THE “SEVEN PALMS” OF FACHI
My feelings, when I first entered Fachi through its frowning walls, were of bewilderment and astonishment.
Through an open doorway, unpretentious from the outside, one passed down a few crumbling steps, and stood on the threshold of the town. Sense of protection from the outside world, with its blighting sun and sand-filled wind, was present at once, while an eerie gloominess already threatened; for the level of the town was almost cellar-depth below the land outside. Flung back against the thick exterior wall, rested the first grim evidence of defence: a heavy, palm-plank door riveted, primitively, and chained together, while a great beam and a stone set into the floor of the court within showed how it was closed and buttressed when need arose (I was soon to learn that every street, every dwelling entrance, every room within these dens, had doors of the same character of formidable strength). Over this portcullis type of entrance, which gave the only way of entry to the town, the white jaw-bones and skull of a camel are built into the wall, on the inside, for all the world like the crest of a gang of pirates.
But the strangest novelty, in those first moments, lay in the discovery that, on all sides, the walls were constructed with salt, blackened with dust and age, yet, surely, salt, set as hard as the finest concrete and rasping as broken glass. It was not long before it dawned on me that the whole of the remarkable town was built of the same material.
The court, or area, inside the entrance, is small. But, passing on through a dark, shadowy, covered porchway, I soon learned that everywhere space was given away with niggardly economy.
Leaving the entrance, one enters a maze of alleys which represent the streets of the town: alleys that twist and turn in an amazing fashion, so that it is difficult to get an unobstructed view of more than a mere twenty or thirty feet of fairway. They are the narrowest slits of lanes, man-wide in places, but twice that width on an average; closely confined by black dwelling-high walls. Such sections of them as are fortunate enough to have a narrow overhead outlet to the sky are filled with shadows. Where roofed over they are dark and grim; mouse-ridden nooks, where man might lurk at any hour of the day who wished to cut an enemy’s throat.
Bare, earthy settees are recessed in places in these alleys where a foot or two of extra space permits an addition without entirely blocking up the pathway. There a single person may repose in the cool of evening; or sit cross-legged with another, exchanging idle gossip, or hatching cunning schemes.
Twisting and turning, portalled at points of advantage with a confusion of plank doors, these alleys lead an interminable distance. I find myself in the position of believing I am lost in a large city, and will never get back unguided to the point of setting out. I have been a score of times in Fachi. On the last visit, as on the first, I found myself at dubious turnings, enquiring of furtive den-dwellers, “Which way leads to the blue sky outside?” Can one credit this of a place no greater in area than a country village? It seems hardly possible; yet it is so, and it is chiefly the closely knit network of lane-slits that leads to this erroneous impression of great size.
