Ali said nothing, but drew up his haik over his mouth and nose, and looked into the night, folding his thin hands in his burnous.
“Achmed will sleep in the Bordj of Arba,” continued Batouch in a low, murmuring voice, as if speaking to himself. “And the beasts will be in the court. Nothing can remain outside, for there will be a greater roaring of the wind at Arba. Can it be the will of Allah that we rest in the tents to-morrow?”
Ali made no answer. The wind had suddenly died down.
The sand grains came no more against their eyelids and the folds of their haiks. Behind them the negro’s drum gave out monotonously its echo of the wind, filling the silence of the night.
“Whatever Allah sends,” Batouch went on softly after a pause, “Madame will go. She is brave as the lion. There is no jackal in Madame. Irena is not more brave than she is. But Madame will never wear the veil for a man’s sake. She will not wear the veil, but she could give a knife-thrust if he were to look at another woman as he has looked at her, as he will look at her to-morrow. She is proud as a Touareg and there is fierceness in her. But he will never look at another woman as he will look at her to-morrow. The Roumi is not as we are.”
The wind came back to join its sound with the drum, imprisoning the two Arabs in a muttering circle.
“They will not care,” said Batouch. “They will go out into the storm without fear.”
The sand pattered more sharply on his eyelids. He drew back into the café. Ali followed him, and they squatted down side by side upon the ground and looked before them seriously. The noise of the wind increased till it nearly drowned the noise of the negro’s drum. Presently the one-eyed owner of the café brought them two cups of coffee, setting the cups near their stockinged feet. They rolled two cigarettes and smoked in silence, sipping the coffee from time to time. Then Ali began to glance towards the negro. Half shutting his eyes, and assuming a languid expression that was almost sickly, he stretched his lips in a smile, gently moving his head from side to side. Batouch watched him. Presently he opened his lips and began to sing:
“The love of women is like a date that is golden in the sun,
That is golden—
The love of women is like a gazelle that
comes to drink—
To drink at the water springs—
The love of women is like the nargileh, and like the dust of
the keef
That is mingled with tobacco and with honey.
Put the reed between thy lips, O loving man!
And draw dreams from the haschish that is the love of women!
Janat! Janat! Janat!”
The wind grew louder and sand was blown along the café floor and about the coffee-cups.