the cock has been defying achmet bukdadi again to-day.
it is a very little cock, hardly larger than a bantam; its plumage betokens a fine disregard of race; if you were pressed you might suggest a remote relationship to a game-cock. the cries of achmet bukdadi drew me to the window to see the cock, feathers raised, parading angrily and scornfully in front of him. achmet’s cries attracted two or three other children, and they ran about on our terrace trying to hustle the cock off the edge of it. finally one courageous boy lifted him by the wings, and put him on the back of another, whence he descended with feathers and dignity ruffled to the ground, while the children dispersed shrieking and laughing.
achmet had a more prompt ally two days ago, when the cock was doing sentry-go before their front yard gate and would not let achmet go home. his cries called his mother to his aid, and she came evidently prepared for the crisis, for she straightway threw the wand which was in her hand with unerring aim, and the cock fled vanquished down the village rubbish-heap.
achmet’s mother is the most silent and most graceful woman in the village. she is the youngest of bukdadi’s two wives; the other must be the mother of the sullen looking boy who lounges after our water-donkey up and down the hill, for she is grey haired, while achmet’s mother has thick black plaits under her blue head veil. she is not indifferent to matters of dress, for her outer wrapping is edged with crimson. she seems far more active than the other woman, and all her movements, in the most menial occupation, show an unconscious grace which tempts one to the full use of unusual advantages of observation. her grace is not the tender quality often so-called, but a robust deftness and certainty of action. she had to drive a lame donkey to the water the other day, and in the strokes of her staff there was no more pity for the little beast, halting and hurrying between two diverse pains, than for her own burdened womanhood. the donkey must drink; she herself would bring water for the household in the great earthenware pot balanced on her head. hesitation for the animal was as much out of the question as help for her from the stepson who lounged past her with his stick held behind his shoulders.
so she urged the animal to the pool beneath the tamarisks, and i doubt not mounted the hill again with all the speed that nature would allow.
it is well, perhaps, that she is taciturn in a yard so populous—the other wife, the two sons, bukdadi himself, seldom seen, a girl, daughter or slave, and the little achmet, not to speak of the animals—the white camel in the corner nearest the gate, the neat black water-donkey next him, for the invalid one occupies the innermost corner, the bullocks who move with deference at her bidding, besides achmet’s enemy the cock with his harîm, and the pigeons. i cannot be sure that the brown sheep belong to this yard; they are always being driven out, it is true, but whenever they are not being driven out they are going in; and it appeared that the black goat with two kids was preparing to spend the night in the hollow stem of the mud fungus, on the family platform. what makes conclusions less certain, however, is that the grey kid now dances up and down hill with the boy in the yellow-striped dress, and that the sheep have more than once called on us in our dining-room.
among all these achmet’s mother moves, sober, taciturn, efficient. one wonders when the transition comes from the laughing children to the serious, burdened woman. marriage is not the turning-point, for little saïda, with her round face and dark eyes and blue-patterned little chin, is married, though she still prefers to live with her father and be an occasional visitor at her husband’s house. and what there is of demureness in saïda compared to the ragged ahm ibrahim in wild neglected gaiety is produced evidently not by her marriage but by her blue dress and her red dress, her necklace and her earrings.
the burden of the household, but above all the care of the children, must work the change, and the trace of tenderness that there is about achmet’s mother seems all for achmet. she exercises no repressive influence on him, for achmet, with his grubby black dress, his thin, merry, ugly little face with even rows of little white teeth as he lisps his greeting—achmet, whether cantering about on a dhurra stalk, or pretending to be a man carrying stones with his grandfather, or climbing over his neighbours’ walls, is always gay.
he takes the unexpected gift without that deliberate anticipation of favours to come which is the first acquirement of the arab baby; and in his pleasures and his woes alike achmet flies to his mother, conveys to her his bakshîsh of sugar-cane; wails to her when the cock is warlike and threatening.
she had him with her one evening in the great mud chalice which forms larder, barn, and summer chamber of the arab house.
the sun had gone down, but a certain unreal glow lay on the hill behind the village; night was purpling the sky; her figure rose out of the shadowy cup powerful and graceful, with the child crouched at her feet; the work of the day was over, her heart’s desire was with her.
to-day she could not come to the child when he called, for but two nights ago there was a movement and whispering at midnight in the yard of bukdadi, and the wail arose of a voice smaller and younger than that of little achmet. so the mother rests.
