I.
How well I remember the day when my husband, an officer in the French army, was nominated for service in Algeria! I was still plunged in slumber when I was suddenly aroused by a diabolical yell (if you ask my husband he will hotly deny this, but men can never be believed). I sat up, thinking the end of the world had come, and saw my husband frantically waving a white paper and shouting: “Named in Algeria—1st Regiment of Spahis! With a wife and children it’s impossible! Why am I married?”
“Well!” I said, still half asleep, but seizing the sense of the remark that referred to me. “You ought to know why you are married. What’s the matter with you? Do you want a divorce?”
“Don’t be frivolous; it is a serious matter,” he groaned, holding out the paper for my inspection. “Do you understand? I am nominated to an African regiment, the 1st Spahis, and in a fortnight I must be there.”
“Do you mean that we—you and I—are going out to North Africa?” I cried. “Really? Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“Are you mad?” he demanded, in astonishment.
“Yes; mad with joy,” I replied. “I’m tired to death of poky French garrison towns. We’ll go out to the sun and be stewed, have our throats cut by Arabs, and enjoy ourselves down to the ground.”
“My dear girl,” said my husband, with as much calmness as he could muster, “we are ordered to a post in the mountains, Teniet-el-Haad. In all probability you will get no servants to go with you, and there may not even be a fit house to live in. A lady cannot go there!”
“An English one can—we follow our husbands,” I said, stoutly.
“I shall have to go alone,” he said, quietly, “unless I can find some fellow to exchange.”
“You can do as you like,” I answered, loftily, “but I am going to join!”
And so I did, in his company and that of my three children.
I was sadly disappointed in Algiers; it appeared to my jaundiced eyes quite an ordinary town. Its arcades, filled with elegant Parisian-looking women and top-hatted, frock-coated men straight from the Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne, gave me quite a shock. However, I consoled myself with the thought that our station was far away up in the wild mountains of the Tell, where real live Arabs, hyenas, jackals, and a panther here and there would advantageously replace these civilized banalities.
“A WHEEL HUNG FOR AN INSTANT OVER BOTTOMLESS SPACE.”
Our journey from Algiers to Affreville was just like any other railway journey. At the last-named town we got out, had a nice breakfast at the station buffet, and at twelve got into the coupé of a diligence so dilapidated and prehistoric in appearance that my heart sank within me; but that was only the beginning. This vehicle was drawn by eight skinny white horses, each of whom seemed to have his own private opinion as to the manner of drawing the vehicle—and all their opinions seemed to differ vastly from that of the driver, whose face wore an “I give it up” sort of expression. So bored was the good man by things in general that during the journey he indulged in sundry snoozes. This was bearable whilst the road was wide and on the flat, but when it wound like a narrow white ribbon round and round the mountains, and one gazed up on the left at a grey wall of rock, and on the right down fathomless precipices, we glanced at our slumbering Jehu and held on by the skin of our teeth, whilst the skinny horses dashed headlong round narrow corners and a wheel hung for an instant over bottomless space. This nightmare ride lasted for eight hours, during which time I tried hard to feel that I was enjoying myself, despite the cramp in my legs and the stiffness of my neck—necessarily slightly bent on account of the lowness of the roof. Finally we arrived at Teniet-el-Haad, which appeared to be composed of one narrow street hemmed in abruptly on either side by the mountains. Thankfully we crawled out of the diligence and walked up the hill to the “bordj,” or fort, where a flat had been provided for us by the Government. So this was to be my home! I gazed eagerly round at the small rooms with their bare, whitewashed walls, and then—when I had a box to sit on—I sat down and cried.
“Nice place, Algeria, isn’t it?” mildly remarked my husband. I felt at that moment as though I could have throttled him cheerfully.
A VIEW OF TENIET-EL-HAAD.
From a Photograph.
Truly my position was not enviable. Accustomed hitherto to be waited on hand and foot, I now found myself without a servant of any kind, save my husband’s orderly. I was in a strange country, and was expected to do everything for myself. However, repining would not help matters, so I set to work to teach the orderly the rudiments of the culinary art, he knowing nothing more about it than—than I did. What hard days those were, to be sure! I wonder my husband survived them. My fried potatoes fell into greasy bits instead of frying, my scrambled eggs flew up the chimney, my omelettes were sickening messes, and the meat either would not cook at all or exaggerated the matter and turned into coal. Then there was the washing and ironing. I never thought—until I essayed the work—that there was much difficulty about it; it seemed quite easy. You took soiled things off, put them in water and soaped them; then you wrung them out, ironed them, and there you were. Our linen, however, grew greyer and greyer, yellower and yellower, and I became pensive. “What do you think is wrong with it?” I asked the orderly, who had become our washerman, there being no other.
“Well, madam,” he said, diffidently, “I think it wants sort of boiling gently with something or other. I remember my mother——”
“Oh, what did your mother do?” I asked, eagerly.
“Well, she washed it first, and then put it in a barrel with a hole in the bottom and—and boiled it, I think. Leastways, it was somehow all right after.”
“But you can’t boil in a barrel; it would catch fire,” I objected. “And why a hole? Surely the water would run out?”
He looked shy and unhappy.
“Well, there may be something wrong about the boiling in the wooden barrel. I misremember that, but”—a slow grin spread over his face—“I’m sure about the hole, because I used to stop it up, and mother was awfully wild.”
After some weeks, however, the orderly began to see light, and, helped by an Arab boy, managed these tiresome domestic matters well enough to allow of my going out riding and seeing a little of the country.
The mountains, burnt yellow by the hot summer sun when I first saw them, were growing rapidly green after a few hours’ torrential rain. In the forest all the spring flowers sprang to life again, flowering hastily on tiny short stems as though fearing they would not find time before being cut off by the winter frosts. A carpet of blue and white iris and crocus spread out under the shade of the mighty cedars, together with all sorts of bright creeping plants. Orchids and narcissi peeped up from every damp corner, and in the crevices of the rocks wild carnations and geraniums made a dash of bright colour.
One day whilst out mushrooming I felt rather thirsty, and proposed to my husband to go and ask for some goats’ milk at a tent I saw peeping through the underwood higher up. He acceded, and, talking and picking flowers, we wandered up slowly. Never in my life have I seen so dilapidated a tent. It had been mended again and again with rags so various in shape and colour that little of the original felidga was left. Around it was the traditional artificial hedge of jujube trees, whose thick, fine, long thorns protected the inmates from thieves and wild beasts. A sad-looking donkey and a few goats grazed around, while a particularly savage dog began barking violently and straining at a very rotten cord at our approach. Thin and mangy, he looked as if he could thoroughly enjoy a steak out of my husband’s substantial calves, but he soon retired, with more haste than dignity, when my better half stooped to pick up a stone. All Kabyle dogs have a settled opinion about stones, and the gesture is sufficient for them.
The noise brought out the owner of the tent, and he stood gazing majestically at us, draped in dirty white rags. A woman followed him. Her thin, bony, brown face, scraggy neck and shoulders, skinny arms and legs might have been those of an old woman, yet something told me that she was young, but worn out by over-work and under-feeding. Such sights are often seen and fill one with pity. Behind her came five little children, all, except the two girls—who each modestly wore a red handkerchief on their curly heads, and a necklet of wooden beads—clothed in sunbeams.
My husband asked if we could have some milk. With a lordly gesture the Arab signed to the woman, who slowly caught a goat by its hind leg and began milking it into a broken yet clean-looking earthen bowl. Nevertheless, I brought out my little picnic mug and made her milk into that.
My husband offered ten sous to the Arab, but he turned away disdainfully. “He who drinks at my tent is welcome,” he said. “He is God’s guest, and between him and me no money can pass.”
And yet how the want of money showed itself on every side!
I made up for it to myself by slipping a few pennies into the brown little hands of the children, who had finally decided that I was not likely to bite and had approached me. Delighted, they ran with them to their mother, who seized them feverishly, with a terrified side-look at her husband. Filled with pity, I slipped a silver piece into her lean hand—rather too well rewarded by the ardent kisses she showered on my hands, my shoulders, and the edge of my dress. I then asked the Arab to show me the interior of his tent. He seemed pleased at my demand, but I regretted it deeply when I beheld the dirtiness of it. Dirt was the principal furniture, together with several wooden spoons, an “aguesseau” for rolling the semolina into cous-cous, a “kess-kess” for cooking it by vapour, and a heap of terrible-looking rags. On this heap lay an indistinct form, from which came slow, painful gasps—the gasps of a departing life. Shuddering, I bent down and saw a venerable woman—so small, so wizened, so extraordinarily thin that I could not imagine how there was any life in her. She opened her eyes and turned them slowly on the Arab; and I read pitiful supplication, mingled with bitter reproach, in their cavernous depths.
The Arab looked down gloomily, and a wave of emotion swept over his hitherto impassive face.
“What is the matter with her?” I asked.
“She has not eaten for two days,” he answered.
“But why? Is she ill? Give her some milk at once. At once, do you hear?”
I felt angry at the calmness of these people in the presence of this dying woman.
“She is dying,” he said, obstinately.
“But you are doing nothing to save her,” I cried.
My husband pulled my sleeve.
“Come, come, dear,” he whispered, “you are giving yourself useless pain.”
“But I will make him give this old woman something,” I persisted. “She is his mother, perhaps, and is trying to ask him for food with all her strength. Give her some milk,” I cried.
The man mumbled something; I understood that he was telling me she was old, worn out, and that it was waste to feed her.
Overwhelmed with horror, I gasped: “Then you are letting her die—on purpose! She—she is dying because you have let her starve to death?”
He bowed his head. Then, as if he felt that some explanation was due to the roumia who was his guest, he added, in a low voice, “Her children will have her share. They want it.”
I seized my husband’s arm. “Come—come away from this horror,” I cried; and quickly we ran down the hill to where the fragrant narcissi grew, and there I flung myself on the ground and sobbed.
Presently the sweet, balmy air was filled with sharp shrieks and yells—the cries of mourning of the Arab women as they tear their faces with their nails. And I knew that the poor old woman had passed away, and that those who had starved her to death were now bemoaning her loss, and consoling themselves by saying, “In cha Allah!” (“It is the will of God”).
“‘GIVE HER SOME MILK,’ I CRIED.”
I went home a wiser and a sadder woman; I have never forgotten the horror of the incident.
From my window in the fort I had a beautiful view. In front was the range of mountains along which the cedar forest runs. I could just discern the rock where General M——’s first lion tried to get at him, and the small, scrubby tree up which the gallant General swarmed just in time. Lions are very rare nowadays in these parts, though a forester signalled the passage of one on the other side of the forest during my stay. On the left of my window I could see the bee-hive habitations of a race of negroes who live on the hill rising up immediately behind the chief street of Teniet. I think I have never seen such inhuman-looking, hideous specimens of the human race. Monkeys are far superior in looks to them, and their utter malignity and wickedness of expression lent additional ugliness to their distorted, pointed features. Murders were—well, if not daily occurrences, at least very frequent among them, and at last I grew quite accustomed to the diabolical shrieks and shouts which the warm, balmy air wafted to me from the opposite hill.
More often than not the rows originated over some very trivial matter. No European would venture for love or money into this negro village, and several French Spahis told me that they would not guarantee the life of the white man who dared to enter it even in broad daylight. The Arabs held the same opinion, and no honest man among them would visit the place on any account. Thieves and murderers, however, were certain to find a safe refuge, and many a one, I was informed, had hidden there, married a negress, and become one of the sinister tribe. The police never thought of entering the hamlet, and always abandoned pursuit of a criminal at its boundaries. I cannot imagine why the whole place was not burnt down and its lawless inhabitants dispersed.
I failed to obtain a photograph of one of these beauties. They objected to being taken, and no one dared to insist. The next picture, however, depicts the village itself, as seen from Teniet-el-Haad.
THE THIEVES’ VILLAGE AS SEEN FROM TENIET-EL-HAAD.
From a Photograph.
Talking of murders brings to my mind a double suicide which occurred in the fort. One night I was awakened by a revolver-shot just outside my window. I got up and looked out, but at first could see nothing, so black was the night. After a time, however, I saw a dark mass on the ground and heard a faint moaning. I was about to give the alarm when the sentry passed, stooped down, and uttered an exclamation. Then he went away, to return immediately with others. There was a murmur of voices, and finally they carried something away. My husband was absent, so I was forced to await morning in order to ascertain the facts of the matter. “Cherchez la femme” is, alas! a very true adage. The shot was fired by one of our non-commissioned officers, who had killed himself as he walked to and fro in the barrack-yard smoking and talking with his best friend, whom he had just discovered was a successful rival for the heart of the girl he loved and meant to marry as soon as his service was over. Having had suspicions, he had determined to draw the truth from his friend, who was perfectly oblivious of there being any engagement between him and the girl, and confessed freely when pressed that they loved each other and meant to be married later on. Drawing a revolver from his pocket, the unhappy sous-officier cried, “She was to have been my wife!” and, before the other understood what the phrase meant, pulled the trigger and fell dead at his horrified comrade’s feet.
The morning after, the friend, another non-commissioned officer, was raving mad. When the girl learnt of the tragedy she had caused, we learnt afterwards, she grew very white, but said nothing. All day she sat silent with fixed eyes, deaf to the reproaches of her parents, who did not spare their abuse. The next morning they found her asleep in death—she had poisoned herself!
I noticed here and there whilst riding about the country trees from whose branches hung long shreds of different-coloured cloth. On making inquiries I was told they were marabout, or holy, trees. Each district has one or more of these sacred trees, and to them come all the women to beseech of Allah to grant their prayers. In order to obtain the intercession of the holy tree, they hang pieces of their clothing on the branches, which are sometimes almost entirely covered with coloured rags, fluttering in the breeze, and giving the tree a most curious appearance.
A marabout is a saint, or holy man, and it is not given to every man to be a saint, however pious he may be. Real saintship among the Arabs is hereditary, and is one of the three castes of nobility. The sons are heirs to the fathers’ piety, and, though often far from worthy, reap the benefit of their birth-right. This religious nobility has great influence, and can excite or quell revolts, as, Koran in hand, they preach its precepts, often explained to satisfy their own wishes.
Apart from the hereditary marabouts there are the “little” marabouts, who live miserably on public charity beside the tomb of some ancestor who died in the odour of sanctity. Many of these so-called marabouts manage their affairs uncommonly well and are really wealthy men. Here is a story I have been told, which gives one an idea of the way these “little” marabouts set up in business.
Mohammed ben Mohammed was a marabout whose affairs were in a most flourishing condition. Pilgrims visited his ancestor’s tomb by hundreds, leaving many and rich offerings, and Mohammed ben Mohammed grew fatter and wealthier daily until his servitor, Ali ben Ali, became tired of watching his master’s increased wealth and bulk, whilst his own pocket was as flat as his body was thin. So one dark night he silently took his departure, riding on the back of a young ass belonging to his master.
After a march of about thirty miles the ass had enough of carrying Ali. It was a young ass, and knew no better, so it went on strike, lay down, and forthwith died. Thereupon Ali dug a big hole and put the ass in, piling a great mountain of stones over it. Then, sitting down beside the heap, he began to pray. A traveller passing inquired by whose tomb he prayed so fervently. Ali was filled with astonishment. “What! Had he never heard of the great Saint Amar ben Amar (literally ‘an ass, the son of an ass’)? All the people of the country round came there to pray.” The traveller did not fail to mention the Marabout Amar ben Amar’s tomb, and soon pilgrims flocked to it with offerings, and Ali ben Ali grew fat and rich. The faithful neglected Mohammed ben Mohammed, who at last, furious, abandoned his marabout in order to pay a visit to his rival. Great was his astonishment when he recognised his runaway servitor.
Taking him aside, he whispered, “Tell me the truth. Who is your marabout?”
“The ass I stole from you. And now tell me—who is your marabout?”
“The mother of the ass you stole from me!”
I conclude that the two Arabs chuckled together and continued to exploit the faithful in common, but history does not relate any more of their doings—nor, indeed, does it vouch for the complete veracity of the story. It is, however, to my personal knowledge quite the sort of thing one might expect to happen.
THE AUTHORESS AND HER CHILDREN IN THE CEDAR FOREST NEAR TENIET-EL-HAAD.
From a Photograph.
(To be continued.)
