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THE EDGE OF THE DESERT




[Illustration: I. M. D.

Porte de Tunis.

Kairouan

Jan. 4. ’23.]




                               THE EDGE OF
                               THE DESERT

                                   By
                              IANTHE DUNBAR

                                 LONDON
                           PHILIP ALLAN & Co.
                              QUALITY COURT

                       _First published in 1923._

                  _Made and Printed in Great Britain by
                Southampton Times Limited, Southampton._




_To_

J. W. H.

TO WHOSE SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I OWE SO MUCH




CONTENTS.


    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




CHAPTER I

KAIROUAN


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
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 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. 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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.

The Kaïd

Kairouan]

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 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 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 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.

Hassan was always full of zeal and spurred me to great deeds.

“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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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.

At last the bridegroom was approaching.

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 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 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 of the booths, their discarded red and yellow slippers
neatly ranged on the ground below.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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 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 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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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?

The other had been regarding him with a faint ironical smile about his
lips.

“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 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!”

“But how am I to know?” began Forde, and hesitated.

“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.

Forde nodded.

“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 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 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.”

The other obeyed and the invalid put the post card carefully away in the
box.

“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 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.

And then four months later it was all sharply recalled.

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 exported
as super-phosphate. The mining districts contain a large population of
workers, chiefly immigrants, with French managers in authority.

[Illustration: The Souks.

I. M. D.]

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
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, 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.

[Illustration: Bedouin Woman

I. M. D.]

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 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 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, 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.

Le marché aux Tapis.

The Souks. Sfax.

21.2.23.]

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 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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.

A village Marketplace]

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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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 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 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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.

Grain Market. Tozeur.]

All this part is called the Djerid, and here one feels the intense
solitude of the desert. It is on the edge of the 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 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 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 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.

[Illustration: I. M. D.]

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.”

[Illustration: I. M. D.

El Haj Hassin ben Abdulla Na Hali: Sand Diviner.

Gabès. 11.1.23.]

I told Mansour to ask him if he could tell what had 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

[Illustration: Women Washing

I. M. D.]

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

[Illustration: Village Scene

I. M. D.]

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 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 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. 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.

[Illustration: Entrée d’un Souk

Tunis

I. M. D.

2.23.]

And yet the flavour of it is spoilt by the touch of unreality 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. 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.