S.L. Bensusan - Morocco

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When it became necessary for us to leave Marrakesh the young shareef went
to the city's fandaks and inquired if they held muleteers bound for
Mogador. The Maalem had taken his team home along the northern road, our
path lay to the south, through the province of the Son of Lions (Oulad bou
Sba), and thence through Shiadma and Haha to the coast. We were fortunate
in finding the men we sought without any delay. A certain kaid of the Sus
country, none other than El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haida, who rules over
Tiensiert, had sent six muleteers to Marrakesh to sell his oil, in what is
the best southern market, and he had worked out their expenses on a scale
that could hardly be expected to satisfy anybody but himself.

[Illustration: IN THE FANDAK]

"From Tiensiert to Marrakesh is three days journey," he had said, and,
though it is five, no man contradicted him, perhaps because five is
regarded as an unfortunate number, not to be mentioned in polite or
religious society. "Three days will serve to sell the oil and rest the
mules," he had continued, "and three days more will bring you home." Then
he gave each man three dollars for travelling money, about nine shillings
English, and out of it the mules were to be fed, the charges of n'zala and
fandak to be met, and if there was anything over the men might buy food
for themselves. They dared not protest, for El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haida had
every man's house in his keeping, and if the muleteers had failed him he
would have had compensation in a manner no father of a family would care
to think about. The oil was sold, and the muleteers were preparing to
return to their master, when Salam offered them a price considerably in
excess of what they had received for the whole journey to take us to
Mogador. Needless to say they were not disposed to let the chance go by,
for it would not take them two days out of their way, so I went to the
fandak to see mules and men, and complete the bargain. There had been a
heavy shower some days before, and the streets were more than usually
miry, but in the fandak, whose owner had no marked taste for
cleanliness, the accumulated dirt of all the rainy season had been
stirred, with results I have no wish to record. A few donkeys in the last
stages of starvation had been sent in to gather strength by resting, one
at least was too far gone to eat. Even the mules of the Susi tribesmen
were not in a very promising condition. It was an easy task to count their
ribs, and they were badly in need of rest and a few square meals. Tied in
the covered cloisters of the fandak there was some respite for them from
the attack of mosquitoes, but the donkeys, being cheap and of no
importance, were left to all the torments that were bound to be associated
with the place.

Only one human being faced the glare of the light and trod fearlessly
through the mire that lay eight or ten inches deep on the ground, and he
was a madman, well-nigh as tattered and torn as the one I had angered in
the Kaisariyah on the morning after my arrival in the city. This man's
madness took a milder turn. He went from one donkey to another, whispering
in its ear, a message of consolation I hope and believe, though I had no
means of finding out. When I entered the fandak he came running up to me
in a style suggestive of the gambols of a playful dog, and I was
exceedingly annoyed by a thought that he might not know any difference
between me and his other friends. There was no need to be uneasy, for he
drew himself up to his full height, made a hissing noise in his throat,
and spat fiercely at my shadow. Then he returned to the stricken donkeys,
and the keeper of the fandak, coming out to welcome me, saw his more
worthy visitor. Turning from me with "Marhababik" ("You are welcome") just
off his lips, he ran forward and kissed the hem of the madman's djellaba.

A madman is very often an object of veneration in Morocco, for his brain
is in divine keeping, while his body is on the earth. And yet the Moor is
not altogether logical in his attitude to the "afflicted of Allah." While
so much liberty is granted to the majority of the insane that feigned
madness is quite common among criminals in the country, less fortunate men
who have really become mentally afflicted, but are not recognised as
insane, are kept chained to the walls of the Marstan--half hospital, half
prison--that is attached to the most great mosques. I have been assured
that they suffer considerably at the hands of most gaoler-doctors, whose
medicine is almost invariably the stick, but I have not been able to
verify the story, which is quite opposed to Moorish tradition. The mad
visitor to the fandak did not disturb the conversation with the keeper and
the Susi muleteers, but he turned the head of a donkey in our direction
and talked eagerly to the poor animal, pointing at me with outstretched
finger the while. The keeper of the fandak, kind man, made uneasy by this
demonstration, signed to me quietly to stretch out my hand, with palm
open, and directed to the spot where the madman stood, for only in that
way could I hope to avert the evil eye.

The chief muleteer was a thin and wiry little fellow, a total stranger to
the soap and water beloved of Unbelievers. He could not have been more
than five feet high, and he was burnt brown. His dark outer garment of
coarse native wool had the curious yellow patch on the back that all
Berbers seem to favour, though none can explain its origin or purpose, and
he carried his slippers in his hand, probably deeming them less capable of
withstanding hard wear than his naked feet. He had no Arabic, but spoke
only "Shilha," the language of the Berbers, so it took some time to make
all arrangements, including the stipulation that a proper meal for all the
mules was to be given under the superintendence of M'Barak. That worthy
representative of Shareefian authority was having a regal time, drawing a
dollar a day, together with three meals and a ration for his horse, in
return for sitting at ease in the courtyard of the Tin House.

Arrangements concluded, it was time to say good-bye to Sidi Boubikir. I
asked delicately to be allowed to pay rent for the use of the house, but
the hospitable old man would not hear of it. "Allah forbid that I should
take any money," he remarked piously. "Had you told me you were going I
would have asked you to dine with me again before you started." We sat in
the well-remembered room, where green tea and mint were served in a
beautiful set of china-and-gold filagree cups, presented to him by the
British Government nearly ten years ago. He spoke at length of the places
that should be visited, including the house of his near relative, Mulai el
Hadj of Tamsloht, to whom he offered to send me with letters and an
escort. Moreover, he offered an escort to see us out of the city and on
the road to the coast, but I judged it better to decline both offers, and,
with many high-flown compliments, left him by the entrance to his great
house, and groped back through the mud to put the finishing touches to
packing.

The young shareef accepted a parting gift with grave dignity, and assured
me of his esteem for all time and his willing service when and where I
should need it. I had said good-bye to the "tabibs" and "tabibas," so
nothing remained but to rearrange our goods, that nearly everything should
be ready for the mules when they arrived before daybreak. Knowing that the
first day's ride was a long one, some forty miles over an indifferent road
and with second-rate animals, I was anxious to leave the city as soon as
the gates were opened.

[Illustration: THE JAMA'A EFFINA]

Right above my head the mueddin in the minaret overlooking the Tin House
called the sleeping city to its earliest prayer.[47] I rose and waked the
others, and we dressed by a candle-light that soon became superfluous.
When the mueddin began the chant that sounded so impressive and so
mournful as it was echoed from every minaret in the city, the first
approach of light would have been visible in the east, and in these
latitudes day comes and goes upon winged feet. Before the beds were
taken to pieces and Salam had the porridge and his "marmalade" ready, with
steaming coffee, for early breakfast, we heard the mules clattering down
the stony street. Within half an hour the packing comedy had commenced.
The Susi muleteer, who was accompanied by a boy and four men, one a slave,
and all quite as frowzy, unwashed, and picturesque as himself, swore that
we did not need four pack-mules but eight. Salam, his eyes flaming, and
each separate hair of his beard standing on end, cursed the shameless
women who gave such men as the Susi muleteer and his fellows to the
kingdom of my Lord Abd-el-Aziz, threw the _shwarris_ on the ground,
rejected the ropes, and declared that with proper fittings the mules, if
these were mules at all, and he had his very serious doubts about the
matter, could run to Mogador in three days. Clearly Salam intended to be
master from the start, and when I came to know something more about our
company, the wisdom of the procedure was plain. Happily for one and all
Mr. Nairn came along at this moment. It was not five o'clock, but the hope
of serving us had brought him into the cold morning air, and his thorough
knowledge of the Shilha tongue worked wonders. He was able to send for
proper ropes at an hour when we could have found no trader to supply them,
and if we reached the city gate that looks out towards the south almost as
soon as the camel caravan that had waited without all night, the
accomplishment was due to my kind friend who, with Mr. Alan Lennox, had
done so much to make the stay in Marrakesh happily memorable.

It was just half-past six when the last pack-mule passed the gate, whose
keeper said graciously, "Allah prosper the journey," and, though the sun
was up, the morning was cool, with a delightfully fresh breeze from the
west, where the Atlas Mountains stretched beyond range of sight in all
their unexplored grandeur. They seemed very close to us in that clear
atmosphere, but their foot hills lay a day's ride away, and the natives
would be prompt to resent the visit of a stranger who did not come to them
with the authority of a kaid or governor whose power and will to punish
promptly were indisputable. With no little regret I turned, when we had
been half an hour on the road, for a last look at Ibn Tachfin's city.
Distance had already given it the indefinite attraction that comes when
the traveller sees some city of old time in a light that suggests every
charm and defines none. I realised that I had never entered an Eastern
city with greater pleasure, or left one with more sincere regret, and that
if time and circumstance had been my servants I would not have been so
soon upon the road.

The road from Marrakesh to Mogador is as pleasant as traveller could wish,
lying for a great part of the way through fertile land, but it is seldom
followed, because of the two unbridged rivers N'fiss and Sheshoua. If
either is in flood (and both are fed by the melting snows from the Atlas
Mountains), you must camp on the banks for days together, until it shall
please Allah to abate the waters. Our lucky star was in the ascendant; we
reached Wad N'fiss at eleven o'clock to find its waters low and clear. On
the far side of the banks we stayed to lunch by the border of a thick belt
of sedge and bulrushes, a marshy place stretching over two or three acres,
and glowing with the rich colour that comes to southern lands in April and
in May. It recalled to me the passage in one of the stately choruses of
Mr. Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_, that tells how "blossom by blossom
the spring begins."

The intoxication that lies in colour and sound has ever had more
fascination for me than the finest wine could bring: the colour of the
vintage is more pleasing than the taste of the grape. In this forgotten
corner the eye and ear were assailed and must needs surrender. Many tiny
birds of the warbler family sang among the reeds, where I set up what I
took to be a Numidian crane, and, just beyond the river growths, some
splendid oleanders gave an effective splash of scarlet to the surrounding
greens and greys. In the waters of the marsh the bullfrogs kept up a loud
sustained croak, as though they were True Believers disturbed by the
presence of the Infidels. The N'fiss is a fascinating river from every
point of view. Though comparatively small, few Europeans have reached the
source, and it passes through parts of the country where a white man's
presence would be resented effectively. The spurs of the Atlas were still
clearly visible on our left hand, and needless to say we had the place to
ourselves. There was not so much as a tent in sight.

At last M'Barak, who had resumed his place at the head of our little
company, and now realised that we had prolonged our stay beyond proper
limits, mounted his horse rather ostentatiously, and the journey was
resumed over level land that was very scantily covered with grass or
clumps of irises. The mountains seemed to recede and the plain to spread
out; neither eye nor glass revealed a village; we were apparently riding
towards the edge of the plains. The muleteer and his companions strode
along at a round pace, supporting themselves with sticks and singing
melancholy Shilha love-songs. Their mules, recollection of their good meal
of the previous evening being forgotten, dropped to a pace of something
less than four miles an hour, and as the gait of our company had to be
regulated by the speed of its slowest member, it is not surprising that
night caught us up on the open and shut out a view of the billowy plain
that seemingly held no resting-place. How I missed the little Maalem,
whose tongue would have been a spur to the stumbling beasts! But as
wishing would bring nothing, we dismounted and walked by the side of our
animals, the kaid alone remaining in the saddle. Six o'clock became seven,
and seven became eight, and then I found it sweet to hear the watch-dog's
honest bark. Of course it was not a "deep-mouthed welcome:" it was no more
than a cry of warning and defiance raised by the colony of pariah dogs
that guarded Ain el Baidah, our destination.

In the darkness, that had a pleasing touch of purple colouring lent it by
the stars, Ain el Baidah's headman loomed very large and imposing. "Praise
to Allah that you have come and in health," he remarked, as though we
were old friends. He assured me of my welcome, and said his village had a
guest-house that would serve instead of the tent. Methought he protested
too much, but knowing that men and mules were dead beat, and that we had a
long way to go, I told Salam that the guest-house would serve, and the
headman lead the way to a tapia building that would be called a very small
barn, or a large fowl-house, in England. A tiny clay lamp, in which a
cotton wick consumed some mutton fat, revealed a corner of the darkness
and the dirt, and when our own lamps banished the one, they left the other
very clearly to be seen. But we were too tired to utter a complaint. I saw
the mules brought within the zariba, helped to set up my camp bed, took
the cartridges out of my shot gun, and, telling Salam to say when supper
was ready, fell asleep at once. Eighteen busy hours had passed since the
mueddin called to "feyer" from the minaret above the Tin House, but my
long-sought rest was destined to be brief.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Literally, "Slave of the Merciful."

[44] Priest attached to the Mosque.

[45] The Angels of Judgment.

[46] So many lepers come from the Argan Forest provinces of Haha and
Shiadma that leprosy is believed by many Moors to result from the free use
of Argan oil. There is no proper foundation for this belief.

[47] This is the most important of the five supplications. The Sura of Al
Koran called "The Night Journey" says, "To the prayer of daybreak the
Angels themselves bear witness."

"SONS OF LIONS" AND OTHER TRUE BELIEVERS

[Illustration: EVENING IN CAMP]

CHAPTER X

"SONS OF LIONS" AND OTHER TRUE BELIEVERS

FALSTAFF--"Four rogues in buckram let drive at me."

_King Henry IV._, Act II. Scene 4.

By the time Salam had roused me from a dream in which I was being torn
limb from limb in a Roman amphitheatre, whose terraced seats held
countless Moors all hugely enjoying my dismemberment, I realised that a
night in that guest-house would be impossible. The place was already
over-populated.

A brief meal was taken in the open, and we sat with our feet thrust to the
edge of the nearest charcoal fire, for the night was cold. Our animals,
tethered and watered, stood anxiously waiting for the barley the chief
muleteer had gone to buy. Supper over, I sat on a chair in the open, and
disposed myself for sleep as well as the conditions permitted. Round me,
on the bare ground, the men and the boy from the Sus lay wrapped in their
haiks--the dead could not have slept more soundly than they. The two fires
were glimmering very faintly now, M'Barak was stretching a blanket for
himself, while Salam collected the tin plates and dishes, his last task
before retiring. Somewhere in the far outer darkness I heard the wail of
a hyaena, and a light cold breeze sighed over the plain. Half asleep and
half awake I saw the village headman approaching from out the darkness; a
big bag of barley was on his shoulder, and he was followed closely by the
muleteer. They came into the little circle of the fast falling light; I
was nodding drowsily toward unconsciousness, and wondering, with a vague
resentment that exhausted all my remaining capacity to think, why the
headman should be speaking so loudly. Suddenly, I saw the muleteer go to
earth as if he had been pole-axed, and in that instant I was wide awake
and on my feet. So was Salam.

The headman delivered himself of a few incisive rasping sentences. The
muleteer rose slowly and wiped a little blood from his face.

Salam explained: his capacity for fathoming a crisis was ever remarkable.
"Headman he charge three dollars for barley and he don't worth more than
one. Muleteer he speaks for that, and headman 'e knock him down."

"Ask him how he dares interfere with our people," I said. "Tell him his
kaid shall hear of it."

The headman replied haughtily to Salam's questions and strode away. "He
say," said Salam, beginning to get angry, "Pay first and talk
afterwards--to Allah, if you will. He say he wait long time for man like
muleteer an' cut 'im throat. What he's bin done that be nothing. What he's
goin' to do, that all Moors is goin' to see. He come back soon, sir."

Then Salam slipped noiselessly into the guest-house and fetched my
repeating shot gun, from which I had previously drawn all cartridges. He
sat down outside with the weapon across his knees, and the bruised
muleteer safely behind him. I coaxed the charcoal to a further effort and
returned to my chair, wondering whether trouble that had been so long in
coming had arrived at last. Some five minutes later we heard a sound of
approaching footsteps, and I could not help noting how Salam brightened.
He was spoiling for a fight. I watched dim figures coming into the area of
light, they took shape and showed Ain al Baidah's chief and two of his
men--tall, sturdy fellows, armed with thick sticks. Seeing Salam sitting
with gun levelled full on them they came to a sudden halt, and listened
while he told them, in a voice that shook and sometimes broke with rage,
their character, their characteristics, the moral standing of their
parents and grandparents, the probable fate of their sons, and the certain
and shameful destiny of their daughters. He invited them, with finger on
trigger, to advance one step and meet the death that should enable him to
give their ill-favoured bodies one by one to the pariahs and the hawks,
before he proceeded to sack Ain al Baidah and overcome single-handed the
whole of its fighting men. And, absurd though his rodomontade may sound to
Europeans, who read it in cold print, it was a vastly different matter
there in the dark of the Plain, when Salam stood, believing he held a
loaded gun in his hand, and allowed his fierce temper rein. The headman
and his two attendants slunk off like whipped curs, and we proceeded to
feed our animals, replenish both fires, and sleep with one eye open.

[Illustration: PREPARING SUPPER]

Morning came over the hills to Ain al Baidah in cold and cheerless guise.
The villagers crowded round to stare at us in the familiar fashion. But
there were grim looks and dark scowls among them, and, failing the
truculent and determined bearing of Salam and the presence of the kaid we
should have had a lively quarter of an hour. As it was, we were not ready
to leave before eight o'clock, and then Salam went, money in hand, to
where the thieving headman stood. The broken night's rest had not made my
companion more pleased with Ain al Baidah's chief. He threw the dollars
that had been demanded on to the ground before the rogue's feet, and then
his left hand flew up and outward. With one swift, irresistible movement
he had caught his foe by the beard, drawn down the shrinking, vicious face
to within a few inches of his own, and so holding him, spoke earnestly for
half a minute, of what the Prophet has said about hospitality to
travellers, and the shocking fate that awaits headmen who rob those who
come seeking shelter, and beat them when they complain. Ain al Baidah's
chief could not but listen, and listening, he could not but shudder. So it
fell out that, when Salam's harangue was finished, we left a speechless,
irresolute, disgraced headman, and rode away slowly, that none might say
we knew fear. If the village had any inclination to assist its chief, the
sight of the blessed one's weapon, in its fierce red cloth covering, must
have awed them. Some days later, in Mogador, I was told that the Ain al
Baidah man is a terror to travellers and a notorious robber, but I made no
complaint to our Consul. If the headman's overlord had been told to punish
him, the method chosen would assuredly have been to rob every man in the
douar, and if they resisted, burn their huts over their heads. It seemed
better to trust that the memory of Salam will lead Ain al Baidah's chief
to lessen his proud looks.

We made slow progress to Sheshoua, where the river that might have barred
our road to the coast was as friendly as the N'fiss had been on the
previous day. The track to its banks had been flat and uninteresting
enough; what good work the winter rains had done by way of weaving a
flower carpet on the plains, the summer sun had destroyed. There was a
considerable depression in the plain, though we could not notice it at the
slow pace forced upon us, and this accounted for the absence of water
between the rivers, and for the great extent of the calcareous gravel, in
which few plants could thrive. Only the _zizyphus lotus_, from whose
branches little white snails hung like flowers, seemed to find real
nourishment in the dry ground, though colocynth and wild lavender were to
be seen now and again. But by the Sheshoua River the change was very
sudden and grateful to the eye.

A considerable olive grove, whose grey-green leaves shone like silver in
the light breeze, offered shade and shelter to a large colony of doves.
There was a thriving village, with a saint's tomb for chief attraction,
and solid walls to suggest that the place does not enjoy perennial
tranquillity. But even though there are strangers who trouble these good
folk, their home could not have looked more charmingly a haunt of peace
than it did. All round the village one saw orchards of figs, apricots, and
pomegranate trees; the first with the leaves untouched by the summer heat,
the apricots just at the end of their blossoming, and the pomegranates
still in flower. In place of the dry, hard soil that was so trying to the
feet of man and beast, there were here meadows in plenty, from which the
irises had only lately died. I saw the common English dandelion growing
within stone's throw of a clump of feathery palms.

Tired after the vigil of the previous night and the long hours that had
led up to it, we reclined at our ease under the olives, determined to
spend the night at Sidi el Muktar, some fifteen or twenty miles away. From
there one can hunt the great bustard, and I had hoped to do so until I saw
the animals that were to take us to the coast. Neither the bustard nor the
gazelle, that sometimes roams Sidi el Muktar's plains, had anything to
fear from those noble creatures. The kaid alone might have pursued bird or
beast, but as his gun was innocent of powder and shot there would have
been nothing but exercise to seek.

After a two-hours' rest, given in one case more to sleep than lunch, we
moved on towards the village of Sidi el Muktar, passing some curious
flat-topped hills called by the natives Haunk Ijjimmal.[48] The oasis had
ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the road became as uninteresting
as was our own crawling gait. I noticed that the Susi muleteers were
travelling very sadly, that they had not among them an echo of the songs
that had sounded so strangely on the previous day, and I bade Salam find
the cause of the depression, and ask whether the young lad whose features
had become pinched and drawn felt ill. Within a few moments the truth was
out. The six men had eaten nothing save a little of the mules' barley
since they left Marrakesh, and as they had been on short rations between
Tiensiert and the Southern capital, their strength was beginning to give
out. It was no part of my business to feed them; they had received
"something in the hand" before they left the city, and could well have
bought supplies for the road, but they had preferred to trust Providence,
and hoped to live on a small part of the mules' barley and the daily gift
of tea that had been promised. Under the circumstances, and though I had
found reason to believe that they were lazy, feckless rogues enough, who
really needed an iron-handed kaid to rule over them, I told Salam to pass
word round that their wants would be supplied at the day's end. Then they
picked up their old stride, and one by one resumed the love-songs of
yesterday as we moved slowly over the plains to where, in the far
distance, Sidi el Muktar stood between us and the fast setting sun, placed
near to the junction of three provinces--Oulad bou Sba, through which we
travelled, M'touga, famous for fleet horses, and Shiadma, where our road
lay.

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