Mohammed Ali and His House | Page 5

boys are to blame for it!" cries a third, turning to the group who stood near the men, closely wrapped in their brown cloaks, the hoods pulled down over their eyes.
"Why did you encourage him to undertake so daring a feat?" cried a fourth, pointing threateningly toward the boys.
"It is not our fault, Sheik Emir," said one of them, defiantly; "he would do so."
"Mohammed always was proud and haughty," exclaimed another. "We told him that a storm was coming, and that we would go home. But he wouldn't, sheik."
"That is to say," said the sheik, angrily--"that is to say, you have been ridiculing the poor boy again?"
"He is always so proud, and thinks himself something better than the rest of us," murmured the boy, "though he is something worse, and may some day be a beggar if--"
The storm now began to rage more furiously; the waves towered higher, and threw their spray far on to the shore and high upon the rock, as though determined to make known its dread majesty to the inhabitants of the city of Cavalla, which stands with its little houses, narrow streets, and splendid mosque, on the plateau of the rock of Bucephalus. On the summit of the rock a woman is kneeling, her hands extended imploringly toward heaven; she has allowed the white veil to fall from her face, and her agonized features are exposed to view, regardless of the law that permits her to reveal her countenance in the harem only. What are the laws to her? where is the man to command her to veil her countenance? who says to her: "You belong to me, and my heart glows with jealousy when others behold you"?
No one is there who could thus address her; for she is a widow, and calls nothing on earth her own, and loves nothing on earth but her son, her Mohammed Ali.
She knows that he has gone out to sea in a frail skiff to cross over to the island-rock Imbro. The boys have told her of the daring feat which her son had undertaken with them. Filled with anxiety, they had come up to the widow of Ibrahim to announce that her son had refused to return with them after they had started in their fisher- boats for the island of Imbro. "I have begun it and I'll carry it out," the proud boy had replied to them. "You have ridiculed me, and think yourselves better oarsmen than I, and now you shall see that I alone shall cross over to Imbro, while you cowardly return when the storm begins to rage."
This was his reply, and in their anxiety they had repeated it to his mother Khadra, telling her, at the same time, that they were innocent of her son's misdeed, and had begged him in his mother's name to return with them. There she kneels on the brow of the rock, gazing out upon the water, imploring Allah to restore her son, and conjuring the raging sea to bear back her child to the shore.
The mother's entreaties are ardent, and strong is her prayer to Allah and to Nature.
The ghins, the evil spirits themselves, hold their breath and flap their black wings more gently when they rustle past the spot where a mother weeps and prays for her son!
But a tear drops from the eyes of the good spirits when they meet such a mother, and this tear is potent to save her child. Perhaps at this moment an agathodaemon has flown by, has seen the agonized mother, and has let fall a tear upon the waters, for at this moment they become more tranquil. Perhaps the ghins have suddenly been swept away by the whirlwind, Zeboah, for the storm is now hushed.
The storm is stilled, though from time to time its mighty breath is again heard; and then it is again mute, and the waves roll in upon the shore less furiously. The sky, too, begins to grow clear. The sun looks out from between the clouds, and throws a long golden streak of light across the waves, as if to conciliate with its smile the foaming sea, and smooth its furrowed brow.
Now, a single, mighty cry resounds from above, from the place where the mother is kneeling. It seems to find its echo here below on the shore where the men and boys are standing. It is a cry of joy, of ecstasy. And all hands are raised and pointed across the water to the spot where the island-rock, Imbro, must lie. It is not visible; the waves have surged over it, as they always do when the storm rages, but they know that it must lie there. And there--a black spot! It dances on the waves, and is lifted above the white spray.