Even this last disaster they charged in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now cursing them for Israel's sake.They were the same people that had thrust their presents upon him when he was setting out.
At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water.
She gave him a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and inquired if he was going on to Tetuan.He told her yes, and she asked if his home was there.And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and said in a moving way, "Then Allah help you, brother.""Why me more than another, sister?" said Israel.
"Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man," said the old woman.
"And that is the sort he is hardest upon."Israel faltered and said, "He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--""Who else but Israel the Jew?" said she, and then added, as by a sudden afterthought, "But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has stripped him.Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so wise and powerful!"Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame, he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him.
"They tell me," he said, "that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has devils.""Blind and dumb, poor soul," said the old woman; "but Allah has pity for the afflicted--he is taking her away."Israel rose."Away?"
"She is ill since her father went to Fez.""Ill?"
"Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying."
Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered, and fled out of the hut.Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?