Meanwhile, Marrakesh and its adobe walls, of a sad yellow-pink tone, grew nearer and nearer, till at last the long line of crumbling tapia was but a short distance off, and the Báb-el-Roub, a massive gateway, plainly to be seen. Just outside the walls, Mr. Miller, one of the missionaries, met us: he had one piece of news, which carried with it regret wherever it was heard across the length and breadth of the British Empire—the death of Cecil Rhodes. Under the Báb-el-Roub we rode into the city of crumbling walls and silent sandy roadways: somewhat of a deserted city, the great southern capital appeared to be at first; but then we were nowhere near its heart, and the half of it is gardens and quiet houses, while a small part only, is wholly full of vitality: the whole is crumbling to pieces, and strange of all strangest cities ever seen.
We rode straight to Kaid Maclean's house, lent us by Lady Maclean—the best house in Morocco City, over-looking one of the many market-places, and that open space in which story-tellers and snake-charmers, surrounded by a dense circle of admirers, cater to an attentive throng. The house was empty, and we "camped" in several of the rooms, lunching in a long gallery which looked straight out on to the Atlas Mountains: the mules went into a capacious stable; the servants made themselves comfortable in the kitchens. It is hard to find house-room in Marrakesh: of course a hotel is unheard of, nor is camping-ground to be met with easily. There are no foreign consuls in this far-off city, and no English element beyond the two or three missionaries who live there. Travellers have generally to depend upon the loan of some house for the time being, from a holy Sharīf or Moor of some standing; but the house may be anywhere, and comfortable or otherwise. Since the Sultan was at Fez, his army and his commander-in-chief, Kaid Maclean, were at Fez too: hence the reason of the Macleans' house standing empty, within which we were so fortunate as to find ourselves.
Marrakesh cannot be described: it must be seen. It is more suggestive, more intangible, more elusive—that is to say, its Eastern medley of a population is so, and its crumbling tapia-walled houses are so—than any other Moorish city. More ghosts should stalk the half-deserted yellow roadways of Marrakesh, more mysteries be shrouded within the windowless walls, than a man of Western civilization could conceive.
It is a vast city—other writers have chronicled the number of square miles which it accounts for—and yet, in spite of its size, the sum-total of souls it contains is not overwhelming. There are gardens everywhere, stretch after stretch of palm-trees, acre after acre of fruit-trees, and wedged among them all, lie the flat roofs, swarm the endless throng which spells humanity; and the oddest, most varied humanity—Arabs and negroes, men from the Sus, from the Sahara, from Draa, Berber hillmen, tribesmen from the Atlas, a tumultuous multitude, a hive of bees of whom no census has ever been made. We were among them all, the first time we rode through the city. No one walks in Marrakesh: as a matter of fact I did later on, often enough, sometimes alone, getting somewhat jostled in the narrow ways—beyond that in no way inconvenienced. But every one who can, is on a mule or a long-tailed countrybred, pushing along at a foot's pace, crying out now and then, and avoiding this pair of black toes, that coffee-coloured bare heel.
Beyond the wall, covered with nails, whereon heads are fastened after rebellions have been quenched and the time of punishment and warning has come, we rode into the land of little shops. Here, in another instance, Marrakesh is unique: the narrow streets were in great part entirely roofed in overhead either by vines or by bamboos; the brilliant sunlight streamed through the spaces between the vines and canes, and chequered the seething white throng which eternally passed underneath it. From an open street we plunged into the cool shade of one of these arcades. And how it moved! Nothing ever stood still in the Marrakesh soks. Life "travels" for ever and for ever there. Between the shops, themselves teeming with bustle and incident, moved up and down, the throng of white, draped, dignified figures, calling, heaving, struggling, jostling sometimes, chattering always, blotched with shifting yellow sunlight and black shadow cast by the lattice roof overhead. It was a transformation scene; it was a weird dream—weird to the point of seeming unreal, unlike men and the haunts of men, though all the time rampant with humans.
The Kutobea, Marrakesh.
Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier.
When the Sultan went to Fez, a party of soldiers and goldsmiths and craftsmen of all sorts went with him from the city of Marrakesh, in number over forty thousand souls. But the exodus made no appreciable difference in the soks. Not only the numbers, but the types of the stream of faces between which we rode were all striking, and each one so far removed from anything at all European. Humanity can indeed be separated from humanity by gulfs impassable, or gulfs which may alone be bridged over by a violation of nature, on the part of the man upon the east bank or upon the west bank.
The palm-trees wave above Marrakesh, turtle-backed mosques and tall towers rise among the gardens and gleam in the sun, but above and beyond every other feature of the far-away fantastic southern capital one watch-tower rises over everything and rears itself into the sky—the Kutobea, built, according to tradition, by Fabir for the Sultan El Mansur. It stands in a vast empty space close to the Great Mosque: few people pass that way—their footfalls are almost unheard in the soft sand; and the lonely tower cuts the clear quiet sky. The Kutobea is built of dark red stone. There is a pattern, alternately raised and sunk, on the faces of the minaret, the sunk part cut deep, the raised part carved and standing out. A broad band of wonderful black and green iridescent tiles, snakes round the top like some opulent spotted serpent. Part of it has dropped away: the gilded brass balls, the cupola, are here and there tarnished; but the sun sets, and his indulgent rays swamp every defect, burnish and polish and gild corner-stone and fretted marble and emerald-green tile alike, until the "to-day" of the Kutobea is as triumphant as its "yesterday" of many hundred years. The design of the tower itself—the minaret—is said to have come from Constantinople, as did the Giralda at Seville, which it so resembles.