I still insist on undertaking the trip to Shali on foot, but am reassured by the fact that my donkey is following me, so I can ride him when my legs start shaking or my feet give out. You're an old man now, Yahya, but you still have your anger. They continue to have some respect for that anger in the council of the agwad, even though you possess no influence over them. They never used to do what I said in the past and they don't do it now, so what's the point of anger? I shall keep a hold on myself today.
The invitation sent by Sheikh Sabir yesterday puzzled me because it said that the meeting of the agwad would be at his house today instead of at our daily meeting place under the open lean-to at the entrance to Shali. My suspicions of Sabir do not stem from his being the leader of the Easterners. God knows, I don't distinguish between Easterner and Westerner, and they all know my story. It was my right to preside over the council of the agwad because I'm the eldest, but I conceded my claim of my own free will even though that angered my people, the Westerners. Let Sabir enjoy the presidency, then, but I still regard him with suspicion.
Why is he having us assemble at his house? Is it a council of war? I'm still not comfortable with him. He doesn't reveal frankly what he's after but keeps weaving and ducking. He doesn't say, 'Yahya, I'm better educated than you,' but is always boasting that he studied at the Zeitouna mosque in Tunis and repeating that there he understood them and they understood him because they speak our language. What he means is that they're not like the Egyptians who are ignorant of our language and with whom I studied when I spent a few years of my life as a boarder at the mosques of Ibraheem and Abu el Abbas in Alexandria. He looks at me while speaking as though I were responsible for the Egyptians' not knowing the language of Siwa, and I smile to myself. I feel like telling him, 'Let it go, Sabir! Your stories of Tunis and the Zeitouniya have given us headaches. You're educated and I'm ignorant. Are you happy now?' In fact, I may have actually told him that. I don't remember.
I do think I challenged him on the prophecies. He has in his possession a book which he obtained from I know not where that includes prophecies that he repeats every time the council meets. He chants them as though he were reciting from the Koran: 'It is written, O Earth, that a time shall come when you shall be as a widow who strews dust upon her bowed head. It is written that strangers shall walk your paths in pride and your people shall walk with their eyes cast down. It is written that the voice of the fool shall ring out and the wise man shall talk into his sleeve.' After these gloomy prognostications, his eyes roam over his listeners and he says, as though gloating, 'The hour of prophecy and accounting has come. How could it not, when you drink wine publicly, perpetrate abominations both open and concealed, and deliver yourselves to perdition with your own hands? Why should not torment be your just reward?'
When I hear him saying such things, I rebuke him and shout out the prayer 'May the mercy of God reach us before His anger, and may He spare us above all from the cawing of crows!' Only with difficulty do I restrain myself from asking him, 'Are those the only sins, my dear sheikh? Isn't the desire to bring about ruination also a sin? And you — are you not a slave to pride and consumed by hatred? You hate us Westerners and you hide your hatred behind your supposed prophecies, as though you wanted all the disasters therein to befall us "today before tomorrow". And why, Sheikh Sabir, do you hide what is inside you and not reveal it?' Take care, Yahya! Now you're thinking like them. You still see through the eyes of the Westerners no matter how hard you try.
All the same, I can't think of those prophecies without smiling when I remember Maleeka. She was small, perhaps about four years old. She'd barely learnt to speak but could imitate the men and women and everyone laughed when they heard her, except for her mother. Maleeka would narrow her eyes or open them to their widest, she'd pout her lips or suck in her cheeks, and she'd change the features of her beautiful face and try at the same time to change her childish voice to match the person she was imitating. My sister Khadeeja considered what Maleeka did to be scandalous and would hit and kick her to stop her speaking, so she'd run to me and take refuge behind my back, screaming, 'Save me, Uncle!' I'd rebuke my sister, of course, but at the same time I'd try to shut Maleeka up, to no avail, especially when she was imitating Sabir. She'd show the whites of her eyes and repeat in a voice that she'd try to roughen the prophecies of the horrid sheikh of which she understood not a word. I'd put my hand over her mouth so that she wouldn't repeat in front of the children and women things they shouldn't hear, but I couldn't help laughing all the same. Khadeeja reproached me for encouraging her daughter to be what she called 'shameless', but who could stop Maleeka? Beating didn't work on her and neither did leniency, not when she was a child and not when she'd grown up. It's how you were fated to be, Maleeka!
When I reached the council of the agwad at the house of Sheikh Sabir and saw them sitting in a circle there, I smelt once more the smell of war and my heart sank. I saw one of our zaggala from the West sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up to his chest away from the circle of the agwad. None of the agwad of our clan had informed me that the man would be attending, so could he have something to do with this secret council? The zaggala are also the troops of the agwad on the battlefield and they have a say in matters of war and peace. I prayed that God would disprove my fears.
No one spoke. The silence went on and on and they sat in a circle on the cushions, each evading his brother's eye. To avoid talking they picked dates from the baskets placed in front of them and busied themselves in their lengthy chewing. What were they waiting for?
Eventually, Sheikh Sabir cleared his throat and said, 'The district commissioner has summoned me to meet him.'
Eyes were raised towards him and he continued slowly, 'And the commissioner has told me that he has sent a new letter to Cairo and is expecting the answer with the next caravan.'
He fell silent again. My patience wore out and I said, 'And so, Sheikh Sabir? What did he write in his letter and what is the answer he's expecting? Why don't you speak quickly and let us go?'
After a long struggle, we got it out of Sabir that the commissioner had sent a request once again for the reduction of the tax and that the oasis's yearly liability should be one thousand camel-loads of dates instead of two, plus two hundred camel-loads of olive oil instead of five hundred. He had also requested the cancellation of the penalty for late payment.
Pandemonium broke out from the agwad, Easterners and Westerners alike. We'd asked for the reduction of the tax to five hundred camel-loads of dates and one hundred of olive oil. Why hadn't the commissioner asked for what we'd agreed on?
Sabir said that the commissioner had informed him that the orders he'd brought with him were for an increase in the liability, not a reduction, and that if they agreed in Cairo to what he'd asked for, we should thank God.
The angry mutterings of the agwad continued and Sheikh Abd el Majid of the Easterners said, 'If it were up to me, I wouldn't pay anything and let them do what they like.'
Another Eastern sheikh whom I couldn't identify responded to him in a low voice, after the commotion had calmed down, 'Every time we say that and refuse to pay the tax. Then we pay it in the end, and on top of it the late fees, when the armies and the guns come.'
Silence reigned once more. Then Sheikh Sabir said, 'You're right,' and next (like one at the end of his tether) 'and I forgot to tell you that the commissioner informed me that he will not deal himself with the families over the gathering of the tax, as used to be the case, but will hold me to account and consider me responsible for the accounts of the agwad and their families and the whole tax, as decided on by Cairo.'