Morocco, Its People and Places

by Edmondo De Amicis

Another fine spectacle that we had at Tangiers was that of the festival of the birth of Mahomet; and it made the greater impression upon me that I saw it unexpectedly. Returning from a walk on the sea-shore, I heard some shots in the direction of the Soc-de-Barra. I turned my steps in that direction, and at first found it difficult to recognize the place. The Soc-de-Barra was transfigured. From the walls of the city up to the summit of the hill swarmed a crowd of white-robed Arabs, all in the highest state of animation. There might have been about three thousand persons, but so scattered and grouped that they appeared innumerable. It was a most singular optical illusion. On all the heights around, as upon so many balconies, were groups seated in Oriental fashion, motionless, and turned toward the lower part of the Soc, where the crowd—divided into two portions—left a large space free for the evolutions of a company of cavalry, who, ranged in a line, galloped about, discharging their long guns in the air. On the other side an immense circle of Arab men and women were looking on at the games of ball-players, fencers, serpent-charmers, dancers, singers and musicians, and soldiers. Upon the top of the hill, under a conical tent open in front, could be discerned the enormous white turban of the Vice-Governor of Tangiers, who presided at the festival, seated on the ground in the midst of a circle of Moors. From above could be seen in the crowd the soldiers of the Legations, dressed in their showy red caftans, a few tall hats, and European parasols, and one or two artists, sketch-book in hand, while Tangiers and the sea formed a background to the whole. The discharge of musketry, the yells of the cavalry, the tinkle of the water-sellers’ bells, the joyful cries of the women, the noise of pipes, horns, and drums, made up a fitting accompaniment to the strange and savage spectacle, bathed in the burning noon-day light.

My curiosity impelled me to look everywhere at once, but a sudden scream of admiration from a group of women made me turn to the horsemen. There were twelve of them, all of tall stature, with pointed red caps, white mantles, and blue, orange, and red caftans, and among them was a youth, dressed with feminine elegance, the son of the Governor of Rif. They drew up in a line against the wall of the city, with faces toward the open country. The son of the Governor, in the middle, raised his hand, and all started in full career. At first there was a slight hesitation and confusion, but in a moment the twelve horsemen formed but one solid serried line, and skimmed over the ground like a twelve-headed and many-colored monster devouring the way.

Nailed to their saddles, with heads erect, and white mantles streaming in the wind of their career, they lifted their guns above their heads, and, pressing them against their shoulders, discharged them all together, with a yell of triumph, and then vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust. A few moments after they came back slowly and in disorder—the horses covered with foam and blood, their riders bearing themselves proudly, and then they began again. At every new discharge, the Arab women, like ladies at a tourney, saluted them with a peculiar cry, that is a rapid repetition of the monosyllable Jù (or in English yù) like a sort of joyous trill.

We went to look at the ball-players. About fifteen Arab boys and men—some of the latter with white beards—some with sabres, some with guns slung across their shoulders, were tossing a leathern ball about as big as an orange. One would take it, let it fall, and send it into the air with a blow of his foot; all the others rushed to catch it before it fell. The one who caught it repeated the action of the first; and so the group of players, always following the ball, were in constant movement from one point to another. The curious part of it was that there was not a word, nor a cry, nor a smile among them. Old men and boys, all were equally serious and intent upon the game, as upon some necessary labor, and only their panting breath and the sound of their feet could be heard.

At a few paces farther on, within another circle of spectators, some negroes were dancing to the sound of a pipe and a small conical drum, beaten with a stick in the shape of a half moon. There were eight of them—big, black, and shining like ebony, with nothing on them but a long white shirt, bound round the waist by a thick green cord. Seven of them held each other’s hand in a ring, while the eighth was in the middle, and all danced together, or rather accompanied the music, without moving from their places, but with a certain indescribable movement of the hips, and that satyr-like grin, that expression of stupid beatitude and bestial voluptuousness, which is peculiar to the black race. Whilst I stood looking on at this scene, two boys, about ten years of age, among the spectators, gave me a taste of the ferocity of Arab blood. They suddenly—and for some unknown reason—fell upon each other, and clinging together like a couple of young tigers, bit, clawed, and scratched, with a fury that was horrible to see. Two strong men had as much as they could do to separate them, and they were borne off all bloody and torn, and struggling to attack each other again.

The fencers made me laugh. They were four, fencing in couples, with sticks. The extravagance and awkwardness of this performance are not to be described, In other cities in Morocco I afterward saw the same thing, so it is evidently the native school of fencing. The leaps, contortions, attitudes, and waving of arms, were beyond words, and all done with a self-satisfied air that was enough to make one fall upon them with their own sticks and send them flying. The Arab spectators, however, stood about with open mouths, and frequently glanced at me, as if to enjoy my wonder and admiration, while I, willing to content them, affected to be much delighted. Then some of them drew aside that I might see them better, and I presently found myself surrounded and pressed on all sides by the Arabs, and was able to satisfy in full my desire to study the race in all its more intimate peculiarities. A soldier of the Italian Legation, seeing me in these straits, and thinking me an involuntary prisoner, came to my rescue, rather against my will, with fist and elbows.

The circle of the story-teller was the most interesting, though the smallest of all. I arrived just at the moment when he had finished the usual inaugural prayer, and was beginning his narrative. He was a man of about fifty, almost black, with a jet-black beard and gleaming eyes, wearing, like all of his profession in Morocco, an ample white robe, bound round the waist with a camel’s-hair girdle, giving him the majestic air of an antique priest. He spoke in a high voice, and slowly, standing erect within the circle of listeners, while two musicians with drum and hautboy kept up a low accompaniment. I could not understand a word, but his face, voice, and gestures, were so expressive that I managed to gather something of the meaning of his story. He seemed to be relating a tale of a journey. Now he imitated the action of a tired horse, and pointed to a distant and immense horizon; then he seemed to seek about for a drop of water, and his arms and head dropped as if in complete exhaustion. Suddenly he discovers something at a distance, appears uncertain, believes, and doubts the evidence of his senses—again believes, is re-animated, hastens his flagging steps, arrives, gives thanks to Heaven, and throws himself on the earth with a long breath of satisfaction, smiling with pleasure in the shade of a delightful oasis. The audience meanwhile stood without breath or motion, suspended on the lips of the orator, and reflecting in their faces his every word and gesture. The ingenuousness and freshness of feeling that are hidden under their hard and savage exterior became plainly visible. As the story-teller became more fervent in his narrative, and raised his voice, the two musicians blew and beat with increasing fury, and the listeners drew closer together in the intensity of their interest, until, finally, the whole culminated in one grand burst; the musicians threw their instruments into the air, and the crowd dispersed, and gave place to another circle.

There were three performers who had drawn a large audience about them. One played on a sort of bagpipes, another on a tambourine with bells, and the third on an extraordinary instrument compounded of a clarionet and two horns, which gave forth most discordant sounds. All three men were bandy-legged, tall, and with backs bent into a curve. Wrapped in a few rags, they stood side by side close together as if they had been bound one to the other, and, playing an air which they had probably played for fifty years or more, they marched around the square. Their movement was peculiar—something between walking and dancing,—and their gestures so extraordinary, made as they were with mechanical regularity and all together, that I imagine them to have expressed some idea founded in some characteristic peculiarity of the Arab people. Those three, streaming with heat from every pore, played and marched about for more than an hour in the fashion I have described, with unalterable gravity, while a hundred or so of lookers-on stood, with the sun in their eyes, giving no outward sign either of pleasure or of weariness.

The noisiest circle was that of the soldiers. There were twelve, old and young, some with white caftans, some in shirts only, one with a fez, another in a hood, and all armed with flint muskets as long as lances, into which they put the powder loose, like all their fellows in Morocco, where the cartridge is not in use. An old man directed the manœuvres. They ranged themselves in two rows of six each, facing one another. At a signal, all changed places with each other, running and putting one knee to the ground. Then one of them struck up, in a shrill falsetto voice, a sort of chant, full of trills and warblings, which lasted a few minutes, and was listened to in perfect silence. Then suddenly they all bounded to their feet in a circle, and with an immense leap and a shout of joy, fired off their guns muzzle downward. The rapidity, the fury, and something madly festive and diabolically cheerful in the performance, are not to be described. Among the spectators near me was a little Arab girl about ten years old, not yet veiled, one of the prettiest little faces I saw in Tangiers, of a delicate pale bronze in color, who, with her large blue eyes full of wonder, gazed at a spectacle much more marvellous to her than that of the soldiers’ dance: she saw me take off my gloves, which Arab boys believe to be a sort of second skin that Christians have on their hands, and can remove at pleasure without inconvenience or pain.

I hesitated about going to see the serpent-charmers, but curiosity overcame repugnance. These so-called magicians belong to the confraternity of the Aissawa, and pretend to have received from their patron, Ben Aissa, the privilege of enduring uninjured the bite of the most venomous beasts. Many travellers, in fact, most worthy of belief, assert that they have seen these men bitten severely, until the blood flowed, by serpents that a moment before had shown the fatal effect of their venom upon some animal. The Aissawa whom I saw gave a horrible but bloodless spectacle. He was a little fellow, muscular, with a cadaverous and stern countenance, the air of a Merovingian king, and dressed in a sort of blue shirt that came down to his heels. When I drew near he was engaged in jumping grotesquely about a goat-skin spread on the ground, upon which was a sack containing the serpents; and as he jumped he sang, to the accompaniment of a flute, a melancholy song that was perhaps an invocation to his saint. The song finished, he chattered and gesticulated for some time, trying to get some money thrown to him, and then kneeling down before the goat-skin, he thrust his arm into the sack and drew out a long greenish snake, extremely lively, and carried it round, handling it very carefully, for the spectators to see. This done, he began to twist it about in all directions, and generally use it as if it had been a rope. He seized it by the neck, he suspended it by the tail, he bound it round his head like a fillet, he hid it in his bosom, he made it pass through the holes in the edge of a tambourine, he threw it on the ground and set his foot upon, it, he stuck it under his arm. The horrible beast erected its head, darted out its tongue, twisted itself about with those flexible, odious, abject movements that seem the expression of perfidious baseness; and all the rage that burned in its body seemed to shoot in sparkles from its small eyes; but I could not see that it ever once attempted to bite the hand that held it. After this, the Aissawa seized the serpent by the neck, and fixed a small bit of iron in its mouth, so as to keep it open and display the fangs to the spectators; and then taking its tail between his teeth, he proceeded to bite it, while the beast went through violent contortions; and I left the place in horror and disgust.