CHAPTER VII
The saint was dead. At dawn his soul had passed into Barzakh, or the second world, the intermediate state between the present life and the resurrection.
While administering to him, Abdul's anxious ears heard the ominous rattle in the dying man's throat, he turned his face Mecca-wards and reverently closed his eyes. At the same moment the faithful who had gathered round him—among whom were some of the inhabitants of the Bedouin village, for the presence of the hermit-saint in the foreigner's camp was known—in one voice acclaimed ecstatically:
"Allah! Allah! There is no strength nor power but in God. To God we belong, to Him we must return! God have mercy on him. La ilaha illallah."
His death had taken place one hour before sunrise; it was now one hour before sunset and Michael was sitting on a little knoll in the desert, watching the mourners return from the funeral of the holy man. It was a very simple affair, far different from the splendid ceremony which would have been accorded him if he had died near a city or of a less contagious malady. There were no hired mourners, no fine trappings on the bier, no wild women whose quavering "joy-cries" (zaghareet) rent the air with their shrill voices.
The little procession which followed the emaciated corpse to its last resting-place in God's wide acre of sand and sky was composed of sincere mourners. The corpse had been wrapped in white muslin and enclosed in a white linen bag. When devout pilgrims or pious Moslems go on a lengthy journey, they usually carry their grave-cloths with them. The saint had not provided himself with even his shroud. As a favoured of God, the clothes in which he would be buried would be forthcoming; he took no thought for the morrow. All his life, by Allah's guidance, men had provided for his simple wants. A hermit-saint is never without his devotees. As a welee he was worthy of a costly funeral, but the nature of his death demanded immediate burial. His fame would follow after. Michael knew that probably some day a white tomb, like a miniature mosque, would mark the spot where his bones had been laid to rest. And to that tomb, a conspicuous object in the flat desert, with its white dome silhouetted against the deep blue sky, devout pilgrims would travel, for many generations.
Michael had not attended the funeral. He had consulted Abdul and they had come to the conclusion that it would be wiser for him, as a professing Christian, not to be present at the actual religious ceremony. From a raised spot in the desert he had seen all that had taken place. In accordance with Moslem superstition, the funeral had been before sunset. All Moslems dislike a dead body remaining in the house overnight; it is always, when circumstances permit, buried in the evening of the day on which death has taken place.
Abdul had told Michael that the dead man would, in all probability, guide the bearers to the exact spot where they were to bury him; if they were going in the wrong direction he would impel them to stop. Michael had watched with interest to see if this would take place, if the bearers halted or altered their course. Evidently the saint was pleased with the spot they had selected, for they journeyed on unhaltingly until they were lost to sight.
And now the little procession was returning, in the fading sunlight. The holy man's emaciated frame, enclosed in its white bag, lay under the golden sand of the eastern desert.
This desert burial seemed to Michael a very simple and beautiful method of disposing of the dead. The dull chanting of the mourners had lent an emotional note to the scene. It was a sad little incident, but one totally free from the ordinary melancholy which attends a Western burial. For a Moslem, death has little horror. A pilgrim in the desert, when he knows that his death is approaching, either from fatigue or exhaustion or some disease, will dig his own grave and lay himself down in it, covering his body up to his neck with sand. There he will quietly, with Eastern philosophy, await his end. He knows that the four winds will bring drifting sand to the spot where his body lies; it will gather and gather, as it does against any excrescence, until his body is well covered. In the desert many are the ships that pass in the night.