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arrived, the most important gift from the bridegroom, who did not know what had happened. Galila accepted the gift—a fish the size of her son Baligh—and gave the carrier his portion. Its arrival in the middle of the loud sobbing made her uneasy and she feared the consequences for her favorite daughter’s future. She leaned over the shaykh’s head, shrouded in a green wrap, and whispered from her wounded heart, “Forgive me, Mu‘awiya.” Then she hurried to a room on the eastern side of the house which looked out to the mosque of Sidi al-Sha‘rani in the distance, telling herself, “Bad luck will strike if the gift is not received in the proper way.” She dried her tears, stood behind the window and let a high-pitched ululation burst forth, dancing to melodies of effusive joy. She hurried back to the room where the body was laid out and resumed wailing from the bottom of her heart. The affair reached the ears of some sly women and they whispered to one another and joked about it all Galila’s life. It was passed around as a living testimony to the eccentricities of the controversial woman, who combined piety, love, and madness.
    The death of her husband affected her sturdy constitution like nothing else. She mourned him with every ounce of her being and extolled his glorious deeds, real and imagined, for the rest of her long life. And she lived to 110! She lived through Muhammad Ali, Ibrahim, Abbas, Sa‘id, Ismail, Tawfiq, the Urabi Revolution, and the 1919 Revolution. But no event lodged itself in her heart like the Urabi Revolution, which had counted her husband among its leading men. She would often relate his heroic exploits and imprisonment to her grandchildren, her imagination going to such lengths as to make Radia’s sons and daughters believe it was Shaykh Mu‘awiya who Arabized Muhammad Ali and upon whom Urabi had depended after God. The picture of Urabi in her mind became mixed with Antara, Hilal, and the family of the Prophet while honoring above all the memory of Shaykh Mu‘awiya.
    Of her children, only Radia and her sons and daughters brought her joy. She was pleased with Amr, although she only visited Bayt al-Qadi a few times, owing to old age. As for Shahira, Sadiqa, and Baligh, a wound that never healed settled in her heart. She would moan at Baligh as he lay drunk on the sofa in the hallway, “You’re a drunk, a sinner, and disgrace to your noble clothes.”
    When his tree burst into leaf and he became an important merchant she said to him, “God has given you wealth to test you. Be careful.”
    Baligh loved her, but suspected she was not entirely sound in the head. Shahira had by this time returned to the family house as an outcast and filled it with cats, whereas Sadiqa … alas! What grief she suffered!
    Qasim was Galila’s favorite grandchild. He would cover her with kisses and listen to her stories, trusting in her with his heart and senses. When what befell him came to pass she was not worried but said to Radia, “Rejoice. God has given you a saint.”
    In the last five years of her life, toward the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century—at the beginning of the 1930s—she finally succumbed to old age. Her window to the world was obstructed by the loss of both her sight and hearing, yet she remained alert and would recognize her loved ones by touch. Shahira looked after her as much as she could until she tired of it; she had more compassion for her cats than for her mother. She would complain about her to Radia whenever she visited, so Radia took turns with her sister and reminded her of the Prophet’s bequest to mothers. “It’s easy to preach. You live venerated in your house and leave me on my own to carry out the bequest!” said Shahira.
    On one of her visits, Radia found the hallway teeming with cats, mewing and running about wildly, warning that something was amiss. She discovered Galila lying lifeless on the sofa. Shahira was asleep upstairs.
Gamila Surur