“What is there, O my daughter?”
“There is this, my father: I fear much to die. I fear the great darkness and the loneliness. Thou knowest how I always have feared to be alone in darkness, how I feel a jinni clutch me, and I scream. O my dearest, O Allah, what shall I do in a darkness which has no boundary, in a silence whence no scream is ever heard?”
She clasped her father’s arm and clung to it, trembling. Shems-ud-dìn, leaning over her, heartrent by the horror in her dilated eyes, ransacked his brain for words to calm her.
“Take comfort, O beloved!” he whispered. “Doubtless there is a place for thee in the garden of Allah.”
“Yes, O my father. Think not I forget all instruction. But that paradise is a shadowy place. It seems to me, as I lie here and think, that a doubt encircles it. It is but a shadow of that sure and glorious one reserved for men. Hear now my prayer, O my father; it is for that I called to thee. When thou, judged righteous, art with the blessed, deign to remember me, thy daughter, and ask of Allah the favor of my presence with thee. The dark-eyed maids will not hate me, for I am thy daughter; and it is allowed thee to ask for a woman dear to thee on the earth.”
“Thou art no woman of mine, in that sense——”
“Hush, O my father! Ask only. Make petition. Is not His mercy boundless? Oh, how I have longed to know that place, the talking fruit, the tree, the wondrous birds, and the voice melodious, and the joy in God’s presence. Promise to ask for me, and my fear will be much less.”
“If Allah will, if at the last day I be judged fit for salvation, then be sure I will fulfill thy petition, O light of my eyes!”
With a sigh of relief, she loosed hold of him and sank back upon the pillows, closing her eyes. It was some time ere she again opened them. Then, meeting her father’s troubled gaze, she smiled languidly, almost voluptuously.
“Be not too sorrowful, O my dear! May Allah reward that kind thought of thine which brought me hither. Here is like paradise. It is part of my fear to die that I must leave this pleasant room—of a light subdued, yet how cheerful!—and the pure sweet odors, and the loving tendance. But what matter! All is allotted.” She paused before adding in a more detached strain, as though trying to view herself through strange eyes: “Knowest thou, O my father, that, did it please Allah to preserve me in life, I think I should pray thee to give me to this good hakìm and not to Shibli. When I suffer pain, the hakìm needs but to look on me and it is gone. His touch is gentle, and his eyes are not as the eyes of Shibli, but rather resemble thine, O my father——”