“Almost…” The answer was diplomatic.
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a fatherly tone.
“Better.” A tear shone in her eye.
“Then let’s begin.” He took some of the herbs, crushed them between his fingers, and inhaled their scent. “First, where are the originals of the poems you’ve translated? I don’t doubt you’ve done a faithful job, but I have to check whether the Arabic is quite so modern.”
“But why shouldn’t it be, Professor? Do you think we’re always going to remain… primitive?”
“What a word to use, Samaher!” Her forwardness startled him. “Who said anything about primitive? I merely wanted to see the originals.”
“They’re in the binders on the table. I’ll call Rashid and tell him to find them.”
“That can wait. By the way, I like your cousin. He’s a fine fellow and very devoted to you. How come someone like him isn’t married?”
Samaher shrugged. “He hasn’t found a wife.” In an irritable whisper she added, “He doesn’t want one. What can I do about it? Nothing.”
“You’re quite right,” the Jewish professor admitted. “There’s nothing you can do. Let’s move on. You say that you’ve read two stories…”
“Two? A lot more than that.”
“You mentioned two in your note to me: a realistic one about a feud between village clans, and one that’s more like a folktale.”
“A parable.”
“Of a political nature.”
“In my opinion.”
“Let’s start with that. Do you remember where you summarized it in your notebook, or do we have to call Rashid?”
She was insulted. “Why Rashid? Of course I remember.”
She leafed through some pages and found it.
The story had appeared in a mimeographed periodical, a quarterly or biannual named Katarna,* put out with French backing in the 1940s by the Railway and Post Office Workers Union of Algeria. Besides information on the postal and railway services and their development, the volume included articles, stories, and poems written by union members. In January 1942, one Ibrahim Ibn Bakhir, a ticket clerk at the Sidi Bal-Abbas station, published a tale titled “El-Tifl el-Faransi el-Murafrif.”
“‘The Floating French Baby’?” Rivlin translated doubtfully.
“That’s correct. It’s one of the stories you marked, Professor.”
Forbearing to point out that most of the markings were Suissa’s, he sat back in his chair.
The Tale of the Floating French Baby
In a small village near Sidi Bal-Abbas lived a hardworking farmer named Yusuf with his wife, Ayisha. Although the two were good, fine-looking people who loved each other greatly, they had no children. “I’m afraid,” Yusuf said to Ayisha, “that I’ll have to take another wife to bear me children.” “That,” Ayisha replied, “is only natural. But to prevent my life from being consumed by jealousy, let me first travel through the countryside. Perhaps I can find an abandoned orphan to be mine.” “You’re right, my beloved wife,” the farmer said. “Go look for an abandoned child. Just make sure you return to me. Although by then I will have taken a second wife, my love for you is assured until your dying day.”
The farmer’s wife decided that the best place to look for an abandoned child was a railway station. People in stations are always in a hurry and often forget suitcases, bags, and even babies. So as to remove all suspicion from herself, and escape being molested because of her beauty, Ayisha cut her hair short, dyed it white, and stuck a beard on her face. Then she sewed herself a short cloak, found a big walking stick, and began wandering from station to station, disguised as a Sufi holy man, in search of an abandoned child.
At first all went well. The old Sufi was treated with respect, and no one suspected a thing. After a while, however, attracted by the Sufi’s bare legs, which were unusually smooth and shapely, people began to follow him and seek his blessing. Afraid of being given away by her soft voice, Ayisha stopped talking and only smiled. But this only increased the number of her devotees, who accompanied her from station to station.
Meanwhile the train management, seeing that the silent Sufi had increased the number of passengers, gave him a free lifetime ticket.
“How very strange,” Rivlin chuckled. “You can see the author was a ticket clerk.”
Yet how was Ayisha, now surrounded day and night by loyal disciples who expected her to work wonders, supposed to find an abandoned baby to comfort her for the many children that her husband’s second wife would bear? And so one night, hatching a plan, she talked. In a thick, slow voice like an old man’s, she told her disciples that she was planning to work a wonder such as no one had ever seen. She would make a little baby too small to stand on its feet float outside the window of a train. Yet who would agree to volunteer their offspring for such a risky miracle? She had to find an orphaned or abandoned child with no mother. If her disciples would bring her such an infant, she would do the rest.
Several days went by, and then Ayisha’s disciples kidnapped a baby. It wasn’t an orphan, however. It was French, because only the French leave their babies lying in baby carriages. It was far easier to steal an infant from a Christian pram than from the shoulder sling of a Muslim mother.
This frightened Ayisha greatly. She had intended to get hold of an abandoned child, a poor, dirty little waif whom she could save from hunger, and now she had been brought a big, fat, blond, well-dressed, conspicuous baby. And the police were already searching for its kidnapper!
Nor was that all. Ayisha had planned to wait for her disciples to fall asleep at night and then rip off her beard, change her hermit’s cloak for a dress, veil her face, and slip away to her husband’s village. How, surrounded by boisterous disciples, with the French police and army on her heels, was she going to do that with a fat, blond French baby?
And what would she tell her angry followers when they discovered that they had kidnapped a baby for a wonder she couldn’t work? And so, sitting down beneath a distant tree, she prayed to Allah to have pity on the French child, whose miracle was planned for the next day.
Samaher was leaning cross-legged against the plumped pillows, her long hair grazing the embroidered flowers on her nightgown. There was new color in her cheeks, and her voice had grown stronger, as if this bizarre and tedious tale were now carrying her along with Ayisha’s disciples and the trains.
The next day, Ayisha boarded a train with several of her disciples. As soon as it picked up speed, she took the French baby and tossed it out the window. Yet Allah had heard her prayer and had pity. He did not let the child fly away but kept it floating outside the window, laughing and playing with the wind until Ayisha took it back into the train. At the next station it was given to a ticket clerk and brought to the police, who had posted a large reward.
“There’s that ticket clerk again,” laughed the visitor.
Ayisha, now a famous — though still childless — wonder-worker, was very sad. Everyone who heard about the floating French baby became more devoted to her than ever. A house was built for her on a mountaintop, and pilgrims came to kiss the hem of her cloak and the dainty soles of her feet. Even her husband’s second wife, who also was childless, came to kneel before her without knowing who she was.
“That’s the end. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Let’s not exaggerate,” he said, his headache back again. It was a story for One Thousand and One Nights. “What strikes you as political about it?”
“Well, you see, Professor, I thought that if it was written in 1942, during the Second World War, when the French were as helpless as babies, it was a story about how sorry the Arabs felt for them.”