XXXV
The caravan stopped in front of the Zaouïa gate. There were great iron doors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour than the deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset the doors were closed.
One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate and guttural in a loud voice.
Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. A name was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, and a great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissed the hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly that the lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could, saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies, one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lord himself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were he not absent.
The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the little procession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation for many animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirty or forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, that the women might descend from their bassourahs. There were three, all veiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly, as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless, she supported her companion, whose bassour she had shared. The two Soudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which the servants of the Zaouïa, began helping them to unload; but the master of the expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was now obliged to walk. Several men of the Zaouïa acted as their guides, gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, and appearing not to see the women.
They passed through another court, very large, though not so immense as the first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camels and horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorer class, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cook their own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air, and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through a subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways, or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.
By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious labyrinth of the vast Zaouïa, the corridors and courts became less ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.
Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque, which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout, the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.