The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Edge of the Desert, by Ianthe Dunbar.

It was cold, but a glorious morning when I left by motor for Kairouan. Soon the white houses of Tunis were left behind. The sun was rising as we flung its outskirts behind us, and the car headed for open country. Rocky hills showed themselves on the horizon, and there were abrupt peaks rising out of stretches of carefully cultivated vineyards, orchards of olive trees, and broad fields just tinged with the promise of early wheat. No walls, but occasional cactus hedges. The road climbed a saddle of hill from whence one could look back on the sea. A few houses here and there, flat-roofed and built in the Moorish style, were obviously the homes of the landowners. Not an inch of ground seemed wasted. Arabs were already at work behind their wooden ploughs, drawn either by horses, mules, bullocks, or camels. These last looked as if they were inwardly protesting against the indignity, and stalked along with their usual disdainful air. After a time the road led into wilder country, bare stretches covered only with a sort of rough heathery plant, with scattered encampments of Bedouins, their black tents surrounded by a[10] zareba of piled thorns. At last we caught the gleam of the white domes of Kairouan against the sky.

It lies in an open plain, and one’s first impression is of its whiteness. White-washed mosques and tombs, white flat-topped houses, enclosed in a high brown crenellated wall. Once inside the gates, all touch of European atmosphere is left behind. The city is Eastern to the core, “une vraie ville arabe,” as Hassan said. It is one of the sacred Moslem places and is a great centre for pilgrimages. The chief mosque is Sidi-Okba, with its large courtyard and numerous doorways leading into the interior, where in the gloom one sees the roof supported by row after row of Roman pillars. The effect in the vast emptiness is striking. The existing structure is said to date from the ninth century, and the builders must have ransacked ancient ruins for their materials. Some of the columns are of red porphyry, and the antique minbar or pulpit-chair is beautifully carved in wood, but beyond this the decorations are poor.

From the minaret in the courtyard there is a lovely view, the holy city crouched below with the frequent bubbles of its domed tombs and mosques, and beyond the wall, wide spaces stretching to distant hills.

But the crowded streets and souks, or covered arcades, were the chief attraction of Kairouan. Nearly all the men wore a burnous with a hood that came over the head. The[11] women did not wear the ugly face covering seen in Tunis, but they were so closely wrapped in voluminous black or white draperies that they looked like walking bundles. Occasionally an eye peered out from amongst the folds, but one wondered how they could see to make their way. Bedouin women strode past, good-looking and haughty, their head-covering thrown back showing their tattooed faces, their necks covered with coins; whilst the blue of their robes made a pleasant note of colour. Their men were tall and sinewy with hawk features, and they wore their sand-coloured burnous like dispossessed princes. Here and there one saw the vivid green cloak or turban of some holy man who had done the journey to Mecca, or there was a splash of madder or burnt orange; but for the most part the crowd was neutral-tinted. Everything, buildings, streets, mosques, and crowds, was drenched in a glow of sunlight. Even the shadows seemed warm and throbbing. The market-place was the great centre, and here it was almost difficult to push through the throng. Men in grave and dignified draperies sat outside the cafés, drinking from tiny handleless cups and smoking meditatively.

I said the place was untouched by modernism, but I must confess that they were usually listening with grave pleasure to a gramophone reproduction of the voices of their own singers! It was fortunate when it kept to that.[12] I was sketching one morning near a café, and through my absorption I became aware of the gramophone giving piercing shrieks and discoursing in a high-pitched woman’s voice. It began to worry me. “What on earth is that record, Hassan?” I asked impatiently, and was appalled at the ready response that it was a Jewess adding to the numbers of Israel! Needless to say, Hassan did not use such a roundabout way of expressing himself. I cast a swift glance at the Arab audience. Impassively they sat, sipping their coffee, and it was impossible to tell what they were thinking of. But Hassan assured me it was a favourite record and most amusing; I hastily became very busy with my painting.

Ali Hassan was my guide in Kairouan and showed an intelligent interest in points of view to sketch. He was a portly Arab, disinclined to exert himself, so the job just suited him. And he spoke French well. He told me he had been born in Kairouan but that he was a travelled man. Had he not been to Tunis, to Algiers, and even to Marseilles? He claimed kinship with nearly every person in Kairouan and this proved a great asset. When I expressed a wish to see the women’s Turkish Baths, “That is easily done,” said he, “for is not the Keeper of the Baths my mother-in-law?” As we passed the outer door he thrust his head in and called to her to come forth. I pushed open a second door, and an old wrinkled crone appeared[13] in a cloud of steam and led me through the various rooms. None of the bathers seemed the least embarrassed at my sudden appearance, but greeted me with smiles as I picked my way through the puddles of water and the pale olive of nude limbs. There were family parties of mothers and daughters and even tiny babies of a few months old, all chattering happily together and plastering themselves with a kind of grey clay. The outer room, where all the clothes were left, was in charge of a girl of fifteen or so, and here were numerous clients in various stages of cooling-off. Arab women in the towns go to the baths two or three times a week, so it is pleasant to feel that the people under the black shrouds that one meets in the streets, are at least clean.

On cold days when Hassan sat huddled in his white burnous by my campstool, looking like an elderly and discontented Father Christmas, it was usually not long before one of his invaluable relatives appeared bringing him a cup of coffee. “The waiter at the Snake Charmer’s café is my sister’s son,” remarked Hassan, complacently sipping, whilst I mused on the vista of relationships opened up by a plurality of wives. I had already met two uncles, two mothers-in-law, five or six of his children, a wife and a nephew. How many more were there? Soon I wanted a small boy to pose in the foreground of my picture. “I will fetch one of my sons,” remarked the conjuror, and[14] walked across the street, returning with a most unwilling small child. “And it is not necessary to give him anything. The sight of money makes the eye greedy,” said his father, peacefully relapsing into the folds of his cloak whilst I settled to work.

Were one to sit for long at the doorway of the Baths, facing the gate of the city, one would see the whole world of Kairouan pass through in the course of the day. It was New Year’s day, and every one was abroad. A deputation of notable townspeople came through the old gateway on their way to present a New Year’s Resolution to someone or something. Their full flowing robes made a[15] picture of the procession, and I sighed at the thought of the top hats and glittering watch chains of England.

Then came three old and venerable men clad in snowy white, two of them supporting the footsteps of the most aged. He was the Kaïd, the authority in Mussulman law, and was nearly ninety.

It was a fête day too at my tiny hotel, and the proprietor supplied ‘champagne’ with a generosity more apparent than real. There was much toasting and making of speeches amongst the small bourgeois who formed the clientèle; and a baby of two was given long sips of champagne by a humorous father, who then acted the part of a waiter with a napkin over his arm, to the intense amusement of his feminine belongings. The rôle suited him admirably. Doubtless Mrs. Noah and the young Shem, Ham and Japhet were also convulsed with mirth in their day at a similar buffoonery played by the head of the family. Jokes die hard.

The military quarters, the Government building, and the hotel were all outside the city gates and provided with small public gardens, full of the green of palms, of pepper trees, of oleanders. A few trees were planted down some of the streets of the tiny modern quarter; but it all ended as abruptly as if a line were ruled across it. Beyond were sand and cactus hedges and roads that led to the horizon. There is something attractive about French colonial quarters[16] however small. They are so trim and neat and provided with the shade of eucalyptus trees, mimosas and anything that will grow in a sandy soil.

Close to the Gate Djelladine was the Snake Charmer’s café and the sound of a native drum and the squeal of a pipe led my steps there one day. He and the two musicians were squatting on a small raised platform at the end of the low room and I as a European was given the doubtful privilege of a place in the front row where my knees were pressed against the platform. The charmer was a strange looking man with a thin wild face, dressed in a striped burnous and wearing nothing on his mop of long black hair. On the floor in front of him lay a bag of sacking that stirred and moved. After the room had filled up with a crowd of Arabs and the music had been going on for some time, he opened the mouth of the sack and from an inner jar pulled out a large cobra. This he began to tease, dancing in front of it, flapping his long hair at it and tapping its tail with a stick. Naturally annoyed, it reared up ready to strike, but the constant movement of the man seemed to daze it. It struck at him once or twice as he swayed and danced in front of it but he took care to keep just out of range. Then he brought a young snake out of the bag, and this sat up too and tried to look like its mother. Meanwhile there was dead silence in the room, except for the drone of the music and the thud of the[17] charmer’s bare feet as he danced. Every eye was fixed on him, the Arab waiter with a tray of coffee in his hands stood motionless, staring, and the dark faces of the audience watched with the intent unblinking gaze of an eastern race. Again the man dived into the bag and brought out a yellow snake which he lowered by the tail into his open mouth, then laughing wildly he took it out and wound it round his head where it looked like a horrible chaplet in the midst of his rough hair, its head pointing out over his brow. I asked if the poison fangs of the cobras had been extracted, and he brought the largest one for me to see, holding it just below the head. An obliging Arab provided a pin, and with this he prized open the jaws. I saw the tooth but I think the top of it had been broken off.

All this time the drone of the native music went on interminably. There is something curiously compelling about its minor key with the little quirks and quavers. It seems to get on the nerves and to hammer and hammer on them insistently. It fits well with the blazing sun and the intensity of the sky. I heard afterwards that the charmer was a Bedouin, but had been brought up in Kairouan from childhood. I wanted to paint him and the musicians, and the sitting was arranged one afternoon.

“Mais oui, you must paint them in an open space outside the town, and then behind them you can paint in the whole of Kairouan and the desert beyond. It will be a magnificent picture.”

I bowed my head, and only hoped he would forget to look for the accessory town and landscape when the sketch was finished. The men grouped themselves very naturally, and even the cobras when the time came seemed to have an instinct for posing. The oldest musician had lost a finger of his right hand through the bite of one of the stock-in-trade. They took a deep interest in the sketch, and the usual small boy that springs out of the dust whenever one stops for a moment, obligingly kept them posted as to its progress. I worked for two hours and then shut up my paint box. Hassan, who had been smoking cigarettes in the background on a chair brought of course by a relation, seemed hurt at my want of enthusiasm when he suggested I should now go and paint a mosque. I had worked all morning as well, and it was now four o’clock, but he evidently thought me a poor thing.

The wide stretches of country beyond the walls were sandy and bare, with only a sparse growth of a heather-like plant on which the camels fed. There were herds of a hundred or more, brown or fawn-coloured or sometimes white. They are the Arabian species having but the one hump, over which is fastened a large mat that fits down[19] over it and looks like a hat, I suppose serving as a protection. The herds are taken out to graze during the day and brought back at night. These are the beasts that belong to town owners and that are hired out for caravans. The foals run by their mothers’ sides, as furry and long-legged as young donkeys. A good deal of trade is carried on with the Bedouins, who bring grain and wool, honey, eggs and butter into the town, and go out again laden with sugar, salt and other goods.

There was a fondouk close by the hotel, and from my window I could hear the roaring of reluctant camels being loaded in the early morning and the cries of their drivers. Looking out I could see them standing in the road, one knee bent, and fastened up by a rope by way of hobbling them. They are wonderful animals, for at a pinch they will eat anything from thorns to cactus leaves, and in times of scarcity they are even fed on date stones. I saw heaps of these being sold in small market-places for this purpose.

But though he does not disdain such accessory diet, the camel requires a large quantity of food, and possesses the useful gift of being able to store up any superfluity of nourishment in his hump, on which to live in hard times. The popular fallacy that he can go for days without food is erroneous, but he lays no stress on the punctuality of his meals as a horse does, and this is a valuable trait in a beast that is used for long journeys across the desert where fodder[20] is scarce. His strange figure with its thin, fragile-looking legs that fold up like a pocket ruler when he lies down, and the small cynical head set on the long swaying neck, suits the sandy wastes and the exotic charm of the East. He walks with slippered tread, wrapt in aloofness. One is baffled by his haughty indifference. He groans and protests as his load is being fastened on, but only as a matter of form, for his docility is remarkable. Overload him, or force him to journey when he is ill, still his protests are no louder. He just dies. Quite quietly and without warning, he lies down and refuses to live, baffling, in death as in life, the comprehension of the bewildered European.

CHAPTER II
SECTS AND SUPERSTITIONS

Mohammedanism is the national religion of Tunisia, but it is not always realised that there are many sects, each basing its belief on the teaching of different religious leaders during the first centuries after the death of the Prophet. The divergences arose in the first instance from varying interpretations of the words of the Koran, and doubtless these divergences have crystallised since into very marked tenets. There are, I believe, more than eighty religious “orders” in the Moslem world, but the word does not bear the same signification as it does in European countries. The follower of an order belongs to an association which does not interfere with his family life or with his profession. At the head of each denomination is a “sheik” who takes up his dwelling, as a rule, near the tomb of its founder.

The sect of the Aïssaouia is remarkable for its extraordinary religious dances. It was founded by Si Mohamed ben Aïssa who died in 1524 at Meknès. Its disciples claim a complete immunity from the effect of poison. According to the legend, its founder was exiled by the Sultan of[22] Morocco on account of his popularity with the people. Crossing the desert his followers suffered greatly from hunger, whereupon their leader told them they might safely eat scorpions, snakes, stones and thorns. This the votaries of his religion still do during their celebrations, endeavouring to prove that the faithful can at will suspend his bodily sensations through fasting and prayer.

Their services are usually held once a week, and I went to one at Kairouan in the Mosque of the Three Doors. It began at 5 p.m. The worshippers squatted in two rows on a square of matting facing each other and reciting prayers. One man after another called out the phrase in a high nasal voice, and the rest made a response in chorus. They kept swaying backwards and forwards and getting more excited. Sometimes the recitation was followed by a low abrupt sound from the rest, that sounded like the growl of a tiger. Meanwhile a boy handed round a cup of water at intervals to the worshippers, and afterwards brought in a brazier of hot coals at which he busied himself warming the parchment of the native drums.

It was fast getting dusk. In a corner sat a group of European spectators, and behind them was a pierced door through which came the fanatical ull-ul-la of women devotees. It was a weird scene. The floor of the mosque was paved with narrow bricks set edgeways, with here and there a slab of mosaic. Stone pillars lost themselves in[23] the gloom of the roof, from which hung common kerosene lamps, strings of ostrich eggs and the coloured glass balls beloved of natives. Shadows gathered in the dim corners, and through the open doorway one could catch a glimpse of the evening sky; whilst interminably the rows of squatting figures swayed backwards and forwards and the chant grew more and more insistent. After what seemed hours, they rose to their feet, and the thudding of tom-toms began. The worshippers ranged themselves standing in a row, and a wretched unhealthy looking creature in a ragged brown burnous was brought forward. Louder and louder came the throb of the music, faster and faster the figures intoned and swayed. It seemed a whirlpool of sound, with that sinister group of devotees at the centre of it.

There was a sudden piercing wail from the women behind the door which seemed to cleave through the clotted sound of the drums and chant like the flash of a poignard. The grey light from the door fell on the ghastly face of the ragged youth. Twitches ran over his body and he staggered out from the rest. His head was thrust forward, and he held his arms stiffly behind him, jerking himself convulsively to the rhythm of the chants. He seemed to be half-hypnotised. His sickly face shone livid in the dim light, his eye-balls were turned up, and he moved in a series of jerks, staggering from side to side. And still the chanting and the music went on, barbaric and horrible, till[24] the tension of one’s nerves became almost unbearable. The chief priest shouted something in a strident voice, and seizing the wretched creature by the shoulder he guided him round the mosque holding an object that dangled between the fingers of the other hand. As the group neared us, I saw it was a live scorpion about two inches long.

Meanwhile the boy was staggering and nearly falling and seemed to have little or no power over his limbs. It was horrible to watch, but I could not turn my eyes away. Suddenly the priest pressed the victim’s head back and dropped the wriggling insect into his open mouth. As far as I could see, the wretched creature devoured it ecstatically; I marked the movements of his throat as he swallowed. This was repeated twice. After that he was given large pieces of jagged glass, and these too he seemed to swallow. I cannot describe how horrible the whole thing was: the gloomy interior, the fanatical howling of the worshippers, and the dazed half-mad youth in the midst. He had been clinging to his guide, staggering from side to side. Suddenly he fell unconscious on the ground, and lay there groaning.

Meanwhile the ceremony went on, paying no more attention to him. Now first one and then another of the worshippers began to jerk backwards and forwards and to pull off their outer garments. One kept flinging his head from side to side, whilst his long black hair flapped first[25] this way and then that. Long metal spikes about four feet in length were brought and the fanatics drove them into their throats or seemed to do so. In any case they drove them in so far that they held without support. They were led round, the ‘swords’ sticking out of their bare necks like pins in a pincushion. I felt quite sick, but worse was yet to come when they knelt down and the priest drove the flat-headed spikes still further in with a hammer. No blood flowed. All this time the drums and the chanting went on, till one’s brain reeled.

I think the men were in a state of hypnotic trance—their eyes were half-closed and they jerked backwards and forwards grunting at every stroke of the hammer. It was so horrible that I could not look at it for more than a few seconds. It was not only the dance itself but the whole feeling of barbarism and degradation. The atmosphere itself felt evil.

The doors were wide open and a few native children stood there staring at the scene within. One after another the row of worshippers began to jerk and step forward, already one burly man had fallen forward on his face and lay inert, the scorpion-eater was a mere twitching mass in a corner, and I had had enough and was thankful to push my way into the open air.

I stepped out into the courtyard of the mosque. Already the sky had paled to a clear amber, barred with the few[26] flaming clouds of sunset. At the fondouk near by, camels were being loaded up to leave the town. They padded silently past in the dusk, their nodding heads turned to the tawny plain that stretched away in the distance to the soft purple of distant hills. Far away, twinkling lights showed the Bedouin encampments for which they were bound. One by one the great creatures passed me, the dust like smoke about their feet, followed by silent hooded figures along the white streak of road that led into the golden haze where the sun went down. Slowly the procession melted away into the distance till it merged into the blue haze that hung about the plain, leaving but a little feather of ruffled sand to show which way it had gone.

Though the educated classes, at least the men, are probably not much influenced by superstitions, the lower classes, especially the women, are cumbered about with them from the day of their birth to that of their death. The Koran allows the existence of certain supernatural beings, midway between angels and men, called genii, and these consist of two kinds, peris and djinns: the former are friendly, but the djinn if not actually malevolent is full of mischief, and it is as well to placate him. Different varieties live in fire, air and water. When drawing water from a well, the prudent housewife does not let down the bucket too suddenly, lest she might disturb a sleeping water-djinn. Any sudden movement might hurt or[27] affront these invisible beings. Besides the constant anxiety to keep on the right side of them, there are a hundred and one things which are unlucky and must be avoided. Should you go to see an invalid on Friday, that person will die. Indeed, on any day of the week it is wiser not to call on him in the afternoon.

The black hand (erroneously called the hand of Fatma, Mohammed’s favourite daughter) painted on the walls of houses and on the prows of fishing boats is designed to avert the evil eye, and a tiny hand is often tattooed on the cheek or worn in the form of a brooch fastened in the folds of the turban. A piece of paper with a verse or two of the Koran written on it is put above the door to warn off scorpions, and many carry round their necks or in their turbans small amulets containing verses of the holy writings. These are also often hung round the necks of horses and camels. The burning of hyssop in the rooms of a house keeps evil spirits at bay, and seems a pleasantly easy method of disconcerting them.

Naturally enough in this atmosphere of superstition, the services of sorcerers and ‘wise women’ are much sought after, for the providing of talismans or for more nefarious designs. Nearly all are of Moroccan extraction, it being well known that those of that country are particularly powerful. The following legend explains how this came about.

One day Allah sent forth some angels on a special mission to the earth. But beguiled by the charms of earthly women, the spirits lingered so long over their task and performed it so badly that they incurred the wrath of the Most High. Fearing lest their conversation on their return might trouble the limpid peace of heaven or sow discontent in young seraph hearts, Allah condemned the culprits to be cast forth for several centuries to a region midway between heaven and the earth. There, suspended in the æther above Fez, the exiled angels busy themselves in making amulets which they throw upon the earth below, to the great aggrandisement of the sorcerers of Morocco.

When it is feared that someone has been ‘overlooked’ by the evil eye, a magician is hastily sent for, and verses of the Koran are usually administered either externally in the shape of an amulet applied to the afflicted part, or internally, chopped up in hot water. Should the patient show no immediate signs of relief, the prescription is repeated till he either dies or recovers. A good deal is also done by the muttering of incantations and the touching of the sufferer. These ‘wise people’ are also extremely useful should a person wish to do harm to an enemy. By the saying of certain incantations accompanied by the shutting of a knife, his life may be quietly cut off with no unpleasant fuss whatever. Or magic powders can be introduced into the water he drinks or the food he eats,[29] which will ensure the destruction of the peace of his household or serious illness to himself. This latter seems the more likely result of the two.

They are also much sought after for love-philtres, or methods of reviving a waning love. There is a horrible story of a woman of good birth in Tunis many years ago, who consulted a magician as to the best way to regain her husband’s love. She was told she must give him couscous to eat, “made by a dead hand.” By dint of bribes, she made her way to a cemetery at midnight, had the newly buried body of a woman disinterred, set the corpse against a gravestone, and holding its rigid hand in hers used it to stir the contents of the cooking pot she had brought. The dead woman was then returned to the peace of her grave, and next day the unconscious husband ate the couscous. But alas! we do not know with what results. The facts leaked out and there was a great scandal over the desecration of a grave, but owing to the social position of the culprit the matter was hushed up.

I was told a strange story too by a European resident in Tunis. Some young man of Arab extraction became engaged, but wearying of his fiancée and wishing to marry someone else he consulted a native sorcerer. By degrees the girl became ill and seemed to be wasting away mysteriously. Doctors could do nothing and the mother was overcome with grief, as also appeared to be the young[30] man. At last an old negress servant declared to the parents that their daughter must have been bewitched. Distracted at the girl’s rapid decline, they finally let the negress take them to consult a famous Arab sorcerer, in fact the very man to whom the young man had applied. Yes, he said, she would die, but he could save her were they prepared to give a higher sum than the young man had paid him to have the curse laid upon her. To this they agreed. A black cock was brought, its heart was taken out and transfixed with a nail on which was skewered her name, and it was then roasted at a slow fire. “And for a further larger sum,” remarked the magician, “I will transfer the malady to the young man himself.” But the parents fled. The patient recovered, and the engagement was speedily broken off.

CHAPTER III
AN ARAB WEDDING

Within a mile or two of Kairouan were various small orchards and gardens, and Ali Hassan told me importantly that he was the owner of one of these, consisting of olive trees, fruit trees and vines, for which he had given 600 francs, and that with taxes and extra payments the whole had cost him no less than a thousand. I was suitably impressed. But during a drive in that direction some of his pride collapsed. He had shown me his property with its mud hut in one corner which he referred to magnificently as “ma maison.” He intended to have it moved down to the roadside end of the field, “for a highway brings much money.” There he will have a little shop and sell coffee and beans, grapes and fruit.

The garden itself looked like a child’s game in the road, just bare twigs sticking up in small heaps of dust; but that was December and Hassan saw it in his mind’s eye by March, pink with almond blossom and starred with the bloom of apricots. Further along the road a gloom fell upon him, and at last he turned from the box seat beside the driver.

“Do you see that truly magnificent garden on the other side, and the beautiful house with three rooms? That was once mine.”

There was a dramatic pause. I enquired delicately how he had been forced to part with it.

“Because the owner of it died, and it was sold for more francs than would stretch from here to the city.”

It was indeed a beautiful property. Many olives and apricot trees were in it and there was a good well, and at his house he had a little business where he sold cakes and coffee and such like. And as many travellers and Bedouins pass up and down the way to Kairouan, he had made money. “Mais oui, it is the road that brings money,” and he sank into a brooding silence.

However, he recovered his cheerfulness when he took me to see his town house. He was anxious I should make a picture of his wife and family, but when we arrived it was to find the former had gone to the baths, taking the smaller children with her. I had seen her before, but now I was introduced to the eldest daughter, a pretty girl of thirteen whom we found at her loom weaving carpets. Her father explained she was busy making money towards her wedding, which would probably take place in a year or two. He would select the bridegroom, and she would not even have seen him beforehand. The little bride-to-be smiled up shyly at me. Her hair was curling and very black, and[33] her complexion olive. Beautiful dark eyes, fringed with long lashes and underlined with kohl gave character to her face, with its straight nose inclined to the aquiline and the full well-drawn mouth. She gave promise of unusual beauty, and already looked three or four years older than she was, to my English eyes. She made a charming picture dressed in a dark short sleeved bodice over a pink cotton under-shift, full cotton pantaloons drawn in at the ankle, and her slim brown feet tucked under her. A faded red handkerchief was tied over her hair, and her bare slender arms moved backwards and forwards as she bent forward deftly knotting in the pieces of wool on the fabric. She worked with the swiftness of long practice, her pretty henna-stained fingers picking out the colours required from a pile of coloured wools in front of her. The little room she sat in was quite bare except for the loom and the matting spread on the beaten earth floor.

On coming in from the door in a quiet street, we had bent down to get through the opening into the room on the left. The walls were whitewashed, roughly decorated with crude coloured drawings of the lucky hand of Fatma. Through this living-room one stepped into a small courtyard, with a collection of green plants in pots in one corner, and a clothes line stretched across it on which flapped a few coloured garments. Two more rooms and a tiny cooking-place opened off it. I was shown the bedroom[34] with great pride. There were rugs on the floor, and two large beds built into recesses. Coloured illustrations from European magazines adorned the walls, and a very well drawn portrait of Hassan’s father done by some French artist to whom he had acted as guide. There was a portrait of a very wooden and staring-eyed Bey and another of his predecessor. Hassan stood in the room watching my face for an expression of surprise and delight which I managed to produce. To my remarks he waved his hand round his possessions. “It is nothing,” he said, “you should have seen my country house.”

There was another woman in the living room, Hassan’s sister, who with her husband occupied the other bedroom, a discontented-looking handsome girl, about twenty-two, more gaudily dressed than the little carpet-weaver. She squatted on the floor cracking almonds with her white teeth and putting the kernels into a small earthenware bowl. A smouldering good-looking piece, thoroughly bored with life and probably meditating a speedy change of husbands.

I met some English missionaries who had been in the country for thirty years, and they told me that divorce is very common amongst the inhabitants. It is even rather the rule than the exception, and it is almost as often resorted to on the part of the wife as on that of the husband. It can be procured for the most trifling causes, and the[35] divorcée does not lose social caste. She returns to her father’s house and usually remarries, though in that case the father cannot command as good a payment for her as he received from her first husband. Should there be children the question of their maintenance is settled by the Kaïd. The missionaries naturally were brought more in contact with the lower classes, amongst whom they thought divorce was commoner than in the wealthier circles. The poorer women go out closely veiled, but those of better birth live almost entirely in their houses and on the very rare occasions when they do go out, it is in a closed carriage with all the blinds down. However, they rarely resent their seclusion in the harem; they look on it as an enhancement of their value, and these missionaries had never heard any complaint of the system.

It is quite likely that whilst we are pitying the women of the harem for their secluded, miserable lives, they are also wasting compassion on us, as poor creatures whom their husbands value so little that they let them wander anywhere unveiled! But I think compassion is hardly the sentiment with which we inspire them. Horror and disgust are their more probable feelings. At every turn we run counter to their idea of what is seemly and in good taste; and this question alone, of the different conception of women’s standing in the East and in the West, makes mutual understanding difficult between the two races.

Though the Koran allows four wives, it is not often a man avails himself of the permission. It is too expensive, and he prefers to take his supply consecutively. He can get as much change as he likes, by the easy way of divorce. I went to an Arab wedding of the poorer classes at Kairouan, and found it deeply interesting. It was a cold clear night with a bright moon, the open space outside the walls of the city silvered in its light. It seemed strangely quiet and empty after the stir and bustle of the day; the little booths were shut, and a slinking white dog nosed amongst the shadows. From a distant café came the sound of a stringed instrument and the singing of a reedy voice. Otherwise silence. But when we had passed through the city gates, we heard a loud hum of voices. Muffled figures were hurrying along and soon we found ourselves in a crowd waiting for the marriage procession. Knots of musicians appeared and struck up their queer wavering tunes on pipes and drums and barbaric looking stringed instruments, whilst some hand held aloft a lamp which made a small radius of ruddy flame, lighting up the group below it and making the hooded figures look more mysterious than ever. From a side street came the shrill call of women shouting to keep evil spirits from the dwelling of the newly married pair, whilst nearer and nearer came the sound of the approaching procession.

In a few moments it moved past, the bridegroom in the[37] middle of it, his head and shoulders shrouded in a thick covering. The noise woke a bundle of inanimate rags against the wall at our feet; it stirred, groaned and sat up. To the sound of shouting and drums and the intoning of a nasal chant, the bridegroom disappeared down the echoing street on his way to the mosque. Already the bride had been fetched to his home, the civil service having taken place the day before. We made a short cut there, between blank walls where the path seemed a trickle of light through impenetrable shadows.

And so we came to the house itself. Mysterious veiled figures stood motionless on the roof, like sentinels of Fate. In the gloom my hand was seized by a native woman’s, small and dry, and I was led into the house followed by my English companion. We were taken across one room, and brought to the doorway of another from whence came a hum of voices and laughter. Peering into this smaller room we saw it packed with gaily-dressed women squatting on the ground, whilst in the corner sat the bride like a waxen image. She was swathed in a robe of heavily tinselled stuff and over her head was thrown a drapery that quite hid her face. Not a soul spoke French, but we were hospitably beckoned in. It proved a matter of some difficulty to avoid stepping on the human mosaic which covered the floor but we managed it somehow and sat down in very cramped positions in places of honour close[38] to the bride. She sat with her back against the bed, which in Arab fashion was in an alcove. So great was the throng, that our advent had pressed a small child under the bed itself, from whence first came a doleful snuffling, followed at last by a determined wail. It was as much a work of art to rescue the victim as to extract a winkle from its shell with a pin, but it was ultimately restored to the bosom of its family.

All this time the bride sat rigid and unbending as befits a modest Arab maiden. She made no sign of life, even when the woman next her raised the heavy veil for us to see her. She was a rather heavy-featured girl, her face artificially whitened, with a brilliant dab of rouge on either cheek, her forehead painted with an ornamental design in black and her eyebrows made to meet in a straight line. Her fingers had been dipped in some dark scented ointment, whilst the backs were decorated in an intricate pattern with henna and the palms dabbed here and there. Her hair was in two heavy plaits on either shoulder and she wore a coloured silk handkerchief bound over it and above that a tinselled head-dress with a long tail to it that hung down her back.

The heat in the small room was stifling. The women were all unveiled and many of them were heavily powdered and rouged, their fingers loaded with rings and wearing necklaces and earrings. Some were dressed in queer décolleté[39] dresses reminding one of fashions of twenty years ago, with tight pointed bodices, much be-sequined and trimmed and with a kind of gilt epaulettes on the shoulders. Everyone chattered hard, small babies cried, outside the shouting and noise of drums went on, and the atmosphere grew thicker and thicker with the odour of packed humanity, scent and powder, and the sweet musty smell of garments that had been laid away in aromatic herbs. Most of the women were of a warm olive colouring, with beautiful long dark eyes, and one or two were as fair as English brunettes with a natural carnation in their cheeks.

Amongst them I made out the mother of the bride, dressed in shabby black. She had a fine worn face, with features that showed more mind than the rest of the crowd, and dark eyes tear-stained in their hollowed sockets. The cheekbones were high, the nose short and straight, and the sad mouth drooped at the corners. It was the face of a woman who could think and suffer, and stood out amongst the comely crowd in the same way that her black draperies ‘told’ against their gay clothes. She reminded me of the Virgin in the Pietà of Francia in the National Gallery. At times she wept softly with eyes that seemed already burnt out with sorrow, drying her tears with a fold of her veil. I longed to know Arabic, that I might speak to her. Amongst foreigners whose language one does not know and having no mutual tongue for comprehension, one is as[40] deaf and dumb, all power of observation and understanding centred in sight. So, I suppose, must a deaf mute pass through the world, striving to participate in the brotherhood of humanity, watching for a gleam here, a glance there, to unlock the perpetual riddle.

The women began to leave for the larger room where we thankfully followed. But there we were not much better off, as in a moment a feminine crowd closed in upon us in a frenzy of friendly curiosity. It was like stepping into a cageful of monkeys. They seized our arms, ran their hands over us, exclaiming and gesticulating, fingered our blouses, our ornaments, and trying to pull off our hats. It was only the arrival of the bridegroom that averted their attention. He was brought by another way into the room, still veiled, and then the bride was brought to him and amidst much laughter and shouting his head covering was removed. After this they were conducted to the door of another bedroom, stepping over the sill of which each tried to step on the other’s foot, the one who succeeds being supposed to have the predominance in their future married life. The door was shut on them, “et voilà tout” as a small Arab boy remarked to me, glad to air his slender French.

I was told later that when the bridegroom finds himself alone with his bride he lifts her veil and sees her face for[41] the first time. He takes off her slippers and outer coat and then leaves her, and rejoins his men friends outside. If he has not been satisfied with his bride’s appearance it is still open to him to repudiate her, in which case she will return to her father’s house. Should he be pleased with her, however, the next day is given up to a banquet to all their friends, and he returns to his house where the married life of the young couple begins.

As soon as the bridal pair had disappeared the crowd turned its friendly attention to us, and I thought we should never fight our way through the mob of women. I caught a glimpse of the young Englishwoman in a perfect maelstrom of females, her hat off, her blouse almost torn from her shoulders. I waded to her with difficulty as one might through heavy surf, and laughing and breathless we at last got clear and out into the open air. The Englishmen and Hassan had had to stay outside, only women being allowed in. “And was the bride very beautiful?” Hassan asked with romantic interest. He told us the feast that would take place next day would be a great one: half a sheep roasted, cakes and sweetmeats of every kind.

“Indeed marriage is always a very expensive affair,” he sighed. “A man is lucky if he is not 500 francs the poorer by the time it is all over. For his bride he must give 300 to 400 francs, perhaps even more. Then he must provide the furniture for the house, and the bed, and one[42] set of silk garments for the bride. And also there is the wedding banquet and for that too he must pay.”

I asked what the bride’s contribution to the household was; she must bring the mattress and the bedding, also the cooking pots, and her own clothes.

“Yes, it is not many who can afford to have more than one wife,” he went on. “And if a man be wishful to have two, never do they get on together, and thereupon he must perhaps have two houses or be for ever deafened with their quarrels.”

He fell into a reverie, whilst we made our way through the outskirts of the town, past the deserted market-place that slept in the moonlight, under the shadowy pepper trees that made a grateful shade in the heat of the day for the vendors of oranges and sweetmeats, and so through the city gate back to the quiet little square and the open door of the hotel.

The scene in the Kairouan Souks was one of great animation in the afternoon, when auctions were held by the shopkeepers. The buildings consisted of long narrow passage-ways whose arched roofs were pierced here and there with openings to let in light. The shops were on a raised level on either side as in all Eastern bazaars, and were just recesses Where the seller squatted amongst his wares, whilst the customers and spectators sat along the broad stone edge covered with matting that ran along the front[43] of the booths, their discarded red and yellow slippers neatly ranged on the ground below.

Business is conducted slowly and with dignity in the East, there is much talk and bargaining, coffee is brought and sipped during the process and then finally, perhaps, a purchase is made. The shopman in his flowing soft-coloured robes, probably wearing a flower over one ear, slowly measures the desired carpet or rug by hand, from the elbow to the tips of his fingers. There is more discussion, and at last the purchaser brings out a worked leather purse and counts out the requisite payment.

But during an auction, the scene was much more animated. Shop assistants rushed up and down carrying goods and bawling at the top of their voices “What offers? what offers?” Customers bid against each other and the noise and bustle were tremendous. Every other moment a panting native rushed back to the owner of the shop to ask if the latest offer were to be accepted. Up the side-passages opening into the central Souk, more auctions might be going on simultaneously, and the crowd was so great that sketching had to be of the snapshot variety.

Nearly all the men were in white or sand-coloured burnous, with the hood partly pushed back, showing the small twisted turban and close red fez worn underneath. The Tunisian countrymen are in general fine looking men, tall and aquiline featured, with good foreheads and clearly[44] marked eyebrows. Nearly all have a moustache and a dark closely clipped beard, but one sees a few of fairer type amongst them. They are friendly and courteous. A gamin told one grave and dignified looking figure that I was sketching him, whereupon my model glanced at me, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. I showed him the sketch and he laughed, much amused. Very often the shopkeepers near whom I was sitting with my sketch-book offered me coffee and I always met with hospitality and goodwill. If one asks their permission before settling[45] down, it is always granted, and they usually take one more or less under their protection, and try to prevent a crowd from collecting.

I like the Arabs’ fine dignity. Probably their flowing style of dress helps to give this effect, and the hooded cloak makes a becoming setting to their dark faces. Even the tiny boys wear the burnous and go about looking like small elves in their pointed hoods.

Outside the western walls of the city, the graveyards stretched right away as far as the Mosque du Barbier, which lay about half a mile from the town. The tombs were not marked by any inscriptions, and often were only covered by a small rounded slab or just roughly enclosed by an edging of bricks. On these poorer graves a cluster of bricks set sideways in the earth told the sex of the dead: if set close together they mark the resting place of a man, if scattered, that of a woman. There is something inexpressibly forlorn about these Moslem cemeteries, the graves so huddled together, no green, no flowers. The tiny spectacled owl perches on the low headstones or makes his silent flight from one to the other, and beyond the graveyard itself the whole sky flames to brilliant red at the going down of the sun.

The sunsets in Kairouan were magnificent. The whole of the west seemed to burst into fire and the desert glowed with a deep reflected rose. I call it ‘desert’ but it was[46] not really this. ‘Le vrai desert’ is far off. But the wide stretches of sandy waste looked the name, and at sunset they turned a wonderful red, with washes of dusty purple, whilst the far hills were first violet and then almost black against the last splendour of the sky.

Coming home through the cemetery one evening, Ali Hassan was anxious to know if I had read the Koran, and begged me to carry one about with me; “it would protect you greatly.” I asked him if the Fast of Ramadan was kept very strictly in Kairouan. He said yes, “except that there are always some who do not follow their religion seriously. They do not pray regularly, neither do they fast carefully for a month at Ramadan. But they will find the difference when they reach the other world. For every Ramadan they have broken here, they will have to fast a year hereafter. Ils auront joliment faim,” he ended with satisfaction. I gather he himself is a scrupulous observer of his religion.

When I left Kairouan, Hassan came to see me off, wishing me happiness and prosperity, and hoping I should return some day. He presented me with one of his most treasured possessions, a picture postcard of himself and his family at the Marseilles Exhibition. There they all were posing under a tent, and labelled ‘Fabrication de Tapis de Kairouan (Tunisie) Maison Ali Hassan.’ Even under these trying conditions I was glad to see Hassan had still[47] continued to look dignified. There was his wife to the left of the picture wearing all the family jewels and watching a sleeping baby that even in slumber seemed to remember it was ‘en exposition.’ The little girls were working at their handloom, whilst Hassan himself sat with a son on either side, and a row of family slippers in varying sizes ranged along the edge of the mat in front of him. He was immensely proud of this work of art.

As my train steamed slowly away from Kairouan, I saw him still on the platform, his portly figure wrapped in the voluminous folds of a white burnous, watching till the distance had swallowed me up.

CHAPTER IV
SOUSSE

The country through which the train passed from Kairouan to Sousse was bare and desolate, with scarce scattered Bedouins’ tents now and again that seemed to blend with their surroundings like the nests of wild birds. A few grazing camels wandered near them, herded by ragged children who turned to stare at the train. The plains stretched as far as the eye could reach to the feet of distant hills. We passed one or two shallow lakes, obviously rainfall collected in depressions of the ground, that would dry up as some we had already seen which were now nothing but stretches of cracked and seamed mud, looking like jigsaw puzzles.

Sousse proved to be a picturesque little town on the sea, built about the base of the old Kasba or fort, whose walls stand on a hill above it, looking out over the flat-roofed white houses of the modern town to the waters of the Mediterranean. From the fort itself there was a magnificent view: on one side the curving coastline with its dotted white villages and the gentian sea fading to a pale mist in the distance, on the other, vistas of olive groves and orchards.

The great local industry is the cultivation of olives, and there are factories for the making of oil and soap on the outskirts of the town. The actual care of the trees is almost entirely in the hands of the Arabs, to whom the French owner usually sells the crop in bulk, unpicked. A tree in full bearing is worth three to four hundred francs a year, and an orchard may contain thousands of trees. The Arabs are so improvident that they often spend all the money they make during the harvest, in six months’ time, and then are forced to realise in advance on their next. Frequently they get into the hands of the Jews in transactions in which it is certainly not the latter who suffer.

Beyond the Kasba are the Christian catacombs, which are interesting, and cover a large area. Passage after passage is tunnelled out, with poor little skeletons neatly stowed away on either side as a careful housewife stocks her store cupboard with jam.

The Souks are not so picturesque nor as extensive as those of Kairouan and of Sfax, but the crowd was enthralling to watch. In the native cafés grave men in picturesque draperies were seated along the broad stone ledge on either side the room, sipping coffee or playing a kind of chess, whilst the owner bent over his charcoal fire at the far end, and the assistant sped about on bare feet carrying sheaves of the long-handled coffee holders, just big enough to fill each minute cup. To this is often added a drop of orange flower water or some sweet essence.

In the brilliant sunshine outside the arcade a peasant squatted on the paved path whittling at flutes made from a cut piece of cane ornamented with red and green paint. He played a few sweet husky notes to show his skill. Opposite to him sat a vendor of oranges, and a seller of the brown flat loaves of native bread sprinkled on the top with seeds, and beyond them a man with a tray of sweetmeats, slabs of toffee, cakes of chopped nuts, brilliantly coloured strips of pink rock, and sugar birds striped red and green and set on wire stems to attract children. All these huddled on the ground, their wares spread round them, whilst at the end of the steep stony street one saw the frowning battlements of the Kasba rising sheer against the sky, and looking downhill caught a glimpse of the blue of the sea and the white sails of fishing boats like drowning butterflies in the harbour. Across the bay were the houses of the little fishing village of Monastir. The country just round Sousse is all olive groves, with huge hedges of spiked cactus, and when I was there in January, shrivelled prickly pears still hung along the edges of the leaves. There had been so many that year that they had not all been picked. The whole country teems with Roman remains, and one sees fragments sticking up out of the ground wherever foundations are being dug for a house.

I went from there to spend the day at El Djem to see the wonderful ruins of its amphitheatre. To reach it, one again travels through a great stretch of bare country. The engine of the train broke down and we were delayed for about two hours en route. We first ran over an Arab, and in his efforts to avoid this, the driver had put on his brakes so suddenly that he injured the mechanism of the engine. None of the passengers seemed to be much perturbed when they heard afterwards of the Arab having been killed. Indeed the man must have been a confirmed suicide, for the country is so bare that a train can be seen coming two miles off, and its progress is deliberate enough to give the most dreamy of pedestrians time to realise his danger. Perhaps it is like the Trans-Siberian railway, where compensation used to be given to the family of the deceased, till it was discovered that the peasants were driving a lucrative trade in aged relatives.

Before reaching El Djem, I saw the huge ruins of the amphitheatre against the sky. They looked immense, with a small Arab village about their feet. In colour they were a warm brown, built of enormous blocks of stone; and the size of the building took my breath away. I am told it is as fine as the Colosseum at Rome, and of course it gains in grandeur from its isolated position. Forlorn and ruined as the building is, with its arches like empty eye-sockets staring into space, there is still something[53] magnificent and defiant about it. Most of the tiers for spectators are still there, part of the Imperial entrance and ranges of arched openings. Below, in the centre, are the prisoners’ cells and the dens for wild beasts, with the openings by which the latter were released into the arena.

I sat on a large block of stone. Pigeons flew in and out of the galleries where Roman ladies used to sit and watch the gladiators and the fights with savage animals below. Grass grew along the edges of the walls, and a tuft of wild thyme waved in the breeze. It was a grey day, and against the sad sky the great edifice seemed to stand brooding over its past splendour.

I went with the Arab custodian across fields, by narrow footpaths edged with spiked battledores of prickly pears, and was shown vestiges of a paved Roman road and the remains of a villa. We passed an old well, used still by the villagers, at which a young girl was drawing water. These village people go unveiled and she stared at us, a slender brown slip of a child in a ragged blue robe caught across her smooth shoulder by silver brooch pins. Her face was pointed, a tiny trident was tattooed on her forehead, and another mark on her chin. She gazed at me with her bright dark eyes the underlids of which were darkened with kohl, and then turned again to the filling of the red amphora-shaped jar she carried. I watched her walk away, graceful and erect, bearing the earthenware vessel[54] of water on her head, her bare feet moving noiselessly along the dusty path.

Numberless children ran out to meet us in the village, laughing merry little things in tattered burnous and blue gown, incredibly dirty and cheerful, with a constant flash of white teeth. Even the tiniest girls wore thick metal anklets, and tots of five or six carried baby brothers astride their hips. The children’s playtime is a short one; at seven or eight years old they are already at work herding cattle or collecting fodder and fetching heavy jars of water from the wells. I have often seen a small girl almost weighed down with the weight of a jar of water. They crouch down whilst an older one lifts it on to their back and passes a cord round their forehead to hold the jar in place. Then, staggering, the poor little thing gets to her feet and starts off, almost bent double. The Arabs are very fond of their children and good to them, but they never seem to realise what heavy work they put on them.

Later, from the small station, I watched the day fade and dusk settling on the countryside. Slow-pacing camels were making their homeward way driven by young boys, whilst here and there a little group of workers was returning from the fields. The sky turned to a clear translucence in the West, the amphitheatre blurred to a formless mass of grey girdled about the knees with a blue haze of smoke from the Arab village. Dogs barked from behind its mud[55] walls, and the pale stars began to peer from between the clouds. First here, then there, the warm flicker of a fire showed through an open doorway; and all these homely signs of village life seemed to make ever more and more remote the great outline of the ruins. For a time I could still see the sky through the top arches of the building, but even that faded by degrees, till at last night folded her mantle about the vastness of its desolation.

CHAPTER V
PASSING THROUGH

The dark trees along the centre of the boulevard looked almost artificial against the greenish glare of the electric lights. From every café streamed bands of revellers, their brilliant costumes adding to the theatrical appearance of the streets. Dominoes of every colour flitted about; orange, purple, emerald and lemon yellow. Showers of confetti made a pink and blue snow upon the ground, and the moving crowd passed in and out from the dark shadows below the trees to the clear-cut brilliance of the light. Rattles and toy trumpets sounded shrill above the under-note made by the murmur of the populace. From some building came the noise of dancing and the crash of a band. Groups of absurdly dressed figures pushed their way through the restaurants, here a Teddy bear linking arms with a Red Indian or an English jockey escorting a ballet-dancer.

And up and down the roadway went little knots of the poorer people in family parties, father and mother in dominoes from under which appeared cheaply-shod feet, whilst rather shabby small Pierrots trotted by their side. The few fiacres could only move at a foot’s pace, the trams[57] had ceased running. Behind the noise of the carnival and the hum of voices the town itself was strangely hushed and the tideless sea down by the harbour made no sound. Through the foliage of the trees gazed the quiet stars.

There was a queer unreality about it all, thought the Englishman as he sat at a small table on the raised terrace of a café and looked down on the passers-by. Vaguely it struck him what a fine design it might make, the dark heavy mass of greenery carved against the glittering background of the lamps, and the coloured snake of people that wound amongst the stems, paused, coiled and uncoiled. They shared the unreality of the whole thing. He felt they could not be real, they were just a boxful of dolls taken out to be played with and to be swept back into oblivion when one was tired of them.

The air was soft and warm and it was pleasant to sit there and gaze dreamily at the shifting scene. A few Arabs passed, looking impassively at it all: and it was impossible to read the expression on their dark faces. A group of palms stood black against the star-freckled sky. The whole picture in its strangeness stirred his imagination. This was Africa, even though the country of Tunis were but the fringe of it. No sea stretched between him where he sat and the hot wide spaces of the Sahara. Were one to ride and ride into the far distance, at last one would escape civilisation altogether, would reach to the primitive[58] roots of humanity. And it was a mere chance that had brought him here.

He loved the sea and hated all liners, so was taking a trip in the Mediterranean on a small steamer. There had been a slight breakdown of the engines, and the ship had put into this little port for repairs. The first night he spent on board watching the twinkle of lights on the shore, but to-day he had landed and found himself in the midst of Carnival rejoicings. He was the only Englishman on board, and it seemed to him that he was the only Englishman in this town. At any rate he had seen no other. He heard French, Italian and Arabic spoken round him, but nothing else. During the afternoon he had wandered about the native town, and climbing up a steep and narrow street that seemed just a gash in the white walls, he had come out on a height near the fort, from whence he looked down on the harbour spread below, dotted with tiny craft, beyond it the restless rim of the sea. He did not know the East, and the picturesqueness of the Arab town delighted him; the hooded groups that sat about the doorways, the statuesque folds of their drapery, the clash of women’s anklets, the glowing sunlight that seemed to pour into every nook and cranny like some rich golden wine. It was all new and strange.

And now to-night there was the feeling of being an onlooker at some fantastic theatre-scene. As he sat[59] smoking and watching, a passing Columbine glanced at him and smiled; the Englishman in the grey tweed suit looked so alien in this stir and flutter. And he was young and good looking. Why should he be alone? But her glance was thrown away upon him. He sat watching the scene, absorbed.

He had been there, perhaps, an hour, and was about to pay for his drink and move on, when a child’s voice made itself heard at his elbow. He turned. By his side stood a small Arab boy, wrapped in a mud-coloured garment, and it was his voice that had aroused his attention. He gave the child a coin, paid his bill and stepped out into the street. And again he found the boy beside him. He was talking in a mixture of broken French and Arabic impossible to follow. What on earth did the child want? He turned on him impatiently and the small figure shrank away, but a few minutes later it was back again, still repeating some unintelligible phrase. Telling him angrily in French to go away, the traveller pushed his way into the crowd. Long festoons of coloured paper had been flung from hand to hand and fragments of them hung dangling in the branches, stirred now and then by a passing breath of wind too faint to set the foliage itself in motion.

It was close on midnight. He wandered down the central street on his way to the harbour. As he drew[60] near, the tang of seaweed and shipping reached him on the night air; and turning, he looked back at the coloured necklace of lights that ringed the shore. His steamer was due to leave early the next day, and this was the last glimpse he would have of the place. Queer, he thought, how he had dipped for a moment into its life. Like opening the pages of a book, reading a few lines, and then being forced to close it again.

As he stood there, he became aware of a movement in the shadows and instinctively drew himself together. The place was lonely, he was a stranger and might be thought worth robbing. Then his keen eyes made out the figure of the child who had already followed him. The boy came up to him, and this time silently held out a scrap of white paper on which something was written. The Englishman took it to the light of a lamp and read it with difficulty. The paper had evidently been torn from a pocket book, and across it was scrawled in pencil the words “Please come,” with an almost illegible signature underneath them. He stared at the writing, puzzled. He knew no one in the place, and his first idea was that the paper had been picked up somewhere. But the Arab boy was pulling his coat gently and pointing to the town. The man hesitated. Stories of decoyed travellers, of murder and robbery passed through his mind, and again he examined the piece of paper.

The writing was evidently English and it was an educated hand, though faltering and uncertain. The signature was unreadable but he guessed it to be a man’s. He questioned the messenger but could not understand what he said, and the boy kept on pointing to the town and tugging his coat softly. The traveller did not hesitate long. His curiosity was roused and there was something adventurous and romantic about the situation that appealed to his youth. He signified his decision by a nod, and prepared to follow his guide.

Swiftly and silently the latter sped in front, turning now and again to make sure he was followed. His bare feet made no sound and the cloak wrapped round him so merged into the surroundings that more than once he seemed to have disappeared altogether. A late moon had risen and the roadway gleamed in its light. As they neared the central thoroughfare with its glare and gay crowds, the boy struck off into a maze of small streets that led away from it towards the Arab quarter. The sound of revelry became fainter and as they climbed the narrow way they left it behind. Black and white in the moonlight stood the gate of the native town, and they passed through it.

The narrow dimly lit streets were almost deserted. In leaving the modern town they seemed to step suddenly into a different world, a world where men moved[62] mysteriously on secret errands. The stranger found himself trying to hush the frank sound of his own footsteps, to bring himself into line, as it were, with his surroundings. A solitary shrouded figure here and there approached on noiseless feet and passed, absorbed and enigmatic. The roadway became so narrow that there seemed but a knife-blade of light between the black shadows of the overhanging houses which drew together like conspirators. Turning and twisting through the tortuous streets the figure ran ahead, and the Englishman still followed, though inwardly somewhat dismayed at the distance he was being taken.

At last they stopped. A low entrance stood in a recess before them, and the boy softly pushed a door open and went in, leading the other a few steps through darkness to a second one which opened into a small courtyard.

The moon shone clearly upon it, showing the arcaded passage that ran round it on which several rooms opened. From one there came a thread of lamplight. There was a small stone well in the centre of the court and the moonlight lit the dim carving on it and on the slender pillars of the arcade. Evidently the house had once been a building of some importance, but it was now shabby and dilapidated. The paving was uneven with gaping cracks, and the pillars were broken and defaced.

At the sound of their approach the door with the light[63] was held ajar and a woman’s muffled figure appeared. The small Arab made a gesture to the Englishman to wait and went into the room closing the door behind him.

A creeper growing in a pot with its leaves trained against the wall gave out a faint scent. There was the squeak and scuffle of a bat in the eaves. From far away came the sounds of merrymakers, so attenuated by distance as to be little louder than the bat’s squeak. And in the silence round the listener pressed the sense of people at hand, of sleepers stirring to far-off sounds. Then the door on which his eyes were fixed opened slowly and a bar of ruddy light slid across the cold whiteness of the moonlight. He was beckoned in.

On entering he found himself in a small and lofty room with a marble floor on which a few poor rugs were spread. There seemed to be no windows and a lamp stood on the ground. The figure of a woman wrapped in a mantle squatted on the floor, and on a couch in an alcove the figure of an Arab raised itself with difficulty on one elbow to look at him.

“What is it? Why have you sent for me?” the Englishman asked impatiently, feeling there had been some hoax, if nothing worse.

At his voice the figure smiled. “It’s rough luck on you bringing you here at this time of night, you must forgive me.”

The traveller stood amazed. The other was no Arab, then! It was an English voice, drawling and weak, but unmistakably that of a gentleman.

“By Jove! you’re English!” said the bewildered newcomer, staring at the strange figure on the couch.

It was that of a tall man in native dress, the face yellowed and lined and so thin that every bone seemed to show. He was evidently very ill, his deep-set eyes burning with fever, his movements weak and uncertain. The Eastern robes hung loosely on his gaunt body and he was half sitting, half lying on the couch, propped up with pillows. Close by him the figure of a woman crouched over a bowl in which she stirred a dark liquid that gave out a pungent smell.

The invalid spoke in Arabic and she got up with a jingle of ornaments and left the room by another door, whilst the boy went back to the courtyard. The visitor watched her ungainly figure moving away, more and more bewildered. What on earth was an Englishman doing here, in these surroundings and with these people?

“Yes,” he said, “it’s hard to understand. But there it is. It’s too long a story to tell. Anyway here I am. I’ve lived the life of an Arab for years. What’s the phrase for it?—‘gone under’—yes, that’s it. I’ve gone under. My[65] name is Dunsford, and there’s something I want you to do for me.” He paused.

“My name’s Forde,” the traveller answered. “What is it you want me to do? Why did you send for me? We have never met before.”

“I know, I know, but I had to get hold of some Englishman—you as well as another—I can’t live much longer, and there’s something I want done. I daresay there are one or two of our countrymen in the place, but I specially wanted a stranger. I don’t want people here poking into my affairs.”

“But,” expostulated Forde, “why not see a doctor? Or have you got one? I could look up someone in the town: I’m only passing through myself, but I could find someone.”

“It’s not a doctor I want. I went to see one some time ago and there’s nothing to be done. I’ve got medicine and things,” the other added impatiently seeing an interruption imminent, “I don’t mind the snuffing out for myself but I’m worried about one of my boys. I mean for after I’m gone. He’s taken after my side,” he went on with a crooked smile, “and he’ll never settle down out here, I want him got out of it.”

Good heavens! Was he going to ask him to take over the child? The newcomer was appalled. But the invalid seemed to read his thoughts.

“It’s all right,” he assured him, “it’s not such a big job I want you to do. I’ve a brother at home, a J.P. and landowner and all that sort of thing. He’s a hard man, but he’s just, and he won’t have a down on the little chap because his father’s been a rotter. He’ll get him to England and give him his chance. But I don’t want to write to him even if I could.” He looked down at his wasted hands. “No, I want you to look him up when I’m safely gone and to tell him about the boy, and he’ll do the rest.”

“But I’m only here to-night and I’m off again to-morrow,” broke in the other. “It’s just an accident I’m in the place at all. The ship put in for repairs, and I shall never be here again.”

“All the better,” was the answer, “if I had wanted someone on the spot I’d have got hold of a consul. But I’ve cut adrift from all my own lot and I don’t want to be mixed up with them again. That’s why I told Ibrahim to find a stranger. And I fancy, by the look of you, that you can keep your mouth shut.” He grinned. “He’s been out looking for weeks past and it’s just your rotten luck that he pitched on you. But you’ll do—you’ll do!”

“Know when I’m downed? I’ve thought it out. The best plan is for you to leave a postcard with me addressed to yourself, and when the time comes the boy will post it. No need to write anything on it: you’ll understand.”

He stopped exhausted, whilst the young man stared at him. After a minute he went on again.

“I’ve got my brother’s address written out ready. His on one side, and mine on the other, and I’ll give it to you. You’ll do it for me?” he added.

“I’d like to show you my son,” the invalid said, “if you wouldn’t mind giving me an arm I think I can manage it.”

The younger man helped him to his feet and supported him to the inner room. Here there were two beds. On one lay two sleeping dark-skinned children, but the father passed them and drew back the coverlet to show the occupant of the further bed. Seldom had Forde seen a lovelier boy. Flushed with sleep, his fair hair touzled and rough, he lay fast asleep, his open shirt showing the dimpled milk-white neck. In his hand he clutched some cherished toy. He lay on his side, his rosy cheek burrowed into the pillow, little feathers of gold about his damp forehead. He seemed about seven.

Dunsford stood looking down at him, a look of mingled pride and pain on his face, and Forde was able to study him unobserved. It was a curious and interesting face, the brow well-shaped and the eyes dark blue and with something wistful about them. The watcher fancied that the sleeping child, when awake, might show much the same[68] wide and faintly-puzzled look. The father too must have been fair, but the hot suns of the East had burnt his skin to a deep tan. Below the close red fez and small twisted turban his fair hair seemed going grey. His extreme thinness made the sharp ridge of his nose stand out like a beak, and there was a deep groove on either side between the nostrils and the hollowed cheeks. He had been recently shaved and only a gleam of grey showed along the narrow jaw. The mouth was compressed, but it seemed more from habit than nature. And now that he was off his guard its natural mobility could be noted. It was a face that showed intelligence and sensitiveness, allied with self will and determination, even a touch of fanaticism. The face of a man who might be fired by an impracticable idea, and who would break himself to pieces in trying to drive it through. He seemed a personality driven in upon himself. His bearing showed distinction as did also his well-kept hands.

As he watched the boy his face broke up and softened. Whatever wall he had built up about his inner self his defences were down before his son. He re-arranged the sheet, it seemed more with the motive of touching the child than for any other reason, and his hand lingered by the pillow. In the silence could be heard the soft breathing of the sleeper, till it was broken by a rustle of draperies as the Arab woman rose from the floor where she had been[69] sitting beyond the bed. At sight of her the man’s face changed. He dropped the coverlet and made a sign to his companion to help him back to the other room.

“You can tell my brother the little beggar’s all right,” he said as he sank back again upon the couch. “Legal and all that, you know. I married his mother,” with a jerk of the head towards the inner room, “before a consul as well as by Mohammedan law. The boy hasn’t been christened but my brother will enjoy getting all that done. Tell him I called him Humphrey after our old grandfather.” He stopped.

Then following his instructions Forde brought him a box which he unlocked. Inside it were some documents tied together, and from the bundle he took a slip of paper with the addresses and gave it to his companion.

“Now there’s only the post card,” he said. “You’ll find one on that table. Address it to yourself: to your home address. Then it is sure to find you.”

“That’s all, my dear fellow, and a thousand thanks. It’s a weight off my mind and I hope it won’t be a great nuisance to you.” He was silent for a time, then “Are you fond of women?” he asked abruptly. “It was over one that I went to pieces long ago.” Forde thought of the huddled shapelessness in the next room.

“I was an Army man,” began the voice again, but checked. “Sorry there’s nothing I can offer you, you don’t take opium?... But I expect you’ll be glad to be off, and I can tell you I’ll sleep easier to-night. You’ll find Ibrahim in the courtyard and he’ll show you the way back.”

The men shook hands and again the invalid declared he wanted nothing. “Only your promise not to say a word of this to my brother or to anyone till the post card reaches you,” he said to Forde, as the latter stepped into the open.

The shadow of the wall had crept a little further across the courtyard, and a few wisps of cloud dimmed the radiance of the moon. The figure of Ibrahim rose from the shadows and moved silently before him, retracing the way that they had come. The glow of illumination had died down, and only a scattered knot or two of revellers were to be seen as they crossed the thoroughfare. Night seemed to have flowed over the town and to have obliterated all tumult in her quiet tide. Down by the jetty gleamed the eye of the steamer, where she lay at her moorings, the water gently lapping her sides. Ibrahim melted away into the shadows as the young man stood a moment on deck before going below, watching the pathway of the moon across the dark water and the silver sleeping town; thinking too of the mysterious house in the heart of the Arab quarter, with its strange secret.

When he awoke in the morning he found they were[71] already at sea and through the porthole he could see the curves of the coastline and the white semi-circle of the town fading to a faint blur. At first he thought constantly of the happenings of the night, but the interest and excitement of travel by degrees pushed them from his mind.

He was at home and they were sitting out under the big cedar on the lawn when the second post arrived. “Here’s your lot—catch!” said his brother throwing some letters across to him.

“Oh! can I have the stamp?” shrieked a small nephew, as he saw a foreign postmark.

The budget fell just short of Forde and landed face downwards, the white blank of a postcard staring at him from the grass.

He gazed at it silently. A passing breeze shook the roses on the terrace and a few crimson petals loosened themselves, fluttered a moment and floated soundlessly to the ground. There seemed to him a pause in the warm stir of summer and then a voice cried gaily, “Hullo, who’s your absent-minded friend?”

CHAPTER VI
SFAX

Sfax, like Kairouan and Sousse, is a walled town and the Souks are even more fascinating than those of Kairouan. The European part of the town is quite separate, and is picturesquely built in the Moorish style, the wide streets planted with palms running across to the harbour with its busy shipping. It is a very flourishing place, the centre of the olive oil industry and also the port for the phosphates which are obtained in such quantities near Metlaoui and other places. These mines seem almost inexhaustible, and new veins are always being discovered. One sees truckloads and truckloads of the stuff, looking like sand, coming along the line. In running the hand through it, one finds quantities of fishes’ teeth, quite whole and perfect and so sharp that they can pierce leather. Some are as large as the teeth of a fox, pointed and white, and there are some that have two fangs or even three. The phosphates are one of the richest products of this country. The ‘ore’ is sometimes shipped direct from Sfax, being loaded into vessels specially prepared to carry it, or it is first chemically treated in the neighbourhood and then[73] exported as super-phosphate. The mining districts contain a large population of workers, chiefly immigrants, with French managers in authority.

Outside the northern walls of Sfax was a large space where fodder was stacked, and charcoal and grain sold, and where the laden camels came stepping gravely along the white highway from the country, and here were small groups of men squatting round cooking pots, or Bedouins collecting round two negresses who were stirring beans over a charcoal fire, shredding in red pepper, the firelight playing on their broad features and flashing teeth.

The drone of native pipes from a ragged booth close under the walls, led us in that direction and we found two Soudanese doing a kind of dance, surrounded by a crowd of Arabs. They were in a medley of garments, one wearing an old khaki coat over his accordion-pleated shirt. It had once been white, but was stained and worn to an indeterminate shade. Dirty turbans were on their heads. One stood playing on a curious horned bagpipe, whilst the other revolved slowly round beating a drum, his hideous ebony face thrown back, his mouth opening and shutting, showing the pink interior and a thin tongue that quivered like an animal’s. Those who gave him money placed it in this horrid slot and he pouched it instantly in his cheek, all the time twisting and turning in a sort of dance. The last time I had seen anything of the sort was when I watched[74] the ‘shimmy shake’ danced by Europeans on board a liner. There it had been an absurd travesty, civilisation playing at barbarism. Here was the original stuff, primitive and raw, under the intense blue of an Eastern sky, the sunlight pouring down on the scene and making great blocks of shadow under the awning and at the feet of stacked bales of pale yellow chaff.

The crowd were chiefly in neutral tints, broken with the bright crimson of a fez here and there, the warm madder of a cloak dyed in henna, or the brilliant lemon yellow of native slippers.

Along the road a group of Bedouins passed like a classic frieze against the white background of a marabou. Four camels in single file led by a man wrapped in a cloak, each laden camel topped by a huddled blue figure that bent and swayed to the motion. Two or three Bedouin women accompanied them on foot, in loose girdled robes, bearing burdens on their heads. Barefoot and erect they strode past, their olive throats covered with necklaces of coins, their handsome tattooed faces set to the open country. They are impatient even of the scant civilisation of the Souks. They are a people of free spaces and the wide sky; as soon might the kestrel companion with the dove, as these wild natures fraternise with city folk. And as they swung past, the frowning crenellated walls of the city looked down, as they have done for ages past,[75] upon them and the bustle and crowd of the Souks, gazing beyond them to the gentian sea, whose calm they have watched ruffled by the prows of generations of conquerors who have come, have ruled, and in their turn become the dust blown hither and thither by the desert wind.

I found sketching in the Souks almost impossible at first, the people crowded round me so; but a champion suddenly appeared in the shape of an Arab waiter at the hotel whose eye fell upon my easel. I painted, did I? Et voilà, he too was devoted to art. Had he not accompanied[76] artists on many expeditions? Was he not an accredited guide, with patrons in Paris et partout? For six months he had been guide to an English lady, a great painter—“Nous avons beaucoup travaillés,” and she had gained a prize in the Salon for one of her large pictures painted here, here, in Sfax. “I will accompany you gladly to the Souks, madame. I can show you all the points from whence one can make an effective picture. And the crowds will no longer trouble you. All the world knows me.” And when I came down in the afternoon there indeed was Rached ben Mohamed, a white burnous thrown over his waiter’s clothes, a cigarette in his mouth. He was as good as his word. From one intricate street to another he led me, pausing to show me a corner here, a group there. “This is a magnificent subject,” he would say, “but not for the afternoon. The shadows are wrong then. You want a morning light. Tiens! I shall finish my work always very early and then I am tout à fait à votre disposition.”

He was an amazing character, much darker than an Arab, and I suspect his mother of having listened to the blandishments of a Soudanese. He talked a peculiar French rather difficult to follow, with terrific rapidity. All the shopkeepers in the Souks seemed to know him, and he was treated with great deference as he swaggered past, wrapped in his burnous, with his crimson fez on one side, talking[77] of the great artists he had been with, of the six months he spent in Paris, of the expeditions he had organised as guide.

“Comme dessin c’est très joli,” he remarked kindly, on looking at my first hasty pencil sketch in the Souk aux Tapis, “ça donne bien l’impression.”

My heart rather failed me when I heard of the great canvases painted by the French artist. I feared my efforts would be withered in his scorn, but “vous avez vraiment du talent,” he pronounced; and much heartened, I dashed on cobalt and aureolin in a wild effort to reproduce the brilliance of the scene in front of me.

I was painting in the Street of Stuffs. It was a narrow way, sloping down to an entrance to the Souks. A ragged awning was slung from a tumbledown balcony on one side to the roof of a shop on the other. Brilliant handkerchiefs and coloured stuffs hung on either side of the pathway; in the shade of a recess a tailor plied his trade, sitting cross-legged amongst billows of muslin. The sun beat down, slatting the roadway with glowing stripes, a continuous crowd surged up and down, men on their way to the mosque, countrymen staring at the goods proffered for sale, blind beggars tapping their way along and calling “Give, in the name of Allah!” and behind them rose the slender tower of a minaret.

I squeezed in between two shops and painted valiantly,[78] whilst Rached kept the crowd from encroaching on me. He wielded his cane like a scythe from time to time, making a clean swathe amongst the onlookers. And all the time he kept up his lordly air, accepting a chair from one, a cigarette from another, a cup of coffee from a third. He bullied, he cajoled, or he flattered, and always with success. I suspect him of assuring the crowd that I was a person of vast importance. I wondered to myself over his mysterious employment as a waiter, for a large card hung in the office setting forth his prowess as a guide. I gathered from him that if a great artist came along (here a faint underlining of the adjective) he threw up his waitering, engaged a substitute in his place, and turned guide for several months at a time. “Ah yes,” he said, whilst we made our way back to the hotel down a white side street whose walls stood sharp against a blinding sky, “to travel is to live.” He snatched a narcissus from a passing Arab youth and presented it to me with a flourish, leaving the original owner too astonished to protest.

At the far end of this narrow way was the Street of the Coppersmiths with its clang of beaten metal and glow of heaped copper. A yard out of it was crammed with mules and donkeys, their bulky saddles piled in a gay heap in the archway leading to it. Now and again a laden beast came up the street, its driver shouting to the crowd to make way. Tattered heaps by the side of the[79] wall stirred and groaned a petition for alms, the poppy red of a Spahi’s cloak and his blue pantaloons made a sudden chip of colour. And everything was soaked in sunlight.

Midway down the street was a curious white minaret, topped with metal like a sort of pagoda. At its foot collected groups buying and selling. The yellow roadway was sharply cleft with clear-marked shadows, and a carpenter in a brown burnous sat on the floor of his shop making axles for cart wheels, a froth of thin shavings heaped round him. Then a brightly painted cart with high wheels came past, cleaving a way for itself in some mysterious manner. Once it and its shouting driver were past, the crowd flowed together again like water that you have divided for a moment with a stick, the beggars picked themselves up from the corners to which they had rolled for safety, and life went on as usual.

The weather was very uncertain, and now set in for a cold wet week. I wandered about with my sketch-book in the covered Souks and finally Rached settled me in a small shop with the air of conferring a great favour upon the owner. It dealt in a variety of goods—silks, buttons, shot, etc. An elderly Arab dressed in a soft dove-coloured burnous was a customer, and asked if he might offer me a cup of coffee. I accepted with thanks, whilst in a hissing whisper the guide conveyed to me the importance of my[80] new friend. We talked a little through Rached as interpreter.

The old man told me he was going to Europe in the spring, for medical treatment as well as for business. He was a dignified figure in his ample draperies, with thin fine features. Rached told me afterwards that he was a big silk merchant, and intended going to London to inspect silk materials. He and the Kaïd were to travel together, with Rached as interpreter. A fleeting mental picture of the trio progressing down Regent Street made me smile inwardly. Certainly their interpreter would be equal to any emergency, but how will those dove coloured draperies fare, and that calm dignity ever survive the Tube or the rush for a motor bus? The merchant had three wives, one from Constantinople—“une jeune femme très riche,” another from Tunis, and a third from his native town of Sfax. “Elles sont toutes excessivement jolies” asserted Rached, but I reflected that in a country of veiled women, probably all men’s wives are beauties. With some interest I asked how many children there were, but there is only one girl. “And imagine to yourself how rich she will be,” sighed the guide, who loved money. But he loved still better the flinging of it about with a lordly air, so I hardly think his own daughter will ever be a great partie.

After a short time I began to understand the geography of the native town, but there were still mysterious alleys[81] that seemed to lead nowhere, shady relatives of the bigger streets. Close to the city wall was the street of the Pretty Ladies. Like trap-door spiders one stood in each doorway, dressed in gay silks, her cheeks rouged, eyebrows painted to meet in a single line, and tiny black patches on her face. Most of them were not beautiful. But one doorway opened into a sort of alcove with a stone seat running round it, and here we caught sight of three pretty girls in earnest conversation with one young man. They were dressed in light silk striped with colours, heavy silver anklets clashed as they moved and their perfumed hands were heavy with rings. One turned and glanced at my English companions, shooting a glance at them from her long-lashed painted eyes, then drawing her silver veil closer round her with a mock modesty.

All round the ramparts ran a pathway, and from this height one looked across the town to the harbour or to the sea of olives that stretched for miles into the country. It is a prosperous town and the land round it very rich. When the almond blossom was out, and all the orchards on the outskirts of the town a smother of blossom, I motored about 15 miles into the country, and all the way we ran through groves and groves of carefully kept olives, till from a small tower we looked across their grey and silver stretches to the white distant town of Sfax along the bay.

CHAPTER VII
OASIS TOWNS

From Sfax I went by train to Gafsa, an inland oasis town lying most picturesquely in a sandy plain, surrounded by rocky mountains that rise sheer from it. It is about three miles from the station of the same name, and the drive to it leads from the bare plain to the thick olive groves and the clustering palms that form the oasis. It is just a little Arab town, with the usual handful of French government offices and the fort. There are several mosques, and from the minaret of one I watched the magnificence of the sunset across the plain. There are more than thirty-eight springs about here, so the place does not lack water, and every stream is full of small water tortoises. The remains of the Roman baths are still to be seen. A group of village women were washing their jars in the clear blue-green water, whilst small boys offered to dive for coins.

The cultivation of olives is the chief industry of the place and I went to see a native olive press in the evening. The air was thick with the heavy cloying smell of oil, and in the long low building men were turning a press from which oozed a dark fluid. A smoky lamp was the only[83] light, and their dark glistening arms and faces showed up fitfully as they moved. In the dim light they might have been denizens of the nether regions, busied over some horrid rite. From the shadows came the sound of muffled feet, where the gaunt pale figure of a camel circled interminably, turning a stone mill that crushed the fruit. Huge barrels, shining greasily, stood about filled with pure oil. The ground was slippery and uneven, and a heap of the crushed skins and pulp lay in the yard outside, staining the earth a dull crimson.

I seemed to be the only European traveller in the little town, and my first attempt at finding a hotel had not been very happy. There had been a doubt as to which to recommend me, and I had engaged a room by telegram in advance, but my heart sank as my dilapidated carriage drew up at it. It looked like a small drinking booth, with a floor of beaten earth and a few ricketty tables. From the background appeared a sodden-looking old man, who had evidently been sampling the hotel wine freely. He took me across a muddy yard inhabited by dejected hens and showed me through a rough room full of women ironing clothes, into a dreadful bedroom strewn with untidy garments. Out of it opened another which he offered me. But one glance was sufficient for me and I fled.

The next attempt turned out to be another little café place, but it had a block of buildings down the street[84] where guests were put up, and which was clean and neat. No one else, not even a servant, lived in it. I was given two enormous keys, one for my bedroom and one of the front door, and after dining in the little café, where a wooden screen separated me from the Arab clientèle who were drinking coffee and playing cards, I returned to my fastness. It struck chill and bare as I locked myself in. Not a sound. Luckily the furniture was too meagre to give cover for thieves. There were about ten other rooms in the building, all empty ... no servants and no means of calling one. I woke late in the night, thinking I heard a sound in the passage. The night was pitch dark and silent, and the village seemed dead. From somewhere came the drip-drip of water. I listened, but could hear nothing else, and when I woke next, daylight was struggling through the curtains. All the accessories for a splendid ghost story had been there, but fortunately there was no actor for the chief part.

The oasis is very beautiful and my guide said that in the time of orange blossom one is forced to muffle one’s face because of the overpowering scent. It may be true. He was a sallow melancholy Arab youth, who had served at Salonika and had lost an arm there. He did not talk much, but warmed up on the subject of his wound and gave me a horribly realistic account of it. “And why,” he asked, “were the English fighting the French?” I[85] tried to enlighten him, but with little success. He had been well cared for in hospital at Salonika by a lady who was very good to the wounded. French? He did not know. Perhaps she was, or English or German. Anyway she talked French and she had wept over his wounds and had given him chocolate and had taught him to write with his left hand. So her memory is still cherished in this remote little town of Tunisia. His cousin had also been sent to the War and they were always together. They had not then felt so alone. His cousin had made him promise that if[86] he were killed Yousuf must see he was buried as a good Moslem, and must write and tell his family. Should it be Yousuf who fell, then Ali would carry out the same good offices for him. They were together when there was a loud explosion and his cousin fell upon his face. The boy ran to pick him up and found him dead, and casting up his hands in despair, at that moment he himself was struck and his arm torn off. When he came to himself the stretcher-bearers were carrying him away. And he said “Take also my cousin, for I must see that he has proper burial,” but they answered “We must take you first,” and so he was carried into the darkness and never saw Ali’s body again. “What could I have done? They would not listen to me, and I know not how my poor cousin was buried. Ah! he knew that he would not live,” said Yousuf. “When we first put on gas-masks, then Ali wept, for he felt Death touch him. And so it happened.” He was silent.

As we rode, a sudden storm of rain came up. The mountains were blotted out, and a tiny marabou stood out startlingly white of a sudden against the blue black of the clouds. Two pigeons flew across them looking like bits of white paper, a heavy drop or two fell, digging deep into the loose sand, the palms stood motionless waiting, and then with a great rush came the rain.

From there I was going on to Tozeur, and the only train[87] left at the dreadful hour of 5 a.m. Motors were non-existent, so I had to start for the station soon after 4 a.m. in a cross between a hearse and a bathing machine known as the hotel omnibus. I shared it with various muffled figures who emerged sleepily one by one from blank shuttered houses on the way. Usually they first had to be wakened by loud thumps on the door and shouts that we could not wait for them. It felt like a dream, and I wondered if perhaps I had got into some enchanted place which I could never leave again. Supposing we were to miss the train, how often might not this performance be repeated? I became aggressively English and determined. At the last stopping place I declared if I were kept waiting any longer I should complain to the Contrôle Civile. I was rather vague as to the power I was threatening to unleash, but the mere thought of it roused the driver and Yousuf to a frenzy of action. They rushed simultaneously upon the barred door and kicked and knocked to such purpose that the last traveller appeared blinking and still arranging his turban. And then when we got to the station, the train was late and we had half an hour to wait.

As I steamed away across the wide stretches of tawny plain with the dark blur of the oasis of Gafsa in the distance and the mountains already turning purple in the sickly dawn, the unreality of the place seemed to accentuate itself in my mind. Had I really been there? Really[88] wandered through the oasis, and watched the troops of camels coming along the dried river bed? Really heard the call of the muezzin across the sleeping Arab town? Or had it all been a dream? I scarcely knew.

It was wet when I reached Tozeur, and I stumbled down sandy roads in a chill rain, to the hotel. It was more the oasis of one’s imagination than anything I had yet seen. Beyond the thick grove of palm and fruit trees and the little native town built of earth bricks there stretched a great waste of yellow sand, in which the modern station buildings stood absurdly by themselves. To the east there glistened the vast Shott, a kind of quicksand with a salty crust. There are safe tracks across it for camels and mules, but a step to right or left may engulf the unwary traveller. In the distance it looks like an immense lake, the salt surface shining like water, and after rain it does become a shallow lake in places. It has been a terror to travellers for many generations, and rumour exaggerated its dangers. One of the earliest accounts of it was written in the fourteenth century, by Abou Yaga Zakkaria, who told terrible stories of hundreds of camels being swallowed up and leaving no trace, through straying from the safe path. All round it stretches a sandy solitude, broken only by the dark palm groves of Tozeur, and far away, those of Nefta.

All this part is called the Djerid, and here one feels the intense solitude of the desert. It is on the edge of the[89] Sahara. In summer the heat is terrific, and the air vibrates as above an oven. The small town is surrounded by a sea of sand; the streets are ankle deep in it, and it stretches as far as one can see. It is picturesque, the houses built of earthen bricks set in patterns and with arched and tunnelled passages. ‘Town’ is rather a misleading term; it is just a collection of buildings clustering round a market-place, the roads wandering off vaguely from it into the desert.

The oasis is beautiful, streams of blue-green water everywhere, and a tangle of fruit trees amongst the slender trunks of the palms. It is about 2,500 acres in extent, the dates being renowned for their flavour. Alas! all were exported, and as unprocurable as fresh fish at a seaside resort. A minaret near a door covered with green tiles caught the eye, but most of the buildings were low and only remarkable for the picturesque way in which the bricks were set, forming attractive designs. The grain market was held under a modern roof, but the rest was in the open air, and the wide space was covered with an immense crowd. The women dressed in dark blue cotton with one white stripe the length of it, and they held the head covering across their faces. There is a large admixture of negro blood, which has spoilt the Arab type.

The population is occupied almost entirely in the care of the date palms. When first planted the small tree is[90] watered once a day and sheltered from cold winds. It begins to bear a little when 10 or 12 years old. From the age of 20 it produces an annual harvest of fruit and at 30 it is at its greatest vigour and continues in full bearing for another 30 years or so. Then its produce lessens by degrees and it is used for the extraction of palm wine or nagmi as it is called; but this is only practised on trees whose yield is poor, or which are already worn out.

Truly the palm is the Arab’s friend. The fruit is his staple food; its leaves are made into baskets and panniers, or serve as hedges, its stem for gate posts and the beams of houses; while the fibrous stuff that is near the root is made into rope, mattresses and a sort of cloth. Even the date stones are eaten by camels. The Arabs have a saying that were a camel to walk into a palm grove, he could come out completely equipped with bridle, saddle and panniers and even with the palm leaf stem as a whip. It is in a palm-leaf cradle that the desert Arab is rocked to sleep as a child; his life passes below its shade, and it is under boards of its wood that he takes his last rest.

Twenty-four kilometres from Tozeur is the little town of Nefta. I motored there on a beaten road across the stretches of sand. To our left the Shott shone like a great lake, streaked with faint grey and purple. As far as we could see, the desert stretched away interminably till it met the horizon. The track followed the telegraph[91] posts, and we passed a few groups of Arabs with their camels, plodding along at a pace which they can keep up for days at a stretch. One seemed to be moving for ever through an immense space, almost with a feeling of being hypnotised. Then, ahead, there was a dark blur in the expanse. “Voilà Nefta!” said the chauffeur.

It is entirely an Arab town, the flat-topped houses and the clothes of the inhabitants all of the same colour as the surrounding sand. Thick groves of palms cluster along the streams that flow from a quantity of springs. The oasis is called the ‘corbeille’ and is aptly named, for it lies in a hollow over which the village, straggling along two small heights, looks down. The palms grow all up the edges of this cup, and through their stems one sees the glow of sand against a pale blue sky. Springs of clear water bubbled up everywhere in the oasis and round the feet of the palms was the tender green of growing things. Bushes of white jasmine scented the air. And within a stone’s throw of this verdure is the vast emptiness and silence of the desert. Far, far on the horizon, like the tender tints of Venetian glass, was the pale blue and rose of distant rocky hills.

The tiny hotel was in the market-place, and from its verandah we looked down on an animated scene. Camels laden with firewood came in from the far country, driven by uncouth-looking men wrapped in ragged cloaks, their[92] feet covered with rough shoes made of camel’s hide tied round the ankle. Tiny children, naked but for their one hooded garment, crept to warm themselves by the fires where cooking was going on. The people seemed very poor, their clothes tattered and scanty. Small booths were set up in the market-place, where unappetising meat was sold, and flat loaves of bread. One shopman dealt in primitive rings set with beads, sheathed knives and the flat mirrors that the Arab woman loves to wear hung round her neck. Far into the night I heard the sound of voices in the market-place below, and caught the occasional flicker of a fire.

Nefta seemed full of children, queer little elfin figures in their pointed hoods with their thin unchildlike faces. There had been three bad harvests in succession, and[93] everyone was poor and hungry. I watched a tiny boy of about four years old who was left on guard over a heap of grass straw that his father had brought for sale. The little creature took his task very solemnly and hour after hour he sat there gravely, his trailing garment folded over his bare feet. It turned very cold as the sun went down, but still the small Casabianca stuck to his post. It began to grow dusk, and yet he sat there motionless, his eyes fixed on the bundles of straw. I thought how pleasant it would be to slip a coin or two into his frozen hands and started out full of this benevolent intention. But the sight of me was more than the poor little hero could stand. He had faced cold and hunger and the danger of possible thieves, but the terrifying sight of a white woman in strange garments was too much for him. He stood his ground bravely for a moment, but as it became certain I was coming straight to him, he fled, but hovered nearby in terror and perplexity like some shy bird whose nest is approached. I held up the money for him to see, but he did not understand. It proved useless to try to coax him back, and I went away, watching from a distance for his return. Like the bird, he slipped back to his post in the dusk as soon as he thought me safely gone, and now I waited till his father had appeared and then tried again. Again he wavered and turned to run as I drew near, but the father understood my gestures and caught him, smiling,[94] by a flying end of his cloak. And so he stood, frightened but valiant, whilst I closed his tiny cold hand over the coins. I left him still bewildered, and could only hope the money served to buy a hot supper and perhaps firewood for the family.

Next day I rode along the route to Tougourt, in Algeria, a nine days’ journey by caravan. There seemed nothing to mark the road from the ocean of sand. It was edged in some places with a low parapet of banked sand and dry grass. Far below us was the dark mass of the ‘corbeille’ and above it the village of Nefta with its irregular line of houses, pricked here and there by a minaret and dotted with the white bubbles of marabou. On the other side, desert. The red-roofed douane on the frontier between Algeria and Tunis, looked like a child’s forgotten toy. Far off the minute silhouettes of distant camels paced slowly across the immensity. The air was clear and thin. One seemed alone in the world.

And suddenly, there at our feet we saw the delicate faces of tiny crocus-like flowers gazing at us from the level of the sand itself. Flushed with a faint lavender, the slender stamens stained with orange, they seemed indeed a miracle. From what nutriment had they woven their frail loveliness? The sand was friable and bare, the cold winds of night must pass like a scythe over these lonely places. But mysteriously, defying the vast world, minute trembling[95] roots must have crept from the small bulbs, mooring the little plants to a firm anchorage. And the first few drops of warm rain had brought them to a fragile flowering. Crushed by the spongy feet of passing camels, unregarded, ignored, they spread their delicate carpet, earnest of the later more bounteous gifts of Spring. And in this land of life reduced to bare necessities, of a people living from hand to mouth, of the harsh nomad existence led by Bedouin tribes, these little flowers seemed a message linking us to a more gracious existence, a land of kindlier aspect, of softer skies, with its largesse of blossoms of which the desert knows nothing.

CHAPTER VIII
THE SAND DIVINER

The little oasis town of Gabès is on the coast, quite in the south of Tunisia, the line to it being made by German prisoners during the War. After leaving the broad belt of cultivation that stretches some way out of Sfax, with its olives and corn and fruit trees, the train ran through bare open country with scattered flocks of cattle, sheep or camels grazing on a sparse and wiry grass. Here and there a few Arabs were laboriously tilling the soil with wooden ploughs drawn by lean bullocks or camels. The latter are harnessed by means of a broad band of sacking across the front of their humps, attached by ropes to the plough. But soon these signs of cultivation ceased, and I looked out on a sandy and desolate waste, only broken occasionally by tracts of rough grass, stretching to a far dove-coloured sky. We reached Gabès in the dark. All night a storm raged, and I heard the thunder of waves on the shore and the wind and the rain lashing the palm trees of the oasis. The next day it was still stormy, and the public garden opposite the hotel was bruised and battered, whilst the palms looked dishevelled and untidy with their hair all over their eyes.

Gabès is a very small place, just the French military cantonments, one street, and a few houses and shops. A little river flows into the sea here, and on its other bank is the oasis, full of running water and palms and fruit trees. I rode for a long way through it. Arabs were at work amongst the vegetable gardens or tending the palms. Some of the trees are tapped for the juice, which is made into an intoxicating drink. When drawn off, it is colourless and clear and very sweet. The top of the palm is cut off, a hole made down the centre and a jar put into it. This fills itself every twelve hours or so. The tree is treated in this way every two years three times, and it does the growth no harm. One can see by the notches in the stem where it has been cut.

About a mile and a half from Gabès are the queer little villages of Jarette and Vielle Jarette, the latter built largely of stone from Roman ruins. They consist of a perfect rabbit warren of native houses with passage-ways leading from one to the other, buttressed with old stone pillars. Huge blocks of carved stone, fragments of acanthus, etc., are built into the walls. I went into one minute interior, where two girls sat on the earth floor weaving at a hand loom, whilst another was grinding corn in a stone hand-mill. They took a deep interest in me and fingered my fur coat in astonishment. They were broad featured, with very thick wavy hair, and were[98] covered with jewellery. My guide Mansour tells me the Arabs cannot understand why European women wear so few gems.

“Your ladies do not trouble to make themselves beautiful, do they?” said he. “With us, the women take so much trouble that even the plain make themselves handsome.”

He was an excellent guide, energetic and intelligent, talking French well, and had been a good deal with Englishmen on various shooting expeditions, so understood English ways.

I found the market-place of Jarette very interesting to sketch. There was always a great crowd in the morning, selling meat, vegetables, grain, tiny dried fish, poultry, etc. The walls were mostly mud coloured and the men in clothes the colour of earth, too, with only now and again the bright red or blue of a woman’s veil, or the striped skirt they wear in Gabès. But the brilliance of the sun made the whole scene sparkle and glow. The alley way in which I sometimes sat was roofed with palm leaf, through which one saw chinks of deep blue sky. The walls seemed to throb with refracted light, and at the end of the shadowed tunnel was a vignette of the busy market-place, sharp and clear in the intense sunlight. Figures squatted round wares arranged on the ground, others strode past carrying bags of grain. Here a negro was selling oranges, or a[99] butcher auctioning pieces of horrid carmine to an intent crowd. Small boys looking like gnomes in their pointed hoods, with brown faces and bare legs, tiny girls carrying solemn-eyed babies, the black mysterious figures of veiled women, or a group of lightly veiled village girls coming past with a swing of drooping earrings and shapely arms holding burdens on their shoulder, swinging blue and red draperies, long dark eyes, and the blue tattoo marking on chin and cheek considered beautiful. Working away at my sketch I got a vague yet distinct picture in my mind of them as they passed; and the little donkeys, ridden by figures sitting on the rump and keeping up a flail-like motion of yellow slippered feet against their dusky sides, and shouting “Aarr-r-rh!”

All was bustle and excitement, and under the shelter of my roofed way were stacks of green vegetables and the cool purple and cream of turnips. The sunshine permeated everything outside, flooded market-place and crowd in a torrent of light, not golden, but a brilliant clear light in which things stood out sharply etched and distinct. A North African winter sunshine, amazingly brilliant, yet without much heat. The sun had not yet become the tyrant of summer, when men fly from his rays, and night becomes little less breathless than the day, when palms hang motionless in the sultry glare and people leave their mud dwellings for the shade of the oasis, when the glittering[100] sea breaks on a blinding beach, and the earth lies panting and scorched. These are the days, I suppose, when the mind turns with longing to the grey washes of rain in England, to the cool depths of summer woods and the freshness of clear springs amongst green ferns. For the shadow of a rock in a weary land.

On my way back from the market-place one day I passed an old sand-diviner, who sat wrapped in his neutral-coloured robes by the roadside, foretelling the mysteries of the future to a negress who squatted in front of him, evidently come on behalf of her mistress. On his knee he held a large book, and in front of him was the little wooden tray spread with sand, in which he made mysterious signs with his fingers. He was a kindly-looking old man, wrinkled and brown, his grey beard giving him a reverend appearance. He gave me permission to sketch him, and went on with his fortune telling. Sometimes he would look at his book and then peer with his mild eyes into the blue of the sky above his head, whilst the woman watched his movements with apprehension. I finished the sketch of him and he was delighted with it, and said:

“Put under it that my name is El Haj Hassim ben Abdallah Na Hali and that I can tell all things. I know all the stars by name and the power they have over each man’s fate. Nothing is hid from me.”

I told Mansour to ask him if he could tell what had[101] passed in my life, and listened, smiling, for his answer. First he must know my name and the name of my mother. After repeating them with great difficulty he smoothed the sand in his tray and marked it six times with his finger. Then he looked up to the sky for a time, and spoke:

“This lady has a hard head; she does not easily believe. She loves to see new things and to travel to strange lands. Six countries has she already seen and yet more will she visit. Many times has she crossed great waters, once in peril of her life. She has been married, and he who was her husband is dead. Six men have been her friends—” (A little nervous as to the possible signification of the Arab word ‘friend,’ I hastily repudiated the last statement)—“and one will take her to a far country and will leave her there. It is spoken.”

Fortunately my hard head prevented my being much perturbed by the unpleasantness of the last part of the prophecy, but I was much charmed by the old man and his simplicity. Every day he sits there, his gentle face bent over his book, and from far and near people come to consult him. Mansour was distressed that I had not taken his speech more seriously.

“Of a truth he knows everything; I when young went to consult him, for I was greatly in love with a beautiful girl whom I wanted to marry. So great was her beauty that I could neither eat nor sleep for the thought of her.[102] But the Sand-diviner said: ‘Lo, my son, put all thought of her from thy mind, for she will never be thine, not even wert thou to lay a bag of gold at her feet would she look upon thee.’ And it was even as he said. She would not look upon me. And for the space of five months I was grievously ill because of the love I bore her. Thus do I know the Sand-diviner speaks truth.”

We trudged along the dusty road in silence and then I ventured to ask if he had married someone else, and the cheerfulness of his answer relieved my anxiety. Yes, he was married, and his wife was “une vraie Arabe,” for she made herself beautiful for him, and three times in the week she went to the baths and perfumed herself, “and this she will continue to do,” he remarked, “till she has children. Then will she have no other thought but of her babes, for is not this the nature of women?” he ended philosophically.

He told me later that he had had three wives (he was a man of about 28, I think) and his first two he had divorced because they did not get on with his mother. “But one of them I shall marry again when my parents are no longer alive, for I am very fond of her, and she is waiting for me.” He explained to me that the first duty of a Moslem is to his parents. He brings his wife back to the paternal house, and unless there are too many children they live there till the death of the older generation. In any case a son must[103] support his parents all the days of their life. It is not forbidden to a Moslem to marry a Christian, there is much in the Bible that is also in the Koran. But never may the Mohammedans have anything to do with the Jews. They are an accursed people, a people set apart——

On my way to sketch one day, I saw an Arab funeral at the graveyard and watched for a time. The body, wrapped in folds of stuff and covered with a red cloth, lay on a light bier carried shoulder high, followed by a procession of men intoning verses from the Koran. There was a service held at the grave side, the professional mourners sitting in a circle chanting and swaying backwards and forwards. In this case it was the funeral of a woman, but no women were there, their presence not being allowed by custom. The foot of the grave had been bricked round and the corpse was taken from the bier and laid sideways in it, being then bricked in and the earth filled in on the top. The leader of the procession went round giving money to each of its members, and one by one the mourners condoled with the eldest son, kissing him on the shoulder.

Mansour watched from afar, for the dead woman was the mother of a friend of his, and he should have been attending the funeral.

“Life is but a short gift,” he said, “and soon over. To each of us must come an hour like this. We come from the dark and we enter the dark again.”

He told me the near relatives of the deceased must take off all jewellery, must fast for two days, and for the space of several months must not cut their hair nor attend entertainments of any sort. I asked how soon a man usually re-married after his wife’s death and was told in about six months’ time. He was shocked at our English custom of two years of widowhood. “It is not good for man to live alone,” he remarked sententiously.

On the death of one of the family, the women shriek and tear their faces with their nails. Everything is taken out of the room and the body is wrapped in a fine cloth and laid on a mattress on the ground, with its face towards Mecca, where it is visited by relations and friends. The burial takes place within twenty-four hours of death. When the corpse is lifted on to the bier, all children who are too young to talk are taken away from the home, there being a popular belief that they might hear the three cries said to be given by the dead when leaving his dwelling place, and so become dumb. Many willing helpers give assistance in carrying the bier, the Koran promising the remission of ten sins for every step taken in this way. It also promises forgiveness of a sin to all who follow in the procession. A piece of reed is placed in the tomb, containing copies of the prayer recommending the soul of the dead to the angels who will enquire of him regarding his orthodoxy. The assistants, before the grave is filled in,[105] say, “Thou hast come from the earth, and to the earth thou returnest, whither we shall follow thee.” They each throw a handful of earth into the tomb, and it is then filled in, the gravedigger, when his work is finished, crying, “May he be forgiven!” The near relatives may cook no food for three days after the death, but may eat of what is brought to them. On the third day, readers of the Koran recite verses of it in the house of mourning, and the ceremonials are then finished.

CHAPTER IX
THE CIRCUS

There had been great excitement for some days past amongst the Arab children in the little oasis town. Mysterious vans had arrived by the train which crept once a day across the wide stretches of desert country, looking in the distance like a caterpillar with gleaming eyes before it drew up in the dusk at the tiny station. The children hung about watching till they were dispersed by an important-looking official.

It had not been so very long ago that the train itself had been a new excitement, bringing a whiff of modern civilisation to this small outpost on the edge of the desert. This was as far as the railway had reached as yet, and the station buildings had a somewhat bewildered air, set down in space with nothing but desert beyond them, and only the frail thread of the line to connect them with the far-off stir of modern life. And now it seemed it was bringing something tangible and wonderful. There were placards in French and in Arabic announcing the arrival of a Grand World Circus, and performances were to be held three nights running in the town.

The small Arabs talked of nothing else. What was a[107] circus? It leaked out that there were wonderful European boys who rode on winged horses with flowing tails; there were men who walked in mid-air on wires as fine as the threads of a spider’s web. There were animals that could talk. There were clowns. What were clowns? Above all, there was a marvellously beautiful princess who also walked in mid-air, light as thistledown and graceful as a houri. A town crier with a drum paraded the only street shouting out the attractions of the circus and distributing handbills printed in Arabic. Grave men studied these solemnly over their tiny cups of black coffee, whilst the children edged nearer and nearer, gleaning crumbs of information. “Lo, the cost of a seat is one franc; it is much money,” said one greybeard to another. But again and again the words of the handbill drew their eyes back. “Hassan hath seen such an exhibition at Tunis, and he saith it is more marvellous even than the paper sets forth.”

Early every morning the children collected in the station square watching for what might happen. One day there were bales of stuff lying on the ground, and men were hard at work driving in poles and tent pegs and little by little a great tent rose in the square itself and a watchman took up his position in front of it to prevent all from entering. Next a party of strangers arrived and excitement grew to fever point. The new comers lodged at a tiny hotel and few caught sight of them. From a smaller tent close by[108] the large one came the sound of horses stamping, and a boy lying full length on the ground and peering under the edge of it, declared his face had been brushed by a long and silky tail that touched the ground. Then it was true about the wonderful horses! Excited small boys chattered hard, and the booking of seats became furious. Along the dusty roads came knots of peasants from outlying mud villages, fingering their cherished coins. The fat Frenchman at the table outside the tent took a stream of money all day long and smiled, well pleased.

Down by the grey-green river where the women beat and pounded linen in the clear running water, there was talk of little else. Their husbands and brothers and sons would see the circus. They themselves, being women, could not go. But that did not prevent their being intensely interested in the coming event.

“It is said they be in league with the Evil One and thus it is they can walk in mid air,” said one woman, busily wringing out a dark blue strip of muslin. “Allah send that our menfolk come to no harm in going to see them.”

“It is truly spoken,” the others answered, and there was a pause for a moment in the unceasing chatter, whilst a passing breeze stirred the palm leaves in the oasis across the stream and set the sandy soil whirling in small eddies.

It was a day in mid-January and already the almond blossom was beginning to show a delicate flush among the[109] palm stems, and the naked grey fig trees were putting forth small emerald leaves. On the wide seashore the waves were coming in gently, pushing a ring of creamy froth ahead of them, and there was a softness in the air and a greater warmth in the sun’s rays. The short African winter was almost over.

As the evening drew on, flaring naphtha lamps made a blaze of light at the entrance of the circus tent, and hours before the entertainment was to begin a crowd began to collect, the more fortunate clutching their tickets, the rest prepared to wait outside through the whole performance on the chance of catching a glimpse of the wonderful sights within.

Darkness came with its usual rush and through the curved leaves of the eucalyptus trees in the hotel garden shone the faint glimmer of stars. As we stepped into the open air the far-off beat of the sea seemed a steady pulse in the night. Our feet fell softly on the sandy road, and ahead of us was the glow of the circus. A packed crowd surrounded it, the light catching on dark faces and flowing draperies. Huddled in their cloaks they were impassive in appearance, but in reality deeply stirred. All eyes were turned to the tent, from the chinks of which came a heartening orange glow that spoke of the hidden glories within, whilst the shaky strains of a band made themselves heard at intervals.

The setting of the entertainment was meagre in the extreme. The Box Office sat on a chair by a rickety[110] wooden table, and occasionally rushed forth to chase away inquisitive boys who were approaching too near the mysteries. Inside there were three or four tiers of rough seats round the low canvas edging that circled the ring. On one side were the reserved seats, occupied by French officers of the small garrison and their wives, glad of even this simple distraction, shopkeepers, railway officials, and the richer Arabs. On the other side were rows and rows of natives packed as closely as possible along the benches, whilst the children sat on lower seats still, staring round them at the tent and up to the dim gloom of the roof, where a trapeze hung motionless. The ring was uncovered beaten earth, and naphtha lights illuminated the scene with a crude glare.

When all the seats were filled, the band, composed of a violin, a cornet, and a most useful drum, set up a martial air. There was a tightening up of the tense excitement amongst the children, and to a burst of ardour on the part of the drum, a grey horse cantered easily into the arena. His flowing tail almost swept the ground and from his arched neck rippled a long and silky mane. Striding after him came the Master of the Ceremonies, with his long whip and air of distinction. And with him came a scrap of a boy in a fringed khaki costume that strove to give him a Red Indian air. A scarlet handkerchief was knotted round his head. Round and round the ring[111] went the horse, with an easy regular canter, until the crowd broke into exclamations of admiration. Had such an animal ever been seen before in the little town? “Truly it was such a steed as the son of a prince might ride,” said one to another. Then there was a fresh stir of interest as the tiny khaki figure ran to meet it, seemed to cling for a moment against its side, then threw a small leg across its back and sat upright, waving an acknowledgment to the applause. To the crack of the Master’s long whip that rang out like a pistol shot, the horse kept up his easy canter, whilst one by one the boy performed his tricks, standing on one leg, lying full length and picking up flags from the ground as he rode past, jumping over hurdles, etc., his small face set and grave under the folds of the scarlet handkerchief, intent on performing his task correctly. The crowd clapped delighted, till at last he and his steed disappeared in a storm of applause. Then talk rose again in a buzz. “Verily Hassan spoke truth when he said we should see marvels,” and there were murmurs that the turn was over too quickly. In the more expensive seats they discussed the show patronisingly and declared it not at all bad. Someone said it was a small family affair, this French travelling-circus, and that the performers worked hard and made it pay. “A wretched life,” he added.

Meanwhile from my seat near the gangway I could watch the performers as they came on and overhear snatches of[112] talk. As the grey and its rider went out they passed a knot of people talking together. “Canst thou manage it, Etienne?” said a woman’s anxious voice, and at the same moment two clowns appeared laughing and bandying jokes. One of them, the elder, was so drawn and haggard, it seemed with pain, that it could be marked even through the thick white make-up on his face. He was in the usual baggy white costume; whilst the other, tall and young, was dressed absurdly in a short black jacket, with a turndown collar and flowing red bow tie, and wide checked trousers. His face, with its twinkling humorous eyes and wide slit mouth was reddened to the hue of a rosy apple, whilst his fair curly hair stood up in tufts above it. It could easily be seen he clowned for the love of it. He chaffed the audience, even drawing laughter from the Arab part of it, asked absurd questions of the Master of the Ceremonies, tried to perform feats of horsemanship and failed grotesquely, only to do something finally much more difficult than he had at first attempted.

But after a time a certain restlessness began to make itself felt amongst the audience. Good as the clowns were, the crowd was looking for the appearance of the Enchantress, the wonderful Princess of the Air. Expectation, whetted by what had already been seen, became more and more keen.

At last there was a stir outside, a pause, a crashing of chords on the part of the Band, and running forward with[113] quick little steps, smiling to left and right, her dark hair hanging down her back, her candid eyes seeming to beg a kind reception from the crowd, she appeared.

She was dressed in scarlet tights, her arms bare to the shoulder, and by her side trotted a small boy, dressed too in red. With all her bravery of gaudy apparel and in spite of her professional ingratiating smile, there was still so much of the honest bourgeoise wife and mother about her that she struck one as incongruous. What queer chance had shaped her life to this? She came on with an air of competent quiet assurance. She was a large woman, with well-shaped sturdy limbs, and a wedding ring gleamed on her plump hand. She stepped into the arena, smiling all round, and I saw her surreptitiously pat the small boy’s foot as she lifted him into the trapeze and followed him herself.

Then came a really wonderful performance. She swung at a perilous height, knelt on the swaying swing, hung head downwards from it by her knees, her long hair streaming in a straight sweep from her head. The applause was tremendous. Sitting astride the bar she kissed her hand to the audience, then she and the small boy went on with their evolutions in mid air. Sometimes he threw himself into space, to be caught by her hanging hands, or he stood on her shoulders whilst they swung dizzily backwards and forwards above our heads. And all the time she had that air of an honest bourgeoise conscientiously giving[114] the audience full value for their money. This Enchantress of the Air, this wonderful Princess the rumour of whose exploits had set a small town dreaming of romance, about whose scarlet-clad figure in the eyes of the Arab audience still clung the glamour of far-off cities and of unknown lands beyond the sea: for many a night she would haunt the dreams of the wide-eyed children in the audience, with that magic that had been first roused by the music of her high-sounding names, then strengthened by her strange apparel, and the ease and sureness which she displayed. Could one use such a word in connection with her solid person, one might say she had ‘flashed’ upon their consciousness, a being from another world, something jewelled and rare. And still she looked down, smiling, from the height above us.

The haggard looking clown had a part too to take in the acrobatic performance. He came to rub his feet in a heap of chalk near the gangway, and I could see tiny points of perspiration pricking through the make-up on his face. I knew he feared lest he should break down and I watched anxiously as he joined the performers. First he handed a chair up to the woman as she stood on the swing, and balancing it by two legs she sat on it, turning and twisting whilst all eyes were rivetted on her. Her calm and assurance seemed to uphold and steady the man. He and she and the boy did wonderful acrobatic tricks, but even at that distance I could mark the tension about his whitened face.[115] Once or twice he missed his spring, but she remained serene and quiet and smiled encouragement to him.

The performance was gone through steadily, and then came the last pose, that set the nerves tingling. He stood on the swinging bar, she on his shoulder, and above her the small figure of the boy with a foot on either side her head. The veins stood out on the man’s neck from the immense strain, and though it was only for a moment they stayed, arms stretched out like a swaying human ladder, it was a relief when they slid safely to the ground.

Next came a ‘turn’ again with two horses. The Enchantress stood in the gangway next me, resting, her arms folded. She told me the Infant Prodigy was her son, and that she had four other children, one of them the boy rider we had seen. She spoke frankly and pleasantly. Yes, it was a hard life; they went from town to town, staying a few nights in each, but they earned their living, and after all, “il faut travailler, n’est ce pas?” She smiled, and moved away. An honest soul in that large figure, undoubtedly; kindly and conscientious. Her firm cheeks glowed with colour, her dark eyes had a direct gaze, and her bare arms were shapely and white. Her natural setting seemed some small shop in a provincial town, or perhaps the parlour of a country inn.

Later, she came on again, but this time it was the Infant Prodigy who was the chief performer. The Master of the Ceremonies appeared in flannels, balancing a long pole on[116] his shoulder, and up this the little figure crept inch by inch, till at last he sat on the top, a tiny spot of crimson in the glare of the lamps. His mother watched him anxiously whilst the rest of the troupe stood round looking on. At a given signal the music stopped and the boy cautiously let himself head downwards along the pole, clasping the top of it with his feet. There was a sharp intake of breath all round the tent. One small foot felt for a ring at the top of the pole, and sidled its way through it up to the ankle. Then the little creature spread himself out, only touching the supporting pole with the tip of one hand.

All this time, in the dead silence, the man kept the pole balanced, moving slightly backwards and forwards, moisture running down his face with the effort. There was an attempt at applause, but it was checked. The moment was too critical. At last the child straightened himself up again almost imperceptibly, gently drew his foot free from the ring and slid triumphantly to the ground, whilst the clapping broke out with redoubled vigour.

It was the last item on the programme and whilst the Master made a flowery French speech to the audience, the Enchantress reappeared—a cotton gown over her professional garments, and methodically went the round of the tent making a collection in a china plate. In this dress she became matter-of-fact. It was hard to connect her with the scarlet figure that had held our interest chained so short a time ago.

People began to leave, streaming out into the darkness. The artistes were clearing away the few stage properties whilst the musicians wrapped up their instruments, and turning back as I left the tent I saw the little Prodigy slipping his hand into his mother’s and trotting off to be put to bed.

The air outside struck chill after the stuffy heat of the tent. From the distance came a faint sound of native music and fireworks celebrating an Arab wedding. Hooded figures muffled in cloaks passed silently as ghosts. The sharp rustle of palm leaves made itself heard in the darkness, and clear on the night came the notes of a bugle from the military cantonment on the edge of the little town. Groups of Arabs stood about discussing the wonders of the evening with those who had not been able to get a seat, whilst small boys hung wistfully about the entrance, loth to leave the enchanted spot and to return to everyday life.

Long after the circus has left the country, and the Prodigy has grown up, there will be talk of it in the mud houses along the river bank and in the village market-places. And as the tale spreads from one hearer to another, its marvels will become ever more and more wonderful, and slimmer and more beautiful the heroine, till she and the satin-coated horses and the small boy-acrobat will take their places amongst that gallery of half-mythical figures, almost divine, of whom stories are told round flickering village fires in the dusk.

CHAPTER X
ROUND ABOUT GABÈS

There is a beautiful stretch of sand along the small Bay of Gabès strewn with shells and pieces of coarse sponge, brought in by the tide. Sponge fisheries are found further south, but the variety at Gabès itself is of no good. There are tunny fisheries here, and also a trade in shell fish carried on with Marseilles. The little river is frequented by native fishermen who use hand nets which they throw with great skill. The net is circular and draws up close together when in the hand. When thrown it opens wide on reaching the water and sinks owing to its leaded edge. After leaving it for a few minutes the fisherman pulls it in, the strain on the cord closing the mouth again. As a fisher is stationed at every few yards, I do not think the fish population can be a large one.

Further up the river the women collect to do their washing, and make picturesque groups in their blue and red garments. They use both hands and feet to pommel and wring the clothes, and beat them with the stem of a palm leaf. Some have soap, but many use only a kind of earth, and all the washing is done in the cold running water of[119] the stream. They chatter like a flock of paroquets, some knee deep in the water, others squatting on the bank, amongst them many negresses with their short hair twisted into innumerable small plaits across their foreheads. I thought them to be Nubians, from their features and dark colour and the style of their hair dressing.

One came up to where I was painting, a tall, good-looking girl, very black, carrying herself with the graceful nonchalance of her race. A flat basket laden with newly washed clothes was on her head, and she stood comely as a statue, backed by the tawny sand and the dark green of the oasis, the firm outline of her shoulders and breast showing through the blue stuff drawn round her. Heavy silver anklets clashed as she moved. When near me she smiled and said something in Arabic. Mansour, translating into French, said she asked where I came from, and if I would take her as a servant with me to England. I had a swift vision of the scandalised horror with which my Devon household would view her arrival in the character of maid. “Tell her,” I said, “that she would not like England. There is not enough sun there. She would be cold and unhappy.” But still she smiled. I gave her a coin, and she went away regretfully, walking like a queen, evidently still yearning for the post of lady’s maid in a land paved with gold and silver. Whilst I went on with my painting, Mansour told me these negresses are great travellers. They will cheerfully[120] leave their country and fare into the unknown, and they make excellent servants. I think the Arabs have no feeling against the black races.

Meanwhile the Arab women were busy over their washing. “That girl over there,” remarked the guide, “is my cousin. I recognise her by the tattoo marks on her leg.” I had been told that these designs were often peculiar to a family, and Mansour’s remark seemed to bear this out. Most of the women were tattooed on the shin as well as on the lip and forehead, and sometimes on the tip of the nose. They only made a pretence of veiling themselves when he looked their way, and I gather that in the south of Tunisia the harem system is not very rigidly enforced. They seemed very happy, laughing and gossiping amongst themselves, spreading out broad strips of coloured stuff, red or orange or indigo, on the stones to dry, whilst the bright hues were reflected in the clear green water, and small brown children in abbreviated shifts played solemnly close at hand.

“Never do women cease talking together whilst they wash linen at the water’s edge,” said Mansour, “and it is strange how barely one day can pass without something requiring to be cleansed,” he added meditatively.

Behind us were the low mud walls of the village, with the towers of the minaret and the domed mosque rising above them, and a flock of black lop-eared goats came round the corner driven by a ragged youth. On the far side of the[121] stream countless palms were inter-threaded with the branches of fruit trees, and in and out amongst the oasis ran little dusty roads between mud walls topped with thorns or spiked palm leaves, to keep off trespassers. By every path flowed runnels of clear water, pied wagtails stepped daintily about the edges, a film of green showed where the early crops were beginning to come up, and I could picture to myself the joy it must be in another month or two to step from the bare desert into this paradise of blossom and leafy shade.

Riding through the oasis one day we came suddenly upon a small white marabou or holy tomb set at the angle of two pathways. A solitary figure knelt in prayer at the entrance, whilst the mule he had been riding cropped the herbage by the stream, with a trailing rein. It was very silent, except for the far sighing of the palm trees above our heads.

Slowly we went on our way and came to a small village as the afternoon was growing late. The notched stems of date palms were like purple grey pillars on one side of the path, and an old man was coming back from work in the fields, his sand-coloured burnous slung round him in such fashion as to make a sack in which he was carrying a bunch of green vegetables. His sinewy neck and arms looked almost copper colour in the evening light; the faded blue of his coat repeated the note given by a wisp of smoke that[122] floated across a low wall. The dust lay thick on the road, muting the footfall of passers-by. Already the shadows were growing long, draped figures were collecting round the well to draw the evening supply of water. In the distance was the cloud of dust that meant the return of the village herd with his flock from their day’s pasturage, whilst outside the low building where coffee was sold and drunk, men swathed in the long folds of their burnous sat and discussed the happenings of the day. And again I felt the simplicity and dignity of the East.

As we came back across the wide stretches beyond the oasis, it turned cold and clear. There was hardly a tinge of colour in the sky till the golden line of the sun had almost disappeared. Then it was as if the dark hawk of night had flown upon the bright day. The whole of the West was littered with tiny golden feathers torn from his breast, whilst the sky was dyed a sudden red with blood. The distant palms stood out black as velvet against the brilliant background, and as it faded, fingers of light stretched far into the pale green-blue of the heavens. Then as quickly as the effect had come, it was gone. The landscape turned a steely grey and the trees a blur of dull green. Only the strip of sea in the distance kept its intensity of colour in a world that seemed all at once sucked empty of life.

From Gabès one can go by car to see Matmata, a village[123] about two hours’ run from the former place, where all the inhabitants live under ground. The road led across stretches and stretches of bare sandy country, tufted here and there with low bushes, across rocky nullahs which become raging torrents after rain, till at last it climbed up and up a zigzag road and reached the top of a summit from whence we looked down on nothing but further and further bare hills. Below us lay the village, a crumpled succession of irregularities in the uneven ground. It looked as if some giant child had been playing in the sand with a spade.

On getting nearer we saw entrances here and there in the banks to which were fitted rough wooden doors. We went into one and found ourselves first in a hollowed passage which led through a stable to an open space on to which opened two or three caves in which the inhabitants lived. They are scooped out by tools and are large and roomy, with smooth walls and roof worked with a kind of plaster. Each room contained a large rough wooden bed, a shelf or two along the wall, perhaps a child’s cradle swung on ropes from the ceiling. They were all scrupulously swept and clean. In one a woman sat on the floor nursing a baby, in another one was weaving rough cloth on a loom. We also saw an underground café which was full of men, though from outside there was no sign of life.

Tunnelled passages led from one set of dwellings to[124] another in some cases, and we went along one to reach a shop stocked with provisions.

The recent storms had wrought havoc with the architecture and the villagers were busy building up walls that had been undermined by the rain. They were of the usual peasant type and seemed hardworking, cultivating olives and the small fields from which they reap a laborious crop. The French head of the gendarmerie told us there were 15,000 of these people, all living underground. The caves are said to be warm in winter and cool in summer, and they certainly compared favourably with many native huts. The cave-dwellers have lived in this fashion from ancient times, and I am told that Pliny refers to them in his account of the Roman settlements in Tunisia. Were one to walk through the neighbourhood one could never guess at the labyrinth of dwelling places below one’s very feet. But knock at one of the doors and a furious barking of dogs warns the hidden inhabitants of the approach of a stranger. We were fortunate in seeing the womenfolk about their work, owing to Mansour having troglodyte relations. As a rule they are hastily concealed on the arrival of visitors, and I fear that fate befell the more beautiful amongst them when we appeared, judging by the singularly unattractive assortment presented for our inspection: a great disappointment, since I had heard much of the good looks of the feminine cave dwellers. Those left for us to see comprised[125] an aged beldame covered with wrinkles, a sickly-looking half-witted girl, and a by no means merry widow. One can imagine the mixed feeling with which the beauties of the family receive orders to retire into hiding, baffled curiosity warring with a natural complacency at being credited with the possession of dangerous attractions.

On the way back we passed one of the road patrol, wrapped in a thick cloak from which a rifle stuck out, riding a weary horse, and carrying the mails. He rides once a day from the fort at Matmata to Gabès, sign of the law and order established in the remote country districts, and midway on his round he passes the other patrol on the outward way. Were he to be attacked by a gang of robbers he would be hard put to it to defend himself. But the people have an awed respect for the power of the law. When telegraph posts were first set up in the desert to the south, the inhabitants were ignorant of their use, and the arrest of an escaped prisoner from the capital as soon as he reached his native village seemed to them to savour of the miraculous. “It is thus,” explained the sergeant of police, “the wire on those posts stretcheth even unto Tunis, and as a dog, however long his tail, will bite him that pulleth it, so when we touch the wire, no matter at what point, the jaws at the other end will bite.”

CHAPTER XI
CUSTOMS

As I said before, the position of Arab women in Tunisia is so different from that which they hold in Europe that it is difficult for the two races ever to understand one another. A wife must not speak to her husband in the presence of her parents or of his. In referring to him in conversation she must not mention his name, but use a roundabout method in speaking of him, such as “the master of the house” or “the father of my children.” She may not eat or drink in his presence. Usually he takes his meals with his sons, waited upon by the women folk, who take their food later by themselves.

Amongst poor people the wife’s lot is a harsh one as all the work falls upon her, it being below the dignity of her husband to help her in any way. One often meets a countryman on a small donkey ambling along the road, his feet almost trailing in the dust, whilst his docile wife runs behind laden with the family baby and various belongings. Of course it may be that he knows exercise to be good for her health, but if that is the case, he does not try the recipe himself.

The rôle of wife is evidently a precarious one. At any moment she may be repudiated by her husband and for the most trifling causes. Should he wish to have the repudiation pronounced by the Kaïd, it is easy to find some pretext. Wishing to insult his wife outrageously, he compares her to the back of a person he cannot marry, saying for instance: “You are no more to me than the back of my aunt.” To the European mind this does not seem a very injurious remark, especially if the aunt is a handsome woman; but it is enough to send the wife in tears to the nearest Kaïd. She must wait four months to give her irate husband time to repent and to do the prescribed penance of fasting two months or feeding sixty poor persons. In that case his offence would be washed out. But one quite understands that it is a good deal easier for him to go on with the repudiation. He probably has been on short commons since his unfortunate remark, for an aggrieved wife is not careful over her cooking, and he does not therefore relish the prospect of a two months’ real fast. On the other hand sixty poor persons would probably have voracious appetites. So it comes cheaper to lose his wife. One can imagine many a mild-mannered man being driven into this position.

To do Mohammed justice, he endeavoured to improve the lot of wives, and laid down that the sum paid for one on marriage should be settled upon her. But there is a[128] difference between law and custom, and the old custom still prevails by which the father receives the money.

The head of the family holds a very important position in a Mussulman household, and is treated with great deference by his children. A well brought up son never enters a house in which his father is without asking his permission, nor does he smoke in his presence or speak to him till addressed. Adoption is much practised in Tunisia, and the adopted children are treated in the same way and hold the same rights as the real ones.

A man must never speak to any woman in the street even though she be his own wife or mother. He must even feign not to see these last. It is one of the things that strikes one most on first visiting a Mohammedan country. You never see men and women talking or walking together. The men walk with each other, whilst the few women you see scutter about in twos and threes, closely veiled. If in the company of a husband or father they follow behind.

The Arab is very punctilious as to manners; his courtesy is remarkable, and there are fine gradations of salutation which it takes some time for the stranger to grasp. Should a younger man meet an acquaintance older than himself, he bows with his right hand on his heart. The elder responds in the same way. A child greets his master by taking his hand and kissing it, and then placing it against his own forehead. This same form[129] of obeisance was paid me by women of the poorer classes. An inferior kisses the turban of the superior. Two people of equal rank kiss each other’s shoulders, whilst relatives meeting after a long absence kiss each other on the lips. Women embrace each other repeatedly when meeting.

No business can be conducted quickly; before approaching the real subject the weather must be commented upon, the health of the other enquired into, and that of his wife under the ambiguous title of his “house” or his “family.” Compliments must pass and a thousand and one polite formulas. To plunge into the matter in hand shows ill breeding of the worst description.

I was sketching one morning from the office of a lawyer in an oasis village, so had ample scope for watching professional etiquette. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in flowing robes, his stock of small inkbottles, pens and other awesome implements of his trade ranged carefully on the clean matting round him, whilst he was laboriously writing some document from right to left. A yellow jonquil stuck behind his left ear seemed to me to bring a perilously burlesque note into the legal atmosphere, but I found it taken as a matter of course.

When I asked permission to sit in the doorway of his office, it was given most graciously and he forthwith sent out for a tiny cup of black coffee which he begged me to accept. I felt it would be delightful to become a client[130] under these conditions. Why do not the denizens of Lincoln’s Inn offer us scented coffee, and wear flowers behind their ears? It would render the making of a will a pleasant interlude and do much to cheer a drooping bankrupt. If a yellow jonquil proved a little voyant for a London complexion, a white one could be substituted, and how pleasant the flower-bed in the early morning train up to town!

Whilst I was there a young man appeared in company of three or four friends, and after removing their shoes they were shown into the office with great ceremony. There they all squatted down on the far side of the ink bottles, and coffee was at once sent for and handed round. Grave compliments passed backwards and forwards, and the client praised the well-known acumen and mental gifts of the lawyer, who in gracefully denying any special talent, dislodged the jonquil which fell with a flop to the floor. Picking it up he absentmindedly tucked it in again, this time over his right ear, and the conversation was resumed. The state of the crops was discussed, the probability under the blessing of Allah of a good harvest, talk of an extension of the railway, etc. I left half an hour later, wondering whether the young man had called about the renting of a piece of agricultural land, but heard later that he was about to sue a neighbour for debt. Doubtless the real reason of his interview was reached by the afternoon.

In Tunis itself the women veil themselves in a particularly ugly way. They bind two thick pieces of black stuff across their faces, leaving only a slit for the eyes free. In their voluminous white draperies, and with the white head covering, this gives a most uncanny appearance. They look some dreadful kind of grub. Below the full skirts can be caught a glimpse of stockinged ankles and heelless slippers surmounted by silver bangles.

They may only unveil before their husbands, fathers and very near male relations. The Koran has a deep distrust of feminine charms. “As soon as a man seeth the eyes of a woman he is running into danger. For the glance of a woman is as an arrow without bow or cord.” And again “How often do the looks cast upon women return to do harm to those who sent them.”

In this leisurely land it is considered bad form to hurry, this being one of the signs by which those possessed of devils can be readily detected. Since the opening of tourist agencies, there has been a great influx of these latter into the country.

With that care for hygiene so noticeable in ancient religions, there are countless observances of cleanliness imposed upon the faithful. Hands must be washed after a meal, and the face as well before prayer. If water is not available then fine sand may take its place. Five prayers must be said daily: in the morning, just before[132] sunrise, at midday, during the afternoon, at sunset, and an hour and a half after the going down of the same. The call to prayer can be heard at these stated times, and it is curiously impressive to wake just as dawn is about to break, and to hear the long drawn-out wail of the muezzin from the minaret in the silence of the night.

Contact with Western civilisation is loosening the hold of their religion upon the people of Tunisia, and the change is probably not for the better. A devout follower of the law of the Prophet is an upright man, but in the slackening of his faith he is apt to acquire only the vices of the European and is in danger of losing his own religion and being left with nothing to take its place.

There are religious schools as well as the Government ones where French is taught, and many boys attend both. In walking through the narrow streets one often hears the drone of small voices, and sees a neat row of little slippers outside a doorway. On going inside, one finds a master intoning the Koran, each phrase of it being repeated interminably by the scholars sitting cross-legged on the matting and rocking themselves backwards and forwards. Each pupil is provided with a board painted white on which the text is written, and when at last all the scholars know it by heart it is washed out, and a fresh one inscribed and taught.

In one tiny village on the edge of the Sahara the school[133] was being held in the courtyard of the minaret, up which I had gone to see the view. The master was intoning the Koran in an inner room, whilst the class of small boys followed it with the correct prostrations outside, facing a sort of recess in the wall which indicated the direction of Mecca. They withstood the intense temptation to stare at a stranger, and went on solemnly with their devotions, whilst I took a snapshot from behind them, quite unperceived.

Service is held in the mosques on Fridays, the prayers being led by a kind of priest called the ‘iman.’ Women are not allowed to take part in public worship. Friday is always a busy and crowded day in the Souks, as it is then that the countrymen come in from the outlying districts to attend service.

Charity is strictly enjoined on the faithful, and apparently no one need ever starve in Tunis. He has but to sit in the gutter and call for alms in the name of Allah, and he will be supported, even if meagrely, for life. Every mosque possesses its clientèle of beggars who reap a livelihood from the worshippers. Fasts are also observed, and the big fast of the year is that of Ramadan, which lasts for a month, during which time not a morsel of food nor a drop of liquid may be taken between sunrise and sunset. When Ramadan falls in the hot weather, the pious undergo real sufferings from thirst.

Wine is forbidden to a Moslem, but this prohibition is now often set aside, especially amongst the younger generation. Probably the drinking of coffee took its place, for the Arab swallows innumerable tiny cups of it during the day.

The Tunisian café in a small town or village is a pleasant place. The customers sip their coffee in a leisurely way, sitting in the sunshine, and discussing the news of the day. Many play dominoes or chess, and sometimes strolling musicians, snake-charmers or professional story tellers collect a group round them. The teller of tales is a very popular personage, and is always sure of a large audience, and now and again one comes across the impromptu bard who weaves his chant as he goes along, introducing apt stanzas about each giver of a coin, to the delight of the crowd.

Life is leisurely. No one is in a hurry, the day is long. Why trouble to do to-day what may as well be left till to-morrow? There is none of the feverish activity and restlessness of modern civilisation. “About each man’s neck hath Allah hung his fate,” and therefore it is useless to try to avert it. Interminable discussions are carried on over the coffee cups, and as in village-life all the world over, a neighbour’s affairs are of only secondary importance to one’s own. The fierce light that beats upon a throne is but a taper to the penetrating beam focussed upon every household in a small community.

They are an attractive race, and the poorer classes seem to have the virtues and faults of children. They require constant supervision at their work and plenty of the syrup of praise when they do well, and like children they are quick to see and take advantage of any weakness in an employer. George Washington would have found himself lonely indeed amongst them, for they cannot speak the truth. They lie as a matter of course and often most inartistically. A servant will deny that he has been smoking, even with the half-consumed cigarette between his fingers. When it is pointed out to him he professes extreme astonishment and declares that Allah must surely have placed it there. It is difficult to receive such an excuse with calm. They are said to be untrustworthy, but I was not in the country long enough to be able to judge of this. Their dignity is admirable, they are gentle, charitable to the poor and treat the aged with reverence. They love flowers, scent, the shade of trees and the sound of running water. Missionaries say the children are very quick and intelligent up to the age of thirteen or fourteen when their minds seem to cease developing. If they make some impression on the girls when young, the influence of fathers and husbands tends quickly to destroy it. Education is looked on far more favourably than it was, however, and even the daughters of a family are now sometimes allowed to attend school, especially in the towns.

There are two opposing opinions as to the people of Tunisia. One side holds that they are a played-out race, of whom no further development can be expected. The other declares that their evolution was arrested by the triumph of Mohammedanism, that in earlier days there were brilliant intellects amongst them and that there is every possibility of an awakening of their slumbering mentality. The French scientist Saint Paul is of this latter belief. He was for years in the country living amongst the people and penetrating to their houses in his character of doctor, and in his book Souvenirs de Tunisie published in 1909 he made an exhaustive study of their psychology and testified warmly to their good qualities and intelligence.

CHAPTER XII
TUNIS

The town of Tunis itself is cosmopolitan. Approached by steamer, it spreads itself out in a white fan along the edge of a lagoon that has the effect of a bay, being only divided from the Gulf of Tunis by the merest strip of land. There seems scarcely a finger’s breadth between the two. In the early morning of a December day the town showed as a white blur in the haze that hung about the lake. The ship glided slowly through the narrow entrance at Goulette which leads into a canal deepened out in the shallow waters of the lagoon, marked on one side by floating buoys and on the other fringed by the narrow embankment on which runs the tramway to Carthage.

At first sight Tunis seems knee-deep in water she stands so low, and indeed a great part of the modern town is built on land reclaimed from the lake itself. But as one nears the shore the picturesque jumble resolves itself into flat-topped white houses, the domes of innumerable mosques, outlines of minarets, lines of dark foliage marking the whereabouts of central boulevards, and behind them all the wooded slopes of the Belvedere pleasure park. From here the eye is led by degrees to further and further hills.[138] It is a picturesque setting. Backed by jagged rocky hills that glow deep rose and dusky purple at sunset, the capital gazes over the placid waters of the lake to the deep blue of the Gulf beyond, to the twin peaks of le Bou-Cornine on the north east and the low hill of Carthage to the West.

The French part of the town has broad streets with shady avenues of trees, modern shops with Paris goods displayed behind plate glass windows. Electric trams pass and re-pass. One could imagine oneself in the South of France. But by way of the archway called La Porte de France, left standing when the ancient walls were demolished, one escapes with a sigh of relief into the native town. Here too, everything is touched with Europeanism, but enough remains to prick the imagination. The narrow covered Souks or arcades, where the merchants sit in their tiny raised shops, their shiny yellow slippers ranged side by side ready to put on again when business is over, the crowd in flowing Eastern robes sauntering up and down languidly shopping, the red and green tomb of a holy man right in the gangway, with a blind beggar squatting beside it proffering an open hand for alms, the strange chrysalis-shaped white bundles with their tight black veils, that are women, the passing funeral with its swathed corpse carried shoulder-high and followed by a chanting crowd. All this breathes the East.

And yet the flavour of it is spoilt by the touch of unreality[139] about it all. Tawdry European goods are presided over by a dignified Mussulman in a fez who will perhaps accost you in excellent English. From under flowing robes appear narrow French shoes. One groans. And then, of a sudden, you may look up an alley way, and it is the real thing again. A strip of blue sky, hot sunshine, the blue-green of a small dome, men in statuesque drapery outside the carved entrance of a mosque. A glimpse within of kneeling silent figures in white, in dove colour, in grey. And your flagging spirit fires again. Tunis is a beautiful Arab woman in European dress, and as such she frequently puts one’s teeth on edge. But push into the country and you will find the native life untouched, the peasant people leading the same lives as generations before them led, no hint of the uneasy modernism that spoils the capital.

One must remember too that the town of Tunis cannot be treated as a homogeneous entity. It is composed of many elements, all keeping to their own customs and habits and mixing not at all. The French took over the Protectorate of the country in 1881, but their race does not predominate here. There is an immense population of Jews who inhabit their own quarter, and an even greater number of Italians and Maltese as well as the natives of the country itself. One hears Italian spoken as often in the street as French, and I suspect a certain jealousy and suspicion on the part of the French.

The country is ruled by a Bey under the protection of the French Government represented by a Resident General. The different provinces are under the management of Kaïds appointed by the Bey and answerable to French ‘Contrôleurs Civils.’ The system seems to work well, and undoubtedly the country has prospered under French protection, even though that protection was originally thrust upon her. Good roads are made, a plentiful supply of water is brought to each town, the country is linked up by railways and telegraphic communication, and schools are opened in even the smallest places. It seemed to me the inhabitants live on happy terms with their ‘protectors,’ and I was struck by the absence of any insolence in the attitude of the latter to the dark-skinned races. Arabs and Europeans travel in the same railway carriages and trams, sit perhaps at adjoining tables in restaurants, take their turn at the booking offices, naturally and without resentment on either side. I had known India well many years ago, and the difference of our attitude to a subject race could not but come into my mind now. The British rule is a beneficent one, and just. But it is the rule of a kindly master over subordinates. The French method appears to me a happier one.

The town of Tunis itself seems to be spreading rapidly, large hotels spring up as suddenly as mushrooms after a night’s rain, and the streets are full of sight-seeing tourists.[141] At times a cargo of as many as five hundred of them may be dumped on shore, earnestly ‘doing’ Tunis in a few hours or a day and a half. The town Arab adapts himself to his environment and becomes one of that race of beings without nationality, familiar to all who have travelled in distant lands, a hybrid creature of most distasteful qualities. Where the carcase is to be found there shall the vultures be gathered together, and as the troops of admiring tourists debouch upon the street one is irresistibly reminded of a shoal of herring in shallow water with its accompanying clamour of predatory gulls. If Allah has caused the harvest to fail, he has at least provided the tourist.

They are of all varieties: from the superior person sheltered from any contact with the vulgar world behind the glass windows of his touring limousine-car, and the crowd that moves from one cosmopolitan hotel to another, carried about almost without volition like goldfish in a bowl, to the traveller who perhaps has saved up enough just to do a Mediterranean trip and to stare with delighted bewilderment at a life so different from that to which he is accustomed.

In the hotel of one small oasis town I observed a tall and gaunt young man of indeterminable nationality, and as I rode back peacefully in the evening from my saunters in search of sketchable points of view I used to see the same youth striding along the road, the dust flying from behind[142] his heels, whilst a weary guide tottered in his wake. Mansour was much amused. “Truly the foreigner is possessed of a devil,” he remarked, “I know his guide and he tells me that every day his employer sets forth with a map and walks with fury from the rising up of the sun to its going down. He is afflicted with a rage of walking. Mahmoud when first engaged by him rejoiced greatly, for he thought the newcomer to be inexperienced and foresaw fat profit for himself. But though it is but four days since he came, already is my friend so greatly exhausted that he can scarce put one foot before the other. He prays daily that the stranger may soon leave, for he is so young that there is still great strength in him. He is tall and his legs are of such a length that he takes but one step while Mahmoud must take two, and never will he take a car or mount a donkey.”

We were gently ambling home from a sketching expedition. It was getting late in the afternoon and the long shadows of the palms lay across the sandy road. Our steeds were beginning to mend their pace as they came in sight of their stables. I had been painting hard and was in the comfortably tired state induced by two hours satisfactory work. Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps and there shot past us the figure of the thin young man walking as if for a wager. His brow was unheated, his face serene. Close behind him panted the sorry figure of[143] Mahmoud who cast an agonised look upon his friend as he limped past. His figure was certainly not adapted to violent exercise and he seemed at the last stages of exhaustion. And so he was. Next day the energetic pedestrian passed me where I sat sketching down by the river. The dust still spurted from below his feet. But he was alone. “Mahmoud hath taken to his bed,” explained Mansour, “he saith that if he gets up he will be made to walk fifteen miles. And indeed he cannot rise for he is naught but aches and pains from head to foot and is calling curses upon the foreigner. He had hoped to be given much money, for had he not ready two pairs of worn-out shoes to testify for him? But is not life sweeter than money? and he can do no more. The traveller has not been able to get another guide, for every man finds himself of a sudden too busy. Thus he will soon leave. And Mahmoud saith that never will he engage himself from henceforth to any stranger till he has first looked upon him to see whether or no his legs be long!”

In Tunis, forgetting that I myself was a tourist, I studied them with an interested eye. Sitting outside a small restaurant in the central boulevard where the heaped flower stalls made splashes of colour under the heavy foliage of the trees, I watched them pass, sipping my coffee and meditating their infinite variety.

And in the hotel drawing room that evening I was[144] accosted by a grey haired and aggrieved spinster. “Can you tell me,” she asked, “where I can find a tea-shop in Tunis?” I explained patiently that tea-shops are not indigenous to the country, that tea can be served at any café or restaurant, but that coffee is the national drink and is beautifully made. “In a town of this size there must be a tea-shop,” she remarked firmly, “I mean the kind where there is a band and you can get muffins and scones as well as cakes. I am sure someone told me there is one here,” she added, casting a suspicious glance upon me. I mentally shrugged my shoulders and moved away. She spent three days in the place and every afternoon was devoted to her pathetic quest. And on the last day as she stood in the hall awaiting the hotel omnibus, her luggage about her feet and a neat waterproof upon her arm, I ventured to inquire as to its success. “I was here too short a time to come across it,” she answered coldly, “but I shall be returning.”

So I gather the search for a tea-shop is to be resumed, and I am very much afraid that in a year or two she may find it.

The history of Tunisia has been the record of a long sequence of civilisations that have possessed her in turn, have risen to fame and glory and one by one have gone down before a fresh power. As far back as the ninth century B.C., Carthage was founded by the Phœnicians[145] and rapidly became a rich and powerful city. Her merchants trafficked all along the Mediterranean and even pushed as far as the little island of Great Britain wrapped in Atlantic fogs. Her riches were immense and she dared to enter the lists against Rome itself. This temerity cost her dear. After two long wars she was beaten, her fleet destroyed, and finally in 146 B.C. the Romans utterly destroyed the town, and the country became a Roman province. They rebuilt it later and Carthage again became rich and powerful. In 439 A.D. she was taken by the Vandals and about a hundred years later passed into the keeping of the Byzantine Empire. At the end of the seventh century the city was again utterly destroyed by Arab conquerors, and since then Carthage has remained a heap of ruins, the town of Tunis gradually growing in importance and wealth. The subsequent fortunes of the country since the Arab conquest down to 1575 were interwoven with the general history of Barbary, but at that date it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, till it threw off the Turkish yoke about the eighteenth century and became virtually independent. Finally, in 1881, France sent an expedition to Tunis with the proclaimed purpose of punishing the raids of Tunisian tribes into Algiers, and eventually the Bey, under compulsion, signed a treaty of suzerainty to the French Republic.

As each of the earlier conquerors in turn tried busily to[146] destroy all vestiges of his predecessor’s reign, little else but fragments are left of the older civilisations. Carthage is not even a heap of ruins now. She is a handful of dust. Her stones were carried away for the construction of Arab houses, one comes across stray pillars wreathed with the acanthus of Rome, in the Souks of Tunis, huge blocks of stone are built even into the mud villages everywhere, marble pillars have been transferred bodily into the interiors of mosques. Carthage herself has become a desolation and a waste.

I went there on a day of hot sunshine and an intense blue sky. It is about ten miles from Tunis. As the train crawled like a caterpillar along the thread of embankment across the lagoon, an Italian steamer was gliding through the canal on my right; and beyond the pencilled edge of the lake was the deep blue rim of sea for which she was bound. On my left was the placid surface of the lake, dotted with waterfowl and with a few wooden stakes here and there, on which crouched the black figures of cormorants looking like dejected priests. On a tiny island were the ruins of a Spanish fort. Reaching Goulette, there were still a few small stations to pass, and then came Carthage.

The sandy soil seemed almost to throb in the warmth, hedges of cactus lined the broad road from the tiny station. Absurd modern villas stood about, flotsam of the new civilisation. But climbing upward I left the villas behind[147] and turning on the slopes looked out to where the blue of the sea faded into a soft haze. To the west the red cliffs of Sidi bou Said caught the eye, and the clustering white houses of its beautiful village. On the summit of the hill of Carthage stands the ugly modern Roman Catholic cathedral, avenging by its presence the deaths of Saint Perpetua and the unfortunately named poor little Saint Felicity, Christian martyrs in the Roman amphitheatre of Carthage.

Adjoining the cathedral is the monastery of the Pères Blancs, who have a small museum filled with Punic and Roman remains. There are fragments of statues, broken vases, earthenware lamps, coins, medals, sarcophagi in which one can see frail skeletons preserved in their covering of aromatic gum. These haughty warriors and princesses lie helplessly exposed to the gaze of every idle tourist, the painted lids of their resting places standing sentinel-fashion behind each. I am no antiquarian. All I carried away was a confused impression of a débris washed up on the shores of Time; of delicate bracelets and gold rings, of tiny charms, of iridescent glass bottles dug up from the sand, of all the odds and ends that human beings gather round them. I think they were not so very different from ourselves, these people of long ago. And now conquerors and conquered mingle their remains in the sterile peace of museum shelves. In the garden outside were ranged[148] pieces of pillars, fragments of vast statues, here a giant hand, there a colossal head.

A white-robed monk paced slowly along the path with his breviary, and a bush of rosemary gave out a faint aromatic scent as my skirts brushed it in passing. A small boy was herding a flock of goats by the shattered ruins of the amphitheatre, and I wandered from one group of stones to another, all that was left of a great and famous city. I was shown fragments of Roman villas with mosaic pavements, private entrances from them to the theatre where only a broken column or two remains to show the glories of what had once been. Nearly all the finds of any value have been taken to the Bardo Museum at Tunis. Here there is almost nothing. A soft wind stirred the grass growing between the blocks of fallen masonry, a tiny lizard ran swiftly across one of the grey stone seats, far off in the gentian blue of the Gulf showed a feather of dark smoke. The silence was so intense that one could almost hear the rustle of the lizard’s feet. One’s mind swung giddily backwards through the past centuries. More than ever one had the sensation of the inexorable tide of Time, carrying into oblivion the painfully acquired civilisations of the world. Each so absorbed, so confident, and of them all what is left? The crumbling fragile bones in the museum, and a tiny chip of blue mosaic in the dust at my feet, seemed the only answer.

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CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Kairouan	9
II.	Sects and Superstitions	21
III.	An Arab Wedding	31
IV.	Sousse	48
V.	Passing Through	56
VI.	Sfax	72
VII.	Oasis Towns	82
VIII.	The Sand Diviner	96
IX.	The Circus	106
X.	Round About Gabès	118
XI.	Customs	126
XII.	Tunis	137