The Circe of the deserts

by Paule Henry-Bordeaux

"Oh, my lady!" cried he, delighted, "thou bearest on thy forehead the splendour of a king and the humility of a dervish at the bottom of thy heart."

The doctor made the round of the harems of the town to physic the beautiful Turkish women. Every day his house was besieged by blind men imperiously demanding eyes; consumptives, a lung; lame men, a straight leg; hunchbacks, a flat back. Most of the time, these patients desired to catch a glimpse of Lady Hester, and, their curiosity satisfied, they went to throw into the Barada the doctor's powders. But he had sick persons more serious. Ahmed Bey, of one of the most important families of the town, son of Abdallah, ex-Pacha of Damascus, sent for him to attend his son, a little boy of thirteen, ugly, rickety and deformed, and afflicted with an intermittent fever. All the resources of the Damascene medical art had been employed without effect. He had been sewn up in the skin of a sheep which had just been flayed; he had swallowed powdered pearls; he had had his feet covered by still warm pigeons. All without result.

The doctor, who had his neglected cures on his mind, required pressing at first. Then he operated and succeeded in curing the poor child. The father, overjoyed, offered him a complete outfit for the bath; very costly robe of honour to be put on on leaving the water, coffee, pipes and sherbets. These thanks in the Eastern fashion were completed by a rustic fête in the orchards which skirt the Barada.

But the treasure, the jewel of Damascus, was Fatimah, flower of beauty without rival. Her body of pure and graceful outline bore, like a half-opened corolla, the head small and delicate, the face pale and ardent, in which the great shadowy eyes extended themselves mysteriously. And her black hair, of a velvety and bluish black, descended in tresses, entangled with diamonds and gold pesetas, so far as her bare feet. The doctor thought seriously for a moment of renouncing his faith to espouse this adorable creature. Poor doctor! he was not made of the same stuff as a Turkish husband at the head of a riotous harem. Will he consider one day his astonished eyes and his sheeplike and gentle manner? In short, he remained on the border of danger. Lady Hester, on her side, associated with the Turks of rank. One of her friends received her in the midst of his harem: harem of a noble, four wives and three mistresses! None of these women were seated in the master's presence; they stood in a corner of the drawing-room, and did not mount the estrade on which he sat except to fill his pipe and serve his coffee. At dinner, they handed the dishes themselves, never speaking except when their lord asked them a question. "And yet," said Lady Hester, "he is one of the most charming and most agreeable men I know. Towards me he is very gentlemanly and as attentive and courteous as no matter who!" We suspect with what kind of eye these seven women must have regarded the intrusion of this gigantic foreign woman!

As she was visiting the wife of an effendi who had gathered together some fifty ladies to do her honour, the master all at once entered. They veiled themselves hurriedly, and he dispersed them with a brusque gesture. Remaining alone with Lady Hester, he told her that he had informed her dragoman, who shortly afterwards appeared. He kept her to supper in a marble court with groves of orange-trees. Immense gold candelabra bore candles six feet high, and little lamps suspended in clusters from the arcades were mirrored in the water of the basin. Negroes, admirably trained, waited. The effendi talked about astronomy and sent for a bulky book, concerning which he asked a thousand questions.

Strange and very significant picture, that of this Turk forsaking his harem to converse with Lady Hester about the celestial constellations and to talk with her of unknown planets. Did it not seem to her that she was descending from one of those inaccessible stars! And what abyss can be more profound, what distance can be more immeasurable, than that which separates beings kneaded by centuries of civilisation from those in whom the barbarian still sleeps? He, who up to that time had regarded women under the different aspects of a desire unceasingly awakened and unceasingly satisfied, here is he learning in turn respect, admiration, deference, here is he beginning to catch a glimpse of the equality of the sexes and the parity of their complex intelligences!

Little Giorgio, on his knees for four hours, was dead-sleepy. "He kept me until nearly ten o'clock," says the delighted Lady Hester, "an hour after the moment when everyone was obliged to remain in his house under pain of death (new decree of the pacha). All the doors were shut, but all opened for me, and they did not say a word to me."

Lady Hester had, however, another object than that of initiating the Turks into the feminist evolution. She wished to go to Palmyra—Palmyra, the far-off and fabulous town which slept in the heart of the sands, guarded by the burning steppes, without water and without life. "The Syrian desert has only one Palmyra, as the sky has only one sun." Caprice of the tourist and of the woman, adventurous taste for unbeaten tracks? indifference to or even love of danger? latent recollection of Brothers and the prophet Pierre? desire to defy the English travellers who had failed on the journey to Tadmor? And perhaps, plan secret and slowly matured of regulating and of blending together the wandering tribes of the Bedouins, of intriguing with the sheiks, of unravelling again the political skein, a skein short, knotted and entangled with Arab politics?

There are people who do not cease from imposing charity upon the poor; the needy—who cling to their life, dirty, laborious but independent, more than we think—are washed, scrubbed, brushed, nursed, taught, physicked, improved by force. Lady Hester was of the species—more rare happily—which is unable to see men scattered without wishing to group them, to liberate slaves by force and to reform the world. This instinct of domination, this thirst for authority, this imperialism, she was going to satisfy without delay upon the defenceless Arabs. And then the intercourse of a woman, of a queen, bound her. The ruins of Palmyra conjured up too faithfully the name of Zenobia!...

The pacha's two bankers, Malem Yusef and Malem Rafael, to whom she broached this subject, dissuaded her earnestly from it. The journey was excessively dangerous, and the Bedouins would not fail to make her prisoner and exact a very large ransom unless the pacha furnished her with troops. Then a certain Hanah Faknah, who had acted as guide to M. Fiott, offered to conduct her safe and sound to Palmyra. Lady Hester learned soon that he was offering to do much. What was to be done? It was impossible for her to cross the desert under a disguise, for her intentions had been divulged and her slightest movements were noted with extreme attention. She resolved to demand a formidable escort from the pacha. Sayd Soliman then made her understand, in confidence, that the Emir Mahannah, chief of the Bedouins, was in revolt against the Porte, and that the inhabitants of Palmyra were beyond the reach of Turkish justice. New indecision, new uncertainties! Meanwhile, the pacha had a crow to pluck with the cavalry: the famous Delibash, commanded by a young bey, an acquaintance of Lady Hester and son of the deposed governor. Mutiny broke out at Damascus. In the deserts, terrible news, come from Mecca, was whispered: 50,000 Wahabis were threatening the town. The Bedouins had gathered and were ready to rush to their aid. Lady Hester, isolated in her Mohammedan quarter, caught up in the whirlpool of popular anxieties, was not at all uneasy. She thought only of demanding an asylum from her friend the Emir Bechir, the prince of the Mountain, who placed his troops at her disposal. She was flattered by his reception. If, as governor, he had had diabolical inspirations, she proclaimed him, nevertheless, an agreeable and amiable man. How she was to change her opinion hereafter!