North Africa and the desert

by George Edward Woodberry

V

It was the music of the Aïssaouas in the night. The din was terrific, barbaric, ear-piercing, instruments and voices, as I entered the little, roughly boarded hall, sufficiently but none too well lighted, in which hung a slight haze of smoky vapor. There were upward of a score of the order with their chief standing, and a few men were seated on one side, who made a place for me among them. The group in front, close by, filled a small, oblong space, in the midst of which over a fire was a fuming pot; near by it two or three musicians were beating the native drum, others struck cymbals, and a line of men, standing and swaying, lifted a keening rhythm of human voices in a continuous cry. A monotonous unison governed the whole music, which came in cadences, falling to a lower note and slower motion, then rising with swift acceleration to a sort of paroxysm, shrill and rapidly vibrating, and again dropping down till a fresh impetus sent the hard, strong, climbing pulse of the rhythm on its high crescendo. There was never any pause; again and again it culminated and fell away; but it could no more stop than blood. Cymbals, drums, voices—continuous din at first, and then a felt rhythm; it was a whip on the senses. Three or four of the figures were more excited; occasionally one bent his head into the fumes of the pot and took long breaths; these would dance, utter wild cries, creep about with muscular contortions, but no one seemed to pay much attention except the chief. He was a tall, large man, of uncommon physical vitality evidently, heavily wrapped in a white burnoose, turbaned; and it was plain that nothing in the room escaped his eye for a moment, as he stood to one side overlooking, and from time to time giving an order of care or restraint for the more excited participants. Once accustomed to the noise and the lights, my eyes found much detail. A man just at my right, with the stare and spasmodic gesture of a halfwitted person, was devouring pieces of the great leaves of the thorn cactus as if it were lettuce. Another went about chewing pieces of broken glass, which he begged for pitifully, to all appearance, and was as pleased when he got it as a child with candy; he ate it with avidity, like a ravenous animal. There seemed to be no arrangement about anything, nothing designated beforehand, but every one did as he pleased, while the shrill music rose and fell, the feet beat time, and the few who were given over to the intoxication, turbanless and half-garmented, swung among their brothers in a kind of exaltation and partial collapse that were dervish-like.

Suddenly a young man who was standing near me undid his turban, threw off the blouse he wore, and, entering the central group among the musicians, bent down his head over the fire and inhaled the fumes with long gasps. He joined in the cry of the voices, danced, and grew quickly excited; he drew his shirt over his head, and thus, half naked, went again to the fire. At a sign from the chief two other men attended him, one on each side, and supported him; and shortly after—he may have been ten minutes under the influences, in all—the chief joined them, and the group came slowly toward me, making the circuit of the others. The youth knelt directly between my knees. He was, perhaps, eighteen, with a handsome face somewhat ascetically lined, but that may have been due merely to his poverty. He was well formed and muscled, bare to the waist. He seemed entirely dazed, and dependent for direction on those about him; his body was bathed in sweat and trembled violently all over; every particle of his flesh quivered; his eyes rolled, showing the whites in vivid contrast to his black hair, and he panted, as if he craved something intensely and blindly. He threw his head far back, exposing his throat, and one of the men, who held a long, straight sword over him, sank the point just at the base of the throat. It was not a deep cut, but the blood flowed freely, trickling down his breast. The whole took place so near me that I could easily have touched the youth without reaching; my knees were almost against his arms. The others helped him to rise, still apparently unconscious, and led him off to one side. Then the surprising thing occurred. The chief held the boy in his arms tenderly, stroked him, caressed his cheeks, kissed him; the boy’s head lay on his breast. Suddenly, as if with a snap, he came to, and instantly seemed perfectly normal, with no trembling, no convulsion, no sign of his previous state. He was let alone, and in the most unconcerned manner put on his shirt and blouse, arranged his turban, and after standing about a few minutes went away.

I stayed on, and my attention was attracted by a little fellow of eight or ten years, a bright street boy, who was wandering about among the others. He got some sort of permission from the chief, and they passed a knife through his right cheek—clear through. He was very proud of the feat, and walked up and down, shaking his head to make the knife waggle on its outer hilted side; but he was not at all excited. I remained perhaps an hour, and then shook hands with the chief, who was gravely courteous, and I went out under the stars; and the din died away in the distance.

The Aïssaouas are an order of magicians and are widely spread from Morocco, where they have their centre at Meknèz, through Algeria and Tunis. Their founder was Sidi Mohammed-ben-Aïssa, of whom many marvellous miracles are related, but all are of the nature of prestidigitation; the association is, indeed, in some ways, a guild of that art. Its repute, however, among the Moslems, has its roots in the old magic of Africa, and rests on the habits of superstition which are the common ground of the veneration of the miracle-working Marabouts. The Aïssaouas claim immunity from many mortal ills. Nothing that they may eat—scorpions, stones, glass—can harm them; poisons are innocuous; wounds close at once and disappear. They are naturally the physicians for such ills in others, and are snake-charmers and wonder-workers. They are very nomadic in their habits, and go widely through the land. Many wild reports are current of their rites at their fêtes, of their sacrificing animals and tearing the flesh in pieces and devouring it raw; but these and other like things are traits of the orgiastic state in the lower stages of civilization everywhere.

It was a faint shadow of the primeval that I had seen. That human cry, mixed with the sharp cymbals and the drums, frantically wavering and receding, was an echo from the central forests far inland; and that fire with the pot was the ghost of fetichistic rite, perhaps the oldest altar of mankind. The scene, the swaying figures, the intoxication of the body, the atmosphere, belonged to the earliest psychic experiences of the race. It suggested the invisible superstition that lays over and fills the present minds of the populace and the desert dwellers. I found the little boy on the street the next day, and he recognized me. I examined his mouth closely, and there was only a white roughness, like a scar, on the inside of his cheek and a scratch on the outside. He became very friendly; and my pleasantest memory of the Aïssaouas is of his street-boy figure standing on the desert, a quarter of a mile or more down the railway track, where he had gone to get near to my train and give me his last good-by with waving hands.