III
I had never made a Jewish pilgrimage. The opportunities for one are rare, for the Jews are not a pilgrim people. There is on the island, however, a place which is described as a point of their pious journeying for centuries, and thither I repaired. It is the synagogue at Hara-Srira, a village of seven hundred inhabitants, which, with a neighboring and larger village, concentrates the Jewish population of the island in their segregated life. It was only a few kilometres away, and I reached it by a more settled and suburban road than that to Ajim. The little town was a picturesque sight, gathered none too closely about the synagogue, which was the principal building. The sexton and his son, grave persons in Arab costume, took charge of me with polite attention, and after the boy had assisted me to take off my shoes I was ushered into the little temple. It was divided into a series of compartments, and although none of the rooms was large, the general effect was impressive. I was struck by the richness of the interior, and its look of cleanliness and finish, for my eyes had been long unaccustomed to such a scene; the bright tiles, the lights, the walls, all the furnishings seemed quite new and modern, European in fact, as if I had stepped back at once into the familiar world; there was nothing barren or austere, nothing to suggest the neighborhood of the desert and its ways. It was the shrine of an alien religion, and wore the aspect of civilization and a better-provided world, a different economic type, not that of the gray old mosques in lonely places on the sandy downs. The priest in his vestments, a slight, middle-aged man, a sacred if not a stately figure, came to welcome me, and pointing out various details led the way through the half-darkness of the subdued light to a small chapel-like room where were the treasures that I had come to see.
They were books of the old Law and ancient writings that had found an asylum in the sands. I was glad to be where the object of pilgrimage was a Book. These venerated copies of sacred writings, more than libraries, symbolize to me the glory of letters; they are the founts of civilizations. I have seldom seen a more beautiful antique manuscript, or one so solemnly impressive, as the massive volume he showed me, their chief treasure, which, I think, he said dated from the eleventh century. It recalled lovely copies of the Koran that I have sometimes found in the mosques of the Levant. I wished he would read out of it to me, as the young taleb at Kairouan had read the Koran to me by the fading evening light in the dark-browed court of the Mosque of the Barber, nigh the little stone cells of the students, after I had seen, above, the banner-hung tomb of the companion of the Prophet in its solemn desert state; the lean Arab stood, holding the book in his hands, with his face lighted up, intoning the verses, and a few others listening reverently made the group. I shall never forget the music of that unknown tongue, like the sound of winds in the forest or waves on the shore. But I did not like to ask the priest to read. There were other manuscripts, perhaps a score in all, and I spent a half-hour over them. It was pleasant to be in touch with such things once more; for, excepting the wide volume that I saw the seated Jew reading in the street of Tougourt, I did not remember having seen a book in the desert. The priest was proud of these treasures, and the boy also who stood by watching as I turned the leaves; scriptures and learning of long ago, that had survived in this remote niche, cared for and venerated like the gospels of some inaccessible Coptic monastery, they were worthy of a scholar’s pilgrimage and respect.
As I came out into the open I noticed two lines of figures coming across country in opposite directions like people returning from church. They were Mohammedans and Jews, each walking from their respective cemeteries which lay not far away. I thought it was a typical and happy scene of two religions dwelling together in unity and peace. The general appearance of the people was much the same, humbly prosperous and contented, and they were dressed alike. The Jews here are completely Arabized, except in the point of their religion, and it was interesting to observe how much they had become assimilated to the soil. The women especially looked to me like Bedouin women, and I was obliged to scrutinize their features to detect their race; but no burnoose nor haik can disguise the superior vitality and intelligence of the Jews. On my return I stopped to stroll through the market, and there they were much to be seen. It was an abundant market with the usual heaps and collections on the ground—grains, vegetables, utensils, and special quarters for wool, meat, and fish. It was a lively and thronged scene. An auction of donkeys and camels was going on in one place. My eyes were especially attracted by the piles of sheepskins and wool, and the men and boys lying lazily on them waiting for custom, their dark faces and bodies oddly relieved and picturesque on the wool. There were heaps of black sponges, too; and I noticed a curious white kilted costume which I had not seen on these shores, lending a new element to the crowd. Here, too, wandering about, I experienced the smallness of the world anew; for I fell in with some travelling merchants who had come to buy burnooses and blankets of Djerba, and who remembered me from Tunis; they were plainly pleased to find me in such a remote corner of their own country. I myself became sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the place to buy a few dates and figs, and more particularly some dried orange-blossoms, which were sold by the pound. I had never seen such a thing in Italy, and it gave me a lively idea of the orange gardens to the east of the island which were said to be so luxuriant.
As the day wore idly on, I explored the town, Houmt-Souk, for I believe I have not yet named it, which has fine, broad, curving streets and large, open places, a mosque with many domes and a high, square minaret, a tall artesian well, and a public garden where the French government experiments with plants and trees. The proprietor of my hotel was the gardener, and took me about and told me stories of his garden, but the spring was not far enough advanced for the soil to tell the same tale of its luxuriance and rarity. I had to content myself with seeing various shrubs and exotic trees. Then I wandered down to the beach, like all ocean beaches, with heavy, loose sand and a considerable tide, the broad view, sights of the sea, and a ruined Spanish fortress; but I went especially to see the spot where stood for centuries the great mound of Christian bones, Skull Fort they called it, which the pirate Dragut raised after the victory in which he broke the Spanish fleet in this offing, in 1560, taking five thousand prisoners and massacring the garrison. I suppose he massacred the prisoners, too; and here the ghastly memorial of his victory stood nigh the beach, till in recent years the bones were removed and buried in the Catholic cemetery. Before that, Norman raiders and Sicilians, when they harried all these coasts, had temporarily held possession in the Middle Ages; and all over the island are Roman ruins, decayed causeways, baths, temples, the subsoil of all the Mediterranean world. But nothing now stands out in the historic memory of the old lotus land except Dragut’s grim mound.