Free Among the Faithful by Dahris Martin

row against the wall facing the door sat the black shrouded figures of the musicians . Kadeja’s mood on the one hand and these sombre presences on the other created in us an even greater uncertainty as to the exact nature of the occasion. With restraint we acknowledged our welcome. We were composing ourselves upon the bed when one of the black bundles chirruped to us in Eltifa’s voice, ‘Welcome, O Rose! In Allah’s name be welcome, O Sultana!’ A standard feature of our evenings at Kalipha’s was a little game in which each side made extravagant attempts to out-compliment the other. Eltifa’s startling salutation solicited from us like rejoinders. ‘Eltifa is like the jasmine,’ we told her hesitantly, hardly daring to smile. ‘Eltifa is the golden date.’ Her sister performers came to her assistance now and it needed all Kalipha’s ingenuity for Beatrice and me to hold our own in so unequal a contest. The vociferous merriment which it provoked relieved us of any further constraint.
    Suddenly Shelbeia, bedizened with bright silks and party make-up, appeared on the threshold. It was something of a shock to find her in such high spirits! There was not the slightest indication that she housed a rampaging djinn. I appealed to Kalipha, ‘Then this is not really such a serious occasion?’ He seemed at loss for an answer.
    ‘Serious, yes,’ he replied, ‘but not too serious.’
    Shelbeia summoned the musicians to dinner and they filed out in lock-step murmuring and laughing among themselves. Kadeja thendeposited the kassar before us and while Kalipha, Farrah, Beatrice and I devoted ourselves to the excellent macaroni, Boolowi, not yet of an age when he might eat with the men, sat patiently by in his high Egyptian fez. When the bowl was removed and the coffees were served, Kadeja and the little boy, their backs towards us, ate their own supper at the opposite end of the room.
    Now and then as she turned her head I saw that Kadeja’s profile was singularly pure. Smallpox had long ago cheated her of any claim to beauty, it was doubtful whether she could see from one eye, but the warmth of her character, her ripe personality endowed even her ravaged countenance with a kind of beauty. How different she was from the spineless neurotic women I had met and yet she had been conditioned to the same inviolable seclusion that had made them what they were. ‘Ah, Kadeja. She is another thing,’ was her uncle’s way of putting it, ‘she is like a man!’
    The supper things had been cleared away when the thud of the knocker followed by Shelbeia’s shrill melodious joy-cries sent Kadeja flying into the court. The guests had arrived. ‘Alla-la-cen! Alla-la-cen!’ Again and again the zaghareet * pierced the confused greetings and solicitous inquiries. ‘In Allah’s name, be welcome!’ ‘How are you, my sister!’ ‘And Baba Mohammed?’ ‘Well, thanks be to Allah!’ ‘And Fatma?’ ‘And thy maternal grandmother?’ ‘May the occasion profit thee!’ ‘And the little ones?’ ‘Welcome in the name of Allah!’ ‘There is no ill?’ ‘To Allah be the praise!’ During the flurry, Shelbeia’s husband, a grave kindly fellow, slipped in and was invited to sit with us on the bed.
    Chattering, laughing, unpinning their veils, ten or twelve women entered. Most of them, being old friends, doffed their haïks without shame before the three men, the exceptions remained cocooned, one in white, the other in black wrappings – a state which, as the evening progressed, appeared not to incommode them in the least.
    From our vantage seat at the far end we watched the long narrow room transformed into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colours – rose, peacock blue, green, orange, cerise, gold and purple – shifting and glittering in the murky lamplight. Kalipha’s other sister Jannat was there,a short, plump woman with the face of a clean little pig and we were pleased to see that Fatma had been allowed to come. She was already