<h2><SPAN name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></SPAN>XXXIII</h2>
<p>On a flat white roof, which bubbled up here and there
in rounded domes, a woman stood looking out over
interminable waves of yellow sand, a vast golden
silence which had no end on her side of the horizon,
east, west, north, or south.</p>
<p>No veil hid her face, but folds of thin woollen stuff beautifully
woven, and dyed blue, almost as dark as indigo, fell from
her head nearly to her feet, over a loose robe of orange-red,
cut low in the neck, with sleeves hiding the elbows. She looked
towards the west, shading her eyes with her hand: and the sun
near its setting streamed over her face and hair, chiselling her
features in marble, brightening her auburn hair to fiery gold,
giving her brown eyes the yellow tints of a topaz, or of the amber
beads which hung in a long chain, as far down as her knees.</p>
<p>From the white roof many things could be seen besides the
immense monotonous dunes along whose ridges orange fire
seemed to play unceasingly against the sky.</p>
<p>There was the roof of the Zaouïa mosque, with its low, white
domes grouped round the minaret, as somewhere below the
youngest boys of the school grouped round the taleb, or teacher.
On the roof of the mosque bassourah frames were in the
making, splendid bassourahs, which, when finished, would be
the property of the great marabout, greatest of all living marabouts,
lord of the Zaouïa, lord of the desert and its people, as
far as the eye could reach, and farther.</p>
<p>There were other roofs, too, bubbling among the labyrinth
of square open courts and long, tunnel-like, covered and uncovered
corridors which formed the immense, rambling<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></SPAN></span>
Zaouïa, or sacred school of Oued Tolga. Things happened
on these roofs which would have interested a stranger, for there
was spinning of sheep's wool, making of men's burnouses, fashioning
of robes for women, and embroidering of saddles; but
the woman who looked towards the west with the sun in her
eyes was tired of the life on sun-baked roofs and in shadowed
courts.</p>
<p>The scent of orange blossoms in her own little high-walled
garden came up to her; yet she had forgotten that it was sweet,
for she had never loved it. The hum of the students' voices,
faintly heard through the open-work of wrought-iron windows,
rasped her nerves, for she had heard it too often; and she
knew that the mysterious lessons, the lessons which puzzled
her, and constantly aroused her curiosity, were never repeated
aloud by the classes, as were these everlasting chapters of the
Koran.</p>
<p>Men sleeping on benches in the court of the mosque, under
arches in the wall, waked and drank water out of bulging
goatskins, hanging from huge hooks. Pilgrims washed their
feet in the black marble basin of the trickling fountain, for soon
it would be time for moghreb, the prayer of the evening.</p>
<p>Far away, eighteen miles distant across the sands, she could
see the twenty thousand domes of Oued Tolga, the desert city
which had taken its name from the older Zaouïa, and the oued
or river which ran between the sacred edifice on its golden
hill, and the ugly toub-built village, raised above danger of
floods on a foundation of palm trunks.</p>
<p>Far away the domes of the desert city shimmered like white
fire in the strange light that hovers over the Sahara before the
hour of sunset. Behind those distant, dazzling bubbles of unearthly
whiteness, the valley-like oases of the southern desert,
El Souf, dimpled the yellow dunes here and there with basins
of dark green. Near by, a little to the left of the Zaouïa hill,
such an oasis lay, and the woman on the white roof could look
across a short stretch of sand, down into its green depths.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></SPAN></span>
She could watch the marabout's men repairing the sloping
sand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving
in, and saved the precious date-palms from being engulfed in a
yellow tide. It was the marabout's own private oasis, and
brought him in a large income every year. But everything was
the marabout's. The woman on the roof was sick to death of
his riches, his honours, his importance, for she was the marabout's
wife; and in these days she loved him as little as she
loved the orange garden he had given her, and all the things
that were hers because she was his.</p>
<p>It was very still in the Zaouïa of Oued Tolga. The only
sound was the droning of the boys' voices, which came faintly
from behind iron window-gratings below, and that monotonous
murmur emphasized the silence, as the humming of bees in a
hive makes the stillness of a garden in summer more heavy
and hot.</p>
<p>No noises came from the courts of the women's quarters, or
those of the marabout's guests, and attendants, and servants;
not a voice was raised in that more distant part of the Zaouïa
where the students lived, and where the poor were lodged and
fed for charity's sake. No doubt the village, across the narrow
river in its wide bed, was buzzing with life at this time of day;
but seldom any sound there was loud enough to break the
slumberous silence of the great Zaouïa. And the singing of the
men in the near oasis who fought the sand, the groaning of the
well-cords woven of palm fibre which raised the buckets of
hollowed palm-trunks, was as monotonous as the recitation of
the Koran. The woman had heard it so often that she had
long ago ceased to hear it at all.</p>
<p>She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with
the dried palm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed
city, the dimpling oases and the mountainous dunes
that towered against a flaming sky; then eastward, towards
the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one of blue water, the other
of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, and had pale edges<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></SPAN></span>
that met the sand like snow on gold. Above the lake of water
suddenly appeared a soaring line of white, spreading and
mounting higher, then turning from white to vivid rose. It was
the flamingoes rising and flying over the chott, the one daily
phenomenon of the desert which the woman on the roof still
loved to watch. But her love for the rosy line against the blue
was not entirely because of its beauty, though it was
startlingly beautiful. It meant something for which she waited
each evening with a passionate beating of her heart under the
orange-coloured robe and the chain of amber beads. It meant
sunset and the coming of a message. But the doves on the
green tiled minaret of the Zaouïa mosque had not begun yet
to dip and wheel. They would not stir from their repose until
the muezzin climbed the steps to call the hour of evening
prayer, and until they flew against the sunset the message could
not come.</p>
<p>She must wait yet awhile. There was nothing to do till the
time of hope for the message. There was never anything
else that she cared to do through the long days from sunrise
to sunset, unless the message gave her an incentive when it came.</p>
<p>In the river-bed, the women and young girls had not
finished their washing, which was to them not so much labour
as pleasure, since it gave them their opportunity for an outing
and a gossip. In the bed of shining sand lay coloured stones
like jewels, and the women knelt on them, beating wet bundles
of scarlet and puce with palm branches. The watcher on the
roof knew that they were laughing and chattering together
though she could not hear them. She wondered dimly how
many years it was since she had laughed, and said to herself
that probably she would never laugh again, although she was
still young, only twenty-eight. But that was almost old for
a woman of the East. Those girls over there, wading knee-deep
in the bright water to fill their goatskins and curious
white clay jugs, would think her old. But they hardly knew
of her existence. She had married the great marabout, there<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></SPAN></span>fore
she was a marabouta, or woman saint, merely because
she was fortunate enough to be his wife, and too highly placed
for them to think of as an earthly woman like themselves.
What could it matter whether such a radiantly happy being
were young or old? And she smiled a little as she imagined
those poor creatures picturing her happiness. She passed
near them sometimes going to the Moorish baths, but
the long blue drapery covered her face then, and she was
guarded by veiled negresses and eunuchs. They looked her
way reverently, but had never seen her face, perhaps did not
know who she was, though no doubt they had all heard and
gossipped about the romantic history of the new wife, the
beautiful Ouled Naïl, to whom the marabout had condescended
because of her far-famed, her marvellous, almost incredible
loveliness, which made her a consort worthy of a saint.</p>
<p>The river was a mirror this evening, reflecting the sunset
of crimson and gold, and the young crescent moon fought for
and devoured, then vomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters.
The old brown palm-trunks, on which the village
was built, were repeated in the still water, and seemed to go
down and down, as if their roots might reach to the other side
of the world.</p>
<p>Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses
bleached skulls and bones of animals were nailed for luck.
The red light of the setting sun stained them as if with blood,
and they were more than ever disgusting to the watcher on the
white roof. They were the symbols of superstitions the most
Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she was beginning
to hate all Eastern things and people.</p>
<p>The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes
had faded out of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished
into the sunset, and hardly had they gone when the loud
crystalline voice of the muezzin began calling the faithful to
prayer. Work stopped for the day. The men and youths of the
Zaouïa climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the mosque,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></SPAN></span>
where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated
themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man.
The doves of the minaret—called Imams, because they never
leave the mosque or cease to prostrate themselves, flying head
downwards—began to wheel and cry plaintively. The
moment when the message might come was here at last.</p>
<p>The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others
very high, so high that no one standing behind it could be seen.
This screen of whitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons
on the roof from those on the roof of the mosque; but window-like
openings had been made in it, filled in with mashrabeyah
work of lace-like pattern; an art brought to Africa long ago
by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And this roof
was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was
another, where watchers could also look down into the court
of the fountain, at the carved doors taken from the Romans,
and up to the roof of the mosque with all its little domes.
From behind those other lace-like windows in the roof-wall,
sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Naïl girls can have; but the
first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderful
fringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they should
beautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she
had heard her negresses whispering about them.</p>
<p>While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew
across from the mosque to the roof where the woman waited
for a message. At her feet lay a small covered basket, from
which she took a handful of grain. The dove Imams forgot
their saintly manners in an unseemly scramble as the white
hand scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with one
another, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight
to the roof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was
white, with feet like tiny branches of coral, whereas the doves
from the mosque were grey, or burnished purple.</p>
<p>The woman had been pale, but when the bird fluttered down
to rest on the open basket of grain, colour rushed to her face,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></SPAN></span>
as if she had been struck on each cheek with a rose. None of
the doves of the mosque were tame enough to sit on the basket,
which was close to her feet, though they sidled round it wistfully;
but the white bird let her stroke its back with her fingers
as it daintily pecked the yellow grains.</p>
<p>Very cautiously she untied a silk thread fastened to a feather
under the bird's wing. As she did so it fluttered both wings as
if stretching them in relief, and a tiny folded paper attached to
the cord fell into the basket. Instantly the woman laid her
hand over it. Then she looked quickly, without moving her
head, towards the square opening at a corner of the roof where
the stairway came up. No one was there. Nobody could see
her from the roof of the mosque, and her roof was higher than
any of the others, except that which covered the private rooms
of the marabout. But the marabout was away, and no one
ever came out on his roof when he was absent.</p>
<p>She opened the folded bit of white paper, which was little
more than two inches square, and was covered on one side with
writing almost microscopically small. The other side was blank,
but the woman had no doubt that the letter was for her. As
she read, the carrier-pigeon went on pecking at the seeds in
the basket, and the doves of the mosque watched it enviously.</p>
<p>The writing was in French, and no name was at the beginning
or the end.</p>
<p>"Be brave, my beautiful one, and dare to do as your heart
prompts. Remember, I worship you. Ever since that wonderful
day when the wind blew aside your veil for an instant
at the door of the Moorish bath, the whole world has been
changed for me. I would die a thousand deaths if need be
for the joy of rescuing you from your prison. Yet I do not
wish to die. I wish to live, to take you far away and make
you so happy that you will forget the wretchedness and failure
of the past. A new life will begin for both of us, if you will
only trust me, and forget the scruples of which you write—false
scruples, believe me. As he had a wife living when he<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></SPAN></span>
married you, and has taken another since, surely you cannot
consider that you are bound by the law of God or man? Let
me save you from the dragon, as fairy princesses were saved in
days of old. If I might speak with you, tell you all the arguments
that constantly suggest themselves to my mind, you
could not refuse. I have thought of more than one way, but
dare not put my ideas on paper, lest some unlucky chance
befall our little messenger. Soon I shall have perfected the
cypher. Then there will not be the same danger. Perhaps
to-morrow night I shall be able to send it. But meanwhile,
for the sake of my love, give me a little hope. If you will try to
arrange a meeting, to be settled definitely when the cypher
is ready, twist three of those glorious threads of gold
which you have for hair round the cord when you send the
messenger back."</p>
<p>All the rosy colour had died away from the woman's face
by the time she had finished reading the letter. She folded it
again into a tiny square even smaller than before, and put it
into one of the three or four little engraved silver boxes, made
to hold texts from the Koran, which hung from her long amber
necklace. Her eyes were very wide open, but she seemed
to see nothing except some thought printed on her brain like
a picture.</p>
<p>On the mosque roof a hundred men of the desert knelt praying
in the sunset, their faces turned towards Mecca. Down in
the fountain-court, the marabout's lazy tame lion rose from
sleep and stretched himself, yawning as the clear voice of the
muezzin chanted from the minaret the prayer of evening,
"Allah Akbar, Allah il Allah, Mohammed r'soul Allah."</p>
<p>The woman did not know that she heard the prayer, for as
her eyes saw a picture, so did her ears listen to a voice which
she had heard only once, but desired beyond all things to hear
again. To her it was the voice of a saviour-knight; the face
she saw was glorious with the strength of manhood, and the
light of love. Only to think of the voice and face made her feel<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></SPAN></span>
that she was coming to life again, after lying dead and forgotten
in a tomb for many years of silence.</p>
<p>Yes, she was alive now, for he had waked her from a sleep
like death; but she was still in the tomb, and it seemed
impossible to escape from it, even with the help of a saviour-knight.
If she said "yes" to what he asked, as she was trying
to make herself believe she had a moral and legal right to do,
they would be found out and killed, that was all.</p>
<p>She was not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious
resignation poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches
fire. Although she hated her life, if it could be called life, had
no pleasure in it, and had almost forgotten how to hope, still
she was afraid of being violently struck down.</p>
<p>Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her
husband with a man she loved. The husband found out,
and having shot the man before her eyes, stabbed her with
many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss, according to the
custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enough to kill;
but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and loss
of blood. Nobody blamed the husband. He had done the thing
which was right and just. And stories like this came often to
the ears of the woman on the roof through her negresses,
or from the attendants at the Moorish bath.</p>
<p>The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched
Bedouin, who was of no importance except to her for whom his
life was given; but something would happen. He would be
taken ill with a strange disease, of which he would die after
dreadful suffering; or at best his career would be ruined;
for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immense
influence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always
like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the
marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide—in
Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the
capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself.</p>
<p>She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></SPAN></span>
her heart was like ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like
a ball of fire; and pulling out three long bright hairs from her
head, she twisted them round the cord which the carrier-pigeon
had brought. Before tying it under his wing again, she
scattered more yellow seeds for the dove Imams, because she did
not want them to fly away until she was ready to let her messenger
go. Thus there was the less danger that the carrier-pigeon
would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him.
Noura had smuggled him into the Zaouïa, and she herself had
trained him by giving him food that he liked, though his home
was at Oued Tolga, the town.</p>
<p>The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply,
for the same programme had been carried out many times before,
and they had learned to expect it.</p>
<p>When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white
pigeon could afford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret,
following a leader. But the carrier flew away straight and far,
his little body vanishing at last as if swallowed up in the gold
of the sunset. For he went west, towards the white domes of
Oued Tolga.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></SPAN></span></p>
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