“Stop, stop! It is not true! It cannot be,” cried Barakah, with a hysteric laugh.
But Umm ed-Dahak answered, “True, wallahi. What dismays thee? A woman’s task is to produce. We leave the rest to Allah.”
And to console her hearer she went on to tell of broods of thirty, even forty, reared successfully; when Barakah’s dismay was turned to laughter.
In her moments of depression she was haunted by two terrors on her son’s account. One was ophthalmia, a disease so prevalent in Egypt that half the population was composed of blind and one-eyed persons. The other was the plague, of which the women told grim stories with a strange complacency. Many of her friends had been through epidemics of the pestilence and, by their own report, had known no panic. It was a swift and cruel illness, by which they had lost dear ones in despite of careful nursing; it was from Allah; no one’s thinking could avert or cure it. The horror the mere thought of it inspired in Barakah, her futile worry, filled them with a placid wonder.
She had made up her mind that, if the plague drew near, she would carry off her boy to Europe, having no doubt but she could win consent from Yûsuf. But she said nothing of this resolution to the women, knowing they would deem it godless. As a preventive against ophthalmia, she bathed her son’s eyes with cold water twice a day, and gave orders for the flies that settled on them to be brushed away—a thing the slaves would not have thought of doing on their own initiative.
The plague did not come near her; and Muhammad’s eyes continued bright and liquid under long black lashes. An enemy, unfeared as unexpected, struck her joy.
About the period when he was being weaned, Muhammad had a serious illness. An Armenian doctor was called in, who said, “It is the fever.” At that the women wailed and prayed to Allah. The foe was too well known, the scourge of children. There was no need to tell them what to do.
“It carries off a host of infants every year,” said Umm ed-Dahak. “But be not downcast, O beloved. God is great! Many survive, and those who do recover are free from its malignancy for evermore.”
The malady was typhoid fever, or so like it that Barakah could not detect the slightest difference. She had been often told that it did not attack the natives of the land, but only Europeans, who were thought more delicate. Here, then, was the reason. The natives who grew up were all inoculated, having been through the disease in infancy.