Morocco, Its People and Places

by Edmondo De Amicis

There is not in all Tangiers either cart or carriage; you hear no clang of bell, nor cry of itinerant vendor, nor sound of busy occupation; you see no hasty movement of persons or of things; even Europeans, not knowing what to do with themselves, stay for hours motionless in the square; every thing reposes and invites to repose. I myself, who have been here only a few days, begin to feel the influence of this soft and somnolent existence. Getting as far as the Soc-de-Barra, I am irresistibly impelled homeward; I read ten pages, and the book falls from my hand; if once I let my head fall back upon the easy chair, it is all over with me, and the very thought of care or occupation is sufficient to fatigue me. This sky, for ever blue, and this snow-white city form an image of unalterable peace, which, even with its monotony, becomes, little by little, the supreme end of life to all who inhabit this country.

Mahomet.

Among the numerous figures that buzzed about the doors of the Legation, there was a young Moor who had from the first attracted my eye; one of the handsomest men whom I saw in Morocco; tall and slender, with dark, melancholy eyes, and the sweetest of smiles; the face of an enamoured Sultan, whom Danas, the malign genius of the “Arabian Nights,” might have placed beside the Princess Badoura, instead of Prince Camaralzaman, sure that she would have made no objection to the change. He was called Mahomet, was eighteen years of age, and the son of a well-to-do Moor of Tangiers, a big and honest Mussulman protected by the Italian Legation, who, having been for some time menaced with death by the hand of an enemy, came every day with a frightened visage to claim the protection of the Minister. This Mahomet spoke a little Spanish, after the Moorish fashion, with all the verbs in the infinitive, and had thereby made acquaintance with my companions. He had been married only a few days. His father had given him a child of fifteen for a wife, who was as beautiful as he. But matrimony had not changed his habits; he remained, as we say, a Moor of the future—that is to say, he drank wine under the rose, smoked cigars, was tired of Tangiers, frequented the society of Europeans, and looked forward to a voyage to Spain. In these days, however, what drew him toward us was the desire of obtaining, through our intervention, permission to join the caravan, to go and see Fez, the great metropolis, his Rome, the dream of his childhood; and with this end he expended salutations, smiles, and grasps of the hand, with a prodigality and grace that would have seduced the entire imperial harem. Like most young Moors of his condition, he killed time in lounging from street to street, and from corner to corner, talking about the Minister’s new horses, or the departure of a friend for Gibraltar, or the arrival of a ship, or any topic that came uppermost; or else he stood like a statue, silent and motionless, in a corner of the market-place, with his thoughts no one knows where. With this handsome idler are bound up my recollections of the first Moorish house in which I put my foot, and the first Arab dinner at which I risked my palate. His father one day invited me to dinner, thus fulfilling an old wish of mine. Late one evening, guided by an interpreter, and accompanied by four servants of the Legation, I found myself at an arabesque door, which opened as if by enchantment at our approach; and crossing a white and empty chamber, we entered the court of the house. The first impression produced was that of a great confusion of people, a strange light and a marvellous pomp of color. We were received by the master of the house and his sons and relations, all crowned with large white turbans; behind them were some hooded servants; beyond, in the dark corners, and peeping through door-ways, the curious faces of women and children; and despite the number of persons, a profound silence. I thought myself in a room, until raising my eyes, I saw the stars, and found that we were in a central court, upon either side of which opened two long and lofty chambers without windows, each having a great arched door-way closed only by a curtain. The external walls were white as snow, the arches of the doors dentellated, the pavements in mosaic; here and there a window, and a niche for slippers. The house had been decorated for our coming; carpets covered the pavement; great chandeliers stood on either side of the doors, with red, yellow and green candles; on the tables were flowers and mirrors. The effect was very strange. There was something of the air of church decorations, and something of the ballroom and the theatre; artificial, but very pretty and graceful, and the distribution of light and arrangement of colors were very effective.

Marriage Procession in Tangiers.

Some moments were spent in salutations and vigorous grasps of the hand, and we were then invited to visit the bridal chamber. It was a long, narrow, and lofty room, opening on the court. At the end, on either side, stood the two beds, decorated with a rich, dark red stuff, with coverlets of lace; thick carpets covered the pavement, and hangings of red and yellow concealed the walls. Between the two beds was suspended the wife’s wardrobe: bodices, petticoats, drawers, gowns of unknown form, in all the colors of the rainbow, in wool, silk, and velvet, bordered and starred with gold and silver; the trousseau of a royal doll; a sight to turn the head of a ballet-dancer, and make a columbine die with envy. From thence we passed into the dining-room. Here also were carpets and hangings, flowers, tall chandeliers standing on the floor, cushions and pillows of all colors spread against the walls, and two gorgeous beds, for this was the nuptial chamber of the parents. The table stood all prepared near one of the beds, contrary to the Arab custom, which is to put the dishes on the floor and eat with the fingers; and upon it glittered an array of bottles, charged, to remind us, in the midst of a Moorish banquet, that Christians existed. Before taking our places at table, we seated ourselves cross-legged on the carpets, around the master’s secretary, who prepared tea before us, and made us take, according to custom, three cups a-piece, excessively sweetened, and flavored with mint; and between each cup we caressed the shaven head and braided tail of a pretty four-year-old boy, Mahomet’s youngest brother, who furtively counted the fingers on our hands, in order to make sure that we had the same number as a Mussulman, and no more. After tea we took our seats at table, and the master, being entreated, seated himself also; and then the Arab dishes, objects of our intense curiosity, began to circulate. I tasted the first with simple faith. Great heaven! My first impulse was to attack the cook. All the contractions that can be produced upon the face of a man who is suddenly assailed by an acute colic, or who hears the news of his banker’s failure, were, I think, visible on mine. I understood in one moment how it was that a people who ate in that way should believe in another God, and take other views of human life than ours. I cannot express what I felt otherwise than by likening myself to some unhappy wretch who is forced to satisfy his appetite upon the pomatum pots of his barber. There were flavors of soaps, pomades, wax, dyes, cosmetics—every thing that is least proper to be put in a human mouth. At each dish we exchanged glances of wonder and dismay. No doubt the original material was good enough—chickens, mutton, game, fish; large dishes of a very fine appearance, but all swimming in most abominable sauces, and so flavored and perfumed that it would have seemed more natural to attack them with a comb rather than with a fork. However, we were in duty bound to swallow something, and the only eatable thing seemed to be mutton on a spit. Not even the famous cùscùssù, the national Moorish dish, which bore a perfidious resemblance to our Milanese risotto, could we get down without a pang. There was one among us who managed to taste of all; a consolatory fact which shows that there are still great men in Italy. At every mouthful our host humbly interrogated us by a look; and we, opening our eyes very wide, answered in chorus, “Excellent! exquisite!” and hastened to swallow a glass of wine to revive our drooping courage. At a certain moment there burst out in the court-yard a gust of strange music that made us all spring to our feet. There were three musicians come, according to Moorish custom, to enliven the banquet: three large-eyed Arabs, dressed in white and red; one with a theorbo, another with a mandolin, and a third with a small drum. All three were seated on the ground in the court-yard, near a niche where their slippers were deposited. Little by little, our libations, the odor of the flowers, and that of aloes burning in carved perfume-burners of Fez, and that strange Arab music, which, by dint of repetition, takes possession of the fancy with its mysterious lament, all overcame us with a sort of taciturn and fantastic dreaminess, under the influence of which we felt our heads crowned with turbans, and visions of sultanas floated before our eyes.

The dinner over, all rose and spread themselves about the room, the court, or the vestibule, looking into every corner with childlike curiosity. At every dark angle stood an Arab wrapped in his white mantle like a statue. The door of the bridal chamber had been closed by a curtain, and through the interstices a great movement of veiled heads could be seen. Lights appeared and disappeared at the upper windows, and low voices and the rustle of garments were heard on all sides. About and above us fermented an invisible life, bearing witness that though within the walls we were without the household; that beauty, love, the family soul, had taken refuge in the penetralia; that we were the spectacle while the house remained a mystery. At a certain moment the Minister’s housekeeper came out of a small door, where she had been visiting the bride, and, passing by us, murmured, “Ah, if you could see her! What a rosebud! What a creature of paradise!” And the sad lamenting music went on, and the perfumed aloe smoke arose, and our fancies grew more and more active, more so than ever, when we issued forth from that air filled with light and perfume, and plunged into a dark and solitary alley, lighted only by one lantern, and surrounded by profoundest silence.

One evening we received the not unexpected intelligence that the next day the Aissawa would enter the city. The Aissawa are one of the principal religious confraternities of Morocco, founded, like the others, under the inspiration of God, by a saint called Sidi-Mohammed-ben-Aissa, born at Mekïnez two centuries ago. His life is a long and confused legend of miracles and fabulous events, variously related. The Aissawa propose to themselves to obtain the special protection of heaven, praying continually, exercising certain practices peculiar to themselves, and keeping alive in their hearts a certain religious fever, a divine fury, which breaks out in extravagant and ferocious manifestations. They have a great mosque at Fez, which is the central house of the order, and from thence they spread themselves every year over the provinces of the empire, gathering together as they go those members of the brotherhood who are in the towns and villages. Their rites, similar to those of the howling and whirling Dervishes of the East, consist in a species of frantic dances, interspersed with leaps, yells, and contortions, in the practice of which they grow ever more furious and ferocious, until, losing the light of reason, they crush wood and iron with their teeth, burn their flesh with glowing coals, wound themselves with knives, swallow mud and stones, brain animals and devour them alive and dripping with blood, and finally fall to the ground insensible. The Aissawa whom I saw at Tangiers did not go to quite such extremities, and probably they seldom do, but they did quite enough to leave an indelible impression on my memory.

The Belgian Minister invited us to see the spectacle from the terrace of his house, which looked over the principal street of Tangiers, where the Aissawa generally passed on their way to their mosque. They were to pass at ten o’clock in the morning, coming in at the Soc-de-Barra. At nine the street was already full of people, and the tops of the houses crowded with Arab and Jewish women in all the colors of the rainbow, giving to the white terraces the look of great baskets of flowers. At the given hour all eyes were turned toward the gate at the end of the street, and in a few minutes the leaders of the procession appeared. The street was so thronged with people that for some time nothing could be seen but a waving mass of hooded heads, amid which shone out a few shaven skulls. Above them floated here and there a banner; and now and then a cry as of many voices broke forth. The crowd moved forward slowly. Little by little a certain order and regularity in the movement of all these heads became visible. The first formed a circle; others beyond a double file; others again beyond another circle; then the first in their turn broke into a double line, the second formed in a circle, and so on. But I am not very sure of what I say, because in the eager curiosity which possessed me to observe single figures it is possible that the precise laws of the general movement escaped me. My first impression as they arrived below our terrace was one of pity and horror combined. There were two lines of men, facing each other, wrapped in mantles and long white shirts, holding each other by the hands, arms, or shoulders, and, with a rocking swaying motion, stepping in cadence, throwing their heads backward and forward, and keeping up a low eager murmur, broken by groans, and sighs, and sobs of rage and terror. Only “The Possessed,” by Rubens, “The Dead Alive,” by Goya, and “The Dead Man Magnetized” of Edgar Poe, could give an idea of those figures. There were faces livid and convulsed, with eyes starting from the sockets, and foaming mouths; faces of the fever-stricken and the epileptic; some illuminated by an unearthly smile, some showing only the whites of their eyes, others contracted as by atrocious spasms, or pallid and rigid, like corpses. From time to time, making a strange gesture with their outstretched arms, they all burst out together in a shrill and painful cry, as of men in mortal agony; then the dance forward began again, with its accompaniment of groans and sobs, while hoods and mantles, wide sleeves and long disordered hair, streamed on the wind, and whirled about them with snake-like undulations. Some rushed from one side to the other, staggering like drunken men, or beating themselves against walls and doors; others, as if rapt in ecstasy, moved along, stiff and rigid, with head thrown back, eyes half closed, and arms swinging; and some, quite exhausted, unable any longer to yell, or to keep on their feet, were held up under the arms by their companions, and dragged along with the crowd. The dance became every moment more frantic, and the noise more deafening, while a nauseous smell came up from all those bodies like the odor of a menagerie of wild beasts. Here and there a convulsed visage turned upward toward our terrace, and a pair of staring eyes were fixed on mine, constraining me to turn away my face. The spectacle affected me in different ways. Now it seemed a great masquerade, and tempted me to laugh; then it was a procession of madmen, of creatures in the delirium of fever, of drunken wretches, or those condemned to death and striving to deaden their own terror, and my heart swelled with compassion; and again, the savage grandeur of the picture pleased my artistic sense. But gradually my mind accepted the inner meaning of the rite, and I comprehended what all of us have more or less experienced—the spasms of the human soul under the dread pressure of the Infinite; and unconsciously my thoughts explained the mystery: Yes; I feel Thee, mysterious and tremendous Power; I struggle in the grasp of the invisible hand; the sense of Thee oppresses me, I cannot contain it; my heart is dismayed, my reason is lost, my garment of clay is rent. And still they went by, a pallid and dishevelled mass, raising voices of pain and supplication, and seeming in their last agony. One old man, an image of distracted Lear, broke from the ranks, and tried to dash his head against a wall, his companions holding him back. A youth fell head foremost to the ground, and remained there insensible. Another, with streaming hair and face hidden in his hands, went by with long steps, his body bent almost to the earth, like one accursed of God. Bedouins were among them, Berbers, blacks, mummies, giants, satyrs, cannibal faces, faces of saints, of birds of prey, of Indian idols, furies, fauns, devils. There were between three and four hundred, and in half an hour they had all gone by. The last were two women (for they also belong to the order), looking as if they had been buried alive, and had escaped from their tomb,—two animated skeletons dressed in white, with hair streaming over their faces, straining eyes, and mouths white with foam, exhausted, but still moving along with the unconscious action of machines; and between them marched a gigantic old man, like an aged sorcerer. Dressed in a long white shirt, and stretching out two bony arms, he placed his hands now on one head, now on the other, with a gesture of protection, and helped them to rise when they fell. Behind these three spectres came a throng of armed Arabs, women, beggars, and children; and all the mass of barbarism and horrid human misery broke into the square, and was dispersed in a few minutes about the city.