Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum." "But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?" "Then how can she say the Shemang either?"Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and silenced both the bondwomen: "The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is a thief." There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp in the days of the Governor's marriage.This person was an old negro, bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of either.
For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everbody.In his dark cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat and drink of his meagre substance.
Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his own great trouble, he tried away for him.
"Father," cried the lad," does it not say in the good book that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much?""It does, my son," said the Taleb "You have truth.What then?""Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover," said Ali.