Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/73

Rh for her. If you care to, we can visit this saint's tomb also"

When the woman left, we finally turned away from this little street of so much mingled beauty and pathos and crossed to the quarter of El-Corran, in whose mosque the saint, Seida Reriba, is buried. One of the Faithful who were worshiping there told us this story of the saint, who has been dead for centuries but who is still revered and appealed to because of her great miracles.

"When the night is deep, there glides through the silent, sleeping streets the filmy figure of a woman, as light as the autumnal mist in a valley. It is the good Seida Reriba, who is making her nightly round. She enters alike the houses of the rich and the hovels of the poor; she reads the thoughts of her people as well as what is written on the tablets of Fate. Only an innocent child, if one happened to be in the street at such an hour, could see her. Often Reriba enters a house and takes up her place near the hearth, where she remains invisible, even though she may allow herself to be heard. Whenever she laughs or sings a snatch of sweet song, it means that happiness or success are coming to that home; while, if it be sounds of sobbing, sighing or groaning that are heard, it bodes misfortune for the master of the house."

From this tale of one of the natives of the quarter of El-Corran we understood that the childless woman must have heard the sobs of Seida Reriba in her dwelling, foretelling to her the greatest misfortune that can be visited upon an Eastern woman—divorce and after it either the return to her parents' house or the misery of a beggar's life.