Halima And The Scorpions | Page 2

rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins.
And the Ouled Naïls could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their
huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their
painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let
no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense
door key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge
brass nails, such as stands by each dancer's bed.
And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing

should be between the hands of an Ouled Naïl, a girl of no repute, come
thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
pockets of loose livers.
Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
Ben-Abid belonged to the Tribu des blancs, and was the singer attached
to the café of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each
evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted
up his voice in the song "Lalia":
"Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies trembling-- O
Lalia! O Lalia! The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy
love.
Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest silver-- And I,
Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of what will come. O Lalia!
O Lalia!"
The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
refrain of "Wur-ra-Wurra!" and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his
tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown
throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
"Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her," he
murmured. "Ben Ali Tidjani's blessing could never rest on an Ouled
Naïl, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha's
bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a
treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who
wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the
stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who
patrol the dunes."
And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument,
while Kouïdah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook

the tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid
had spoken.
Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there
were found many to believe Ben-Abid's words. She stood before her
room upon the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the
dancers in the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son
of a scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon
his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous
reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted,
vexed her to the soul.
"Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
repeat what he has said!" she cried. "Let him come out from his lair in
the café of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit in his
face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be his------"
And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid,
and to all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over
their card games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not
ill-pleased with Ben-Abid's words. For even in the Sahara the women
do not care that one of them should be exalted above the rest.
Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
Halima. Kouïdah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the café of
the hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
"To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima," he
murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in
his hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his
eyes, and swaying his head from side to side.
And Kouïdah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market;

when the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
jerseys of