THE ARSENAL
THE ARSENAL
And now one of the great gates of New Fez looms before us. We enter. For a moment a dampness like that of a tunnel wraps its cool refreshing blackness about us, and then we emerge into a spacious age-worn court, which shows us that the adjective "new" applied to this strange, almost deserted quarter has only a comparative significance. There is in the entire city nothing that is really new. And yet this is not strictly true, for on our right we see a gateway freshly plastered, freshly painted in pale blue, with piles of cannon balls upon the top of its pilasters. It is the recently established arsenal of the Sultan. For the Sultan, though averse to progress and to civilization, has not hesitated to adopt that which is most barbarous in our science,—the modern methods of destruction; and here he manufactures death-dealing instruments like those invented by the Christians. We traverse the long, almost deserted square, and cross the threshold of another gate. We find ourselves in a tortuous, vaulted corridor, divided into gloomy sections by huge horseshoe arches. These gates of Fez are surely not designed to facilitate urban circulation, rather are they designed, in case of need, to prevent or at least to impede the rapid gathering of crowds in the great areas around the imperial palace—to isolate the various precincts of the city in case of revolution.
"FEZ—IN ALL ITS DILAPIDATED REALITY"
As we pass onward, veiled women observe us with a silent wonder, a few men pause to clear their throats or sneer, a holy beggar crouching in an angle howls after us his incoherent curse. While my horse passes close to one of these ruined pillars, I involuntarily extend my hand and touch the crumbling brick, as if to be assured that all this is not an illusion; that Fez, the city of our dream, does actually exist in all its dilapidated reality; that at last the object of our journey into Morocco has been attained; that our arrival in the Sultan's city is an accomplished fact. Then, followed by our caravan, we pass from under these ponderous arches and enter another court, smaller but not less strange than the first. Here, moving to and fro are a few white-robed beings; but so silently do they stalk along, seemingly unconscious of our presence, that we feel as if we had entered a city of the dead, inhabited only by sheeted ghosts. Already we feel as if the shroud of Islam were being slowly wrapped about us. To the left rise the walls which hide from view the seraglios and palaces of Mulai El-Hasan III, the Sultan; to the right are other walls, concealing we know not what mysterious buildings—vast abandoned structures which the stranger never sees.
IN THE GATES