But the downfall of the Khedive’s favourite, occurring at this epoch, dashed the ardour of the seers, and caused them in alarm to change their vision. The man, whose pomp had served them for a measure of Muhammad’s greatness, disappeared from life. The story ran that, having grown too great, he had been trapped by order of his loving master, accommodated with a weighted sack, and dropped into the Nile. The tidings caused a flutter in the world of women like that of seafarers beholding shipwreck. For the favourite’s death involved the ruin of a great harîm, boasting its troupes of dancers and of trained musicians, lavish of entertainment and of gay repute. Its members, far too many to be all beloved, had, some of them, found vent in wild amours which furnished thrilling stories to more lucky women. Now all the slaves were scattered among other houses; the ladies, owning private property, returned to their relations pending further marriage. The great man’s children were reduced to mediocrity; his honours and emoluments divided up among a score of courtiers; his name became a byword for pride’s fall.
“Wallahi, our beloved must not follow in his steps too closely. Allah forbid!” said Umm ed-Dahak solemnly. And forthwith she began to make another forecast, with frequent “In sh´Allahs” and “Ma sh´Allahs,” to rob it of all taint of boastfulness. “He goes up gently, rousing no suspicion in the ruler, winning the people’s voice, as did Muhammad Ali. Then, when the times are ripe, he asks the Sovereign and his courtiers to a banquet and cuts all their throats. Then he ascends the throne and does good deeds, till all men praise the Maker for his rare benevolence. And thou, his mother, wilt reside in splendid state, and when the great ones of the English come with gifts for thee, thou wilt spit upon them and repel them with thy little foot. In sh´Allah!”
Barakah would be a widow in those days, by Allah’s mercy. A queen, she would of course have many lovers. Did she desire a man—one word, and he was hers as quick as lightning! And Umm ed-Dahak would be ever at her call to spread the net for goodly youths and guard her secret.
“But I shall be too old by then!” laughed Barakah.
“Please Allah, no!” cried the old woman, a trifle vexed at being brought to earth. “Thou wilt be still quite youthful. See thee now: what beauty, what a youthful figure! By Allah, almost wicked in a mother! Thou dost not grow old.”
In fact, her shape, though something fat, was not ungainly, like that of younger women leading the same life. She took no care of it, conforming to the harîm custom for women who bear children to let beauty go. “The time and purpose of the bloom is past, the fruit succeeds, more noble,” they assured her. She saw the rarest beauties, like Bedr-ul-Budûr, already changing into fat old women. Compared with them she felt still young and comely. But when, her carriage rolling on the Gîzah road, she saw real Frankish women, riding, driving, she felt a raddled and unwieldy hag. There was one Englishwoman in particular who often passed her, driving a light dog-cart with a Nubian groom behind—straight as a lance and trim of waist, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes under grizzled hair. A creature of free air and open sunlight, the shuttered, perfumed shade could not produce her like. A jealousy near hatred stirred in Barakah.
One evening Yûsuf, thinking to amuse her, had sent her with his sisters and Muhammad to the new opera-house which the Khedive had built to please the European visitors, and also to provide His Highness with relays of mistresses. There, in a harîm box behind a screen, she smoked cigarettes and listened to what seemed mere senseless screeching to one who had admired the voice of Tâhir. The opera was Don Giovanni. Never had she witnessed a performance so stilted, artificial, and absurd. She quite agreed with the remarks of her companions, who, after their first wonder at the building and the lighted stage, yawned openly and called it simple madness. Yet the entertainment was no bad one to the taste of Europe, as she knew from the applause of people in the unscreened boxes, where barefaced, brilliant women sat and stared about them. The mere existence of those women there in Cairo, transgressing every native rule of conduct, was an insult. The freshness even of the old ones made her conscious of decay. When the girls after the second act proposed to go, she agreed gladly. Muhammad screamed to stay, and had to be transported bodily by Barakah, while one of his young aunts held her hand upon his mouth. A very small boy at the time, he had supposed the scene was laid in hell, and all the hideous screams of the performers denoted pangs of tortured infidels.
Muhammad, for his mother’s sake, abhorred the English; and yet he loved his mother, who was of that race. He reconciled these warring passions by supposing the existence of a race of Muslims in the British Isles.
One day, when he was ten years old, he came home with a face of indignation, demanding, “O my mother, is it not quite true that the English nation is as strong and warlike as the French, and nowise subject to the lord of Paris?”
“True, O my son.”