonder.
She had made up her mind that, if the plague drew near, she would carry off her boy to Europe, having no doubt but she could win consent from Yûsuf. But she said nothing of this resolution to the women, knowing they would deem it godless. As a preventive against ophthalmia, she bathed her son’s eyes with cold water twice a day, and gave orders for the flies that settled on them to be brushed away—a thing the slaves would not have thought of doing on their own initiative.
The plague did not come near her; and Muhammad’s eyes continued bright and liquid under long black lashes. An enemy, unfeared as unexpected, struck her joy.
About the period when he was being weaned, Muhammad had a serious illness. An Armenian doctor was called in, who said, “It is the fever.” At that the women wailed and prayed to Allah. The foe was too well known, the scourge of children. There was no need to tell them what to do.
“It carries off a host of infants every year,” said Umm ed-Dahak. “But be not downcast, O beloved. God is great! Many survive, and those who do recover are free from its malignancy for evermore.”
The malady was typhoid fever, or so like it that Barakah could not detect the slightest difference. She had been often told that it did not attack the natives of the land, but only Europeans, who were thought more delicate. Here, then, was the reason. The natives who grew up were all inoculated, having been through the disease in infancy.
Muhammad lived, for which his mother gave wild thanks to Allah, and performed a hundred alms-deeds she had vowed in her suspense. But a year later her small daughter died of the same scourge, and in the after years she lost five children by it.
XXV
Her boy was her delight in life. No other woman was allowed to scold him. When Yûsuf slapped him in the cause of order, which happened often, for the child was naughty, she made it up to him with sugarplums and fond caresses. In his father’s absence Muhammad was the lord of the harem; all vied to please him. His foster-mother and the servants told him fairy stories in which good children killed all kinds of monsters. One, which he never tired of hearing, ended thus:
“Then little Hâfiz took a sword and reaped the head of the atrocious ghoul; and beat to death the hag who had ill-used him, and with the help of all the neighbours, who acclaimed his goodness, burnt all his wicked little cousins in a cheerful fire.”
He knew that tale by heart and went about repeating it. He had a lot of toys, but none which gave him so much pleasure as a little cane. With this he beat the slave-girls, uttering terrific curses. The victims, for his satisfaction, made believe to cry, and assured him they were seriously injured. His mother and old Umm ed-Dahak praised his manly spirit.
Fitnah Khânum sometimes shook her head and spoke of necessary discipline. Barakah only smiled; as she did also, when young Na’imah, puffed up with pride of her new motherhood, exclaimed: “By Allah, I will bring up my son otherwise.” But when the prim and dainty Turkish ladies looked fastidious, glancing around her room where
