“Deign to enter, O my sweet,” she called seductively.
Selîm assisted his employer to dismount.
“Go in and rest,” he whispered. “My mother and my sister are alone in there. Thou canst unveil. The dwellings of the poor are all haramlik. In a little while I shall return and call thee from without. I go but to make sure the ways are safe.”
The room in which she found herself was small and stuffy. It was lighted only by the little lamp the woman carried. Barakah was glad to loose her veil awhile. She refused the food, but drank the water, which the women offered, and listened to their cordial blessings with a sense of dreaming. Her prayer was that the boy might not decide to wait till morning. Desire to reach the tomb at once absorbed her life. Deprived of it, she would have had no further being. Her prayer now took the Christian form, and now the Muslim; the two religions growing tangled in her tired mind. At length the boy’s voice sounded:
“Deign to come, O lady. The ways are thronged, they tell me, as in Ragab. To-night is not as other nights, it is well seen.”
With praise to Allah she went out once more. But with its object now assured, her mind grew dull. It was as if suspense alone had held it wakeful. It lost the comprehension of its purpose, regained it with an effort, and then let it go.
They passed beneath an ancient gateway. The city was behind them. Still there was no solitude. Groups of people crossed the sand in all directions. It was a moonless night. The many lanterns moving in the darkness seemed reflections of the stars which shone like gems of many facets in the silky sky. Barakah saw them both alike as golden insects swarming in the cup of a great purple flower. At moments, her head swimming, she mistook the earth for sky, and had the sense of moving upside down.
“There is the cemetery,” said her guide. His whisper seemed to her a long way off. Nor did she see the city of the dead till they were in its streets, which loomed mysterious. The very stars looked sinister above the frowning domes, from which a blacker darkness seemed to emanate. The many crescents looked like horns against the sky. Bats flitted past her; from the distance came a jackal’s howl. What had she come to do there? She could not remember. “To pray,” she told herself, but that meant nothing. She strove with all her might to recollect. Then in a flash remembrance came to her; it bore her on, excited, to the mausoleum. She dismounted, and then, upon the threshold, she forgot once more. She entered, shuddering, too dazed to question why the gate was left ajar, and turned instinctively towards the women’s quarters. A step or two and she stood still in deadly terror, hardly venturing to breathe. There was a light upon the men’s side; beasts were tethered in the court; she heard a sound of digging and men’s voices. Her thought was, “They expect me, and have dug a grave.” As soon as fear would let her, she fled back to where the guide was waiting.
“There are people. We must fly! Make haste!” she whispered.