At the far end of this narrow way was the Street of the Coppersmiths with its clang of beaten metal and glow of heaped copper. A yard out of it was crammed with mules and donkeys, their bulky saddles piled in a gay heap in the archway leading to it. Now and again a laden beast came up the street, its driver shouting to the crowd to make way. Tattered heaps by the side of the wall stirred and groaned a petition for alms, the poppy red of a Spahi’s cloak and his blue pantaloons made a sudden chip of colour. And everything was soaked in sunlight.
Midway down the street was a curious white minaret, topped with metal like a sort of pagoda. At its foot collected groups buying and selling. The yellow roadway was sharply cleft with clear-marked shadows, and a carpenter in a brown burnous sat on the floor of his shop making axles for cart wheels, a froth of thin shavings heaped round him. Then a brightly painted cart with high wheels came past, cleaving a way for itself in some mysterious manner. Once it and its shouting driver were past, the crowd flowed together again like water that you have divided for a moment with a stick, the beggars picked themselves up from the corners to which they had rolled for safety, and life went on as usual.
The weather was very uncertain, and now set in for a cold wet week. I wandered about with my sketch-book in the covered Souks and finally Rached settled me in a small shop with the air of conferring a great favour upon the owner. It dealt in a variety of goods—silks, buttons, shot, etc. An elderly Arab dressed in a soft dove-coloured burnous was a customer, and asked if he might offer me a cup of coffee. I accepted with thanks, whilst in a hissing whisper the guide conveyed to me the importance of my new friend. We talked a little through Rached as interpreter.
The old man told me he was going to Europe in the spring, for medical treatment as well as for business. He was a dignified figure in his ample draperies, with thin fine features. Rached told me afterwards that he was a big silk merchant, and intended going to London to inspect silk materials. He and the Kaïd were to travel together, with Rached as interpreter. A fleeting mental picture of the trio progressing down Regent Street made me smile inwardly. Certainly their interpreter would be equal to any emergency, but how will those dove coloured draperies fare, and that calm dignity ever survive the Tube or the rush for a motor bus? The merchant had three wives, one from Constantinople—“une jeune femme très riche,” another from Tunis, and a third from his native town of Sfax. “Elles sont toutes excessivement jolies” asserted Rached, but I reflected that in a country of veiled women, probably all men’s wives are beauties. With some interest I asked how many children there were, but there is only one girl. “And imagine to yourself how rich she will be,” sighed the guide, who loved money. But he loved still better the flinging of it about with a lordly air, so I hardly think his own daughter will ever be a great partie.
After a short time I began to understand the geography of the native town, but there were still mysterious alleys that seemed to lead nowhere, shady relatives of the bigger streets. Close to the city wall was the street of the Pretty Ladies. Like trap-door spiders one stood in each doorway, dressed in gay silks, her cheeks rouged, eyebrows painted to meet in a single line, and tiny black patches on her face. Most of them were not beautiful. But one doorway opened into a sort of alcove with a stone seat running round it, and here we caught sight of three pretty girls in earnest conversation with one young man. They were dressed in light silk striped with colours, heavy silver anklets clashed as they moved and their perfumed hands were heavy with rings. One turned and glanced at my English companions, shooting a glance at them from her long-lashed painted eyes, then drawing her silver veil closer round her with a mock modesty.
All round the ramparts ran a pathway, and from this height one looked across the town to the harbour or to the sea of olives that stretched for miles into the country. It is a prosperous town and the land round it very rich. When the almond blossom was out, and all the orchards on the outskirts of the town a smother of blossom, I motored about 15 miles into the country, and all the way we ran through groves and groves of carefully kept olives, till from a small tower we looked across their grey and silver stretches to the white distant town of Sfax along the bay.
CHAPTER VII
OASIS TOWNS
From Sfax I went by train to Gafsa, an inland oasis town lying most picturesquely in a sandy plain, surrounded by rocky mountains that rise sheer from it. It is about three miles from the station of the same name, and the drive to it leads from the bare plain to the thick olive groves and the clustering palms that form the oasis. It is just a little Arab town, with the usual handful of French government offices and the fort. There are several mosques, and from the minaret of one I watched the magnificence of the sunset across the plain. There are more than thirty-eight springs about here, so the place does not lack water, and every stream is full of small water tortoises. The remains of the Roman baths are still to be seen. A group of village women were washing their jars in the clear blue-green water, whilst small boys offered to dive for coins.