S.L. Bensusan - Morocco

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MOROCCO

PAINTED BY
A.S. FORREST

DESCRIBED BY
S.L. BENSUSAN

[Illustration: Stamp]

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1904

[Illustration: IN DJEDIDA]

Transcriber's Note:

The following apparent printer's errors were changed:
from appearonce to appearance
from everthing to everything
from kindgom to kingdom
from "Tuesday market. to "Tuesday market."
Other inconsistencies in spelling have been left as in the original.

"As I have felt, so I have written."

EOTHEN.

Preface

It has been a pleasant task to recall the little journey set out in the
following pages, but the writer can hardly escape the thought that the
title of the book promises more than he has been able to perform. While
the real Morocco remains a half-known land to-day, this book does not take
the traveller from the highroad. The mere idler, the wayfarer to whom
Morocco is no more than one of many places of pilgrimage, must needs deal
modestly with his task, even though modesty be an unfashionable virtue;
and the painstaking folk who pass through this world pelting one another
with hard facts will find here but little to add to their store of
ammunition. This appeal is of set purpose a limited one, made to the few
who are content to travel for the sake of the pleasures of the road, free
from the comforts that beset them at home, and free also from the popular
belief that their city, religion, morals, and social laws are the best in
the world. The qualifications that fit a man to make money and acquire the
means for modern travel are often fatal to proper appreciation of the
unfamiliar world he proposes to visit. To restore the balance of things,
travel agents and other far-seeing folks have contrived to inflict upon
most countries within the tourist's reach all the modern conveniences by
which he lives and thrives. So soon as civilising missions and
missionaries have pegged out their claims, even the desert is deemed
incomplete without a modern hotel or two, fitted with electric light,
monstrous tariff, and served by a crowd of debased guides. In the wake of
these improvements the tourist follows, finds all the essentials of the
life he left at home, and, knowing nothing of the life he came to see, has
no regrets. So from Algiers, Tunis, Cairo--ay, even from Jerusalem itself,
all suggestion of great history has passed, and one hears among ruins,
once venerable, the globe-trotter's cry of praise. "Hail Cook," he cries,
as he seizes the coupons that unveil Isis and read the riddle of the
Sphinx, "those about to tour salute thee."

But of the great procession that steams past Gibraltar, heavily armed with
assurance and circular tickets, few favour Morocco at all, and the most of
these few go no farther than Tangier. Once there, they descend upon some
modern hotel, often with no more than twenty-four hours in which to master
the secrets of Sunset Land.

After dinner a few of the bolder spirits among the men take counsel of a
guide, who leads them to the Moorish coffee-house by the great Mosque.
There they listen to the music of ghaitah and gimbri, pay a peseta for a
cup of indifferent coffee, and buy an unmusical instrument or two for many
times the proper price. Thereafter they retire to their hotel to consider
how fancy can best embellish the bare facts of the evening's amusement,
while the True Believers of the coffee-house (debased in the eyes of all
other Believers, and, somewhat, too, in fact, by reason of their contact
with the Infidel) gather up the pesetas, curse the Unbeliever and his
shameless relations, and praise Allah the One who, even in these
degenerate days, sends them a profit.

On the following morning the tourists ride on mules or donkeys to the
showplaces of Tangier, followed by scores of beggar boys. The ladies are
shown over some hareem that they would enter less eagerly did they but
know the exact status of the odalisques hired to meet them. One and all
troop to the bazaars, where crafty men sit in receipt of custom and
relieve the Nazarene of the money whose value he does not know. Lunch
follows, and then the ship's siren summons the travellers away from
Morocco, to speak and write with authority for all time of the country and
its problems.

With these facts well in mind, it seemed best for me to let the pictures
suffice for Tangier, and to choose for the text one road and one city. For
if the truth be told there is little more than a single path to all the
goals that the undisguised European may reach.

Morocco does not change save by compulsion, and there is no area of
European influence below Tangier. Knowing one highway well you know
something of all; consequently whether Fez, Mequinez, Wazzan, or Marrakesh
be the objective, the travel story does not vary greatly. But to-day,
Marrakusha-al-Hamra, Red Marrakesh, is the most African of all cities in
Morocco, and seemed therefore best suited to the purpose of this book.
Moreover, at the time when this journey was made, Bu Hamara was holding
the approaches to Fez, and neither Mequinez nor Wazzan was in a mood to
receive strangers.

So it falls out that the record of some two or three hundred miles of
inland travel is all that awaits the reader here. In time to come, when
Morocco has been purged of its offences of simplicity and primitiveness,
the tourist shall accomplish in forty-eight hours the journey that
demanded more than a month of last year's spring. For Sunset Land has no
railway lines, nor can it boast--beyond the narrow limits of
Tangier--telegraphs, telephones, electric light, modern hotels, or any of
the other delights upon which the pampered traveller depends. It is as a
primeval forest in the hour before the dawn. When the sun of France
penetrates pacifically to all its hidden places, the forest will wake to a
new life. Strange birds of bright plumage, called in Europe _gens
d'armes_, will displace the storks upon the battlements of its ancient
towns, the _commis voyageur_ will appear where wild boar and hyaena now
travel in comparative peace, the wild cat (_felis Throgmortonensis_) will
arise from all mineralised districts. Arab and Berber will disappear
slowly from the Moroccan forest as the lions have done before them, and in
the place of their _douars_ and _ksor_ there shall be a multitude of small
towns laid out with mathematical precision, reached by rail, afflicted
with modern improvements, and partly filled with Frenchmen who strive to
drown in the cafe their sorrow at being so far away from home. The real
Morocco is so lacking in all the conveniences that would commend it to
wealthy travellers that the writer feels some apology is due for the
appearance of his short story of an almost unknown country in so fine a
setting. Surely a simple tale of Sunset Land was never seen in such
splendid guise before, and will not be seen again until, with past
redeemed and forgotten, future assured, and civilisation modernised,
Morocco ceases to be what it is to-day.

S.L. BENSUSAN.

_July 1904._

Contents

CHAPTER I page
By Cape Spartel 3

CHAPTER II
From Tangier to Djedida 21

CHAPTER III
On the Moorish Road 41

CHAPTER IV
To the Gates of Marrakesh 57

CHAPTER V
In Red Marrakesh 77

CHAPTER VI
Round about Marrakesh 101

CHAPTER VII
The Slave Market at Marrakesh 121

CHAPTER VIII
Green Tea and Politics 139

CHAPTER IX
Through a Southern Province 159

CHAPTER X
"Sons of Lions" 179

CHAPTER XI
In the Argan Forest 199

CHAPTER XII
To the Gate of the Picture City 217

List of Illustrations

1. In Djedida _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. A Shepherd, Cape Spartel 2
3. The Courtyard of the Lighthouse, Cape Spartel 4
4. A Street, Tangier 6
5. In Tangier 8
6. A Street in Tangier 10
7. A Guide, Tangier 12
8. The Road to the Kasbah, Tangier 14
9. Head of a Boy from Mediunah 16
10. The Goatherd from Mediunah 18
11. Old Buildings, Tangier 20
12. Moorish House, Cape Spartel 22
13. A Patriarch 24
14. Pilgrims on a Steamer 26
15. The Hour of Sale 28
16. Evening, Magazan 30
17. Sunset off the Coast 32
18. A Veranda at Magazan 34
19. A Blacksmith's Shop 36
20. A Saint's Tomb 40
21. Near a Well in the Country 42
22. Near a Well in the Town 44
23. Moorish Woman and Child 46
24. Evening on the Plains 48
25. Travellers by Night 52
26. The R'Kass 56
27. A Traveller on the Plains 58
28. The Mid-day Halt 60
29. On Guard 64
30. A Village at Dukala 68
31. The Approach to Marrakesh 72
32. Date Palms near Marrakesh 76
33. On the Road to Marrakesh 80
34. A Minstrel 84
35. One of the City Gates 86
36. A Blind Beggar 90
37. A Wandering Minstrel 94
38. The Roofs of Marrakesh 100
39. A Gateway, Marrakesh 104
40. A Courtyard, Marrakesh 108
41. A Well in Marrakesh 112
42. A Bazaar, Marrakesh 114
43. A Brickfield, Marrakesh 116
44. A Mosque, Marrakesh 120
45. A Water Seller, Marrakesh 124
46. On the Road to the Sok el Abeed 126
47. The Slave Market 128
48. Dilals in the Slave Market 132
49. On the House-top, Marrakesh 138
50. A House Interior, Marrakesh 142
51. A Glimpse of the Atlas Mountains 146
52. A Marrakshi 150
53. Street in Marrakesh 154
54. An Arab Steed 158
55. A Young Marrakshi 162
56. Fruit Market, Marrakesh 164
57. In the Fandak 166
58. The Jama'a Effina 170
59. Evening in Camp 178
60. Preparing Supper 182
61. A Goatherd 186
62. Coming from the Mosque, Hanchen 190
63. Evening at Hanchen 198
64. On the Road to Argan Forest 202
65. The Snake Charmer 204
66. In Camp 206
67. A Countryman 208
68. Moonlight 212
69. A Moorish Girl 216
70. A Narrow Street in Mogador 218
71. Night Scene, Mogador 220
72. House Tops, Mogador 222
73. Selling Grain in Mogador 224
74. Selling Oranges 226

_The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved in England by the
Hentschel Colourtype Process._

BY CAPE SPARTEL

[Illustration: A SHEPHERD, CAPE SPARTEL]

CHAPTER I

BY CAPE SPARTEL

Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song,
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

_The Deserted Garden._

Before us the Atlantic rolls to the verge of the "tideless, dolorous
inland sea." In the little bay lying between Morocco's solitary lighthouse
and the famous Caves of Spartel, the waters shine in colours that recall
in turn the emerald, the sapphire, and the opal. There is just enough
breeze to raise a fine spray as the baby waves reach the rocks, and to
fill the sails of one or two tiny vessels speeding toward the coast of
Spain. There is just enough sun to warm the water in the pools to a point
that makes bathing the most desirable mid-day pastime, and over land and
sea a solemn sense of peace is brooding. From where the tents are set no
other human habitation is in sight. A great spur of rock, with the green
and scarlet of cactus sprawling over it at will, shuts off lighthouse and
telegraph station, while the towering hills above hide the village of
Mediunah, whence our supplies are brought each day at dawn and
sun-setting.

Two fishermen, clinging to the steep side of the rock, cast their lines
into the water. They are from the hills, and as far removed from our
twentieth century as their prototypes who were fishing in the sparkling
blue not so very far away when, the world being young, Theocritus passed
and gave them immortality. In the valley to the right, the atmosphere of
the Sicilian Idylls is preserved by two half-clad goatherds who have
brought their flock to pasture from hillside Mediunah, in whose pens they
are kept safe from thieves at night. As though he were a reincarnation of
Daphnis or Menalcas, one of the brown-skinned boys leans over a little
promontory and plays a tuneless ghaitah, while his companion, a younger
lad, gives his eyes to the flock and his ears to the music. The last rains
of this favoured land's brief winter have passed; beyond the plateau the
sun has called flowers to life in every nook and cranny. Soon the light
will grow too strong and blinding, the flowers will fade beneath it, the
shepherds will seek the shade, but in these glad March days there is no
suggestion of the intolerable heat to come.

[Illustration: THE COURT-YARD OF THE LIGHTHOUSE, CAPE SPARTEL]

On the plot of level ground that Nature herself has set in position for a
camp, the tents are pitched. Two hold the impedimenta of travel; in the
third Salam and his assistant work in leisurely fashion, as befits the
time and place. Tangier lies no more than twelve miles away, over a
road that must be deemed uncommonly good for Morocco, but I have chosen to
live in camp for a week or two in this remote place, in preparation for a
journey to the southern country. At first the tents were the cynosure of
native eyes. Mediunah came down from its fastness among the hilltops to
investigate discreetly from secure corners, prepared for flight so soon as
occasion demanded it, if not before. Happily Salam's keen glance pierced
the cover of the advance-guard and reassured one and all. Confidence
established, the village agreed after much solemn debate to supply eggs,
chickens, milk, and vegetables at prices doubtless in excess of those
prevailing in the country markets, but quite low enough for Europeans.

This little corner of the world, close to the meeting of the Atlantic and
Mediterranean waters, epitomises in its own quiet fashion the story of the
land's decay. Now it is a place of wild bees and wilder birds, of flowers
and bushes that live fragrant untended lives, seen by few and appreciated
by none. It is a spot so far removed from human care that I have seen, a
few yards from the tents, fresh tracks made by the wild boar as he has
rooted o' nights; and once, as I sat looking out over the water when the
rest of the camp was asleep, a dark shadow passed, not fifty yards
distant, going head to wind up the hill, and I knew it for "tusker"
wending his way to the village gardens, where the maize was green.

Yet the district has not always been solitary. Where now the tents are
pitched, there was an orange grove in the days when Mulai Abd er Rahman
ruled at Fez and Marrakesh, and then Mediunah boasted quite a thriving
connection with the coasts of Portugal and Spain. The little bay wherein
one is accustomed to swim or plash about at noonday, then sheltered
furtive sailing-boats from the sleepy eyes of Moorish authority, and a
profitable smuggling connection was maintained with the Spanish villages
between Algeciras and Tarifa Point. Beyond the rocky caverns, where
patient countrymen still quarry for millstones, a bare coast-line leads to
the spot where legend places the Gardens of the Hesperides; indeed, the
millstone quarries are said to be the original Caves of Hercules, and the
golden fruit the hero won flourished, we are assured, not far away. Small
wonder then that the place has an indefinable quality of enchantment that
even the twentieth century cannot quite efface.

[Illustration: A STREET, TANGIER]

Life in camp is exquisitely simple. We rise with the sun. If in the raw
morning hours a donkey brays, the men are very much perturbed, for they
know that the poor beast has seen a djin. They will remain ill-at-ease
until, somewhere in the heights where Mediunah is preparing for another
day, a cock crows. This is a satisfactory omen, atoning for the donkey's
performance. A cock only crows when he sees an angel, and, if there are
angels abroad, the ill intentions of the djinoon will be upset. When I was
travelling in the country some few years ago, it chanced one night that
the heavens were full of shooting stars. My camp attendants ceased work at
once. Satan and all his host were assailing Paradise, they said, and we
were spectators of heaven's artillery making counter-attack upon the
djinoon.[1] The wandering meteors passed, the fixed stars shone out with
such a splendour as we may not hope to see in these western islands, and
the followers of the great Camel Driver gave thanks and praise to His
Master Allah, who had conquered the powers of darkness once again.

While I enjoy a morning stroll over the hills, or a plunge in the sea,
Salam, squatting at the edge of the cooking tent behind two small charcoal
fires, prepares the breakfast. He has the true wayfarer's gift that
enables a man to cook his food in defiance of wind or weather. Some wisps
of straw and charcoal are arranged in a little hole scooped out of the
ground, a match is struck, the bellows are called into play, and the fire
is an accomplished fact. The kettle sings as cheerfully as the cicadas in
the tree tops, eggs are made into what Salam calls a "marmalade," in spite
of my oft-repeated assurance that he means omelette, porridge is cooked
and served with new milk that has been carefully strained and boiled. For
bread we have the flat brown loaves of Mediunah, and they are better than
they look--ill-made indeed, but vastly more nutritious than the pretty
emasculated products of our modern bakeries.

Bargain and sale are concluded before the morning walk is over. The
village folk send a deputation carrying baskets of eggs and charcoal, with
earthen jars of milk or butter, fresh vegetables, and live chickens. I
stayed one morning to watch the procedure.

The eldest of the party, a woman who seems to be eighty and is probably
still on the sunny side of fifty, comes slowly forward to where Salam sits
aloof, dignified and difficult to approach. He has been watching her out
of one corner of an eye, but feigns to be quite unconscious of her
presence. He and she know that we want supplies and must have them from
the village, but the facts of the case have nothing to do with the
conventions of trading in Sunset Land.

"The Peace of the Prophet on all True Believers. I have brought food from
Mediunah," says the elderly advance-guard, by way of opening the campaign.

"Allah is indeed merciful, O my Aunt," responds Salam with lofty
irrelevance. Then follows a prolonged pause, somewhat trying, I apprehend,
to Aunt, and struggling with a yawn Salam says at length, "I will see what
you would sell."

She beckons the others, and they lay their goods at our steward's feet.
Salam turns his head away meanwhile, and looks out across the Atlantic as
though anxious to assure himself about the state of agriculture in Spain.
At last he wheels about, and with a rapid glance full of contempt surveys
the village produce. He has a cheapening eye.

"How much?" he asks sternly.

[Illustration: IN TANGIER]

Item by item the old dame prices the goods. The little group of young
married women, with babies tied in a bundle behind them, or half-naked
children clinging to their loin-cloths, nods approval. But Salam's face is
a study. In place of contemptuous indifference there is now rising anger,
terrible to behold. His brows are knitted, his eyes flame, his beard seems
to bristle with rage. The tale of prices is hardly told before, with a
series of rapid movements, he has tied every bundle up, and is thrusting
the good things back into the hands of their owners. His vocabulary is
strained to its fullest extent; he stands up, and with outspread hands
denounces Mediunah and all its ways. The men of the village are cowards;
the women have no shame. Their parents were outcasts. They have no fear of
the Prophet who bade True Believers deal fairly with the stranger within
their gates. In a year at most, perhaps sooner, "Our Master the Sultan"
will assuredly be among these people who shame Al Moghreb,[2] he will eat
them up, dogs will make merry among their graves, and their souls will go
down to the pit. In short, everything is too dear.

Only the little children are frightened by this outburst, which is no more
than a prelude to bargaining. The women extol and Salam decries the goods
on offer; both praise Allah. Salam assures them that the country of the
"Ingliz" would be ruined if its inhabitants had to pay the prices they ask
for such goods as they have to sell. He will see his master starve by
inches, he will urge him to return to Tangier and eat there at a fair
price, before he will agree to sacrifices hitherto unheard of in Sunset
Land. This bargaining proceeds for a quarter of an hour without
intermission, and by then the natives have brought their prices down and
Salam has brought his up. Finally the money is paid in Spanish pesetas or
Moorish quarters, and carefully examined by the simple folk, who retire to
their ancestral hills, once more praising Allah who sends custom. Salam,
his task accomplished, complains that the villagers have robbed us
shamefully, but a faint twinkle in his eye suggests that he means less
than he says.

Breakfast over, I seek a hillside cave where there is a double gift of
shade and a wonderful view, content to watch the pageantry of the morning
hours and dream of hard work. Only the goatherds and their charges suggest
that the district is inhabited, unless some vessel passing on its way to
or from the southern coast can be seen communicating with the signal
station round the bend of the rocks. There a kindly old Scot lives, with
his Spanish wife and little children, in comparative isolation, from the
beginning to the end of the year.

"I've almost forgotten my own tongue," he said to me one evening when he
came down to the camp to smoke the pipe of peace and tell of the fur and
feather that pass in winter time. It was on a day when a great flight of
wild geese had been seen winging its way to the unknown South, and the
procession had fired the sporting instinct in one of us at least.

[Illustration: A STREET IN TANGIER]

Mid-day, or a little later, finds Salam in charge of a light meal, and,
that discussed, one may idle in the shade until the sun is well on the way
to the West. Then books and papers are laid aside. We set out for a tramp,
or saddle the horses and ride for an hour or so in the direction of the
mountain, an unexplored Riviera of bewildering and varied loveliness. The
way lies through an avenue of cork trees, past which the great hills slope
seaward, clothed with evergreen oak and heath, and a species of sundew,
with here and there yellow broom, gum cistus, and an unfamiliar plant with
blue flowers. Trees and shrubs fight for light and air, the fittest
survive and thrive, sheltering little birds from the keen-eyed, quivering
hawks above them. The road makes me think of what the French Mediterranean
littoral must have been before it was dotted over with countless vulgar
villas, covered with trees and shrubs that are not indigenous to the soil,
and tortured into trim gardens that might have strayed from a prosperous
suburb of London or Paris. Save a few charcoal burners, or stray women
bent almost double beneath the load of wood they have gathered for some
village on the hills, we see nobody. These evening rides are made into a
country as deserted as the plateau that holds the camp, for the mountain
houses of wealthy residents are half a dozen miles nearer Tangier.[3]

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