S.L. Bensusan - Morocco

S >> S.L. Bensusan >> Morocco

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

The evening meal is a simple affair of soup, a chicken, and some coffee to
follow, and when it is over I make my way to the kitchen tent, where the
men have supped, and send M'Barak with an invitation to the headman and
his sons. The blessed one makes his way to the headman's hut, while Salam
clears up the debris of the meal, and the Maalem, conscious that no more
work will be expected of him, devotes his leisure to the combustion of
hemp, openly and unashamed. With many compliments the headman arrives, and
I stand up to greet and bid him welcome--an effort that makes heavy call
upon my scanty store of Arabic. The visitors remove their slippers and sit
at ease, while Salam makes a savoury mess of green tea, heavily sweetened
and flavoured with mint. My visitors are too simply pious to smoke, and
regard the Maalem with displeasure and surprise, but he is quite beyond
the reach of their reproaches now. His eyes are staring glassily, his lips
have a curious ashen colour, his hands are twitching--the hemp god has
him by the throat. The village men turn their backs upon this degraded
Believer, and return thanks to Allah the One for sending an infidel who
gives them tea. Broadly speaking, it is only coast Moors, who have
suffered what is to them the contamination of European influences, that
smoke in Morocco.

Like the Walrus and the Carpenter, we talk of many things, Salam acting as
interpreter. The interests of my guests are simple: good harvests,
abundant rain, and open roads are all they desire. They have never seen
the sea or even a big Moorish town, but they have heard of these things
from travellers and traders who have passed their nights in the n'zala in
times recent or remote, and sometimes they appeal to me to say if these
tales are true. Are there great waters of which no man may drink--waters
that are never at rest? Do houses with devils (? steam engines) in them go
to and fro upon the face of these waters? Are there great cities so big
that a man cannot walk from end to end in half a day? I testify to the
truth of these things, and the headman praises Allah, who has done what
seemed good to him in lands both near and far. It is, I fear, the
headman's polite way of saying that Saul is among the prophets. My
revolver, carefully unloaded, is passed from hand to hand, its uses and
capacities are known even to these wild people, and the weapon creates
more interest than the tent and all its varied equipment. Naturally
enough, it turns the talk to war and slaughter, and I learn that the local
kaid has an endless appetite for thieves and other children of shameless
women, that guns are fired very often within his jurisdiction, and baskets
full of heads have been collected after a purely local fight. All this is
said with a quiet dignity, as though to remind me that I have fallen among
people of some distinction, and the effect is only spoilt by the
recollection that nearly every headman has the same tale to tell. Sultans,
pretenders, wazeers, and high court functionaries are passed in critical
review, their faults and failings noted. I cannot avoid the conclusion
that the popular respect is for the strong hand--that civilised government
would take long to clear itself of the imputation of cowardice. The local
kaid is always a tyrant, but he is above all things a man, keen-witted,
adventurous, prompt to strike, and determined to bleed his subjects white.
So the men of the village, while suffering so keenly from his arbitrary
methods, look with fear and wonder at their master, respect him secretly,
and hope the day will come when by Allah's grace they too will be allowed
to have mastery over their fellows and to punish others as they have been
punished. Strength is the first and greatest of all virtues, so far as
they can see, and cunning and ferocity are necessary gifts in a land where
every man's hand is against his neighbour.

[Illustration: TRAVELLERS BY NIGHT]

The last cup of green tea has been taken, the charcoal, no longer
refreshed by the bellows, has ceased to glow, around us the native fires
are out. The hour of repose is upon the night, and the great athletic
villagers rise, resume their slippers, and pass with civil salutation
to their homes. Beyond the tent our guards are sleeping soundly in their
blankets; the surrounding silence is overwhelming. The grave itself could
hardly be more still. Even the hobbled animals are at rest, and we enter
into the enveloping silence for five or six dreamless hours.

* * * * *

The horses stir and wake me; I open the tent and call the men. Our guards
rouse themselves and retire to their huts. The Maalem, no worse, to
outward seeming, for the night's debauch, lights the charcoal. It is about
half-past three, the darkness has past but the sun has not risen, the land
seems plunged in heavy sleep, the air is damp and chill. Few pleasures
attach to this early rising, but it is necessary to be on the road before
six o'clock in order to make good progress before the vertical rays of the
sun bid us pause and seek what shelter we can find. Two hours is not a
long time in which to strike tents, prepare breakfast,--a solid affair of
porridge, omelette, coffee, marmalade and biscuits,--pack everything, and
load the mules. We must work with a will, or the multi-coloured pageant in
the eastern sky will have passed before we are on the road again.

Early as it is we are not astir much before the village. Almost as soon as
I am dressed the shepherd boys and girls are abroad, playing on their reed
flutes as they drive the flocks to pasture from the pens to which they
were brought at sundown. They go far afield for food if not for water, but
evening must see their animals safely secured once more, for if left out
overnight the nearest predatory tribesmen would carry them off. There is
no security outside the village, and no village is safe from attack when
there is unrest in the province. A cattle raid is a favourite form of
amusement among the warlike tribes of the Moorish country, being
profitable, exciting, and calculated to provoke a small fight.

A group of interested observers assembles once more, reinforced by the
smallest children, who were too frightened to venture out of doors last
night. Nothing disturbs the little company before we leave the camp. The
headman, grave and dignified as ever, receives payment for corn, straw,
chickens, milk, eggs, water, and guards, a matter of about ten shillings
in English money, and a very large sum indeed for such a tiny village to
receive. The last burden is fastened on the patient mules, girths and
straps and belts are examined, and we pass down the incline to the main
road and turn the horses' heads to the Atlas Mountains.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "There happeneth no misfortune on the earth or to yourselves, but it
is written in the Book before we created it: verily that is easy to
Allah."--Al Koran; Sura, "The Tree."

[12] This courtesy is truly Eastern, and has many variants. I remember
meeting two aged rabbis who were seated on stones by the roadside half a
mile from the city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. They rose as I
approached, and said in Hebrew, "Blessed be he who cometh."

TO THE GATES OF MARRAKESH

[Illustration: THE R'KASS]

CHAPTER IV

TO THE GATES OF MARRAKESH

In hawthorn-time the heart grows bright,
The world is sweet in sound and sight,
Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight,
The heather kindles toward the light,
The whin is frankincense and flame.

_The Tale of Balen._

If you would savour the true sense of Morocco, and enjoy glimpses of a
life that belongs properly to the era of Genesis, journey through Dukala,
Shiadma, or Haha in April. Rise early, fare simply, and travel far enough
to appreciate whatever offers for a camping-ground, though it be no more
than the grudging shadow of a wall at mid-day, or a n'zala not overclean,
when from north, south, east, and west the shepherd boys and girls are
herding their flocks along the homeward way. You will find the natives
kind and leisured enough to take interest in your progress, and, their
confidence gained, you shall gather, if you will, some knowledge of the
curious, alluring point of view that belongs to fatalists. I have been
struck by the dignity, the patience, and the endurance of the Moor, by
whom I mean here the Arab who lives in Morocco, and not the aboriginal
Berber, or the man with black blood preponderating in his veins. To the
Moor all is for the best. He knows that Allah has bound the fate of each
man about his neck, so he moves fearlessly and with dignity to his
appointed end, conscious that his God has allotted the palace or the
prison for his portion, and that fellow-men can no more than fulfil the
divine decree. Here lies the secret of the bravery that, when disciplined,
may yet shake the foundations of Western civilisation. How many men pass
me on the road bound on missions of life or death, yet serene and placid
as the mediaeval saints who stand in their niches in some cathedral at
home. Let me recall a few fellow-wayfarers and pass along the roadless way
in their company once again.

[Illustration: A TRAVELLER ON THE PLAINS]

First and foremost stands out a khalifa, lieutenant of a great country
kaid, met midmost Dukala, in a place of level barley fields new cut with
the _media luna_. Brilliant poppies and irises stained the meadows on all
sides, and orchards whose cactus hedges, planted for defence, were now
aflame with blood-red flowers, became a girdle of beauty as well as
strength. The khalifa rode a swiftly-ambling mule, a beast of price, his
yellow slippers were ostentatiously new, and his ample girth proclaimed
the wealthy man in a land where all the poor are thin. "Peace," was his
salutation to M'Barak, who led the way, and when he reached us he again
invoked the Peace of Allah upon Our Lord Mohammed and the Faithful of
the Prophet's House, thereby and with malice aforethought excluding the
infidel. Like others of his class who passed us he was but ill-pleased to
see the stranger in the land; unlike the rest he did not conceal his
convictions. Behind him came three black slaves, sleek, armed, proud in
the pride of their lord, and with this simple retinue the khalifa was on
his way to tithe the newly-harvested produce of the farmers who lived in
that district. Dangerous work, I thought, to venture thus within the
circle of the native douars and claim the lion's share of the hard-won
produce of the husbandmen. He and his little company would be outnumbered
in the proportion of thirty or forty to one, they had no military
following, and yet went boldly forth to rob on the kaid's behalf. I
remembered how, beyond Tangier, the men of the hills round Anjera had
risen against an unpopular khalifa, had tortured him in atrocious fashion,
and left him blind and hideously maimed, to be a warning to all tyrants.
Doubtless our prosperous fellow-traveller knew all about it, doubtless he
realised that the Sultan's authority was only nominal, but he knew that
his immediate master, the Basha, still held his people in an iron grip
while, above and beyond all else, he knew by the living faith that
directed his every step in life, that his own fate, whether good or evil,
was already assigned to him. I heard the faint echo of the greeting
offered by the dogs of the great douar into which he passed, and felt well
assured that the protests of the village folk, if they ventured to
protest, would move him no more than the barking of those pariahs. The
hawks we saw poised in the blue above our heads when small birds sang at
sunsetting, were not more cheerfully devoid of sentiment than our khalifa,
though it may be they had more excuse than he.

On another afternoon we sat at lunch in the grateful sombre shade of a
fig-tree. Beyond the little stone dyke that cut the meadow from the arable
land a negro ploughed with an ox and an ass, in flat defiance of Biblical
injunction. The beasts were weary or lazy, or both, and the slave cursed
them with an energy that was wonderful for the time of day. Even the birds
had ceased to sing, the cicadas were silent in the tree tops, and when one
of the mules rolled on the ground and scattered its pack upon all sides,
the Maalem was too exhausted to do more than call it the "son of a
Christian and a Jew."

[Illustration: THE MID-DAY HALT]

Down the track we had followed came a fair man, of slight build, riding a
good mule. He dismounted by the tree to adjust his saddle, tighten a
stirrup thong, and say a brief prayer. Then, indifferent to the heat, he
hurried on, and Salam, who had held short converse with him, announced
that he was an emissary of Bu Hamara the Pretender, speeding southward to
preach the rising to the Atlas tribes. He carried his life in his hands
through the indifferently loyal southern country, but the burden was not
heavy enough to trouble him. Bu Hamara, the man no bullets could injure,
the divinely directed one, who could call the dead from their pavilion in
Paradise to encourage the living, had bade him go rouse the sleeping
southerners, and so he went, riding fearlessly into the strong glare that
wrapt and hid him. His work was for faith or for love: it was not for
gain. If he succeeded he would not be rewarded, if he failed he would be
forgotten.

Very often, at morning, noon, and sunset, we would meet the r'kass or
native letter-carrier, a wiry man from the Sus country, more often than
not, with naked legs and arms. In his hand he would carry the long pole
that served as an aid to his tired limbs when he passed it behind his
shoulders, and at other times helped him to ford rivers or defend himself
against thieves. An eager, hurrying fellow was the r'kass, with rarely
enough breath to respond to a salutation as he passed along, his letters
tied in a parcel on his back, a lamp at his girdle to guide him through
the night, and in his wallet a little bread or parched flour, a tiny pipe,
and some kief. Only if travelling in our direction would he talk, repaying
himself for the expenditure of breath by holding the stirrup of mule or
horse. Resting for three to five hours in the twenty-four, sustaining
himself more with kief than with bread, hardened to a point of endurance
we cannot realise, the r'kass is to be met with on every Moorish road that
leads to a big city--a solitary, brave, industrious man, who runs many
risks for little pay. His letters delivered, he goes to the nearest house
of public service, there to sleep, to eat sparingly and smoke incessantly,
until he is summoned to the road again. No matter if the tribes are out on
the warpath, so that the caravans and merchants may not pass,--no matter
if the powder "speaks" from every hill,--the r'kass slips through with
his precious charge, passing lightly as a cloud over a summer meadow,
often within a few yards of angry tribesmen who would shoot him at sight
for the mere pleasure of killing. If the luck is against him he must pay
the heaviest penalty, but this seldom occurs unless the whole country-side
is aflame. At other times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet
season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of
travellers camp on either side of some river--a silver thread in the dry
season, a rushing torrent now. But the r'kass knows every ford, and, his
long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination. It is his business
to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his
task. He is a living proof of the capacity and dogged endurance still
surviving in a race Europeans affect to despise.

We met slaves-dealers too from time to time, carrying women and children
on mules, while the men slaves walked along at a good pace. And the
dealers by no means wore the villainous aspect that conventional observers
look to see, but were plainly men bent upon business, travelling to make
money. They regarded the slaves as merchandise, to be kept in tolerably
fair condition for the sake of good sales, and unless Ruskin was right
when he said that all who are not actively kind are cruel, there seemed
small ground on which to condemn them. To be sure, they were taking slaves
from market to market, and not bringing Soudanese captives from the
extreme South, so we saw no trace of the trouble that comes of forced
travel in the desert, but even that is equally shared by dealers and slave
alike.

The villages of Morocco are no more than collections of conical huts built
of mud and wattle and palmetto, or goat and camel skins. These huts are
set in a circle all opening to the centre, where the live-stock and
agricultural implements are kept at night. The furniture of a tent is
simple enough. Handloom and handmill, earthenware jars, clay lamps, a
mattress, and perhaps a tea-kettle fulfil all requirements.

A dazzling, white-domed saint's shrine within four square walls lights the
landscape here and there, and gives to some douar such glory as a holy man
can yield when he has been dead so long that none can tell the special
direction his holiness took. The zowia serves several useful purposes. The
storks love to build upon it, and perhaps the influence of its rightful
owner has something to do with the good character of the interesting young
birds that we see plashing about in the marshes, and trying to catch fish
or frogs with something of their parents' skill. Then, again, the zowia
shelters the descendants of the holy man, who prey upon passers in the
name of Allah and of the departed.

Beyond one of the villages graced with the shrine of a forgotten saint, I
chanced upon a poor Moorish woman washing clothes at the edge of a pool.
She used a native grass-seed in place of soap, and made the linen very
white with it. On a great stone by the water's edge sat a very old and
very black slave, and I tried with Salam's aid to chat with him. But he
had no more than one sentence. "I have seen many Sultans," he cried
feebly, and to every question he responded with these same words. Two tiny
village boys stood hand in hand before him and repeated his words,
wondering. It was a curious picture and set in striking colour, for the
fields all round us were full of rioting irises, poppies, and convolvuli;
the sun that gilded them was blazing down upon the old fellow's
unprotected head. Gnats were assailing him in legions, singing their
flattering song as they sought to draw his blood.[13] Before us on a hill
two meadows away stood the douar, its conical huts thatched with black
straw and striped palmetto, its zowia with minaret points at each corner
of the protecting walls, and a stork on one leg in the foreground. It cost
me some effort to tear myself away from the place, and as I remounted and
prepared to ride off the veteran cried once more, "I have seen many
Sultans." Then the stork left his perch on the zowia's walls, and settled
by the marsh, clapping his mandibles as though to confirm the old man's
statement, and the little boys took up the cry, not knowing what they
said. He had seen many Sultans. The Praise to Allah, so had not I.

[Illustration: ON GUARD]

By another douar, this time on the outskirts of the R'hamna country, we
paused for a mid-day rest, and entered the village in search of milk and
eggs. All the men save one were at work on the land, and he, the
guardian of the village, an old fellow and feeble, stood on a sandy
mound within the zariba. He carried a very antiquated flint-lock, that may
have been own brother to Kaid M'Barak's trusted weapon. I am sure he could
not have had the strength to fire, even had he enjoyed the knowledge and
possessed the material to load it. It was his business to mount guard over
the village treasure. The mound he stood upon was at once the mat'mora
that hid the corn store, and the bank that sheltered the silver dollars
for whose protection every man of the village would have risked his life
cheerfully. The veteran took no notice of our arrival: had we been thieves
he could have offered no resistance. He remained silent and stationary,
unconscious that the years in which he might have fulfilled his trust had
gone for ever. All along the way the boundaries of arable land were marked
by little piles of stones and I looked anxiously for some sign of the
curious festival that greets the coming of the new corn, a ceremony in
which a figure is made for worship by day and sacrifice by night; we were
just too late for it. For the origin of this sacrifice the inquirer must
go back to the time of nature worship. It was an old practice, of course,
in the heyday of Grecian civilisation, and might have been seen in
England, I believe, little more than twenty years ago.

Claims for protection are made very frequently upon the road. There are
few of the dramatic moments in which a man rushes up, seizes your stirrup
and puts himself "beneath the hem of your garment," but there are
numerous claims for protection of another sort. In Morocco all the Powers
that signed the Treaty of Madrid are empowered to grant the privilege.
France has protected subjects by the thousand. They pay no taxes, they are
not to be punished by the native authorities until their Vice-Consul has
been cited to appear in their defence, and, in short, they are put above
the law of their own country and enabled to amass considerable wealth. The
fact that the foreigner who protects them is often a knave and a thief is
a draw-back, but the popularity of protection is immense, for the
protector may possibly not combine cunning with his greed, while the
native Basha or his khalifa quite invariably does. British subjects may
not give protection,--happily the British ideals of justice and fair-play
have forbidden the much-abused practice,--and the most the Englishman can
do is to enter into a trading partnership with a Moor and secure for him a
certificate of limited protection called "mukhalat," from the name of the
person who holds it. Great Britain has never abused the Protection system,
and there are fewer protected Moors in the service or partnership of
Britons throughout all Morocco than France has in any single town of
importance.

If I had held the power and the will to give protection, I might have been
in Morocco to-day, master of a house and a household, drawing half the
produce of many fields and half the price of flocks of sheep and herds of
goats. Few mornings passed without bringing some persecuted farmer to the
camp, generally in the heat of the day, when we rested on his land. He
would be a tall, vigorous man, burnt brown by the sun, and he would point
to his fields and flocks, "I have so many sheep and goats, so many oxen
for the plough, so many mules and horses, so much grain unharvested, so
much in store. Give me protection, that I may live without fear of my
kaid, and half of all I own shall be yours." Then I had to explain through
Salam that I had no power to help him, that my Government would do no more
than protect me. It was hard for the applicants to learn that they must go
unaided. The harvest was newly gathered, it had survived rain and blight
and locusts, and now they had to wait the arrival of their kaid or his
khalifa, who would seize all they could not conceal,--hawk, locust, and
blight in one.

At the village called after its patron saint, Sidi B'noor, a little
deputation of tribesmen brought grievances for an airing. We sat in the
scanty shade of the zowia wall. M'Barak, wise man, remained by the side of
a little pool born of the winter rains; he had tethered his horse and was
sleeping patiently in the shadow cast by this long-suffering animal. The
headman, who had seen my sporting guns, introduced himself by sending a
polite message to beg that none of the birds that fluttered or brooded by
the shrine might be shot, for that they were all sacred. Needless perhaps
to say that the idea of shooting at noonday in Southern Morocco was far
enough from my thoughts, and I sent back an assurance that brought half a
dozen of the village notables round us as soon as lunch was over.
Strangely enough, they wanted protection--but it was sought on account of
the Sultan's protected subjects. "The men who have protection between
this place and Djedida," declared their spokesman, sorrowfully, "have no
fear of Allah or His Prophet. They brawl in our markets and rob us of our
goods. They insult our houses,[14] they are without shame, and because of
their protection our lives have become very bitter."

"Have you been to your Basha?" I asked the headman.

"I went bearing a gift in my hand, O Highly Favoured," replied the
headman, "and he answered me, 'Foolish farmer, shall I bring the Sultan to
visit me by interfering with these rebels against Allah who have taken the
protection from Nazarenes?' And then he cursed me and drove me forth from
his presence. But if you will give protection to us also we will face
these misbegotten ones, and there shall be none to come between us."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13