Saïd the Fisherman

I

The house of Saïd the fisherman nestled among the sandhills of the seashore at a long stone’s throw from the town, in whose shadow it lay at sunset. Within, it was a single room, very dirty, the abode of many aged smells; without, a squat cube with walls of stone and roof of mud sunbaked and rolled to a seemly flatness. Hard by was a fig-tree, the nearest to the sea in all that coast. Here, in a crotch of the branches, Saïd would place his mattress in the stifling summer nights and snore two deep bass notes in peace and coolness, while his wife trumpeted a treble from her couch upon the housetop. Here, when the day’s work was done, he would squat in the shade, drawing leisurely at his narghileh, with the sound of bubbling water to cool him at every puff.

He was not a great fisherman, such as is to be found in Europe, with a sailing-boat of his own, who will go far out to sea with his nets. If there were any such in all the coasts of Arabistan, Saïd had never heard of them. Sometimes he would row out in a friend’s boat to a little distance from the shore and drop his nets, a great circle of bobbing cork and driftwood to mark their whereabouts. But mostly he would go to some river-mouth or promontory where flat-topped rocks stretched far into the sea, promising safe foothold. And there, mother-naked, save for a huge turban, he would paddle and flounder all day long with his cast-net, sometimes alone, sometimes with several comrades.

At times, when the catch had been good, he would go into the city with a crate of fish and take his stand in the marketplace, in a corner which from long use he had come to call his own. There he would cry in a loud voice, beseeching Allah to put a craving for fish into the hearts of the passersby. And Allah often lent a kindly ear to his prayer, for he seldom went home but with an empty basket.

It was one evening as he was wending homeward, dragging his empty basket with him across the sand, that the first gust of misfortune struck him.

The sun drew near to his setting, though as yet the sky was innocent of red. Shadows lengthened eastwards across the sand, of the colour of a periwinkle flower. A number of dogs were lying replete about the body of a dead donkey at the edge of the ripples, panting drowsily with their tongues out. They blinked at him as he passed, and their bellies heaved uneasily. They were too full to snarl. A sense of well-being was upon him. He stopped to draw forth a little bag from the girdle of his robe. It contained the gains of the day. He let go the empty basket and squatted down upon the sand, telling out the money piece by piece into his lap. His eyes gloated over the pile.

He held the fingers of his left hand wide apart and touched them one by one with the forefinger of his right. His brows puckered with the effort to reckon how much he could afford to lay by in that hole in the floor of his house which held his savings.

So far as he could count, it needed but one more day like this to make up the price of the coffeehouse he had it in his mind to buy. Then he would leave the fishing business to Abdullah, his friend and partner, and customers would know him thenceforth as Saïd Effendi. That was but the first step in the path of his ambition. Presently he would be a Bey—an Emìr, perhaps. He would lie all day upon a cushioned couch, smoking from a narghileh of rare workmanship. And when Abdullah came to beg him to buy fish, he would seize him by both ears and spit in his face.

Of a sudden the sound of loud shouting broke upon his reverie.

“Oäh! Oäh! Look to thyself, son of a dog!”

He was aware of two horsemen galloping madly down upon him from a gap in the sandhills—Turkish officers of the garrison by their uniform. They were close upon him. He leapt to his feet and sprang aside just in time to save himself from being knocked down and trampled under their horses’ hoofs. He heard them laugh aloud and curse him as they sped by, blinding him for the moment in a cloud of sand.

“May their house be destroyed!” he snarled, looking after them and showing his fangs like a dog that is angry. Then he remembered the money which had been in his lap when their shouts startled him, and there was no longer any room for anger in his heart.

A wild light of hope and fear in his eyes, he flung himself full length upon the ground and fell to groping and sifting with trembling hands. But the wild rush of the horses had played the whirlwind with the sand, scattering it hither and thither and dinting it deep with hoof-prints. After many minutes of burrowing and seeking he had found only two small copper coins; and already the sun was sinking behind the city and its headland, whose shadow was within a hand’s-breadth of him. A long train of camels passed him going towards the gate, the drivers cheerful at sight of their journey’s end.

“What seekest thou, young man?” cried one of them as he passed the fisherman.

Saïd raised himself to a kneeling posture and spread his hands over his eyes.

“Away, scoffer!” he cried sternly. “Who art thou that thou shouldst question a pious man at his prayers?” Then, after an interval of meditation, he prostrated himself so that his forehead touched the sand and forthwith resumed his search, earnestly beseeching Allah to guide his fingers aright and to keep all prying strangers at a distance.

The shadow was now upon him. All the west was a blaze of red gold, so that every roof, every dome, every palm-tree upon the skyline stood outlined clear and black. It was time to give over this frantic groping and clutching which gave such meagre results. He sat up and, squatting on his heels, began a more orderly and less haphazard search, taking one handful of sand at a time, sifting it between his fingers and laying it on one side upon a heap. After more than an hour’s experience of this process he had recovered some twenty small coins, amounting perhaps to a fifth part of the sum he had lost.

Night fell: the stars shone out, blackening the bulk of the dead ass, a few paces distant, which the dogs, reinforced by stray comrades from the city, were beginning to worry anew. The ripples, breaking in luminous foam upon the beach, murmured sadly in his ears. Hunger began to get hold of him. Hasneh would be wondering what had happened, and that savoury mess of lentils and oil would be baked to a cinder. Why should he not go home, eat and drink, and return to his search later on? It was not likely that the sand would be again disturbed that night. He could come back early in the morning and collect the rest of his scattered fortune. His basket would mark the exact spot.

So thinking, he rose and went homewards. A faint light streamed from the door and window of his dwelling. Hasneh was in there with the lentils. His heart warmed at the thought, making the neighbouring void colder and more empty by contrast. As he drew near to the house a sound of wailing grew in his ears—such wailing as he had heard at funerals of the rich, where mourners were well paid for it.

His first thought was of the lentils, that they were spoilt. His next, not without relief, that someone was dead within the house. But there was no one to die except Hasneh herself, and she it was who was wailing, as he had sometimes heard her scold, in a shrill cadence. His desire to learn the truth lent wings to his feet. In a few long strides he gained the threshold.

His woman lay stretched upon the floor within—a heap of clothes from which those ghastly moans and howls proceeded, mingled with curses on some unknown being of the male sex. For a moment Saïd stood frozen in the doorway. Then the sight of something black and shrivelled in a pan upon the brazier sent angry blood coursing through every vein in his body. That something had once been a savoury mess of lentils baked in oil, the lust of which had drawn him from his search among the sand. He sprang to a corner of the room, seized a great staff which leaned against the wall, and fell to belabouring the woman with all the strength of his arm. Her droning wail changed all at once to a lively shriek. She leapt to her feet and closed with him, trying vainly to wrest the stick from his hand.

“May Allah cut short thy life!” she cried. “What have I done to deserve this of thee?”

“The lentils are spoilt!” retorted Saïd, furiously, wrenching his arm free of her and bringing the stick down heavily on her back. “May thy house be destroyed!”

“Madman!” she screamed. “Thou speakest of lentils when an enemy has robbed thee, ruined thee! Look!”

She pointed to a hole in the floor which had been hidden by her body when Saïd entered. Little mounds of fresh sand on the brink of it showed that hands had lately been at work there.

As Saïd’s eyes followed the line of her forefinger his jaw fell and the anger died out of his face. His stick clattered on the ground. Some thief had found out the place where his treasure was hidden, had come in his absence and unearthed the savings of ten long years.

He peered into the hole to assure himself that it was quite empty. Not a single para had been let fall or overlooked by the miscreant. His eyes became dull and filmy as those of a blind man. His face grew livid as the face of a corpse. He fell back against the wall of the room.

Supposing that the shock of her news had killed him, Hasneh began to wail anew, beating her breast and plucking at her robe to tear it. Her voice revived Saïd somewhat.

“Be silent,” he muttered—“thou thief! Thou alone wast in the secret of the hiding-place.”

“Thy life is my life; thy fortune, my fortune,” replied the woman, with indignation. “If thou prosperest, I prosper; and I have a part in thy loss. Listen now to the truth, nor judge me hastily unheard.

“Having prepared the lentils, I sat awaiting thy return, when my heart became sad within me. And I thought, if I uncover the hiding-place and fill my eyes with the sight of that which is good to see, there is no sin. So I took the piece of a broken vessel and scraped until the heap of coins was laid bare to mine eyes. So my heart had peace.

“And as I sat gazing upon my husband’s wealth which is mine, the voice of Abdullah called from without; ‘Behold the great fish, the giant of the deep, whose back is like Lebanon and his fins as the winnowing fans of Allah, with which he makes the winds to blow and stirs the sea to madness! It is Saïd who has brought it to land. It lies by the white stone where the nets of Saïd are spread out to dry. Run, O Hasneh, and thou shalt see that which no woman has ever seen.’

“At that I gathered up my raiment and ran out of the house, expecting to find Abdullah; but I found no man. I went all about the house, but I found not Abdullah nor any other. Then I trembled and fear came upon me. But the news of the great fish drew me onward, until I came to the white stone and found it lonely as ever and the sea-fowl undisturbed upon it. Then I knew that an evil spirit had cried in the voice of Abdullah to lead me astray. So I ran back with all speed along the shore. When I came to the house the hole was as thou seest it and all the money gone.”

Her last words were almost drowned in a flood of tears.

Saïd trembled and cold sweat stood in pearls upon his forehead.

“An evil spirit has done this,” he murmured hoarsely. “Oh, that my enemy had been a man!”

He fell to bemoaning his fate, cursing the day that he was born, and calling upon Allah to have mercy upon his faithful servant. The house that had been rifled by an evil spirit seemed dreadful and unfamiliar. The night which wrapped it about was filled with hideous faces, which glowered at him and mocked him through door and lattice. At length he exclaimed: “Abide here, Hasneh, and keep watch. If thou hearest a voice or seest any evil sight, cry aloud upon the name of Allah and thou shalt be safe.”

With that he stepped out into the night, and, girding up his robe, sped across the sand to the city, black on the starlight, where a few scattered lights shone faintly.