The Passing of Morocco

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

ON THE CITADEL. TANGIER.

Still there are compensations. The Christian may build big ships and guns that shoot straighter than do Moslem guns, but he is not so wise. He works all day like an animal, and when he gets much money he comes to Tangier with it, and true believers, who live in cool gardens and smoke hasheesh, make him pay five times for everything he buys. He is mad, the Nazarene.

Seated at a modern French or Spanish table at a café on the Soko Chico, the Christian is beset by youthful bootblacks and donkey drivers; and older Moors in better dress come up to tell in whispers of the charms of a Moorish dance—‘genuine Moroccan, a Moorish lady, a beautiful Moorish lady’—that can be seen at a quiet place for ten pesetas Spanish. One of them, confident of catching us, presents a testimonial; and with difficulty we reserve our smile at its contents:

‘Mohammed Ben Tarah, worthy descendant of the Prophet, is a first-class guide to shops which pay him a commission on what you buy. He will take you also to see a Moorish dance, thoroughly indecent, well imitated, for all I know, by a fat Jewish woman. He has an exaggerated idea of his superficial knowledge of the English language, and as a prevaricator of the truth he worthily upholds the reputation of his race.’ (Signed.)

The Soko Chico of Tangier, though an unwholesome place, is thoroughly interesting. About the width of the Strand and half the length of Downing Street—that is, in American, half a block long-it is large enough, as spaces go in Morocco, to be called a market and to be used as such. From early morn until midnight the ‘Little Sok’ is crowded with petty merchants, whose stock of edibles, brought on platters or in little handcarts, could be bought for a Spanish dollar. Mightily they shout their wares, five hundred ‘hawkers’ in a space of half as many feet. The noise is terrific. The cry of horsemen for passage, the brawl of endless arguments, the clatter of small coins in the hands of money-changers, and the strains of the band at the ‘Grand Café,’ struggling to make audible selections from an opera; all these together create an infernal din. The Soko Chico, where the post-offices of the Powers alternate with European cafés, is, of all Morocco, the place where East and West come into closest touch. The Arab woman, veiled, sits cross-legged in the centre of the road, selling to Moslems bread of semolina, and the foreign consul, seated at a café table, sips his glass of absinthe. Occasionally a horseman with long, bushed hair, goes by towards the kasbah, followed a moment later by the English colonel, who lives on the Marshan and wears a helmet. A score of tourists gather at the café tables in the afternoon, and as many couriers, with brown, knotty, big-veined legs, always bare, squat against the walls of the various foreign post-offices, resting till the last moment before beginning their long, perilous, all-night runs. Jews who dress in gaberdines listen to Jews in European clothes, telling them about America.

But there is another Sok, the Outer Sok, beyond the walls, where the camels and the story-tellers come, and this is no hybrid place, but ‘real Morocco,’ and as fine a Sok as any town but Fez or Marakesh can show. Here, across a great open space that rises gradually from the outer walls, are stretched rows upon rows of ragged tents as high as one’s shoulder, and before them sit their keepers: Arab barbers ready to shave a head from ear to ear or leave a tuft of hair; unveiled Berber women, generally tattooed, selling grapes and prickly pears, or as they call them, Christian figs; Soudanese, sometimes freemen, trading or holding ponies for hire; women from the Soudan, generally pock-marked and mostly slaves, squatting among their masters’ vegetables; Riff men who have come perhaps from forty miles away to sell a load of charcoal worth two francs; pretty little half-veiled girls, with one earring, selling bread broken into half and quarter loaves; soldiers feeling the weight of each small piece and asking for half a dozen seeds of pomegranate as an extra inducement to buy; minstrels and snake-charmers and bards; water-carriers tinkling bells; blind beggars with their doleful chants—‘Allah, Allah-la’; camel-drivers; saints. At dark the big Sok goes to bed with the camels and the donkeys and the sheep; man and beast bed down together; and it is an eerie place to pick one’s way through when the night is dark. From choice we lived, when in Tangier, across the big Sok, at the Hôtel Cavilla, and sometimes of an evening, after dinner, would descend the slope, passing through the gates, down the narrow, cobbled streets, to the Soko Chico, with its flaring cafés, to sit perhaps and watch a Moorish kaid pit his skill at chess against a German champion. It was the business of Kaid Driss, commander of artillery, to be in readiness at this central square to go to any gate which Raisuli or another hostile leader might suddenly attack; and so this splendid Moor, a well-liked gentleman, spent the weary hours until midnight at this, the Moors’ favourite game. Around the corners, under dank arches, slept his troops, covered even to their noses, their guns, too, underneath their white jelebas. Except the Kaid himself there seemed to be no other Moorish soldier stirring after nine, or at the latest, ten o’clock, and if we should delay our stay within the walls beyond this hour, nothing but a Spanish or other coin more valuable than a Moorish piece would quiet the complaining brave who pulled himself together to unbar the gates for us to pass.

It is not only, however, when the sun is down that the Moor sleeps; he sleeps by day, as he tells you his religion teaches, and rolled in woollen cloth lies anywhere that slumber overtakes him, in the sands upon the beach, on the roadway under gates—what difference does it make, the earth is sweet and a hard bed is best! Why work like the Christian to spend like a fool?

One day I saw a fisherman without a turban, sitting on a rock, beside him a sleeping bundle of homespun haik. They were a pretty pair, and with my kodak I proceeded out to where they were, going cautiously, intending to get a picture, from behind, of the shaved head and its single trailing scalp-lock. But the fisherman discovered me and hurriedly lifted the hood of his jeleba, muttering something. The sound waked the sleeping bundle, which moved itself a moment, then poked out a likewise shaven head and a youthful face thinly covered with sprouting beard. ‘You English man?’ said the head.

‘No, ’Merican,’ I replied.

‘Dat’s better; more richer. Open you mouth and show dis chap you got gold teeth.’