Zarah the Cruel

by Joan Conquest

Yussuf smiled and shook his head and laid his hand upon the dumb youth’s shoulder, who also smiled and shook his head.

“Excellency, not for ten thousand golden lira would I be away from the camp when the tiger-cat learns of the flight. A piece of news for you, white man, who comprehends not the guile of this woman of mixed blood. Did you think she had tired of you? Nay! by the beard she loves you even a hundred times more for your refusal of her love. She sends you to Hareek after the rising of the sun, only to follow you and to beguile you in the solitude of the Red Desert. There is no leech that clings so close to its victim as a woman to the one she loves but who does not return that love. There is no trick she will not descend to, no lie she will not utter, no promise she will not make, with no intent to keep, to gain her end. This is the commencement of my revenge—the end, Excellency, will be the death of her who blinded me. I have waited for this revenge these many years, even from the moment when the sun faded from my sight. I and ‘Mine Eyes’ will follow you, and if we do not overtake you by the noon, then place yourself in Namlah’s keeping. She is of the desert born.” He raised his right hand and turned his sightless face to the skies. “May Allah guide you, and keep you, and bring you to everlasting peace.”

Trenchard stood for a moment to watch the blind man make his almost miraculous way through the rocks which skirted the west end of the plateau, then turned and followed the dumb youth, who smiled and nodded his head in his delight at the trick which was being played upon the Arabian. And Namlah rose from where she sat in the shadows thrown by three dromedaries hobbled at the commencement of the hidden path across the quicksands, and pressed her hand against her forehead in humble salutation and smiled up at her son, and laughed softly in the delight she also felt at the way the beautiful Zarah was being duped. Within the hour she might have to give her life in her fight for the liberty she had lost some many years back when captured in the desert, or she might lose it in saving that of the white woman she had grown to love; but with all the Oriental’s fatalism, she had resigned herself to liberty or to recapture, to life or death. Allah had decided the result in the womb of Time.

Kismet!

Yussuf’s Eyes pressed the back of his hand against his forehead, then bent and touched Ralph Trenchard’s foot as a sign that he was willing to serve the white man to the end, whilst Namlah, smiling all over her homely face, translated the gestures the dumb boy made as he tried to make Trenchard understand.

“He says, Excellency, that before the sun is above our heads at noon he will have guided the Blind One to you upon the path we shall have made across the desert. He loves you for your gentleness and strength, O man of the great white race, and prays you to succour Yussuf if aught should befall him before he reaches the great City of Damascus, which is his home and my home.”

Trenchard raised his right hand and made his oath after the manner of the Arabs.

“Before my God, who is thy God, I swear to make myself responsible for the comfort, welfare and happiness of the three who have so befriended me and mine. I swear that my descendants, unto the farthest generation, shall befriend thy descendants, so that in some small way I shall pay my debt of gratitude.” He smiled down at the enraptured little woman. “Let us sit awhile whilst we wait. Come, Namlah, tell me of the life thou wilt lead in Damascus with thy people.”

The stillness of the night was broken by the grumbling of the dromedaries, the distant shouts of the men, and the body-woman’s whispered words as she told him of the house she would buy or rent in the Bazaar, with rugs upon the floor and many brass pots and pans of her own, filled with milk and butter from her own kine.

“ ... and when her Excellency returns to Arabia, then will Namlah wait upon her,” she said, smiling at the thought, being sure, with the fatalist’s conviction, of a happy ending to the flight. “Then will her golden hair once more glisten like the silk in the sun which makes of the Bazaar a paradise.” She paused for a moment as she drew out a packet wrapped in a cloth. “We have gifts which perchance his Excellency in his goodness will allow his humble servants to present to the Sit upon her marriage as a token of the gratitude the servants have in their hearts for the gentleness of the white people.”