The Edge of the Desert

by Ianthe M. Dunbar

Were one to sit for long at the doorway of the Baths, facing the gate of the city, one would see the whole world of Kairouan pass through in the course of the day. It was New Year’s day, and every one was abroad. A deputation of notable townspeople came through the old gateway on their way to present a New Year’s Resolution to someone or something. Their full flowing robes made a picture of the procession, and I sighed at the thought of the top hats and glittering watch chains of England.

Then came three old and venerable men clad in snowy white, two of them supporting the footsteps of the most aged. He was the Kaïd, the authority in Mussulman law, and was nearly ninety.

It was a fête day too at my tiny hotel, and the proprietor supplied ‘champagne’ with a generosity more apparent than real. There was much toasting and making of speeches amongst the small bourgeois who formed the clientèle; and a baby of two was given long sips of champagne by a humorous father, who then acted the part of a waiter with a napkin over his arm, to the intense amusement of his feminine belongings. The rôle suited him admirably. Doubtless Mrs. Noah and the young Shem, Ham and Japhet were also convulsed with mirth in their day at a similar buffoonery played by the head of the family. Jokes die hard.

The military quarters, the Government building, and the hotel were all outside the city gates and provided with small public gardens, full of the green of palms, of pepper trees, of oleanders. A few trees were planted down some of the streets of the tiny modern quarter; but it all ended as abruptly as if a line were ruled across it. Beyond were sand and cactus hedges and roads that led to the horizon. There is something attractive about French colonial quarters however small. They are so trim and neat and provided with the shade of eucalyptus trees, mimosas and anything that will grow in a sandy soil.

Close to the Gate Djelladine was the Snake Charmer’s café and the sound of a native drum and the squeal of a pipe led my steps there one day. He and the two musicians were squatting on a small raised platform at the end of the low room and I as a European was given the doubtful privilege of a place in the front row where my knees were pressed against the platform. The charmer was a strange looking man with a thin wild face, dressed in a striped burnous and wearing nothing on his mop of long black hair. On the floor in front of him lay a bag of sacking that stirred and moved. After the room had filled up with a crowd of Arabs and the music had been going on for some time, he opened the mouth of the sack and from an inner jar pulled out a large cobra. This he began to tease, dancing in front of it, flapping his long hair at it and tapping its tail with a stick. Naturally annoyed, it reared up ready to strike, but the constant movement of the man seemed to daze it. It struck at him once or twice as he swayed and danced in front of it but he took care to keep just out of range. Then he brought a young snake out of the bag, and this sat up too and tried to look like its mother. Meanwhile there was dead silence in the room, except for the drone of the music and the thud of the charmer’s bare feet as he danced. Every eye was fixed on him, the Arab waiter with a tray of coffee in his hands stood motionless, staring, and the dark faces of the audience watched with the intent unblinking gaze of an eastern race. Again the man dived into the bag and brought out a yellow snake which he lowered by the tail into his open mouth, then laughing wildly he took it out and wound it round his head where it looked like a horrible chaplet in the midst of his rough hair, its head pointing out over his brow. I asked if the poison fangs of the cobras had been extracted, and he brought the largest one for me to see, holding it just below the head. An obliging Arab provided a pin, and with this he prized open the jaws. I saw the tooth but I think the top of it had been broken off.

All this time the drone of the native music went on interminably. There is something curiously compelling about its minor key with the little quirks and quavers. It seems to get on the nerves and to hammer and hammer on them insistently. It fits well with the blazing sun and the intensity of the sky. I heard afterwards that the charmer was a Bedouin, but had been brought up in Kairouan from childhood. I wanted to paint him and the musicians, and the sitting was arranged one afternoon.

Hassan was always full of zeal and spurred me to great deeds.

“Mais oui, you must paint them in an open space outside the town, and then behind them you can paint in the whole of Kairouan and the desert beyond. It will be a magnificent picture.”

I bowed my head, and only hoped he would forget to look for the accessory town and landscape when the sketch was finished. The men grouped themselves very naturally, and even the cobras when the time came seemed to have an instinct for posing. The oldest musician had lost a finger of his right hand through the bite of one of the stock-in-trade. They took a deep interest in the sketch, and the usual small boy that springs out of the dust whenever one stops for a moment, obligingly kept them posted as to its progress. I worked for two hours and then shut up my paint box. Hassan, who had been smoking cigarettes in the background on a chair brought of course by a relation, seemed hurt at my want of enthusiasm when he suggested I should now go and paint a mosque. I had worked all morning as well, and it was now four o’clock, but he evidently thought me a poor thing.