"And what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?" said Sol;"look at me!" "Tut!" said Josephine, "there's nothing to choose between them." "For my part," said Tarha, "I don't see what it matters to us; they say Paradise is for the men!" "And think of the jewels, and the earrings as big as a bracelet," said Hoolia, "instead of this";and she drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's neighbour had given her.
It was all to no purpose."But what of my father?" Naomi asked again and again.
The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations, ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs."Tut!"they said, "why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan?
She would only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan."Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.
In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but jealousy, no diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and the Kabar.
Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the prison, and set Habeebah to guard her.The black woman was in terror at the turn that events had taken.There was nothing to do now but to go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers.How could she be so hard-hearted? Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one word out of her lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her tears.She remembered the hareem, and cried.