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Updated: June 6, 2025
Only one other song he loves more than the twittering tune of Larbi. Sometimes, when twilight is falling over the Sahara, his mother calls him to her, to the white wall where she is sitting beneath a jamelon tree. "Listen, Boris!" she whispers. The little boy climbs up on her knee, leans his face against her breast and obeys.
Larbi had come with his flute and the perfume-seller from his black bazaar. For Domini had bought perfumes from him on her last day in Beni-Mora. Most of Count Anteoni's gardeners had assembled. They looked upon the Roumi lady, who rode magnificently, but who could dream as they dreamed, too, as a friend.
Androvsky stopped, stood still with his back turned towards her. And Larbi, hidden and far off, showered out his little notes of African love, of love in the desert where the sun is everlasting, and the passion of man is hot as the sun, where Liberty reigns, lifting her cymbals that are as spheres of fire, and the footsteps of Freedom are heard upon the sand, treading towards the south.
We do not have water poured out over our fingers before the meal begins, the preliminary wash in the tent is invisible and does not count, and we do not say "Bismillah" before we start eating. We are just heathens, they must say to themselves. Our daily bathing seems to puzzle them greatly. I do not notice that little Larbi or his brother Kasem ever tempt the sea to wash or drown them.
"Larbi must be in there," Domini whispered to Smain, as a person whispers in a church. "No, he is among the trees beyond." "But someone is there." She pointed to the arched window-space nearest to them. A thin spiral of blue-grey smoke curled through it and evaporated into the shadows of the trees. After a moment it was followed gently and deliberately by another. "It is not Larbi.
Yet Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still played the little tune that was as the leit motif of the eternal renewal of life. And within herself she carried God's mystery of renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was to help to carry forward the banner of life.
For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell. But the silence lasted and she went on and came to the fumoir. She went into it at once and sat down. She was going to wait for Androvsky here. Her mind was straying curiously to-day.
Then she stood still, instinctively listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and her own despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she wanted, that she needed it the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent. Had he fallen out of an old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was he dead?
When they were sitting side by side, closely guarded by the gigantic fig and chestnut trees which grew in this part of the garden, he added: "Whom does he love?" "No doubt one of those native women whom you consider utterly without attraction," she answered with a faint touch of malice which made him redden. "But you come here every day?" he said. "Yes. Has he ever seen you?" "Larbi? Often.
"He really has no shame where his heart is concerned." "Arab!" said the Count. "He has learnt it in Beni-Mora." "Perhaps he has taken lessons from Larbi," said Domini. "Hark! He is playing to-day. For whom?" "I never ask now," said the Count. "The name changes so often." "Constancy is not an Arab fault?" Domini asked. "You say 'fault, Madame," interposed the priest.
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