But during an auction, the scene was much more animated. Shop assistants rushed up and down carrying goods and bawling at the top of their voices “What offers? what offers?” Customers bid against each other and the noise and bustle were tremendous. Every other moment a panting native rushed back to the owner of the shop to ask if the latest offer were to be accepted. Up the side-passages opening into the central Souk, more auctions might be going on simultaneously, and the crowd was so great that sketching had to be of the snapshot variety.
I. M. D.
Nearly all the men were in white or sand-coloured burnous, with the hood partly pushed back, showing the small twisted turban and close red fez worn underneath. The Tunisian countrymen are in general fine looking men, tall and aquiline featured, with good foreheads and clearly marked eyebrows. Nearly all have a moustache and a dark closely clipped beard, but one sees a few of fairer type amongst them. They are friendly and courteous. A gamin told one grave and dignified looking figure that I was sketching him, whereupon my model glanced at me, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. I showed him the sketch and he laughed, much amused. Very often the shopkeepers near whom I was sitting with my sketch-book offered me coffee and I always met with hospitality and goodwill. If one asks their permission before settling down, it is always granted, and they usually take one more or less under their protection, and try to prevent a crowd from collecting.
I like the Arabs’ fine dignity. Probably their flowing style of dress helps to give this effect, and the hooded cloak makes a becoming setting to their dark faces. Even the tiny boys wear the burnous and go about looking like small elves in their pointed hoods.
Outside the western walls of the city, the graveyards stretched right away as far as the Mosque du Barbier, which lay about half a mile from the town. The tombs were not marked by any inscriptions, and often were only covered by a small rounded slab or just roughly enclosed by an edging of bricks. On these poorer graves a cluster of bricks set sideways in the earth told the sex of the dead: if set close together they mark the resting place of a man, if scattered, that of a woman. There is something inexpressibly forlorn about these Moslem cemeteries, the graves so huddled together, no green, no flowers. The tiny spectacled owl perches on the low headstones or makes his silent flight from one to the other, and beyond the graveyard itself the whole sky flames to brilliant red at the going down of the sun.
The sunsets in Kairouan were magnificent. The whole of the west seemed to burst into fire and the desert glowed with a deep reflected rose. I call it ‘desert’ but it was not really this. ‘Le vrai desert’ is far off. But the wide stretches of sandy waste looked the name, and at sunset they turned a wonderful red, with washes of dusty purple, whilst the far hills were first violet and then almost black against the last splendour of the sky.
Coming home through the cemetery one evening, Ali Hassan was anxious to know if I had read the Koran, and begged me to carry one about with me; “it would protect you greatly.” I asked him if the Fast of Ramadan was kept very strictly in Kairouan. He said yes, “except that there are always some who do not follow their religion seriously. They do not pray regularly, neither do they fast carefully for a month at Ramadan. But they will find the difference when they reach the other world. For every Ramadan they have broken here, they will have to fast a year hereafter. Ils auront joliment faim,” he ended with satisfaction. I gather he himself is a scrupulous observer of his religion.
When I left Kairouan, Hassan came to see me off, wishing me happiness and prosperity, and hoping I should return some day. He presented me with one of his most treasured possessions, a picture postcard of himself and his family at the Marseilles Exhibition. There they all were posing under a tent, and labelled ‘Fabrication de Tapis de Kairouan (Tunisie) Maison Ali Hassan.’ Even under these trying conditions I was glad to see Hassan had still continued to look dignified. There was his wife to the left of the picture wearing all the family jewels and watching a sleeping baby that even in slumber seemed to remember it was ‘en exposition.’ The little girls were working at their handloom, whilst Hassan himself sat with a son on either side, and a row of family slippers in varying sizes ranged along the edge of the mat in front of him. He was immensely proud of this work of art.
As my train steamed slowly away from Kairouan, I saw him still on the platform, his portly figure wrapped in the voluminous folds of a white burnous, watching till the distance had swallowed me up.