Never in her life had Barakah seen so many strange old women. There were always four or five of them within her chamber, squatting on mats along the wall, conversing in low tones, ready at a breath to rearrange her pillows, or fetch some posset that was ordered for her. They were all of apelike ugliness, and, going barefoot, moved as noiselessly as ghosts.

The Frankish doctor—an Italian—had pronounced her much too frail to nurse her baby—a decision which excited such dependants of the house as were eligible for the post of foster-mother. This was a great prize, kinship by milk, among the Muslims, being esteemed as genuine and binding as by blood. The wet-nurse thus became a near relation of the family, and all her race had claims upon its bounty. Barakah felt jealous of the woman who usurped her function, till she heard from Fitnah KhÂnum that the choice had fallen on the wife of her old friend GhandÛr. The girl, a former slave of the harÎm, was then presented to her, the baby in her arms; and won her heart by her excessive gratitude. She was touched, too, by the transports of GhandÛr, who sang thanksgiving to her lattice in his simple way. His chant was something in this manner:

She liked to hear him, his voice so near at hand produced a sense of true devotion and security. Missing his chant upon the following day, she inquired what had become of him. She was informed that, consequent upon his wife’s preferment, he had been appointed to a small position in the Government. It made her sad.

Her son was given over to the harÎm midwives to fulfil no end of ceremonies destined to frustrate the powers of evil. For a week he was not left alone or in the dark a single second. They carried him in a procession through the house, his future kingdom, and as each door was opened, sprinkled salt mixed with the seven seeds to exorcize the jinn who lurked within. Soon after birth his face had been defiled with certain powders, which Barakah could not persuade the women to wash off. It was a necessary precaution, they assured her, against jealous powers of darkness who, if they had an inkling of his beauty, would destroy him. Chief among these was the discarded wife of Adam, alluded to as El CarÎnah (the companion), the cause of man’s first fall, who hates Eve’s daughters and resents their great fertility. Where a child seems lovely and the mother shows delight in its appearance, she attacks them both; if, on the contrary, she sees it ugly and hears words of disappointment, she lets it live to spite the seed of Adam. For one so powerful, she must be very stupid to be taken in by such pretences, Barakah remarked; but they cried out that such was not the case, but Allah in His mercy had set limits to her sight and hearing. Each day the infant was the central figure in some ancient rite believed essential to its welfare.

As Barakah lay in bed and watched the pattern of the lattice, her whole existence passing like a dream before her, she sought to reconcile her former English with her present Eastern life. Her son was a fine boy, they all assured her. It saddened her that she had no relations of her own to take a pride in him. In this mood she asked YÛsuf to write a little note to Mrs. Cameron entreating her to come one day and see the baby. He did so, and the answer was that she would come with pleasure.

Elated by the prospect of this visit, Barakah wished to have her offspring made presentable; but when she gave command to wash his face and wrap him in nice clothes, the goodies screamed aloud, and fetched the lady Fitnah to remonstrate with her. She gave way, perforce; and Mrs. Cameron beheld the infant at his worst.

The visitor was very kind in her address to Barakah; but, when she held the baby for a minute, looking down at it, the latter, watching keenly, saw upon her face a quiver of extreme disfavour mixed with pity. The whiteness of her hands and face showed the child yellow; Barakah had thought him white as snow till then. A flush of anger and humiliation reached her brain.

“His face is dirty, the poor little one! Our Lord preserve him!” the visitor remarked in Arabic as she returned the baby to his nurse; at which there was an outburst of applause from the onlookers. They called down blessings on the lady’s head, desiring she might have herself a thousand children, not like this one, puny and unpleasant, but most beautiful.

Barakah, consumed with rage, murmured hoarsely in response to Mrs. Cameron’s farewell. The moment she was gone she burst out weeping.

“She did not like the child! She scorned my son, because he is not altogether white as she is.”

“Thou mistakest, O my dear! Be comforted!” cried Fitnah KhÂnum, while the other women round her exchanged pitying glances.

“Thou art not yet perfect in our prudent customs; but thy friend, though not a Muslimah, has learnt them, having been much longer in the land. Hast thou forgotten my instructions touching El CarÎnah? Nor is she alone to be redoubted, since Allah Himself abhors a boastful spirit, and dishonours those who make too much of any creature....”

“O Lord! I know all that!” wailed Barakah. “But she disliked my child, despised him! I—I saw it!”

Conviction that the portion of the human race from which she sprang beheld her son as little better than a monkey, tortured Barakah. She had looked upon him as a mediator, but now sought revenge. Hot, feverish dreams of hate disturbed her rest; and when a spell of khamsÎn weather robbed the world of energy she grew as weak and fretful as her thoughts were wild.

Already Barakah had kept her bed a fortnight longer than any Eastern woman would have dreamt of doing after childbirth. The lady Fitnah, seeing she did not gain strength, believed that some debilitating vile afrÎt was in her. The Frankish doctor said there was no cause for fear. She called him fool and worse, in her own circle; since by his disregard or ignorance of pious formulas he had left the door ajar for evil spirits. Resolved to stop the mischief, when no man was by she hung a plant of garlic in the room, burnt potent odours till its air grew suffocating, and dosed the patient with a paste compounded of the dust of mummies mixed with human milk. When these means failed to drive away the enemy, she sat down in despair among her cronies, and braced herself to try the last resort of all.

This was the “zÂr”—a very awful ceremony, of which she was exceedingly afraid. Her wish to hold it in the house—risking the Pasha’s favour, and her life through terror—was proof of her devoted love for Barakah. The dear one must be healed at any price.

Accordingly, she summoned negresses of those who hold familiar intercourse with demons, bought a kid and several fowls alive, and made arrangements to secure the sick-room to herself and her confederates for two good hours upon a certain afternoon.

Barakah was roused out of a troubled sleep by women moving out the furniture from both bedchamber and salon, and covering the floor with worn-out linen and the cheapest matting. They went, and she lay wondering, when Fitnah KhÂnum came and bade her have no fear. The ceremony she was going to witness was a potent medicine, well calculated to restore her health completely. Many servants, female children, and familiars of the household trooped in with noiseless feet and squatted down along the wall. Then came a group of half a dozen negresses, fantastically dressed in rags of finery, with ringing anklets; one of whom embraced a struggling little goat, while the others bore live chickens by the feet. Bold-eyed and with a swaggering gait, they marched up to the bed, and seemed to offer up the fowls and kid to Barakah, who could not understand the words they uttered in a screeching chant. They then danced back to the adjoining room, of which the door stood open. Upon the threshold madness seemed to seize them. They fell upon the kid with cries of glee. The creature, bleating piteously, was flung into an earthen bowl placed there in readiness. Amid mad laughter knives were brandished and brought down, hands helping to extract the creature’s life. The fowls were likewise gashed and torn asunder; the matting round grew foul with steaming entrails. Another minute and the slayers reappeared, their black arms purpled to the elbow, dripping blood, their faces and their lips defiled with it; and then began a devilish dance of self-abandonment, all the more horrible for its approach to beauty. The sleek skin of the dancers caught blue lights; their fixed eyes gleamed enormous, like those painted on the lids of mummies. Barakah believed herself in hell, for ever lost; it was as if an iron hand compressed her throat. Her heart beat wildly. One of the women, the most shameless, lurched towards her, stretching out a blood-stained hand. Her heart gave one tremendous beat and then stood still.

When she recovered consciousness it was to find the lady Fitnah bending over her. The negresses had gone, the room was cleansed, the furniture replaced exactly as before. She might have thought she had been dreaming had not YÛsuf’s mother whispered eagerly:

“Breathe not a word to YÛsuf or our lord the Pasha. Deny by Allah that thou sawest anything. If not, the afrÎt which we have with pains extracted will return and kill thee.”

In her weak state of mind, oppressed with dreadful and disgusting images, Barakah believed the words and shuddered. She was ill for weeks.