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Updated: May 5, 2025
Look to this man! And she began to pour water on him weeping, till he revived from his swoon; and, seeing her in tears said to her, 'What causeth thee to weep, O Fatimah? She replied, 'O Commander of the Faithful, I saw thee lying prostrate before us and thought of thy prostration in death before Almighty Allah, of thy departure from the world and of thy separation from us.
"Sidi," said Habeebah, "I have promised that you will liberate her father." "Fetch her," said Ben Aboo, "and it shall be done." But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there, and heard of the vain hope which had brought her. "My sweet jewel of gold and silver," the black woman cried, "you don't know what you are doing.
"Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?" cried Fatimah. "Alack! girl," said Habeebah, "the maid is sickening again." And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams.
But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in dread to her father's side. "God be gracious to my father, look at that," whispered Fatimah. "My child, my poor child," said Israel, "is there but one thing in life that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!"
Perhaps this kind of water-cooler is very old, and Solomon himself looked at one when he wrote the words: "As cold waters to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country." It was on a Sunday afternoon that I first met Blind Fatimah and greeted her with Salaam aleikum and she answered aleikum es salaam! "Peace be to you and on you be peace." I asked if she could read.
The Jews of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter, that their Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night. Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her nightdress. She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she laughed as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to her mother's chamber.
"Naomi!" The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind. "My father!" she whispered. "Where did you learn it?" said Israel. "Fatimah, she taught me," Naomi answered; and then she added quickly, as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, "Oh yes, it was I! Was I not beautiful?"
When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses.
Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was, therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. "The Imam is good, the Imam is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?"
And the distinction widens when Hamed rides in the "powder-play," or is trusted to keep shop by himself, while Fátimah is closely veiled and kept a prisoner indoors, body and mind unexercised, distinguishable by colour and dress alone from Habîbah, the ebony slave-girl, who was sold like a calf from her mother's side.
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