“Put under it that my name is El Haj Hassim ben Abdallah Na Hali and that I can tell all things. I know all the stars by name and the power they have over each man’s fate. Nothing is hid from me.”
I. M. D.
El Haj Hassin ben Abdulla Na Hali: Sand Diviner.
Gabès. 11.1.23.
I told Mansour to ask him if he could tell what had passed in my life, and listened, smiling, for his answer. First he must know my name and the name of my mother. After repeating them with great difficulty he smoothed the sand in his tray and marked it six times with his finger. Then he looked up to the sky for a time, and spoke:
“This lady has a hard head; she does not easily believe. She loves to see new things and to travel to strange lands. Six countries has she already seen and yet more will she visit. Many times has she crossed great waters, once in peril of her life. She has been married, and he who was her husband is dead. Six men have been her friends—” (A little nervous as to the possible signification of the Arab word ‘friend,’ I hastily repudiated the last statement)—“and one will take her to a far country and will leave her there. It is spoken.”
Fortunately my hard head prevented my being much perturbed by the unpleasantness of the last part of the prophecy, but I was much charmed by the old man and his simplicity. Every day he sits there, his gentle face bent over his book, and from far and near people come to consult him. Mansour was distressed that I had not taken his speech more seriously.
“Of a truth he knows everything; I when young went to consult him, for I was greatly in love with a beautiful girl whom I wanted to marry. So great was her beauty that I could neither eat nor sleep for the thought of her. But the Sand-diviner said: ‘Lo, my son, put all thought of her from thy mind, for she will never be thine, not even wert thou to lay a bag of gold at her feet would she look upon thee.’ And it was even as he said. She would not look upon me. And for the space of five months I was grievously ill because of the love I bore her. Thus do I know the Sand-diviner speaks truth.”
We trudged along the dusty road in silence and then I ventured to ask if he had married someone else, and the cheerfulness of his answer relieved my anxiety. Yes, he was married, and his wife was “une vraie Arabe,” for she made herself beautiful for him, and three times in the week she went to the baths and perfumed herself, “and this she will continue to do,” he remarked, “till she has children. Then will she have no other thought but of her babes, for is not this the nature of women?” he ended philosophically.