Widows we were told have the special privilege of feeding their sheep wherever they like. The animals may browse on shrubs and trees, vegetables, corn or fruit, without let or hindrance from their neighbours. Consequently a widow’s lamb is fat and well-liking while larger flocks starve, and on market day it will sell for some six times the usual price.
Nomad or rather semi-nomad tribes abound in the district, their low tents of striped camel’s-hair cloth showing as dark patches on the desert or under the trees. They often build a few walls, rough fences and ovens, and settle almost permanently in one place, till the grass is worn away in front of their tents. The fields they cultivate stand high with corn and clover, to feed the camels tethered near the camp or the herds of goats that wander in and out at will. These nomads dress like the other inhabitants of Biskra, but the women wear more blue and less red, and have not quite the same air of being always in full dress. The tents are so low that the men dwarf them utterly, and even the women, short as they are, must stoop to enter. This matters little, as the life of the community is passed in the open. All day long the grinding of the mill may be heard, as the women take it in turns to work together sitting in the dust. The cooking of the cous-couss is done in a vessel hung on a tripod in true picnic fashion—furniture there is none. A few carpets and hangings, the necessary pots and pans, and the mill are all they need, so it is easy enough to strike tents and march wherever the fancy moves them. A pretty sight it is to see one of these caravans on the desert or amongst the dunes, as it comes slowly out of the distance, giving as it moves along just the touch of life and colour that was needed by the scene. The sand-dunes themselves are beautiful with a strange beauty that harmonises with the wild, free life. The shifting sands rise and fall in a succession of hills and hollows covered with yellow, green, and grey scrub, and thousands of bright yellow flowers, for all the world like the Lincolnshire sand-hills or Saunton burrows; only that here the dunes are immense, and stretch out not to the sea, for that has gone, but to the mountains of the Aures, or vanish only in the vast spaces of the Sahara.
On the way to Sidi Okba, where caravans are frequent, we met a sad little procession—a few men riding, one or two on foot, leading a camel with the body of a man swathed and bound like a mummy, and lying across the saddle. They came slowly, solemnly, out of the mysterious distance and disappeared into it again. As a soul passes so passed they.
The shrine of Sidi Okba is well worth seeing. The drive across the desert alone repays the weariness caused by jolting and shaking on a stony road. A real road it is, and not a bad one, considering that it has to pass over the river-bed and some very rough ground. However, it is no satisfactory desert, though flat and desolate enough, for everywhere there is green scrub sufficient to feed camels and the goats of the nomads. Here is neither a trackless wild nor a waterless waste, though the water has the good taste to hide itself under the ground or in the oases. The goal is visible from the start as a dim purple line, yet there is no lack of interest on the way, for the Djebel Ahmar-Kreddou and the surrounding hills assume new forms as mile after mile is left behind, and the colour comes and goes, waxes and wanes.
CARAVAN ON THE SAHARA
Though it is the religious capital of the Ziban and a sacred place, the village of Sidi Okba is built, like its neighbours, of sun-dried mud. But it owns a real bazaar and a large market-place. The bazaar is winding and irregular, shaded here and there by coarse canvas, or matting, stretched on ropes and bars of wood. Canvas of every shade of brown and ochre hangs flapping idly in the breeze over the square, cavernous shops, where, amongst strange, untempting wares, the owners sit motionless, only their eyes awake and on the watch. In other shops men work tirelessly at many trades. Colour exists only in the vividly blue sky, in the palms, and in a few scarlet handkerchiefs. The bazaar and the crowds who surge through it harmonise in tone. The nomads, with wild, dark faces and bare legs, shout as they bargain, unconscious alike of the din and turmoil and of their own value from a picturesque standpoint. Here are no Europeans, no odd contrasts; all is true, unspoilt. Men of the desert swarm in hundreds, but scarcely a woman is to be seen except in the market-place, where, in anticipation of a wedding to take place at night, rows of them sit near a wall, veiled, and listening to passionate, triumphant music, whilst their lords stroll about, or sit in groups as far from them as possible.
The great warrior Sidi Okba, who, after conquering Africa from Egypt to Tangiers, was killed in A.D. 682 by the Berbers, near Tehouda, now in ruins, a little to the north, was buried by his followers in this place. His tomb-mosque, the most ancient in Algeria, is quaintly impressive. It is built of short columns, roughly made and crudely painted, and its chief ornament is a door from Tobna, which is curious both in carving and in colour. The shrine is plain, and the Tsabout or sarcophagus is covered by bright silks embroidered with texts in Arabic. On one pillar is a simple inscription, worthy of so great a man, written in Cufic characters: Hada Kobr Okba ibn Nafê rhamah Allah. (“This is the tomb of Okba, son of Nafê. May God have mercy upon him.”)
Round the tomb and in the mosque men are always praying, and from all the little chambers, nooks, and corners comes the drone of voices; for they are full of scholars old and young, who sit in groups round their teachers, each with a worn board, on which is written a portion of the Koran, grasped in his hands. As they learn, they bend and rock and recite the lesson in sing-song tones. All Arab schools betray their whereabouts by this constant hum as of a gigantic hive.
Most of the neighbouring oases attract in different ways, and there are many favourite points of view, such as the Col de Sfa, which reveal new aspects of the Sahara and the Aures.