Zaynab and Isabelle, "The Passionate Nomad"
In 1902, an improbable relationship developed between the virgin saint and sufi and Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904), the "passionate nomad."[126] Eberhardt was the illegitimate daughter of a defrocked Armenian clergyman of nihilist persuasion and an aristocratic German woman. Her childhood and upbringing in Geneva were wildly eccentric, predisposing Eberhardt to unconventional behavior throughout her brief life. In 1897, the year of Sidi Muhammad's death, Eberhardt and her mother arrived in the city of Bône, hoping to escape the domestic unhappiness and social ostracism they had suffered in Europe. Instead the two women found themselves in Bône's bigoted, self-righteous pied-noir community, whose inhabitants suffered from acute "status anxiety" toward both the Muslim Algerians and expatriate foreigners.[127] There Eberhardt continued her study of Arabic and Islam, snubbing settler society and fraternizing instead with the colonized. Her marriage in 1902 to an Algerian Muslim soldier, Sliman Ehnni, one of the few Algerians to be granted citizenship, also ironically conferred French nationality upon Eberhardt, who carried a Russian passport, as well as provoking an uproar in colonial circles.
Eberhardt's evident sympathy for Islam and Arab culture aroused a great deal of overt hostility among officials and European settlers alike. In addition, Isabelle's disorderly conduct—a fondness for alcohol and drugs, illicit sexual liaisons, and cross-gender, cross-cultural dressing (she wore the garb of an Algerian male most of the time)—caused profound distress in colonial society. Since European women were the custodians of France's divinely ordained civilizing mission in Algeria (and elsewhere in Africa), white women defined social distance from, and political control over, the "natives." By mixing socially and sexually with Muslim Algerians, Eber-
hardt transgressed the culturally and legally defined "racial" barriers separating the two communities. Ironically, Eberhardt, a social marginal, posed the ultimate challenge to the colonial order.[128] It is uncertain how Lalla Zaynab and her zawiya first came to Eberhardt's attention, although when Isabelle and her mother rented their first house in Bône in 1897, they chose to live in the Arab quarter; a Rahmaniyya zawiya was located down the street from their home.[129] By this time, Zaynab's reputation for sanctity and miracles had spread far beyond the Sahara, and she was "spoken of with awe and reverence throughout every corner of Algeria where the disciples of the Rahmaniyya order were found."[130] Women, both European and Muslim, brought their ailing children to Zaynab, who was blessed with the ability to cure. Therefore, Eberhardt may have heard about the female saint either from Muslim friends or from the small circle of French "Arabophiles," or she may have read about her in travel accounts then being published by Frenchmen who had visited al-Hamil.[131] In addition, Eberhardt, as was true of many Europeans in this period, the heyday of European Orientalism, was fascinated by the desert. As Isabelle put it: "In the really Arab towns like the fortified oases of the south, the poignant and bewitching atmosphere of the land of Africa is quite tangible."[132] Thus, her unquiet soul and exoticist cravings drove Isabelle into the Sahara.
In the summer of 1902, Eberhardt made the arduous journey from Algiers to al-Hamil expressly to visit Lalla Zaynab, the first of several pilgrimages to the zawiya. By then the European woman was suffering from a host of physical and other afflictions—chronic malaria, syphilis, and drug addiction—and was bent upon pursuing some vague mystical vocation connected to her frantic search for inner tranquillity. Arriving in Bu Sa'ada during a violent summer rainstorm, Isabelle was forced to obtain written permission from local military authorities before proceeding on to al-Hamil. Clothed in Arab male garb and riding a horse, she set out for the oasis, noting:
The route to al-Hamil goes through the hills, between the high mountains that surround Bou Sa'ada. The wadi follows this route, and near the zawiya of al-Hamil it flows into the gardens, whose date palms radiate with their peculiar color. The village of al-Hamil is made of very light tub (sun-dried bricks) and seems to be painted with whitewash. The village is rather large and situated half-way up the mountainside, dominating the gardens and the valley. The town's culminating point is formed by the zawiya.[133]
Zaynab had been absent from the oasis on some unspecified mission but returned the next day to greet her newly arrived guest. Overlooking the
European woman's dissolute ways, Zaynab welcomed Eberhardt to her residence and apparently consented to be her spiritual mentor and friend. The female saint made a huge impression upon Eberhardt, who described their first meeting at length in her diary. The troubled European woman bared her soul to Zaynab, who listened with evident sympathy to Eberhardt's story, although there is no way of knowing exactly how Isabelle portrayed herself. Zaynab sanctioned Isabelle's spiritual quest, even assuring her visitor of her undying friendship.[134] Isabelle left a moving account of the shaykh's daughter, whom she described as dressed in the simple, white costume of the women of Bu Sa'ada: "Her face, tanned by the sun because she travels frequently in the region, was wrinkled. She is nearly fifty years old. Her eyes are kindly and in them burns a flame of intelligence, though veiled by a great sadness. Everything—her voice, her mannerisms, and the welcome she accords to pilgrims—expresses a profound sincerity."[135]
According to Eberhardt, Shaykh Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim had designated Zaynab to succeed him, educating her in the manner "of the best of his students." Al-Hamil "more so than any other sufi center is a refuge for the poor who come here from all over."[136] The European woman noted with alarm that Lalla Zaynab's health was declining; she appeared older than her years. By then Zaynab suffered from a painful throat disease that made talking arduous and rendered her voice hoarse. Their conversations were interrupted by a "harsh cough which shook [Zaynab's] frail body, fragile as that of a child under its burnus and veils."[137] A lifetime of fasting, asceticism, and illness had left its mark upon the saint; Isabelle was correct in foreseeing Zaynab's death before too long.
Despite the briefness of their first encounter, the two women took to one another, and Zaynab in turn confided in Isabelle. With tears in her eyes, she told her European visitor the following: "My daughter, . . . I have devoted my entire life to doing good for the love of God. Nevertheless, there are men who refuse to recognize the good that I have done for them. Many hate and envy me. And yet, I have renounced all in life; I never married, I have no children, no joy."[138] Isabelle's interview with Lalla Zaynab, as short as it was, brought her an inexplicable sense of joy and much needed inner peace. From the pilgrimage to al-Hamil, which passed as "as rapid as a dream," she returned to Algiers healed, momentarily, of the morbid languor which had so long afflicted her.[139] The next year while in the capital, Eberhardt happened upon one of al-Hamil's inhabitants, Sidi Abu Bakr, who greeted her, saying, "Won't you come see us again. . . . the trees are beginning to flower. . . . the marabuta [Zaynab] speaks often about you."[140] Isabelle, whose own health was declining, visited her spiritual
mentor on several more occasions, writing in 1903 that "each time I see Lalla Zaynab, I experience a sort of rejuvenation. . . . I saw her yesterday twice in the morning. She was very kind and gentle toward me and expressed delight at seeing me again."[141] By this time, the friendship developing between the two women had come to the attention of the authorities.
The French military had been discreetly spying upon Zaynab's activities in al-Hamil since 1897 and monitoring Isabelle's movements since by then she was deemed an "undesirable." Despite the innocuous nature of their relationship, the police tracked Eberhardt's second visit to Zaynab in 1903, seeking to gather information about the meetings. The new governor-general, Charles Jonnart, urged the commanding general of the province to discover "the subjects of the two women's conversations."[142] In part high-level concern was a product of the succession dispute and colonial fears about the politicization of the Rahmaniyya zawiya. Moreover, on the eve of Lyautey's planned military sweep from Algeria into southwestern Morocco, calm in the Sahara was of paramount importance. Finally, some officials held the mistaken belief that Eberhardt exerted influence over the Algerian Muslims because of her sufi affiliation and Arabic fluency. Of course, it was quite the opposite, but the notion that a Muslim woman, like Zaynab, could have an enormous impact upon a European female did not occur to them.
This relationship between a colonized female saint, whose life was wholly devoted to self-abnegation, and a Western woman, whose manic personality impelled her to excess and self-destructive behavior, appears to be somewhat unusual in the annals of Maghribi history. However, both women flouted colonial male authority, although Isabelle's rebellion went much further than Zaynab's since Eberhardt violated the sexual and cultural norms of her own European society. Eberhardt's profession of Islam (she claimed to have converted while still in Europe sometime before 1897), her supposed membership in the Qadiriyya sufi order, and her fluent command of the classical and vernacular Arabic language probably gave her an entrée into Zaynab's circle, as did the North African custom of hospitality and courtesy toward guests. Yet as significant in the developing friendship was the fact that it took place on the physical and political margins of the colonial regime—in the Sahara, away from the centers of European settlement with its increasingly rigid lines of social demarcation.
The two women did not see one another again after 1903. The next year brought Isabelle's sensational death in October 1904 during a desert flash flood at 'Ain Sefra, where the French army, under Lyautey, was thrusting
deep into Moroccan territory.[143] Flamboyant in death as in life, Eberhardt's story overshadowed that of her spiritual guide who also died the same year.
On 19 November 1904, Zaynab succumbed to the disease which had progressively undermined her health.[144] The next day she was buried alongside her father and her paternal uncle in the family mausoleum, in a "great tomb draped with green, yellow, and red coverings, surrounded by a spacious railed enclosure."[145] The crowd attending her funeral became so great and unruly in their grief that the zawiya's personnel buried her earlier than planned. Zaynab's tomb, like that of her father's, became a popular pilgrimage site; indeed it still is today. Now her cousin could at long last assume the long-coveted headship of al-Hamil—or so he thought. Yet Zaynab died intestate; whether she did this intentionally is impossible to ascertain. Without a valid will, and with several branches of the shaykh's family advancing claims to inheritance rights, the matter of succession was postponed for over a year while the complex judicial inquiry proceeded through the courts. Eventually the case ended up before the civil tribunal in Algiers for adjudication.[146]