The Scapegoat [100]
end were playing cards, and two Arabs that were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and of indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant bangs, and the moves of the "dogs" were like lightning. First a mocking voice: "_You_ call yourself a player! There!--there!--there!" Then a meek, piping tone: "So--so--verily, you are my master. Well, let us praise Allah for your wisdom." But soon a wild burst of irony: "You are like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See! thus I teach you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!--there!--and there!"
In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. "We're all having it done," he was saying. "It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of pilgrims once." A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint, a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and crying "Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!" Near to this person a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa, brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune that he had heard on the coast.
Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the ground.
A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of bread. "Hungry, brother? No?" said the youth. "Cheer up, Sidi! No good letting the donkey ride on your head!"
This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless, facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--
El Arby was a black man They called him "'Larby Kosk:" He loved the wives of the Kasbah, And stole slippers in the Mosque.
Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. "Stay here," he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was quelled; "never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will come back." After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him. He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of water by the way.
At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild shouts as each one found his own. "Blessed be God! She's here! here!" Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come. "My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?" After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying off one by one. "Dead, you say?" "Dead!" "No, no!" "Yes, yes!" "No, no, I say!" "I say yes! God forgive me! died last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta."
In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. "We're all having it done," he was saying. "It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of pilgrims once." A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint, a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and crying "Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!" Near to this person a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa, brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune that he had heard on the coast.
Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the ground.
A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of bread. "Hungry, brother? No?" said the youth. "Cheer up, Sidi! No good letting the donkey ride on your head!"
This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless, facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--
El Arby was a black man They called him "'Larby Kosk:" He loved the wives of the Kasbah, And stole slippers in the Mosque.
Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. "Stay here," he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was quelled; "never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will come back." After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him. He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of water by the way.
At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild shouts as each one found his own. "Blessed be God! She's here! here!" Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come. "My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?" After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying off one by one. "Dead, you say?" "Dead!" "No, no!" "Yes, yes!" "No, no, I say!" "I say yes! God forgive me! died last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta."