The Passing of Morocco

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

For a fortnight, till an old American resident of Casablanca invited us to his house, we suffered Squall. We three slept on the roof while a decrepit, dirty Spaniard, the owner of the place, slept below. It was a modest, one-storey house, built in Moorish style. There were rooms on four sides of a paved courtyard, under a slab in the centre of which was the customary well. Overhead a covering of glass, now much broken, was intended to keep out the rain. The place had been looted by the Moors, who took away the few things of any value and destroyed the rest, leaving the room littered with torn clothes and bedding and broken furniture, if I might dignify the stuff by these names; nor had the old man (whose family had escaped to Tangier) cleared out any place but the kitchen and the courtyard.

There was a little slave boy whose master had been killed, and who now served a ‘Mister Peto’ and came to us for water every day. As our old Spaniard would not keep the place clean and saved all the food that we left from meals (which filled the place with flies) we hired the boy for a peseta, about a franc, a day to keep it clean. He was to get nothing at all if he allowed in more than twenty-five flies, and for one day he worked well and got the money. But the reason of his success was the presence all that day of one or the other of us engaged at writing, protecting him from the wrath of the old man, who resented being deprived of both stench and flies. The next day when we returned from the French camp there was no more black boy, and we never saw him again, nor could we ascertain from the old man what had happened to him. Thereafter we never drew a bucket of drinking water from the well without the fear of bringing up a piece of poor ‘Sandy.’

As candles were scarce and bad we went to bed early. Weare and I generally retiring first. We climbed the rickety, ladder-like stairs and walked round the glass square over the courtyard to the side of the roof where cooling breezes blew from the Atlantic. There undressing, we rolled our clothes in tight bundles and put them under our heads for pillows. To lie on we had only sacking, for our rain-coats had to be used as covering to keep off the heavy dews of the early morning. Only Squall had a hammock.

Before retiring every evening Squall had the task of examining and testing his weapons, of which he had enough for us all. A ‘Webley’ and ‘Colt’ were not sufficient, he must also bring to the roof his rifle, on the butt of which were fourteen notches, one for each Moor he had shot. He clanked up the steps like Long John, the pirate, coming from ‘below,’ in ‘Treasure Island.’ When he had got into the hammock, lying comfortably on revolvers and cartridge belts, his gun within reach against the wall, he would begin to talk. ‘You chaps think I bring all these “shooting-irons” up here because I’m afraid of something. Only look at what I’ve been through. I’ve got over being afraid. The reason I bring them all up with me is that I don’t want them stolen,—I mean to say there isn’t any lock on the door, you know.’

‘Go to sleep, Squall.’

‘I mean you chaps haven’t got any business talking about me being afraid.’

‘Can’t you tell us about it at breakfast, Squall?’

One night Squall wanted to borrow a knife; his, he said, was not very sharp. He had been out ‘on the lines’ that day, and he wanted it, he explained, to put another notch in his gun.

Sometimes a patrol would pass in the night, and we would hear the three pistols and the gun click. Once the gun went off.

At daybreak we would rouse old Squall to go and make coffee, and while he was thus employed we were entertained by the occupants of a ‘kraal’ (I can think of no better description) next door. In a little, low hut, built of reeds and brush, directly under our roof, lived a dusky mother and her daughter. The one (I imagine) was a widow, the other an unmarried though mature maid. They were among the score of Moors who had not fled, and there being no men of their own race about they were not afraid to show their faces to us. The mother was a hag, but the younger woman was splendid, big and broad-shouldered, with a deep chest. Her colour was that of an Eastern gipsy, bronze as if sunburned, with a slight red in her cheeks; she was black-haired, and she always wore a flower. From her lower lip to her chin was a double line tattooed in blue, and about her ankles and arms, likewise tattooed, were broad blue bangles, one above her elbow. The clothes that she wore, though of common cotton, were brilliant in colour, generally bright green or blue or orange-yellow, sometimes a combination; they were not made into garments but rather draped about her, as is the way in Morocco, and held together with gaudy metal ornaments. Two bare feet, slippered in red, and one bare arm and shoulder were always visible. While this younger woman cooked in the open yard, and the old crone lean and haggard watched, they would look up from their kettle from time to time and speak to us in language we could not understand. We threw them small coins and they offered us tea. But we did not visit the ladies, to run the risk, perhaps, of dissipating an illusion.