“Tabakoh câsi. (His disposition is cruel.) He is hated even by our own people,” she exclaimed, when I had concluded. “His brutality is fiendish to us and to strangers alike; but when Infidels are brought into his presence, his rage is absolutely ungovernable. Thy torture was not so horrible as some I myself have witnessed. Once, near Téhe-n-Aïeren, at the foot of Mount El Aghil, a young Zouave soldier strayed into our camp, and, being captured, was brought before him. Because the Infidel’s eyes had rested upon one of his women, he ordered them both to be gouged out and sent to the French commandant at Ideles. Then the man’s ears followed, then his nose, then his hands, and after keeping him alive in fearful torture for nearly three weeks, the body of the wretched prisoner was covered with date juice and placed upon an ant-hill, where he was literally devoured by the insects.”
“Horrible!” I said, shuddering. “Are such tortures common among thy tribe?”
“Alas!” she answered, rearranging her pillow; “cruelties such as these are frequently practised, even upon us. Neither men, women, nor children are safe. Those who give our mighty lord offence always pay the penalty with their lives, but never before they have been tortured.”
“Yet thou art anxious to return among them?”
“Yes,” she replied, with an earnest look. As she lay curled up in her cage-like litter, she had the air of a little savage with the grace of a child. “I do not wish to be loved as I have been, like a slave,” she added in a confidential tone.
“But thou hast ruled the harem of the Sheikh, and hast been chief of his great household,” I observed.
“True,” she answered. “But there are circumstances in our lives we cannot forget; there are people who dwell always in the house of our memory.”
I nodded. The truth was easily guessed.
“Two days before being torn from my people,” she continued bitterly, “I met, by mere chance, a man of mine own people whom I have never ceased to remember. It was a chance meeting, and by no fault of mine own was my veil drawn aside. Neither of us spoke, but I knew we loved each other. My father told me he was one of the most daring of the men-at-arms Hadj Absalam sends against the homards, a notorious thief and cut-throat, to secure whose capture the Roumis away at Algiers have offered two bags of gold.” She sighed, then added simply, “Though he may be a murderer, I shall love him, even until Allah bringeth me to Certainty.” (The hour of death.)
She spoke with the passionate ardour of her race. The love of the Arab woman knows neither the shame nor the duplicity of vice. Proud of her submission as a slave, she can love even a murderer without losing any of her self-respect. In her eyes, her tenderness is legitimate; her glory is to conquer the heart. The man she loves is her master, she abandons herself to him without failing in any duty. A daughter of Al-Islâm, she fulfils her destiny according to the moral traditions and beliefs of her country, and she remains faithful to them by loving the man she chooses; her religion has no other rule, her virtue no other law.