maroc and mazagan :6

recently
disgraced, will be offered for sale. One sees portly men of the city
wearing the blue cloth selhams that bespeak wealth, country Moors who
boast less costly garments, but ride mules of easy pace and heavy price,
and one or two high officials of the Dar el Makhzan. All classes of the
wealthy are arriving rapidly, for the sale will open in a quarter of an
hour.

The portals passed, unchallenged, the market stands revealed--an open
space of bare, dry ground, hemmed round with tapia walls, dust-coloured,
crumbling, ruinous. Something like an arcade stretches across the centre
of the ground from one side to the other of the market. Roofless now and
broken down, as is the outer wall itself, and the sheds, like cattle pens,
that are built all round, it was doubtless an imposing structure in days
of old. Behind the outer walls the town rises on every side. I see mules
and donkeys feeding, apparently on the ramparts, but really in a fandak
overlooking the market. The minaret of a mosque rises nobly beside the
mules' feeding-ground, and beyond there is the white tomb of a saint, with
swaying palm trees round it. Doubtless this zowia gives the Sok el Abeed a
sanctity that no procedure within its walls can besmirch; and, to be sure,
the laws of the saint's religion are not so much outraged here as in the
daily life of many places more sanctified by popular opinion.

On the ground, by the side of the human cattle pens, the wealthy patrons
of the market seat themselves at their ease, arrange their djellabas and
selhams in leisurely fashion, and begin to chat, as though the place were
the smoking-room of a club. Water-carriers--lean, half-naked men from the
Sus--sprinkle the thirsty ground, that the tramp of slaves and auctioneers
may not raise too much dust. Watching them as they go about their work,
with the apathy born of custom and experience, I have a sudden reminder of
the Spanish bull-ring, to which the slave market bears some remote
resemblance. The gathering of spectators, the watering of the ground, the
sense of excitement, all strengthen the impression. There are no bulls in
the _torils_, but there are slaves in the pens. It may be that the bulls
have the better time. Their sufferings in life are certainly brief, and
their careless days are very long drawn out. But I would not give the
impression that the spectators here are assembled for amusement, or that
my view of some of their proceedings would be comprehensible to them.
However I may feel, the other occupants of this place are here in the
ordinary course of business, and are certainly animated by no such fierce
passions as thrill through the air of a plaza de toros. I am in the East
but of the West, and "never the twain shall meet."

[Illustration: A WATER-SELLER, MARRAKESH]

Within their sheds the slaves are huddled together. They will not face the
light until the market opens. I catch a glimpse of bright colouring now
and again, as some woman or child moves in the dim recesses of the
retreats, but there is no suggestion of the number or quality of the
penned.

Two storks sail leisurely from their nest on the saint's tomb, and a
little company of white ospreys passes over the burning market-place with
such a wild, free flight, that the contrast between the birds and the
human beings forces itself upon me. Now, however, there is no time for
such thoughts; the crowd at the entrance parts to the right and left, to
admit twelve grave men wearing white turbans and spotless djellabas. They
are the dilals, in whose hands is the conduct of the sale.

Slowly and impressively these men advance in a line almost to the centre
of the slave market, within two or three yards of the arcade, where the
wealthy buyers sit expectant. Then the head auctioneer lifts up his voice,
and prays, with downcast eyes and outspread hands. He recites the glory of
Allah, the One, who made the heaven above and the earth beneath, the sea
and all that is therein; his brethren and the buyers say Amen. He thanks
Allah for his mercy to men in sending Mohammed the Prophet, who gave the
world the True Belief, and he curses Shaitan, who wages war against Allah
and his children. Then he calls upon Sidi bel Abbas, patron saint of
Marrakesh, friend of buyers and sellers, who praised Allah so assiduously
in days remote, and asks the saint to bless the market and all who buy and
sell therein, granting them prosperity and length of days. And to these
prayers, uttered with an intensity of devotion quite Mohammedan, all the
listeners say Amen. Only to Unbelievers like myself,--to men who have
never known, or knowing, have rejected Islam,--is there aught repellent in
the approaching business; and Unbelievers may well pass unnoticed. In life
the man who has the True Faith despises them; in death they become
children of the Fire. Is it not so set down?

Throughout this strange ceremony of prayer I seem to see the bull-ring
again, and in place of the dilals the cuadrillas of the Matadors coming
out to salute, before the alguazils open the gates of the toril and the
slaying begins. The dramatic intensity of either scene connects for me
this slave market in Marrakesh with the plaza de toros in the shadow of
the Giralda tower in Sevilla. Strange to remember now and here, that the
man who built the Kutubia tower for this thousand-year-old-city of Yusuf
ben Tachfin, gave the Giralda to Andalusia.

Prayers are over--the last Amen is said. The dilals separate, each one
going to the pens he presides over, and calling upon their tenants to come
forth. These selling men move with a dignity that is quite Eastern, and
speak in calm and impressive tones. They lack the frenzied energy of their
brethren who traffic in the bazaars.

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO THE SOK EL ABEED]

Obedient to the summons, the slaves face the light, the sheds yield up
their freight, and there are a few noisy moments, bewildering to the
novice, in which the auctioneers place their goods in line, rearrange
dresses, give children to the charge of adults, sort out men and women
according to their age and value, and prepare for the promenade. The
slaves will march round and round the circle of the buyers, led by the
auctioneers, who will proclaim the latest bid and hand over any one of
their charges to an intending purchaser, that he may make his examination
before raising the price. In the procession now forming for the first
parade, five, if not six, of the seven ages set out by the melancholy
Jaques are represented. There are men and women who can no longer walk
upright, however the dilal may insist; there are others of middle age,
with years of active service before them; there are young men full of
vigour and youth, fit for the fields, and young women, moving for once
unveiled yet unrebuked, who will pass at once to the hareem. And there are
children of every age, from babies who will be sold with their mothers to
girls and boys upon the threshold of manhood and womanhood. All are
dressed in bright colours and displayed to the best advantage, that the
hearts of bidders may be moved and their purses opened widely.

"It will be a fine sale," says my neighbour, a handsome middle-aged Moor
from one of the Atlas villages, who had chosen his place before I reached
the market. "There must be well nigh forty slaves, and this is good,
seeing that the Elevated Court is at Fez. It is because our Master--Allah
send him more victories!--has been pleased to 'visit' Sidi Abdeslam, and
send him to the prison of Mequinez. All the wealth he has extorted has
been taken away from him by our Master, and he will see no more light.
Twenty or more of these women are of his house."

Now each dilal has his people sorted out, and the procession begins.
Followed by their bargains the dilals march round and round the market,
and I understand why the dust was laid before the procession commenced.

Most of the slaves are absolutely free from emotion of any sort: they move
round as stolidly as the blind-folded horses that work the water-wheels in
gardens beyond the town, or the corn mills within its gates. I think the
sensitive ones--and there are a few--must come from the household of the
unfortunate Sidi Abdeslam, who was reputed to be a good master. Small
wonder if the younger women shrink, and if the black visage seems to take
on a tint of ashen grey, when a buyer, whose face is an open defiance of
the ten commandments, calls upon the dilal to halt, and, picking one out
as though she had been one of a flock of sheep, handles her as a butcher
would, examining teeth and muscles, and questioning her and the dilal very
closely about past history and present health. And yet the European
observer must beware lest he read into incidents of this kind something
that neither buyer nor seller would recognise. Novelty may create an
emotion that facts and custom cannot justify.

[Illustration: THE SLAVE MARKET]

"Ah, Tsamanni," says my gossip from the Atlas to the big dilal who led the
prayers, and is in special charge of the children for sale, "I will speak
to this one," and Tsamanni pushes a tiny little girl into his arms. The
child kisses the speaker's hand. Not at all unkindly the Moor takes his
critical survey, and Tsamanni enlarges upon her merits.

"She does not come from the town at all," he says glibly, "but from
Timbuctoo. It is more difficult than ever to get children from there. The
accursed Nazarenes have taken the town, and the slave market droops. But
this one is desirable: she understands needlework, she will be a companion
for your house, and thirty-five dollars is the last price bid."

"One more dollar, Tsamanni. She is not ill-favoured, but she is poor and
thin. Nevertheless say one dollar more," says the Moor.

"The praise to Allah, who made the world," says the dilal piously, and
hurries round the ring, saying that the price of the child is now
thirty-six dollars, and calling upon the buyers to go higher.

I learn that the dilal's commission is two and a half per cent on the
purchase price, and there is a Government tax of five per cent. Slaves are
sold under a warranty, and are returned if they are not properly described
by the auctioneer. Bids must not be advanced by less than a Moorish dollar
(about three shillings) at a time, and when a sale is concluded a deposit
must be paid at once, and the balance on or shortly after the following
day. Thin slaves will not fetch as much money as fat ones, for corpulence
is regarded as the outward and visible sign of health as well as wealth by
the Moor.

"I have a son of my house," says the Moor from the Atlas, with a burst of
confidence quite surprising. "He is my only one, and must have a
playfellow, so I am here to buy. In these days it is not easy to get what
one wants. Everywhere the French. The caravans come no longer from
Tuat--because of the French. From Timbuctoo it is the same thing. Surely
Allah will burn these people in a fire of more than ordinary heat--a
furnace that shall never cool. Ah, listen to the prices," The little
girl's market-value has gone to forty-four dollars--say seven pounds ten
shillings in English money at the current rate of exchange. It has risen
two dollars at a time, and Tsamanni cannot quite cover his satisfaction.
One girl, aged fourteen, has been sold for no less than ninety dollars
after spirited bidding from two country kaids; another, two years older,
has gone for seventy-six.

"There is no moderation in all this," says the Atlas Moor, angrily. "But
prices will rise until our Lord the Sultan ceases to listen to the
Nazarenes, and purges the land. Because of their Bashadors we can no
longer have the markets at the towns on the coasts. If we do have one
there, it must be held secretly, and a slave must be carried in the
darkness from house to house. This is shameful for an unconquered people."

I am only faintly conscious of my companion's talk and action, as he bids
for child after child, never going beyond forty dollars. Interest centres
in the diminishing crowd of slaves who still follow the dilals round the
market in monotonous procession.

The attractive women and strong men have been sold, and have realised
good prices. The old people are in little or no demand; but the
auctioneers will persist until closing time. Up and down tramp the people
nobody wants, burdens to themselves and their owners, the useless, or
nearly useless men and women whose lives have been slavery for so long as
they can remember. Even the water-carrier from the Sus country, who has
been jingling his bright bowls together since the market opened, is moved
to compassion, for while two old women are standing behind their dilal,
who is talking to a client about their reserve price, I see him give them
a free draught from his goat-skin water-barrel, and this kind action seems
to do something to freshen the place, just as the mint and the roses of
the gardeners freshen the alleys near the Kaisariyah in the heart of the
city. To me, this journey round and round the market seems to be the
saddest of the slaves' lives--worse than their pilgrimage across the
deserts of the Wad Nun, or the Draa, in the days when they were carried
captive from their homes, packed in panniers upon mules, forced to travel
by night, and half starved. For then at least they were valued and had
their lives before them, now they are counted as little more than the
broken-down mules and donkeys left to rot by the roadside. And yet this,
of course, is a purely Western opinion, and must be discounted
accordingly.

It is fair to say that auctioneers and buyers treat the slaves in a manner
that is not unkind. They handle them just as though they were animals
with a market value that ill-treatment will diminish, and a few of the
women are brazen, shameless creatures--obviously, and perhaps not
unwisely, determined to do the best they can for themselves in any
surroundings. These women are the first to find purchasers. The unsold
adults and little children seem painfully tired; some of the latter can
hardly keep pace with the auctioneer, until he takes them by the hand and
leads them along with him. Moors, as a people, are wonderfully kind to
children.

The procedure never varies. As a client beckons and points out a slave,
the one selected is pushed forward for inspection, the history is briefly
told, and if the bidding is raised the auctioneer, thanking Allah, who
sends good prices, hurries on his way to find one who will bid a little
more. On approaching an intending purchaser the slave seizes and kisses
his hand, then releases it and stands still, generally indifferent to the
rest of the proceedings.

[Illustration: DILALS IN THE SLAVE MARKET]

"It is well for the slaves," says the Atlas Moor, rather bitterly, for the
fifth and last girl child has gone up beyond his limit. "In the Mellah or
the Madinah you can get labour for nothing, now the Sultan is in Fez.
There is hunger in many a house, and it is hard for a free man to find
food. But slaves are well fed. In times of famine and war free men die;
slaves are in comfort. Why then do the Nazarenes talk of freeing slaves,
as though they were prisoners, and seek to put barriers against the
market, until at last the prices become foolish? Has not the Prophet
said, 'He who behaveth ill to his slave shall not enter into Paradise'?
Does that not suffice believing people? Clearly it was written, that my
little Mohammed, my first born, my only one, shall have no playmate this
day. No, Tsamanni: I will bid no more. Have I such store of dollars that I
can buy a child for its weight in silver?"

The crowd is thinning now. Less than ten slaves remain to be sold, and I
do not like to think how many times they must have tramped round the
market. Men and women--bold, brazen, merry, indifferent--have passed to
their several masters; all the children have gone; the remaining oldsters
move round and round, their shuffling gait, downcast eyes, and melancholy
looks in pitiful contrast to the bright clothes in which they are dressed
for the sale, in order that their own rags may not prejudice purchasers.

Once again the storks from the saint's tomb pass over the market in large
wide flight, as though to tell the story of the joy of freedom. It is the
time of the evening promenade. The sun is setting rapidly and the sale is
nearly at an end.

"Forty-one dollars--forty-one," cries the dilal at whose heels the one
young and pretty woman who has not found a buyer limps painfully. She is
from the Western Soudan, and her big eyes have a look that reminds me of
the hare that was run down by the hounds a few yards from me on the
marshes at home in the coursing season.

"Why is the price so low?" I ask.

"She is sick," said the Moor coolly: "she cannot work--perhaps she will
not live. Who will give more in such a case? She is of kaid Abdeslam's
household, though he bought her a few weeks before his fall, and she must
be sold. But the dilal can give no warranty, for nobody knows her
sickness. She is one of the slaves who are bought by the dealers for the
rock salt of El Djouf."

Happily the woman seems too dull or too ill to feel her own position. She
moves as though in a dream--a dream undisturbed, for the buyers have
almost ceased to regard her. Finally she is sold for forty-three dollars
to a very old and infirm man.

"No slaves, no slaves," says the Atlas Moor impatiently: "and in the town
they are slow to raise them." I want an explanation of this strange
complaint.

"What do you mean when you say they are slow to raise them," I ask.

"In Marrakesh now," he explains, "dealers buy the healthiest slaves they
can find, and raise as many children by them as is possible. Then, so soon
as the children are old enough to sell, they are sold, and when the
mothers grow old and have no more children, they too are sold, but they do
not fetch much then."

This statement takes all words from me, but my informant sees nothing
startling in the case, and continues gravely: "From six years old they are
sold to be companions, and from twelve they go to the hareems. Prices are
good--too high indeed; fifty-four dollars I must have paid this afternoon
to purchase one, and when Mulai Mohammed reigned the price would have
been twenty, or less, and for that one would have bought fat slaves. Where
there is one caravan now, there were ten of old times."

Only three slaves now, and they must go back to their masters to be sent
to the market on another day, for the sun is below the horizon, the market
almost empty, and the guards will be gathering at the city gates. Two
dilals make a last despairing promenade, while their companions are busy
recording prices and other details in connection with the afternoon's
business. The purchased slaves, the auctioneer's gaudy clothing changed
for their own, are being taken to the houses of their masters. We who live
within the city walls must hasten now, for the time of gate-closing is
upon us, and one may not stay outside.

It has been a great day. Many rich men have attended personally, or by
their agents, to compete for the best favoured women of the household of
the fallen kaid, and prices in one or two special cases ran beyond forty
pounds (English money), so brisk was the bidding.

Outside the market-place a country Moor of the middle class is in charge
of four young boy slaves, and is telling a friend what he paid for them. I
learn that their price averaged eleven pounds apiece in English
currency--two hundred and eighty dollars altogether in Moorish money, that
they were all bred in Marrakesh by a dealer who keeps a large
establishment of slaves, as one in England might keep a stud farm, and
sells the children as they grow up. The purchaser of the quartette is
going to take them to the North. He will pass the coming night in a
fandak, and leave as soon after daybreak as the gates are opened. Some ten
days' travel on foot will bring him to a certain city, where his
merchandise should fetch four hundred dollars. The lads do not seem to be
disturbed by the sale, or by thoughts of their future, and the dealer
himself seems to be as near an approach to a commercial traveller as I
have seen in Morocco. To him the whole transaction is on a par with
selling eggs or fruit, and while he does not resent my interest, he does
not pretend to understand it.

From the minaret that overlooks the mosque the mueddin calls for the
evening prayer; from the side of the Kutubia Tower and the minaret of Sidi
bel Abbas, as from all the lesser mosques, the cry is taken up. Lepers
pass out of the city on their way to Elhara; beggars shuffle off to their
dens; storks standing on the flat house-tops survey the familiar scene
gravely but with interest. Doubtless the dilals and all who sent their
slaves to the market to be sold this afternoon will respond to the
mueddins' summons with grateful hearts, and Sidi bel Abbas, patron saint
of Red Marrakesh, will hardly go unthanked.

GREEN TEA AND POLITICS

[Illustration: ON THE HOUSE-TOP, MARRAKESH]

CHAPTER VIII

GREEN TEA AND POLITICS

Whither resorting from the vernal Heat
Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet,
Under the Branch that leans above the Wall
To shed his Blossom over head and feet.

_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam._

He was a grave personable Moor of middle age, and full of the dignity that
would seem to be the birthright of his race. His official position gave
him a certain knowledge of political developments without affecting his
serene outlook upon life. Whether he sat outside the Kasbah of his native
town and administered the law according to his lights, or, summoned to the
capital, rode attended so far as the Dar el Makhzan, there to take his
part in a council of the Sultan's advisers, or whether, removed for a time
from cares of office, he rested at ease among his cushions as he was doing
now, this Moorish gentleman's placid and unruffled features would lead the
Western observer to suppose that he was a very simple person with no sort
of interest in affairs. I had occasion to know him, however, for a
statesman, after the Moorish fashion--a keen if resigned observer of the
tragic-comedy of his country's politics, and a pious man withal, who had
visited Mecca in the month that is called Shawall, and had cast stones on
the hill of Arafat, as the custom is among True Believers. Some years had
passed since our first meeting, when I was the bearer of a letter of
introduction written by a high official in the intricate Arabic character.
It began: "Praise be to God! The blessing of Allah on our Lord Mohammed,
and his peace upon Friends and Followers." Irrelevant perhaps all this,
but the letter had opened the portals of his house to me, and had let
loose for my benefit thoughts not lightly to be expressed.

Now we sat side by side on cushions in his patio, partly shaded by a rose
tree that climbed over trellis-work and rioted in bud and blossom. We
drank green tea flavoured with mint from tiny glasses that were floridly
embossed in gilt. Beyond the patio there was a glimpse of garden ablaze
with colour; we could hear slaves singing by the great Persian
water-wheel, and the cooing of doves from the shaded heart of trees that
screened a granary.

"Since Mulai el Hasan died," said the Hadj quietly, "since that Prince of
Believers went to his Pavilion in Paradise, set among rivers in an orchard
of never-failing fruit, as is explained in the Most Perspicuous Book,[27]
troubles have swept over this land, even as El Jerad, the locust, comes
upon it before the west wind has risen to blow him out to sea."

He mused awhile, as though the music of the garden pleased him.

"Even before the time of my Lord el Hasan," he went on, "there had been
troubles enough. I can remember the war with Spain, though I was but a
boy. My father was among those who fell at Wad Ras on the way to Tanjah of
the Nazarenes. But then your country would not permit these Spanish dogs
to steal our land, and even lent the money to satisfy and keep them away.
This was a kindly deed, and Mulai Mohammed, our Victorious Master, opened
his heart to your Bashador[28] and took him to his innermost councils. And
I can remember that great Bashador of yours when he came to this city and
was received in the square by the Augdal gardens. Our Master the Sultan
came before him on a white horse[29] to speak gracious words under the
M'dhal, that shades the ruling House.

"A strong man was our Master the Sultan, and he listened carefully to all
your Bashador said, still knowing in his heart that this country is not as
the land of the Nazarenes, and could not be made like it in haste. His
wazeers feared change, the Ulema[30] opposed it so far as they dared, and
that you know is very far, and nothing could be done rapidly after the
fashion of the West. My Lord understood this well.

"Then that King of the Age and Prince of True Believers fulfilled his
destiny and died, and my Lord el Hasan, who was in the South, reigned in
his stead.[31] And the troubles that now cover the land began to grow and
spread."

He sipped his tea with grave pleasure. Two female slaves were peering at
the Infidel through the branches of a lemon tree, just beyond the patio,
but when their master dropped his voice the heads disappeared suddenly, as
though his words had kept them in place. In the depths of the garden
close, Oom el Hasan, the nightingale, awoke and trilled softly. We
listened awhile to hear the notes "ring like a golden jewel down a golden
stair."

[Illustration: A HOUSE INTERIOR, MARRAKESH]

"My Lord el Hasan," continued the Hadj, "was ever on horseback; with him
the powder was always speaking. First Fez rejected him, and he carried
fire and sword to that rebellious city. Then Er-Riff refused to pay
tribute and he enforced it--Allah make his kingdom eternal. Then this
ungrateful city rebelled against his rule and the army came south and fed
the spikes of the city gate with the heads of the unfaithful. Beforehe

 Before he
had rested, Fez was insolent once again, and on the road north our Master,
the Ever Victorious, was (so to say, as the irreligious see it) defeated
by the Illegitimate men from Ghaita, rebels against Allah, all, and his
house[32] was carried away. There were more campaigns in the North and in
the South, and the Shareefian army ate up the land, so that there was a
famine more fatal than war. After that came more fighting, and again more
fighting. My lord sought soldiers from your people and from the French,
and he went south to the Sus and smote the rebellious kaids from Tarudant
to High. So it fell out that my Lord was never at peace with his servants,
but the country went on as before, with fighting in the north and the
south and the east and the west. The devil ships of the Nazarene nations
came again and again to the bay of Tanjah to see if the Prince of the
Faithful were indeed dead, as rumour so often stated. But he was strong,
my Lord el Hasan, and not easy to kill. In the time of a brief sickness
that visited him the French took the oases of Tuat, which belongs to the
country just so surely as does this our Marrakesh. They have been from
times remote a place of resting for the camels, like Tindouf in the Sus.
But our Master recovered his lordship with his health, and the French went
back from our land. After that my Lord el Hasan went to Tafilalt over the
Atlas, never sparing himself. And when he returned to this city, weary and
very sick, at the head of an army that lacked even food and clothing, the
Spaniards were at the gates of Er-Riff once more, and the tribes were out
like a fire of thorns over the northern roads. But because the span
allotted him by destiny was fulfilled, and also because he was worn out
and would not rest, my Lord Hasan died near Tadla; and Ba Ahmad, his
chief wazeer, hid his death from the soldiers until his son Abd-el-Aziz
was proclaimed."

There was a pause here, as though my host were overwhelmed with
reflections and was hard driven to give sequence to his narrative. "Our
present Lord was young," he continued at last thoughtfully; "he was a very
young man, and so Ba Ahmad spoke for him and acted for him, and threw into
prison all who might have stood before his face. Also, as was natural, he
piled up great stores of gold, and took to his hareem the women he
desired, and oppressed the poor and the rich, so that many men cursed him
privately. But for all that Ba Ahmad was a wise man and very strong. He
saw the might of the French in the East, and of the Bashadors who pollute
Tanjah in the North; he remembered the ships that came to the waters in
the West, and he knew that the men of these ships want to seize all the
foreign lands, until at last they rule the earth even as they rule the
sea. Against all the wise men of the Nazarenes who dwell in Tanjah the
wazeer fought in the name of the Exalted of God,[33] so that no one of
them could settle on this land to take it for himself and break into the
bowels of the earth. To be sure, in Wazzan and far in the Eastern country
the accursed French grew in strength and in influence, for they gave
protection, robbing the Sultan of his subjects. But they took little land,
they sent few to Court, the country was ours until the wazeer had
fulfilled his destiny and died. Allah pardon him, for he was a man, and
ruled this country, as his Master before him, with a rod of very steel."

"But," I objected, "you told me formerly that while he lived no man's life
or treasure was safe, that he extorted money from all, that he ground the
faces of the rich and the poor, that when he died in this city, the
Marrakshis said 'A dog is dead.' How now can you find words to praise
him?"

"The people cry out," explained the Hadj calmly; "they complain, but they
obey. In the Moghreb it is for the people to be ruled as it is for the
rulers to govern. Shall the hammers cease to strike because the anvil
cries out? Truly the prisons of my Lord Abd-el-Aziz were full while Ba
Ahmad ruled, but all who remained outside obeyed the law. No man can avoid
his fate, even my Lord el Hasan, a fighter all the days of his life, loved
peace and hated war. But his destiny was appointed with his birth, and he,
the peaceful one, drove men yoked neck and neck to fight for him, even a
whole tribe of the rebellious, as these eyes have seen. While Ba Ahmad
ruled from Marrakesh all the Moghreb trembled, but the roads were safe, as
in the days of Mulai Ismail,--may God have pardoned him,--the land knew
quiet seasons of sowing and reaping, the expeditions were but few, and it
is better for a country like ours that many should suffer than that none
should be at rest."

I remained silent, conscious that I could not hope to see life through my
host's medium. It was as though we looked at his garden through glasses of
different colour. And perhaps neither of us saw the real truth of the
problem underlying what we are pleased to call the Moorish Question.

[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS]

"When the days of the Grand Wazeer were fulfilled," the Hadj continued
gravely, "his enemies came into power. His brother the War Minister and
his brother the Chamberlain died suddenly, and he followed them within the
week. No wise man sought too particularly to know the cause of their
death. Christians came to the Court Elevated by Allah, and said to my Lord
Abd-el-Aziz, 'Be as the Sultans of the West.' And they brought him their
abominations, the wheeled things that fall if left alone, but support a
man who mounts them, as I suppose, in the name of Shaitan; the picture
boxes that multiply images of True Believers and, being as the work of
painters,[34] are wisely forbidden by the Far Seeing Book; carriages drawn
by invisible djinoon, who scream and struggle in their fiery prison but
must stay and work, small sprites that dance and sing.[35] The Christians
knew that my Lord was but a young man, and so they brought these things,
and Abd-el-Aziz gave them of the country's riches, and conversed with them
familiarly, as though they had been of the house of a Grand Shareef.
But in the far east of the Moghreb the French closed the oases of Tuat and
Tidikelt without rebuke, and burnt Ksor and destroyed the Faithful with
guns containing green devils,[36] and said, 'We do all this that we may
venture abroad without fear of robbers.' Then my Lord sent the War
Minister, the kaid Maheddi el Menebhi, to London, and he saw your Sultan
face to face. And your Sultan's wazeers said to him, 'Tell the Lord of the
Moghreb to rule as we rule, to gather his taxes peaceably and without
force, to open his ports, to feed his prisoners, to follow the wisdom of
the West. If he will do this, assuredly his kingdom shall never be moved.'
Thereafter your Sultan's great men welcomed the kaid yet more kindly, and
showed him all that Allah the One had given them in his mercy, their
palaces, their workplaces, their devil ships that move without sails over
the face of the waters, and their unveiled women who pass without shame
before the faces of men. And though the kaid said nothing, he remembered
all these things.

"When he returned, and by the aid of your own Bashador in Tanjah prevailed
over the enemies who had set snares in his path while he fared abroad, he
stood up before my Lord and told him all he had seen. Thereupon my Lord
Abd-el-Aziz sought to change that which had gone before, to make a new
land as quickly as the father of the red legs[37] builds a new nest, or
the boar of the Atlas whom the hunter has disturbed finds a new lair. And
the land grew confused. It was no more the Moghreb, but it assuredly was
not as the lands of the West.

"In the beginning of the season of change the French were angry. 'All men
shall pay an equal tax throughout my land,' said the King of the Age, and
the Bashador of the French said, 'Our protected subjects shall not yield
even a handful of green corn to the gatherer.' Now when the people saw
that the tax-gatherers did not travel as they were wont to travel, armed
and ready to kill, they hardened their hearts and said, 'We will pay no
taxes at all, for these men cannot overcome us.' So the tribute was not
yielded, and the French Bashador said to the Sultan, 'Thou seest that
these people will not pay, but we out of our abundant wealth will give all
the money that is needed. Only sign these writings that set forth our
right to the money that is brought by Nazarenes to the seaports, and
everything will be well.'

"So the Sultan set his seal upon all that was brought before him, and the
French sent gold to his treasury and more French traders came to his
Court, and my Lord gave them the money that had come to him from their
country, for more of the foolish and wicked things they brought. Then he
left Marrakesh and went to Fez; and the Rogui, Bu Hamara,[38] rose up and
waged war against him."

The Hadj sighed deeply, and paused while fresh tea was brought by a
coal-black woman slave, whose colour was accentuated by the scarlet
_rida_ upon her head, and the broad silver anklets about her feet. When
she had retired and we were left alone once more, my host continued:--

"You know what happened after. My Lord Abd-el-Aziz made no headway against
the Rogui, who is surely assisted by devils of the air and by the devils
of France. North and south, east and west, the Moors flocked to him, for
they said, 'The Sultan has become a Christian.' And to-day my Lord has no
more money, and no strength to fight the Infidel, and the French come
forward, and the land is troubled everywhere. But this is clearly the
decree of Allah the All Wise, and if it is written that the days of the
Filali Shareefs are numbered, even my Lord will not avoid his fate."

I said nothing, for I had seen the latter part of Morocco's history
working itself out, and knew that the improved relations between Great
Britain and France had their foundation in the change of front that kept
our Foreign Office from doing for Morocco what it has done for other
states divided against themselves, and what it had promised Morocco,
without words, very clearly. Then, again, it was obvious to me, though I
could not hope to explain it to my host, that the Moor, having served his
time, had to go under before the wave of Western civilisation. Morocco has
held out longer than any other kingdom of Africa, not by reason of its own
strength, but because the rulers of Europe could not afford to see the
Mediterranean balance of power seriously disturbed. Just as Mulai Ismail
praised Allah publicly two centuries ago for giving him strength to drive
out the Infidel, when the British voluntarily relinquished their hold upon
Tangier, so successive Moorish Sultans have thought that they have held
Morocco for the Moors by their own power. And yet, in very sober truth,
Morocco has been no more than one of the pawns in the diplomatic game
these many years past.

We who know and love the country, finding in its patriarchal simplicity so
much that contrasts favourably with the hopeless vulgarity of our own
civilisation, must recognise in justice the great gulf lying between a
country's aspect in the eyes of the traveller and in the mind of the
politician.

[Illustration: A MARRAKSHI]

Before we parted, the Hadj, prefacing his remark with renewed assurance of
his personal esteem, told me that the country's error had been its
admission of strangers. Poor man, his large simple mind could not realise
that no power his master held could have kept them out. He told me on
another occasion that the great wazeers who had opposed the Sultan's
reforms were influenced by fear, lest Western ideas should alter the
status of their womenkind. They had heard from all their envoys to Europe
how great a measure of liberty is accorded to women, and were prepared to
rebel against any reform that might lead to compulsory alteration of the
system under which women live--too often as slaves and playthings--in
Morocco. My friend's summary of his country's recent history is by no
means complete, and, if he could revise it here would doubtless have
far more interest. But it seemed advisable to get the Moorish point of
view, and, having secured the curious elusive thing, to record it as
nearly as might be.

Sidi Boubikir seldom discussed politics. "I am in the South and the
trouble is in the North," said he. "Alhamdolillah,[39] I am all for my
Lord Abd-el-Aziz. In the reign of his grandfather I made money, when my
Lord his father ruled--upon him the Peace--I made money, and now to-day I
make money. Shall I listen then to Pretenders and other evil men? The
Sultan may have half my fortune."

I did not suggest what I knew to be true, that the Sultan would have been
more than delighted to take him at his word, for I remembered the incident
of the lampmaker's wager. A considerable knowledge of Moghrebbin Arabic,
in combination with hypnotic skill of a high order, would have been
required to draw from Boubikir his real opinions of the outlook. Not for
nothing was he appointed British political agent in South Morocco. The
sphinx is not more inscrutable.

One night his son came to the Dar al Kasdir and brought me an invitation
from Sidi Boubikir to dine with him on the following afternoon. Arrived
before the gate of his palace at the time appointed, two o'clock, we found
the old diplomat waiting to welcome us. He wore a fine linen djellaba of
dazzling whiteness, and carried a scarlet geranium in his hand. "You are
welcome," he said gravely, and led the way through a long corridor,
crying aloud as he went, "Make way, make way," for we were entering the
house itself, and it is not seemly that a Moorish woman, whether she be
wife or concubine, should look upon a stranger's face. Yet some few lights
of the hareem were not disposed to be extinguished altogether by
considerations of etiquette, and passed hurriedly along, as though bent
upon avoiding us and uncertain of our exact direction. The women-servants
satisfied their curiosity openly until my host suddenly commented upon the
questionable moral status of their mothers, and then they made haste to
disappear, only to return a moment later and peep round corners and
doorways, and giggle and scream--as if they had been Europeans of the same
class.

Sidi Boubikir passed from room to room of his great establishment and
showed some of its treasures. There were great piles of carpets and vast
quantities of furniture that must have looked out at one time in their
history upon the crowds that throng the Tottenham Court Road; I saw
chairs, sofas, bedsteads, clocks, and sideboards, all of English make.
Brought on camels through Dukala and R'hamna to Marrakesh, they were left
to fill up the countless rooms without care or arrangement, though their
owner's house must hold more than fifty women, without counting servants.
Probably when they were not quarrelling or dying their finger nails, or
painting their faces after a fashion that is far from pleasing to European
eyes, the ladies of the hareem passed their days lying on cushions,
playing the gimbri[40] or eating sweetmeats.

In one room on the ground-floor there was a great collection of
mechanical toys. Sidi Boubikir explained that the French Commercial
Attache had brought a large number to the Sultan's palace, and that my
Lord Abd-el-Aziz had rejected the ones before us. With the curious
childish simplicity that is found so often among the Moors of high
position, Boubikir insisted upon winding up the clock-work apparatus of
nearly all the toys. Then one doll danced, another played a drum, a third
went through gymnastic exercises, and the toy orchestra played the
Marseillaise, while from every adjacent room veiled figures stole out
cautiously, as though this room in a Moorish house were a stage and the
shrouded visitors were the chorus entering mysteriously from unexpected
places. The old man's merriment was very real and hearty, so genuine, in
fact, that he did not notice how his women-folk were intruding until the
last note sounded. Then he turned round and the swathed figures
disappeared suddenly as ghosts at cockcrow.

Though it was clear that Sidi Boubikir seldom saw half the rooms through
which we hurried, the passion for building, that seizes all rich Moors,
held him fast. He was adding wing after wing to his vast premises, and
would doubtless order more furniture from London to fill the new rooms. No
Moor knows when it is time to call a halt and deem his house complete, and
so the country is full of palaces begun by men who fell from power or died
leaving the work unfinished. The Grand Wazeer Ba Ahmad left a palace
nearly as big as the Dar el Makhzan itself, and since he died the storks
that build upon the flat roofs have been its only occupants. So it is with
the gardens, whose many beauties he did not live to enjoy. I rode past
them one morning, noted all manner of fruit trees blossoming, heard birds
singing in their branches, and saw young storks fishing in the little
pools that the rains of winter had left. But there was not one gardener
there to tend the ground once so highly cultivated, and I was assured that
the terror of the wazeer's name kept even the hungry beggars from the
fruit in harvest time.

[Illustration: STREET IN MARRAKESH]

The home and its appointments duly exhibited, Sidi Boubikir led the way to
a diwan in a well-cushioned room that opened on to the garden. He clapped
his hands and a small regiment of women-servants, black and for the most
part uncomely, arrived to prepare dinner. One brought a ewer, another a
basin, a third a towel, and water was poured out over our hands. Then a
large earthenware bowl encased in strong basketwork was brought by a
fourth servant, and a tray of flat loaves of fine wheat by a fifth, and we
broke bread and said the "Bismillah,"[41] which stands for grace. The bowl
was uncovered and revealed a savoury stew of chicken with sweet lemon and
olives, a very pleasing sight to all who appreciate Eastern cooking. The
use of knives being a crime against the Faith, and the use of forks and
spoons unknown, we plunged the fingers of the right hand into the bowl and
sought what pleased us best, using the bread from time to time to deal
with the sauce of the stew. It was really a delicious dish, and when
later in the afternoon I asked my host for the recipe he said he would
give it to me if I would fill the bowl with Bank of England notes. I had
to explain that, in my ignorance of the full resources of Moorish cooking,
I had not come out with sufficient money.

So soon as the charm of the first bowl palled, it was taken away and
others followed in quick succession, various meats and eggs being served
with olives and spices and the delicate vegetables that come to Southern
Morocco in early spring. It was a relief to come to the end of our duties
and, our hands washed once more, to digest the meal with the aid of green
tea flavoured with mint. Strong drink being forbidden to the True
Believer, water only was served with the dinner, and as it was brought
direct from the Tensift River, and was of rich red colour, there was no
temptation to touch it. Sidi Boubikir was in excellent spirits, and told
many stories of his earlier days, of his dealings with Bashadors, his
quarrel with the great kaid Ben Daoud, the siege of the city by certain
Illegitimate men--enemies of Allah and the Sultan--his journey to
Gibraltar, and how he met one of the Rothschilds there and tried to do
business with him. He spoke of his investments in consols and the poor
return they brought him, and many other matters of equal moment.

It was not easy to realise that the man who spoke so brightly and lightly
about trivial affairs had one of the keenest intellects in the country,
that he had the secret history of its political intrigues at his fingers'
ends, that he was the trusted agent of the British Government, and lived
and throve surrounded by enemies. As far as was consistent with courtesy I
tried to direct his reminiscences towards politics, but he kept to purely
personal matters, and included in them a story of his attempt to bribe a
British Minister,[42] to whom, upon the occasion of the arrival of a
British Mission in Marrakesh, he went leading two mules laden with silver.
"And when I came to him," said the old man, "I said, 'By Allah's grace I
am rich, so I have brought you some share of my wealth.' But he would not
even count the bags. He called with a loud voice for his wife, and cried
to her, 'See now what this son of shame would do to me. He would give me
his miserable money.' And then in very great anger he drove me from his
presence and bade me never come near him again bearing a gift. What shall
be said of a man like that, to whom Allah had given the wisdom to become a
Bashador and the foolishness to reject a present? Two mules, remember, and
each one with as many bags of Spanish dollars as it could carry. Truly the
ways of your Bashadors are past belief." I agreed heartily with Sidi
Boubikir; a day's discourse had not made clear any other aspect of the
case.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] "In Paradise are rivers of incorruptible water; and rivers of milk,
the taste whereof changes not; and rivers of wine, pleasant unto those who
drink; and rivers of clarified honey; and in Paradise the faithful shall
have all kinds of fruits, and pardon from their God."--Al Koran; Sura 47,
"Mohammed."

[28] The late Sir John Drummond Hay, whose name is honourably remembered
to this day throughout the Moghreb.

[29] When a Sultan appears in public on a white horse, it is for sign that
he is pleased; a black horse, on the other hand, is ominous to them that
understand.

[30] Literally "Learned Ones," a theological cabinet, the number of whose
members is known to no man, the weight of whose decisions is felt
throughout Morocco.

[31] 1873-94.

[32] Hareem.

[33] One of the titles of a Sultan. The "Lofty Portal" ("Sublime Porte")
and the "Sublime Presence" are among the others.

[34] Mohammed said: "Every painter is in Hell Fire, and Allah will appoint
a person at the day of Resurrection to punish him for every picture he
shall have drawn, and he shall be punished in Hell. So, if ye must make
pictures, make them of trees and things without souls."

[35] The reader will recognise the Hadj's reference to bicycles, cameras,
motor-cars, and other mechanical toys.

[36] Melinite shells.

[37] The stork.

[38] Literally, "Father of the she-ass," the Pretender who conducted a
successful campaign against the Sultan in 1902 and 1903, and is still an
active enemy of the Filali dynasty.

[39] "The Praise to Allah."

[40] A Moorish lute.

[41] Literally, "In the name of God."

[42] The late Sir William Kirby Green.




THROUGH A SOUTHERN PROVINCE




[Illustration: AN ARAB STEED]




CHAPTER IX

THROUGH A SOUTHERN PROVINCE

    The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
      Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot;
    The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
      From leaf to flower, and flower to fruit.

    _Atalanta in Calydon._

Even in these fugitive records of my last journey into the "Extreme West,"
I find it hard to turn from Marrakesh. Just as the city held me within its
gates until further sojourn was impossible, so its memories crowd upon me
now, and I recall with an interest I may scarcely hope to communicate the
varied and compelling appeals it made to me at every hour of the day. Yet
I believe, at least I hope, that most of the men and women who strive to
gather for themselves some picture of the world's unfamiliar aspects will
understand the fascination to which I refer, despite my failure to give it
fitting expression. Sevilla in Andalusia held me in the same way when I
went from Cadiz to spend a week-end there, and the three days became as
many weeks, and would have become as many months or years had I been my
own master--which to be sure we none of us are. The hand of the Moor is
clearly to be seen in Sevilla to-day, notably in the Alcazar and the
Giralda tower, fashioned by the builder of the Kutubia that stands like a
stately lighthouse in the Blad al Hamra.

So, with the fascination of the city for excuse, I lingered in Marrakesh
and went daily to the bazaars to make small purchases. The dealers were
patient, friendly folk, and found no trouble too much, so that there was
prospect of a sale at the end of it. Most of them had a collapsible set of
values for their wares, but the dealer who had the best share of my
Moorish or Spanish dollars was an old man in the bazaar of the
brass-workers, who used to say proudly, "Behold in me thy servant, Abd el
Kerim,[43] the man of one price."

The brass and copper workers had most of their metal brought to them from
the Sus country, and sold their goods by weight. Woe to the dealer
discovered with false scales. The gunsmiths, who seemed to do quite a big
trade in flint-lock guns, worked with their feet as well as their hands,
their dexterity being almost Japanese. Nearly every master had an
apprentice or two, and if there are idle apprentices in the southern
capital of my Lord Abd-el-Aziz, I was not fated to see one.