One evening Yûsuf, thinking to amuse her, had sent her with his sisters and Muhammad to the new opera-house which the Khedive had built to please the European visitors, and also to provide His Highness with relays of mistresses. There, in a harem box behind a screen, she smoked cigarettes and listened to what seemed mere senseless screeching to one who had admired the voice of Tâhir. The opera was Don Giovanni. Never had she witnessed a performance so stilted, artificial, and absurd. She quite agreed with the remarks of her companions, who, after their first wonder at the building and the lighted stage, yawned openly and called it simple madness. Yet the entertainment was no bad one to the taste of Europe, as she knew from the applause of people in the unscreened boxes, where barefaced, brilliant women sat and stared about them. The mere existence of those women there in Cairo, transgressing every native rule of conduct, was an insult. The freshness even of the old ones made her conscious of decay. When the girls after the second act proposed to go, she agreed gladly. Muhammad screamed to stay, and had to be transported bodily by Barakah, while one of his young aunts held her hand upon his mouth. A very small boy at the time, he had supposed the scene was laid in hell, and all the hideous screams of the performers denoted pangs of tortured infidels.
Muhammad, for his mother’s sake, abhorred the English; and yet he loved his mother, who was of that race. He reconciled these warring passions by supposing the existence of a race of Muslims in the British Isles.
One day, when he was ten years old, he came home with a face of indignation, demanding, “O my mother, is it not quite true that the English nation is as strong and warlike as the French, and nowise subject to the lord of Paris?”
“True, O my son.”
“By Allah, that is what I said. We were arguing, a dozen of us, after school. They all opposed me, stating that the French were much the greater and more civilized. I, sure of my contention, asked a master who stood by. He foolishly asserted that the French were stronger. I informed him of his error in all courtesy, when, to my horror, he began abusing me, detained me in the school an hour against my will, and himself remained to gloat on my imprisonment.
“Nor is that all. No sooner was I free than I went to the house of the principal and made complaint of the injustice. He said—the malefactor!—thus escaping from the question, that it was a sin for true believers to quarrel for the sake of infidels. I told him there were Muslimîn among the English, as witness my own mother, who is one of them. He had the rudeness to declare thou art a convert. It was all that I could do to keep from plucking at his beard. I shall ask my father to remove me straightway from a school where lying insults and oppression thus prevail.”
“The principal spoke truth. I am a convert,” murmured Barakah, hanging her head through fear of her son’s shame.
“Merciful Allah!” cried Muhammad, greatly shocked.
But in a moment he recovered from the blow. Kissing her hand, he murmured fondly:
“Be not downcast, O beloved, it is not thy fault. My comrades sneer at converts; but no matter. I shall still maintain that thou wert born in the right way. Thou art still my dearest mother, loved and honoured.”
The lover-like, protecting air became him rarely.
XXIX
News from the world of men reached the harem like voices from the street without. From time to time some item, interesting them, was cried in tones of censure or approval; but always in a manner of abstraction. This apathy arose from centuries of strict seclusion, in which, through change of dynasties and strife of factions, the privilege of the harem had been respected. The women felt that politics could not come near them; the government which ruled the men was none of theirs. A realm within the realm, they had their own excitements, their own concerns of life and death and amorous crime. Events the most important failed to move them, while trifling breaches of religion or old custom caused a vast commotion in that nursery of fanaticism.
One day, when Barakah was out driving in her carriage, she was stopped near Abdîn palace by the pressure of excited crowds and heard the sounds of angry tumult. The driver backed the horses and then turned. On reaching home she asked the eunuch of the matter.
He shrugged: “It is the soldiers, O my lady. They are angry at the coming of the Frank commissioners.”
It was then that she presumed to question Yûsuf, and learnt that two commissioners, one French, one English, had come to take control of the finances of the country. The Khedive, that jovial libertine and spendthrift, was now bankrupt. The Europeans, as his creditors, assumed the reins.
“But why the English?” questioned Barakah with irritation, for up to then the French alone had been a power in Egypt.
“Wallahi, just because their men are clever,” was the answer. “They bought up all our Sovereign’s shares in the canal. Their guile is great, but greater Allah’s mercy, for the arrival
