Morocco, Its People and Places

by Edmondo De Amicis

An hour afterward the caid and Ali were asleep, each in his tent; the night was very dark, there was not a breath of wind, not a leaf moving; nothing was heard but the murmur of the river, and the breathing of the sleeping men. Suddenly a formidable voice broke the silence of the night:—

“Arusi salutes thee, O Sheik Sid-Mohammed Abd-el-Djebar!”

The old caid sprang to his feet and heard the rapid beat of a horse’s feet departing. He called his soldiers, who came in haste, and shouted, “My horse! my horse!” They sought his horse, the most superb animal in the whole of Garb; it was gone. They ran to the tent of Sid-Ali: he was stretched to the ground, dead, with a poniard stuck in his left eye. The caid burst into tears; the soldiers went off on the track of the fugitive. They saw him for an instant, like a shadow; then lost him; again saw him; but he sped like the lightning, and vanished not to be seen again. Nevertheless they continued to follow, all the night, until they reached a thick wood where they halted to await the dawn. When daylight appeared they saw far off the caid’s horse approaching, tired out and all bloody, filling the air with lamentable neighings. Thinking that Arusi must be in the wood, they loosed the dogs and advanced sword in hand. In a few minutes they discovered a dilapidated house half-hidden among the trees. The dogs stopped there. The soldiers came to the door, and levelling their muskets let them fall with a cry of amazement. Within the four ruined walls lay the corpse of Arusi, and beside it, a lovely woman, splendidly dressed, with her hair loose on her shoulders, was binding up his bleeding feet, sobbing, laughing, and murmuring words of despair and love. It was Rahmana. They took her to her father’s house, where she remained three days without speaking one word, and then disappeared. She was found some time afterward in the ruined house in the wood, scratching up the earth with her hands, and calling on Arusi. And there she stayed. “God,” said the Arabs, “had called her reason back to Himself, and she was a saint.” Whether she is still living or not, no one knows. She was certainly living twenty years ago, and was seen in her hermitage by M. Narcisse Cotte, attached to the Consulate of France at Tangiers, who told her story.

There is not now a corner of Fez that is unknown to us; and yet it seems as if we had only arrived yesterday, so varied is the aspect of the place, so much does every object revive in us the sense of our solitude, so little do we become habituated to the curiosity that we create. And this curiosity is in no wise lessened, although by this time we have been seen over and over again by every native of Fez. Timidity, on the other hand, is lessened, and antipathy, perhaps, a little; the children come nearer and touch our garments, to feel what they are made of; the women look at us with forbidding glances, but they no longer turn back when they see us coming; curses are more rare, the soldiers do not use their sticks so much, and the blows that Ussi received were, it is to be hoped, the first and last blows with a fist that I shall have to report in Italy. And although, in our walks through the city, we are followed and preceded by a crowd, I think we could now go out alone without danger of death. Already the people, according to the soldier’s testimony, have given each of us a name, according to Moorish custom: the doctor is “the man with the spectacles”; the vice-consul is “the man with the flat nose”; the captain is “the man with the black boots”; Ussi is “the man with the white handkerchief”; the commandant, “the man with the short legs”; Biseo, “the man with the red hair”; Morteo, “the velvet man,” because he is dressed in velvet; and myself, “the man with the broken shoe,” because a pain in my foot obliged me to make a cut in my boot. They comment much upon our doings, it appears, and say that we are all ugly, not one accepted, not even the cook, who received this intelligence with a laugh of scorn, and clapped his hand on a pocket in his vest, where he had a letter from his sweetheart. And it seems to me that they find us, or pretend to find us ridiculous, because, in the streets, they laugh with a certain ostentation every time that one of us slips, or hits his head against a branch of a tree, or loses his hat. Nevertheless, and despite the variety of the landscape, this population all of one color, and without apparent distinction of rank, this silence broken only by an eternal rustle of slippers and mantles, these veiled women, these blind, mute houses, this mysterious life,—all end by producing a dreadful tedium. We must be within doors at sunset, and may not go out again. With the daylight ceases all trade, every movement, every sign of life; Fez is no more than a vast necropolis, where if perchance a human voice is heard, it is the howl of a madman, or the shriek of one who is being murdered; and he who insists upon going about at any cost, must be accompanied by a patrol with loaded muskets, and a company of carpenters who at every three hundred paces must knock down a gate that stops the way. In the daytime the city supplies no news beyond some woman found in the street with a dagger in her heart, or the departure of a caravan, or the arrival of a governor or vice-governor of some province who has been thrown into prison, the bastinado administered to some dignitary, a festival in honor of some saint, or other things of the same character brought to us in general by Mohammed Ducali or Schellal, who are our two perambulating journals. And these events, with what I daily see, and the singular life I lead, give me at night such strangely intricate dreams of severed heads, and deserts, of harems, prisons, Fez, Timbuctoo, and Turin, that when I wake in the morning, it takes me some minutes to find out what world I am in.

How many beautiful, grotesque, horrible, absurd, and strange figures will live in my memory for ever! My head is full of them, and when I am alone I make them pass before me one by one, like the figures in a magic lantern, with inexpressible pleasure. There is Sid-Buker, the mysterious being who comes three times every day, wrapped in a great mantle, with head down, half-closed eyes, pale as death, stealthy as a spectre, to confer secretly with the Ambassador, and vanishes like a figure in a phantasmagoria, without any one observing him. There is the favorite Sid-Moussa, a handsome young mulatto, graceful as a girl, elegant as a prince, fresh and smiling, who goes leaping up and down the stairs, and salutes you with a sort of coquetry, bowing profoundly and extending his hand as if he were throwing kisses. There is a soldier of the guard, a Berber, born in the Atlas Mountains, a countenance that one cannot see without a shudder, and who fixes upon me a cold, perfidious, immovable glance, as if he meant to kill me; and the more I try to avoid him the more I meet him, and he seems to divine the dread with which he inspires me, and to take a satanic pleasure in it. There is a decrepit old woman, whom I saw in the door of a mosque, naked as she was born, except for a formless rag about her hips, with her head as bald as the palm of my hand, and a body so deformed that I made an exclamation of horror, and was disturbed for some time by the sight of her. There is the mischievous Moorish woman, who, entering her house as we were passing by, threw off in furious haste the caic that covered her, and giving us a glimpse of her handsome, straight, and well-made figure, and a sparkling glance, shut the door. There is the very old shopkeeper, with a face at once ridiculous and frightful, so bent over that when he stands in the back of his dark niche he seems almost to touch his toes with his chin; he keeps only one eye open, and that is hardly visible; and every time I pass his shop, and look in at him, that eye opens large and round, and shines with a sort of mocking smile that gives me a kind of anxious feeling. There is the beautiful little Moorish girl of ten years old, with her hair loose about her shoulders, dressed in a chemise bound round the waist with a green scarf, who, in attempting to jump from one terrace to another lower one, got caught by her chemise upon the corner of a brick, and was held dangling; and she, knowing that she was seen from the palace of the Embassy, and unable to get up or down, raised the most despairing shrieks, and all the women in the house came, shaking with laughter, to her assistance. There is the gigantic mulatto, a madman, who, pursued by the fixed idea that the Sultan’s soldiers are seeking him to cut his hand off, flies through the streets like some wild thing held in chase, convulsively shaking his right arm as if it were already mutilated, and giving the most frightful yells, which can be heard from one end of the city to the other. There are many, many more; but the one who rises oftenest before my memory is a negro, of about fifty years of age, a servant of the palace, a little more than a yard high, and a little less than a yard wide, a contented spirit, who is always smiling and twisting his mouth toward his right ear; the most grotesque, the most absurdly ridiculous figure that ever appeared under the vault of heaven; and it is of no use for me to bite my fingers, and tell myself that it is ignoble to laugh at human deformity, and shame myself in many ways, the laugh breaks out in spite of me—there must be in it some mysterious intention of Providence—it must break out. And—I really cannot help it—the idea presents itself, what a capital pipe-bowl he would make!

Slave Of The Sultan.

As the day of departure draws near, the merchants come in crowds to the palace, and buying goes on with fury. The rooms, the court, and the gallery have taken the aspect of a bazaar. Everywhere long rows of vases, embroidered slippers, cushions, carpets, caics. Every thing in Fez that is most gilded, most arabesqued, most dear in price, is passed before our eyes. And it is worth while to see how they sell, these people, without a word, without a flitting smile, only making the sign of yes or no with the head, and going away, having sold or not having sold, with the same automaton faces that they brought. Above all, the painters’ room is fine, converted into a great bric-à-brac shop, full of saddles, stirrups, guns, caftans, ragged scarfs, pottery, barbaric ornaments, old girdles of women, come from heaven knows where, that have perhaps felt the pressure of the Sultan’s arms, and next year will appear in some grand picture at Naples or New York. One kind of thing only is wanting, namely, antique objects, records of the various peoples who have conquered and colonized Morocco; and although it is known that such are often found underground and among the ruins, it is not possible to get them, because every object so found has to be carried to the authorities, and whoever finds one hides it; and the authorities, ignorant of their value, destroy or sell as useless material the little that finds its way to them. In this way, a few years ago, a bronze horse and some small bronze statues, which were found in a well near the remains of an aqueduct, were broken up and sold for old copper to a Jew dealer in second-hand goods.

To-day I had a warm discussion with a merchant of Fez, with the intention of finding out what opinion the Moors held of European civilization; and for that reason I did not trouble myself to refute his arguments, except when it was necessary to give him line. He is a handsome man of forty, of an honest and severe countenance, who has visited, in his commerce, the principal cities of Western Europe, and who lived a good while at Tangiers, where he learned some Spanish. I had exchanged a few words with him some days ago, à propos of a small piece of stuff woven of silk and gold, which he pretended to be worth ten marenghi. But to-day, attacking him upon the subject of his travels, a conversation ensued which his companions listened to with astonishment, although they could not understand it. I asked him then what impression the great cities of Europe had made upon him; not expecting, however, to hear any great expression of admiration, because I knew, as everybody knows, that of the four or five hundred merchants of Morocco who go every year to Europe the greater part return to their own country more stupidly fanatical than at first, when they do not return more rascally and vicious; and that if they were all amazed at the splendor of our cities, and at the marvels of our industries, not one of them would be touched in the soul, moved in the mind, spurred on to imitate, to attempt; not one persuaded of the complex inferiority of his own country; and certainly not one, even if he experienced such sentiments, who would be ready to express them, and still less to diffuse them, through the fear of calling down upon himself the accusation of being a renegade Mussulman and an enemy to his country.

“What have you to say,” I asked, “of our great cities?”