The Passing of Morocco

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

CHAPTER II
NIGHTS ON A ROOF

I did not stop long on this occasion at Tangier, because, from a newspaper point of view, Casablanca was a place of more immediate interest. The night before I sailed there arrived an old Harvard friend travelling for pleasure, and he proposed to accompany me. Johnny Weare was a young man to all appearances accustomed to good living, and friends of an evening—easy to acquire at Tangier—advised him to take a supply of food. But I unwisely protested and dissuaded John, and we went down laden with little unnecessary luggage, travelling by a French torpedo-boat conveying despatches.

Here I must break my story in order to make it complete, and anticipate our arrival at Casablanca with an account of how the French army happened to be lodged in this Moorish town. In 1906 a French company obtained a contract from the Moorish Government to construct a harbour at Casablanca; and beginning work they found it expedient, in order to bring up the necessary stone and gravel, to lay a narrow-gauge railway to a quarry a few miles down the coast. In those Mohammedan countries where the dead are protected from ‘Infidel’ tread the fact that the tracks bordered close on a cemetery, in fact passed over several graves, would have been cause perhaps for a conflict; but this—though enemies of France have tried to proclaim it—was not a serious matter in Morocco, where the Moslems are done with their dead when they bury them and anyone may walk on the graves. The French were opposed solely because they were Christian invaders to whom the Sultan had ‘sold out.’ They had bought the High Shereef with their machines and their money, but the tribes did not intend to tolerate them.

After many threats the Arabs of the country came to town one market-day prepared for war. Gathering the local Moors, including those labouring on the railway, they surrounded and killed in brutal fashion, with sticks and knives and the butts of guns, the engineer of the locomotive and eight other French and Italian workmen. The French cruiser Galilée was despatched to the scene, and arriving two days later lay in harbour apparently awaiting instructions from home. By this delay the Moors, though quiet, were encouraged, hourly becoming more convinced that if the French could land they would have done so. They were thoroughly confident, as their resistance demonstrated, when, after three days, a hundred marines were put ashore. As the marines passed through the ‘Water Port’ they were fired upon by a single Moor, and thereupon they shot at every cloaked man that showed his head on their march of half-a-mile to the French consulate. At the sound of rifles the Galilée began bombarding the Moslem quarters of the town; and the stupid Moorish garrison, with guns perhaps brought out of Spain, essayed to reply, and lasted for about ten minutes.

But the landing force of the French was altogether too small to do more than protect the French consulate and neighbouring European houses. Town Moors and Arabs turned out to kill and rape and loot, as they do whenever opportunity offers, and for three days they plundered the places of Europeans and Jews and at last fought among themselves for the spoils until driven from the town by reinforcements of French and Spanish troops.

The fighting and the shells from French ships had laid many bodies in the streets and had wrecked many houses and some mosques. Certain Moors, less ignorant of the French power, had asked the French to spare the mosques and the ‘Saint Houses,’ domed tombs of dead shereefs, and when the fighting began the Arabs, seeing these places were untouched, concluded, of course, that the protection came from Allah, until they entered them and drew the French fire.

Casablanca, or, as the Arabs call it, Dar el Baida, ‘White House,’ was a desolate-looking place when we arrived three weeks after the bombardment. Hardly a male Moor was to be seen. The whole Moslem population, with the exception of a few men of wealth who enjoy European protection, and some servants of consulates, had deserted the town and had not yet begun to return. Jews in black caps and baggy trousers were the only labourers, and they worked with a will recovering damaged property at good pay, and grinning at their good fortune. In the attack the Moors had driven them to the boats, but now the Moors themselves had had to go. Native Spaniards did the lighter work.

A Spaniard and a Jewish boy took our luggage to an hotel, of which all the rooms were already occupied, even to the bathroom and the wine closet, as the long zinc tub in the courtyard, filled with bottles, testified. The proprietor told us that for ten francs a day we might have the dining-room to sleep in, but on investigation we decided to hunt further. Speaking Spanish with a grand manner, for he was a cavalier fellow, the hotel-keeper then informed us through an interpreter that he wanted to do what he could for us because he too was an American. The explanation (for which we asked) was that in New York he had a brother whom he had once visited for a few months, and that at that time, ‘to favour an American gentleman,’ he had taken out naturalisation papers and voted for the mayor.

But this man’s breach of the law in New York was his mildest sin, as we came later to hear. He had many robberies to his credit and a murder or two. For his latest crime he was now wanted by the French consul and military authorities, but being an American citizen they could not lay hold of him except with the consent of the American consul, who happened to be a German, and, disliking the French, would let them do nothing that he could help. Rodrigues (this was the name of the Spanish caballero) had defended his place against the Arab attack with the aid only of his servants. The little arsenal which he kept (he was a fancier of good guns and pistols) had been of splendid service. It is said that when the fight was over forty dead Moors lay before the hotel door, half-a-dozen horses were in Rodrigues’s stable, and bundles of plunder in his yard. It was a case of looting the looters. On tinned foods taken from the shops of other Europeans (whom he had plundered when the Arabs were gone from the town) he was now feeding the host of newspaper correspondents who crowded his establishment. But we were not to be looted likewise by this genial fellow-countryman, and our salvation lay at hand as we bade him au revoir.

Leaving the Hôtel Américain we turned into the main street, and proceeding towards the Hôtel Continental came upon a party of French officers, who had just hailed and were shaking hands with a man unmistakably either English or American. Beside him, even in their military uniforms the Frenchmen were insignificant. The other man was tall and splendid and brave, as the writer of Western fiction would say. He wore a khaki jacket, white duck riding trousers, English leggings, and a cowboy hat; and over one shoulder were slung a rifle, a kodak, and a water-bottle. To lend reality to the figure—he was dusty, and his collar was undone; and as we passed the group we heard him tell the Frenchmen he had just returned from the ‘outer lines.’ How often had we seen the picture of this man, the war correspondent of fiction and of kodak advertisements!