A Woman of the Benni-Fuhara

by Achmed Abdullah

 

A Woman
of the Benni-Fuhara —By Achmed Abdullah

When Captain Abdullah writes of the wandering Arab tribes, he pictures them as they really are—resplendent in a fierce, romantic beauty that 1s all their own. For his travels and adventures have led him many times beneath the striped tents billowing on the sand-blown Sahara. It was there he heard, from the faltering lips of an aged Arab, this weird tale that you will never forget; for it will make you ask, as it did Captain Abdullah, “Isn't jealousy, perhaps, the one evil that love, no matter how strong, cannot ever dispel?"

FOR the second time the insistent knocking at the outer door, five flights down, splintered the silence. It filled them with a stark terror that was intensified by the brown pall of darkness. There was a candle stuck in a bottle. But they had not lit it since that night, a week earlier, when the two—Mansur el-Andalusi, sheik of the Benni Fuhara tribe, and Atheba, his wife—had come to Algiers and, hugging the shadows, flitting like ghosts across moon-white squares, had sought refuge in this ramshackle, deserted old caravanserai on the outskirts of town.

Dirty and grimy the place. A chaos of broken furniture and rags piled in closets. But Mansur el-Andalusi had said was it safer than the mercy of the French or the Benni Hossayn. It was characteristic of his brittle desert-bred sensitiveness that he had not mentioned the real reason for seeking asylum in the city slums instead of continuing the flight toward the Moroccan border where there was safety in the stone huts of distant cousins. It was characteristic of his wife that she had put this reason into plain words:

“We must also consider the child which I shall bear you, O my lord."

"Allah grant it be it be a man-child!" he had murmured. "A man-child to carry on our race."

“And our feud against the Benni Hossayn," she had interrupted, “and our hate against the French. May the lord God bless neither the one nor the other!"

For she was a woman of the Benni Fuhara, and it was a saying wide-blown through the nomads' black tents that the women of the tribe were a spear's toss ahead of the men in truculent, ribald lawlessness and readiness to take offence. Indeed it was he who few months earlier, after a dispute over taxes on the tribe's small, sorrel cattle, had had persuaded Mansur to mount his young men on their swift-footed war dromedaries and to rise in rebellion against the French.

At first they had be victorious. Then the French had swept into the desert with horse, foot, and the guns, and slaughtered the flower of their manhood. They had been helped by the Benni Hossayn, a vulpine race of Bedawin cameleers whose felt tents stippled the wilderness near the Fa oasis.

The few surviving Benni Fuhara had scattered into the dun waste, spreading spreading afar the tale and pity of their doomed, stubborn race, while the sheik, outlawed by the French, his tribe wiped out, had bound Atheba on the saddle behind him and had ridden forth from that reeling wreck of strife, into the North, and had reached Algiers on their way to the mountains of The Scorpion. “Algiers is safest,” Mansur had argued. “Men of a hundred tribes crowd the streets. All look alike to the roumis, the French.”

They had not despaired of the future; and here they were now, in this deserted caravanserai, and there was the loud pounding at the door downstairs, setting every nerve a-quiver to its utmost capacity, suffusing their souls with muffled, shivering echoes.

A moment later, sharp commands rasped out in French and Arabic: “Menhoo—who goes there?”

“Oukef—halt!” Soldiers, doubtless, driving away the curious who gathered from the neighboring slums. Out of the bowels of the tottering old building came their coarse bellow, fraught with cruelty and malevolence, and it chilled the blood of those two up there on the top floor.

They stared at each other across the brown gulf of darkness. They could see no more than their dim contours where they squatted on the ground beside the huge Arab bed. They could feel each other's eyes; could feel the fear that bloated under the burden of sounds as the pounding was repeated violently. Presently, there came a popping, bursting noise, and then the crackle of steel, the dull, brutish thud of rifle butts, and footsteps mounting the creaky stairs—nearer, ever nearer. Mansur rose. He passed into the moon rays that stabbed through a high, grilled window with a silvery gesture. The moon rays showed him of medium height, stocky beneath his swathing burnoose, the bearded face with just a suggestion, not exactly of weakness but of easy-going submission to a mind more impatient and hardy than his. Mansur—to use his own words—preferred riding with an idle whip and unused spurs. But there had been the cold iron of Atheba's ambition: ambition to make the Benni Fuhara masters of the desert from the shifting sand gulch called The Meeting of Wild Stallions to the rugged basalt ledge called The Night of Seven Green Stars, ambition to dare the rage of the French overlord; ambition that, ultimately, had brought him here caught like a rat in a trap—a price on his head.

But he loved his wife very dearly. There was no reproach in his heart nor bitterness; not even now, with Fate spreading a grey net across his path. His words asked for no pity; held no self-pity: “It is useless to fight, as useless to surrender. Death stands on my left side. On my right stands death's twin brother. Still—” and he spoke in his usual, dispassionate undertone though he unsheathed his sword—“I would prefer to die fighting.”

“It would be more decent,” she assented gravely, “more in keeping with the traditions of the Benni Fuhara.”

Momentarily she was silent. She listened to the ominous rhythm downstairs. And suddenly this savage, primitive creature of ineffable mastery and unconquerable courage covered her face with her hands in a spasm of despair. “Forgive me!” she sobbed.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he smiled. “Who can escape what is written on the forehead by the Angel of the Scrolls?”

“You are great-hearted. But it was my fault. I carry the curse of unstanched pride. I am—hayah!—a woman of the Benni Fuhara.”

She spoke the last words in blame and, too, in excuse of self. Yet perhaps these very words and all they implied in inflexible determination to win out against whatever odds, gave back to her a measure of chilly wisdom

“Put down the sword,” she said calmly though hurriedly. “You can appeal to it when all else has failed. You must hide.”

“The holes are only big enough for scorpions, child.”

“Hide under the bed!”

“Too obvious!” he said while steadily, from below, stammered and grew the threatening, iron surge. “They will look there first of all.”

“They may not—just because it is too obvious.”

“No, no! They will find me and wah hyat Ullah!—there will be no room under the bed to clear a blade or strike a blow. My beard will be dishonored. I shall not even be able to die fighting....”

“Oh—but the soldiers—listen, listen....” as the voices drew nearer—“they are of the Arabs, of the Moslems. Of our own blood and faith! A whispered word in their ears—imploring their help. Please—it is your only chance....”

At last, as always, he gave in, saying he had obeyed her during life. So why not in the hour of death?

“You will not die, my lord. I feel it—oh—” she interrupted herself quick! as beyond the door feet came, feet slurred to a stop, as a heavy fist pounded on the door, as a rough shout demanded:

“Hey there! Open!”

She kissed him passionately. “Yah zainu l'-alama aleyka salamu llah—” she whispered—“on thee the peace of God, O beauty of the turban!”

He crept under the bed. Then, slowly, she turned. She faced the door. For a fleeting second terror led her brain to the point where numbness succeeds upon excess of fear. But she regained her self-control with a shuddering effort. She tightened her quivering nerves against the coming ordeal She drew up her face veil. She was a woman of the Benni Fuhara; decent even at a moment of supreme agony.

Crash! Bang! Crash!—the heavy, pounding fist.

“Open! Open!”—the rough, impatient shout.

A grating, tearing sound as a bayonet was forced into the jamb.

The door splintered; gaped wide open. Somebody held a lamp. A ruddy light flickered; steadied; bored through the brown gloom. A sweep of bearded faces there on the threshold, crimson, blue-tasseled chechias pulled deep over broad foreheads. Uniforms. The gleam of a sword. Black holes of rifle barrels leveled in a straight, minatory line.

An order rasped out: “Halt!”

A thud of rifle butts dropping punctuations on the floor.

Then a voice from the coiling, purple shadows near the stairs landing: “Surrender!” and pushing to the front, the first to enter—followed by a young French lieutenant and a dozen Askaris, Arabs in the army of the Republic—was an elderly French civilian in double-breasted frock-coat and high silk hat.

The man introduced himself in excellent Arabic as M. Sevier, the cadhi-el-bhats, or examining magistrate, adding he had a warrant for the arrest of Mansur el-Andalusi, sentenced to death for high-treason, murder, and armed rebellion.

“My husband is not here,” she replied calmly. “Be pleased to go away.”

“Your tongue is false. Half an hour ago, coming from the bazaar where he bought dates, he entered this house. It is being watched. Nobody saw him leave. Also, standing outside the door. I heard voices. So you see....”

“I was speaking to God,” she interrupted.

“Praying for help?”

“No. 1 was cursing the French. I was imploring Allah to pour out their blood upon the edge of the sword.”

She heard a faint, quickly suppressed laugh among the Askaris. A moment earlier, immediately after they had entered, her terror had returned, flooding her with grey, choking waves. Now, hearing that faint laugh, her terror ebbed away once more; once more she felt confident, capable of anything. She swept a glance at the row of soldiers, their faces blurred into indistinct shadows by the crimson chechias deeply pressed over foreheads at the proper, swashbuckling angle. Hayah!—she thought triumphantly—a shrewd head had a hundred hands. And her head was shrewd, very shrewd. Was she not a woman of the Benni Fuhara?

“Be pleased to go away,” she continued, staring at the Frenchman. “This is the harem.” And with superb arrogance: “It is not fitting for a man, an infidel at that, to enter here with loud words and the clank of strife.”

“But—look here....”

“Goult, Sidi. Ma andi ma n'zid—” she said with dry finality—“I have spoken, sir. I have nothing to add.”

The Frenchman sighed. He felt conscious of an illogical liking and admiration for this savage, fearless woman. There were those stories that it was she who had incited Mansur to rebellion. Perhaps the stories were true. In her own way she was a patriot. Well—he shrugged his shoulders—so was he. There was his duty as an official of the, Republic; and he turned to the lieutenant, telling him to proceed with the search.

Some of the Askaris accompanied the magistrate to the garret. Others, led by the lieutenant, dispersed through the wide, curtainless Moorish arches that connected the room with a sweep of apartments, all dusty and grimy. Electric torches were switched on. Lights stabbed into dark corners.

For a moment the lieutenant reappeared on the threshold. “Go ahead,” he said to the three soldiers who had remained in the room with Atheba. “Remember: three thousand francs blood money to be split—and the lion's share to the one who gets the rebel—dead or alive!”

“Oui, mon lieutenant!”—the men were proud of their guttural French.

“Three thousand francs the roumis offer for the sacrifice of a Moslem's head. Wah! What are three thousand or thirty times three thousand francs between children of the same soil?” she whispered.

When he drew nearer she touched the sergeant's chevrons on his sleeve as a Bedawin, running away from the toll of blood feud, touches another Bedawin's tent rope to claim protection. “Behold!” she continued. “I have alighted at your tent, O son of Adam!”

The man did not reply. But he gave a low, mocking laugh. He reached up with one hand, brushing away the chechia from his forehead. And the first thing Atheba saw was the criss-cross, purple tribal mark of the Benni Hossayn, the Benni Fuhara's ancient enemies; and the next moment, as the moon rays slashed across his features as clean as with a knife, she recognized the flaring nostrils, the high cheek bones, the hooded, sloe-black eyes,—and she whispered his name with utter, shuddering incredulity: “Zeid ibn Rashid...”

“Aye!” he echoed. “I am indeed Zeid ibn Reshid. Ahee—it seems that I cannot escape you, O crusher of hearts. Nor—” and again he laughed mockingly—“can you escape me.”

Silently, she stared at him with the eyes of her body while, to the eyes of her soul, there rose a picture of the past—of a day seven years ago, shortly before her marriage to Mansur, during the time of the er-rabia, the short, sweet spring herbiage of the desert, when at night, in the sheiks' coffee tents, the young men sing of love. Her father's only child, Atheba had taken his herd to pasturage, and had suddenly found Zeid ibn Reshid standing square in her path. “Ho, crusher of hearts!” he had shouted, walking up to her with a heavy swagger. “By Allah—there are secrets on your lips which I must read.”

He had clutched her shoulders. She had tried to tear herself free; he had laughed:

“A Benni Fuhara, you? A Benni Hossayn, I? Pah—a pig's grunt for the difference! What does feud matter when soul speaks to soul and love answers for both?”

He was about to drag her off, but, returning from the farther desert where they had searched for a stray camel filly, three youths of the Benni Fuhara had chanced on the scene. They had leaped upon Zeid ibn Reshid before he could draw his crooked girdle-dagger. They had beaten him within an inch of his life with camel sticks and hippo-hide flails, while Atheba had danced about the prostrate man, kicking him with her hard little feet. And here he was now, no longer a rough cameleer but a proper sergeant in the roumis' army; and, with that low, mocking laugh of his, he repeated the whisper: “It seems that I cannot escape you, O crusher of hearts. Nor can you escape me....”

STILL she was silent. Her silence cloaked no plan of action. There was now only despair. Hope had guttered out like a candle in the wind. Instinctively she receded against the bed; instinctively stretched out wide, ineffectual arms, as if to protect her husband just as, followed by the Askaris, the two Frenchmen returned from their fruitless search.

“Our bird must have flown the coop in spite of our precautions,” said the magistrate.

“Unless he's in this room,” replied the other. “Hunted everywhere?” he asked the soldiers who had remained.

“Oui, mon lieutenant!”

“What about the bed? Have you looked under the bed, sergeant?” he demanded.

“It is the only place where I have not looked.” Zeid ibn Reshid's face was turned toward Atheba.

“Go ahead!” The lieutenant spoke gruffly, because he was ashamed of his sympathy. He gave a sharp word of command. The soldiers drew up in a line, leveling their rifles at the bed in a slight, downward angle, while Atheba stepped to one side. But in the split second between her stepping aside and Zeid ibn Reshid's advance, her eyes met his and there was a woman's full tale—a woman's full life in that passing glance.

“Forgive me, forgive me, O son of Adam!” pleaded the eyes above the veil, while her lips were silent except for a staccato intake of breath. “Have pity, O creature of God!” implored the grey, gold-flecked eyes. “Are we not both of the Moslems, of the Arabs?”

“Nom de Dieu!” barked the lieutenant impatiently. “Go on, sergeant!”

“Be careful!” warned one of the soldiers. “The rebel may be beneath—and you know the saying: mukkaram el-Bedaw—the nomads are full of wiles!”

“I, too, am a nomad,” laughed Zeid ibn Reshid. “I, too, am full of wiles.” And to Atheba, in a sibilant, equivocal murmur: “Tawakkal al' Ullah—place thy reliance upon God!”

He bent with a clank and jingle of his military accoutrements and crept under the bed, while she waited, breathless, rigid. Ludicrously, unreasonably, trivial things impinged on her consciousness: she watched a beetle scuttling over the floor. Then Zeid ibn Reshid crept out from under the bed. He was alone. “No living thing there,” he said to the lieutenant.

And when Atheba almost swooned with an overwhelming reaction of exultation and joy he steadied her with a strong arm, whispered to her: “What is gold between children of the same soil, between Benni Hossayn and Benni Fuhara....?”

A few minutes later, the room was again in brown darkness. She waited until the last sound had passed into memory. Then she turned toward the bed. “Come, my lord!” she called. “The roumis have gone.” There was no answer.

“Come!” she repeated more loudly. When still there was no answer, suddenly a dread wave of premonition swept over her. She lit the candle. She bent. She looked under the bed.

She saw that Zeid ibn Reshid had spoken the truth. No living thing was there. Only a dead man, his throat slashed from ear to ear, the blood staining the earth-brown burnoose. A cry went up from her lips. A single cry; ugly, hoarse, grating. Then she was silent.

She was a Bedawin. She was a Moslem. Mektoob—she thought—what is written, is written! Fate was like a blind camel—coming out of the dark—with no warning, no jingling of bells.;

So she sank on her knees and prayed to the Lord Allah in whom she believed with all her hard, fervent soul:

“There is no God but He—the Living, the Eternal! He bringeth forth the dead from the living; He bringeth forth the living from the dead....”

“He bringeth forth the living from the dead!” she repeated. And was not her husband dead? And was there not life—her unborn child's life?

Aye! The living from the dead! The blessed, eternal miracle of creation! “Blessed be Allah, the Lord of Daybreak!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Allah, Thou All-Merciful, let it be—oh—let it be a man-child. And let him grow up strong and lusty and ruthless and wide-stepping!

Aye! The past was the past. But the future was hers and her breed's. She picked up Mansur el-Andalusi's sword. It gleamed like a star in the light of the candle. Allah willing, her child would wield it some day.