“It’s a pity to waste it, Zarah,” she said gently. “Why not stuff a pillow with it?”
The Arabian bit hard on the amber mouthpiece of the naghileh. With her short hair curling round her face, Helen looked like an exquisite girl of fifteen, defenceless, helpless, and calculated to inspire pity in the heart of almost any man.
“Call Namlah!” She lashed the Abyssinian across the thigh when she had to repeat the order. “Art deaf or bereft of the use of thy limbs, thou fool!” she screamed, seizing the dagger from her belt and throwing it after the rapidly retreating negress, missing her shoulder by an inch as she emulated the speed of the ostrich through the doorway.
Namlah, upon whom Helen had counted in her heart of hearts, had failed her, and without her help nothing could be done, no communication with Ralph effected, no plans for escape made.
Of all the crowd of women who jeered and laughed at her she seemed to be the one who cherished the greatest hatred for her. She spat with vigour when the white girl passed, and at other times shouted various abusive and ribald remarks, urging the women to see that the unbeliever performed her menial tasks thoroughly, so as to enhance the glory of Allah the one and only God.
She ran in and prostrated herself before her dread mistress, then pulled the masses of hair roughly from under Helen’s feet and tossed it this way and that as though it were the hair of goat or camel.
“A kerchief for thy head, O great mistress, could I weave, or a plaited girdle set with pearls, though ’twere wellnigh sacrilege for the middle of the believer to be bound by the hair of the infidel. Behold the infidel looks even like the skull of one dead, with her face like unbaked bread and her head like unto the wing of the ostrich plucked of its feathers.”
With instructions to make what she could of the silky burden which filled both her arms, she spat or, rather, for fear of her mistress’s humour, made the sound of vigorous spitting in Helen’s direction, and vanished through the doorway.
Helen lay on the floor that night, her beautiful shorn head resting on her arm, and poured out her heart in gratitude that Zarah had not seen fit to shave it completely.