Lalla Christabel now became a frequent visitor in Fatima’s home. Zubeida’s wistful face took on a new expression as she listened to her gentle teaching. From the first, she drank in every word, so that Lalla Christabel was soon able to pass from the simpler Bible stories to the deeper teaching of the Lord’s death, and the power of the precious blood to cleanse from all sin.
So it was not long before Zubeida, too, opened her heart to the Savior, and found in Him a Friend and Comforter such as she had never dreamed of in her poor, almost loveless life.
It was beautiful to see the change in Zubeida after she had made this great discovery. Even Sidi Abd-er-Rahman noticed the new brightness in her eyes, and the gentleness of her voice and manner. Up to this time, she had often been irritable with him, and although this was mostly due to ill-health, yet to Sidi Abd-er-Rahman it seemed unjust in the extreme, for he considered himself a very good husband, as, indeed, comparatively speaking, he was.
“O, Zubeida, this is a very good dish that you have prepared for me,” he remarked once at the noon meal.
Zubeida beamed with happiness, for she had taken special pains with its preparation, in order to please her husband.
“The last time I had it,” continued Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “there was not enough pepper, and as for the onions, I could scarcely taste them. How is it that you have cooked so much better lately? “
Zubeida became bold. For some time she had been praying for strength to confess Christ to her husband, and now suddenly the strength seemed given.
“I do it to please our Lord Jesus,” she replied, “and since I have given my heart to Him, He helps me with my cooking.”
There was a pause. “The dish is excellent,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, for he could think of nothing else to say. Then he remembered his own words regarding his little Fatima. “I want her to have a Christian character but not to be a Christian.”
But could Zubeida really be thinking of “changing her religion?” “No matter,” he muttered to himself, as he put on his burnous and went off to the café. “No matter, she is only a woman!”
Poor Lalla Dorothy was having a bad time. She was Lalla Christabel’s young helper who taught the native embroidery to the little Arab girls, and since quite early morning everything had been going wrong. To begin with, the sirrocco was blowing, the hot wind from the desert which always gave her a headache. Then Lalla Christabel had been obliged to go out, and had left her to give the little girls their Scripture lesson. This made her nervous, for she knew that her Arabic pronunciation still amused her pupils, especially the younger ones.
Worst of all, the children were determined to be naughty. Three or four embroidery frames were pushed on to her lap, their owners all clamoring for attention at the same time.
“I am not coming to embroidery tomorrow,” said the biggest girl, with a meaning look at the others, some of whom laughed rudely.
“And why not, O Yamma?” asked Lalla Dorothy. “We have a feast in our houses,” two or three answered at once.
“Do not scream, O my daughters,” said Lalla Dorothy. “What feast, then, is this?”
“It is the Mouloud,” replied Yamma, with a defiant look. “The Birthday of the Prophet.”
The look was lost on Lalla Dorothy, whose head was bent over an embroidery-frame. But now Yamma took up a familiar strain, the rest joining in mischievously, one after another.
“Jesus and Muhammad are keef-keef (the same)! Jesus and Muhammad are the same!” Little Fatima had laid down her frame, and sat quite shocked, looking now at Lalla Dorothy, now at the young rebels at her feet.
“O Yamma, you know this is not the truth,” Lalla Dorothy said gravely. She had hoped great things for Yamma, and her fair young face flushed with disappointment. “Do me the favor of being quiet.”
“It is the truth, Yamma has the truth!” cried the chorus of excited voices, while little Zenib chimed in, more in bravado than anything else.
“Jesus is good, and Muhammad is good! The same thing! Both are good. This is the truth. The truth, O Lalla Dorothy!”
Poor Lalla Dorothy did not know enough Arabic to argue the matter, so she could only shake her head sadly, and command silence.
But when Lalla Christabel heard of this little incident, she quite understood. “It is just the mouloud coming on,” she said consolingly. “They are always restive at these feast-times.” And she arranged that Lalla Dorothy should take the children to the seaside on the chief day of the feast, because some of the proceedings are such that they are better away from them.
“Fatima’s mother will certainly allow her to go,” said Lalla Dorothy.
“I am not so sure about her father,” Lalla Christabel replied.
Lalla Christabel was right. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman would not hear of Fatima’s being away on the great day of the mouloud. He was determined that she should keep the feast, and Zubeida also.
For some time past, he had been growing more uneasy about the teaching which his wife and daughter were receiving from the Christians. Zubeida’s words, though he had never mentioned them again, lingered uncomfortably in his mind. Moreover, his brother-in-law, Saleh, from his distant home in the mountains, had taken the trouble to write him a long, warning letter on the same subject.
“Now,” thought Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “at the mouloud it shall be seen by all that my wife and daughter are good Moslems. Not one item of the feast shall be left out in my house. My wife shall go with the other women to the baths, the cemetery and the tomb of the marabout (pronounced marraboo, a Moslem “saint”). Fatima shall have the best toy that I can buy her, and as many sweets and cakes as she can eat.”
On the first evening of the feast, when they go with candles to the special service in the mosque, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, coming in from the French town, produced a cardboard box from under his burnous and handed it to Fatima. After much unwrapping of tissue paper, a beautiful doll appeared dressed in the latest Parisian style, and able not only to shut and open her eyes, but to walk across the floor, and to say, with a charming doll-accent, “Oui” and “Non,” “Merci,” and “s’il vous plait.”
No need to ask if Fatima was pleased. Laying for a moment her precious new baby in the box, she flung her arms around her father’s neck.
“I love you, I love you!” cried the child. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman took her on his knee.
“And I, do I love you, O Fatima?” he asked, looking into the glowing face.
“Yes, father,” she replied, nestling against him.
“Would I ever beat you, O my daughter?” he went on, after a pause.
Fatima was surprised. “Oh, no, father,” she replied at once. “Certainly you would never beat your daughter.”
“Because I love you, O Fatima, I would beat you, but only for two reasons. First, if, when you are older, if you refuse to marry the man that I choose to be your husband; and secondly, if you ever change your religion.”
“What does that mean, father, to change one’s religion?” asked the child.
“No matter now,” he replied, relieved. “You will know when you are older. Tomorrow, you will take your new doll, and go with your mother to the baths. The next day, you will visit the marabout in the country. This is the children’s feast, and I want my daughter to have a happy time.”
Poor Zubeida, cooking at the other side of the curtain, had overhead the conversation between Fatima and her father, and had understood better than the child what Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was driving at. She was far from well, and her hands, usually so deft, trembled as they kneaded the semolina.
A few hours earlier, Lalla Christabel had called, and Zubeida, of her own accord, had told her that she did not wish to go to the marabout as was the custom during the feast.
“I do not want to walk in two ways,” she had said simply. “The way of Christ is best, and I wish to walk in that only.”
Lalla Christabel, rejoicing in the clear light that had come to Zubeida’s soul, told her that she must expect her husband to be angry; and together they prayed that strength would be given for the coming trial.
The next day an opportunity came to tell her husband. Missing a little silver case which she had been in the habit of wearing around her neck, he asked abruptly, “Where is your charm?”
“I have put it away,” she replied.
“And the paper that was inside, that the marabout wrote for you when you were ill?”
“It is burnt,” she said, looking full at him. “O, my husband, I have no more need of charms, and I do not wish ever to go to the marabout again. Jesus is my Savior now, and He can do for my body all that the marabout could do, and also very much more.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had a good deal of self-control, but his face grew white as he looked at his wife.
“Don’t be a fool, Zubeida,” he said, keeping himself with an effort from seizing hold of her. “You know what is in front of you; do you wish to die, burning the marabout’s writing just at this time? Now understand, tomorrow I will give you money, and you will go with the rest to the marabout, and ask him to write you a fresh paper,” and, without waiting for an answer, he strode off out of the house.
“She won’t dare to disobey me,” he said to himself, as he went towards the café. “What! Should it be said that Abd-er-Rahman ben el-Hadj Abd-er-Rahman could not govern his own house?”