Morocco, Its People and Places

by Edmondo De Amicis

The Governor Abd-Alla.

Bu-Bekr-Ben-el-Abbassi, an elegant and graceful personage, pressed warmly the hand of our chief, saluted amicably Ducali, his former school companion, and welcomed the rest with a dignified and graceful gesture. We rode on, and for some time not one of us could take our eyes off the new-comer. He was the most interesting of all the governors we had seen. Of middle height, and slender figure, dark, with soft penetrating eyes, aquiline nose, and a full black beard, through which, when he smiled, gleamed two rows of beautiful teeth. He was wrapped in a fine snow-white mantle, with the hood drawn over his turban, and mounted on a jet-black horse with sky-blue housings. He looked like a generous, beloved, and happy man. Either my fancy misled me, or the aspect of the two hundred horsemen from Karia-el-Abbassi reflected the benignity of the governor. They appeared to me to have the open and contented expression of men who had for years enjoyed the miraculous grace of a humane government.

This appearance, together with the huts, that began to be more frequent in the country, and the serene weather, refreshed by a perfumed breeze, gave me for a time the delusion that the province was an oasis of prosperity and peace in the midst of the miserable empire of the Scherifs.

We passed through a village composed of two rows of camel-skin tents, held together with canes and sticks; every tent having a tiny enclosure surrounded by a cactus hedge. Beyond the tents cows and horses were feeding; in front, upon our road, were some groups of half-naked children come to look at us; ragged men and women peeped at us over the hedges. No one shook his fist at us, no one cursed us. Hardly had we passed the village when they all came out of their huts, and we beheld a crowd of some hundreds of black, hideous, famine-stricken wretches, who might have risen from some graveyard. Some ran behind us for a while; others vanished among the irregularities of the ground.

The configuration of the country through which we were passing gave rise to a wonderful variety of picturesque effects as the escort and caravan proceeded. It was a succession of deep valleys, parallel to each other, formed by great earth waves, and all covered with flowers like a garden. Passing from one valley to another we would lose sight of the escort for a moment; then on the top of the height behind us would appear, first the muzzles of the muskets, then fezes and turbans, then faces, and finally the figures of men and horses, rising apparently out of the earth. Looking back from a height we could see the two hundred scattered along the valley amid the smoke and re-echoing noises of their shots, and far along behind, the servants, soldiers, horses, and mules, appearing for an instant, and then plunging into the depths and lost to sight. Seen in that way the caravan appeared interminable, and presented the grandiose aspect of an expeditionary army or an emigrating people.

Karia-el-Abbassi was made up of the governor’s house and a group of huts shaded by a few fig and wild olive trees. We accepted the governor’s invitation to rest at his house, and the caravan went on to the spot selected for the camp.

Crossing two or three courts, enclosed between bare white walls, we entered a garden, upon which opened the principal gate of the mansion; a little white house, windowless, and silent as a convent. A few mulatto slaves showed us into a small ground-floor room, also white, with no aperture except the door by which we entered, and another little door in a corner. There were two alcoves, three white mattresses on the mosaic floor, and some embroidered cushions. It was the first time we had been within four walls since our departure from Tangiers; we stretched ourselves voluptuously in the alcoves, and awaited with curiosity the continuation of the spectacle.

The governor came in wrapped in a snowy caic that reached from his turban to his feet. He threw off his yellow slippers, and sat down barefooted on the mattress between Ducali and the ambassador. Slaves brought jars of milk and plates of sweetmeats, and Ben-el-Abbassi himself made the tea, and poured it out into beautiful little cups of Chinese porcelain, which his favorite servant, a young mulatto with his face tattooed in arabesque, carried round. The grace and dignity of our host in all that he did are not to be described, and seemed amazing in a man who was probably very ignorant, who governed a few thousands of tented Arabs, and never in all his life perhaps had seen fifty civilized persons. In the most aristocratic salon in Europe not the least fault could have been found in his manners. His dress was fresh, neat, and fragrant as that of an odalisque just come from the bath. As he moved, his caic showed beneath gleams of the splendid and varied colors of his costume, inspiring in the spectator an ardent wish to tear off the veil and see what was hidden under it. He spoke in quiet tones and without the slightest appearance of curiosity, as if he had seen us the day before. He had never been out of Morocco, and said that he should like much to see our railways and our great palaces; and he knew that there were in Italy three cities which were called Genoa, Rome, and Venice. As he conversed, the little door opened behind him, and the head of a pretty little mulatto girl was thrust out, which rolled around two large astonished and startled eyes, and vanished. She was the governor’s daughter by a black woman. He was aware of the apparition, and smiled. There followed a long interval of silence. In the middle of the chamber rose the fumes of burning aloes from the perfume burners; before the door stood a group of curious slaves; behind the slaves were palm trees; and over all smiled the clear blue sky of Africa. It all seemed so unreal that I found myself thinking of my little room in Turin, and of its sometime occupant, as of another person.

On our way to the encampment, which was about half a mile from the governor’s house, upon a high plain covered with dry grass, we for the first time felt the scorching power of the sun. It was only the 8th of May; and we were not a hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast, and we had yet to cross the great plain of the Sebù.