The time came for me to question her about her brother, a young man about whom I had heard nothing but bad.
There was a moment’s pause. “My family in Fez is fine, God be praised,” she said all in a rush. “They all heard about my husband’s death, but the great distance has kept us apart. The only person who was able to come was my brother on my mother’s side.”
“You have a brother on your mother’s side? Where is he now?”
She looked seriously worried and lowered her gaze. “Sha‘ban knows a lot about him,” she said. “I’ve never liked or accepted this brother of mine. My family sent him here to share my misery. If only they hadn’t done it! Tell him, Sha‘ban.”
“Tell him, you say? Tell him what? About his debauched behavior? About his threats to beat me up if I don’t leave him alone? About his cross-dressing and pseudo-female mischief? His drunkenness and lewd dancing in brothels? The things I know are better said by you.”
It was obvious that Umm al-Banin was too embarrassed to talk about a subject that transgressed all normal bounds of modesty and decency. I saved her the task of saying any more by asking whether she wanted him to stay or to leave.
“This wretched boy is a thorn in my side,” she said. “All night I try to forget about him; all day I spend serving him with hand and cash. If only I could find some way of getting rid of him, sir, I would gladly donate all my rings and bracelets to the cause.”
“Leave the whole thing to me. I’ll make use of the law and regulations set by our noble imams to find a way of getting rid of him. For the time being, I’m going to leave you in God’s tender care. I will see you next week after I have made the necessary arrangements and paid my respect at Hammu’s tomb in the graveyard.”
Umm al-Banin clutched at my burnous and requested that I stay for dinner, but I declined by claiming that I needed to rest. With that she disappeared for a moment, then came back with the pile of documents that she said her late husband had commissioned her to hand over to me. It consisted of the record of the dictations recorded during the seven evenings. I told her that Sha‘ban would soon bring her the gift I had brought back for her from the pilgrimage. She started kissing my hand, calling down blessings on me, and begging me to remember her and visit her house. As we left, I heard Sha‘ban saying farewelclass="underline" “Be patient, Ma’am, be patient. Were I my master’s age, I would marry you in accordance with the custom of God and His Prophet.”
As I made my way out of the house, an old woman gave me a penetrating stare; from her looks she seemed to be leaping to conclusions about my visit to Umm al-Banin’s house and raising a whole flood of tricky questions about my motives. God preserve us from prying eyes. God, Protector of Honor, be my witness that I only visited al-Hihi’s widow to offer my condolences. My hand will only ever be extended to her in order to offer assistance. O God, if I gave her interests preference during my pilgrimage and allowed my mind free rein in thinking of her, You alone know the contexts of people’s minds. You are forgiving and merciful!
For an entire month, days and nights passed. I stayed at home either correcting the section of my history on the eastern region or examining al-Hihi’s transcript of my dictation and making the odd marginal note or addition. Once again I found myself surveying the ongoing flow of events and there from the inability of texts to examine and comprehend them from every viewpoint. The world, be it external or internal — and I may well have said this on some occasion — needs constant, ongoing research. I don’t consider individual efforts aimed at coming to grips with it to be sufficient, nor do I approve of talk about the impossibility of error or confusion and the irrelevance of specialized knowledge and emendation. Religious scholars are indeed heirs of the prophets, as the saying has it. All well and good, but only on condition that they humble themselves before God and leave the gates of independent judgment open for the enlightening rays of truth and the additions provided by later generations of those who cherish research and wisdom.
Where Umm al-Banin was concerned, my researches were of a different kind, a situation where heart and powerful feelings were in charge. Opening my eyes every morning, I would find them still moist with the vision that constantly preoccupied my attention and attracted my deepest affection; and all that was quite apart from the way in which the image of her haunted my moments of distraction and daydreaming.
As the month passed, I went to visit her with Sha‘ban every Friday evening. Gradually I found myself becoming her protector and benefactor, meeting her needs with the maximum degree of subterfuge and concealment. Every time I sat and talked to her, I could feel my sense of responsibility toward her grow stronger. A precious trust for me to take on, a priority on my agenda, these were the terms I used to describe her to myself.
During the course of my visit at the end of that particular month, I was eager to tell Umm al-Banin that the text of her complaint against her brother now contained signatures from witnesses as to his unseemly behavior and the harm he was causing her. In reply she told me that he was actually asleep in a neighboring house. That took me aback, and I was not sure what to do next. Leaving at this point would be a sign of cowardice, while staying might well bring some unanticipated and undesirable consequences. I asked my hostess quietly what she thought should be done. “Let’s cut it off at the head,” she whispered in my ear, “and let whatever happens happen.” I gave the whole thing a moment’s more thought, invoking brain and instinct in the process. I decided that my equivocal situation inside Umm al-Banin’s house did not give me the right to take on the police’s role when it came to defending her. Were I to do that, a whole scandal might erupt around me, one that would give rumormongers and pranksters the juiciest of tidbits to play with. Just as I was standing up to leave, I saw the reprobate coming straight toward me. “Who’s this?” he asked his sister. He was indeed just as I had heard him described: effeminate in appearance and talking and gesturing just like a woman. He seemed drunk and ready for trouble. Umm al-Banin was understandably distraught, but it was Sha‘ban who intervened. “This is your master, you rogue!” he said. “The friend of your late brother-in-law.”
I headed for the door and went outside, closely watched all the while by a group of women headed by the old woman I referred to earlier. As I went on my way, followed by my servant, I heard the threatening words of the young man behind me: “Ah me, I’m sick!” he shouted. “But for that, I’d have made a public spectacle out of you.”