We jogged up the last yard of rocky path, and found ourselves in front of Tetuan in rather less than four hours after leaving the fondâk, to the satisfaction of Cadour: it was an improvement on the day before. This ornament of the cavalry had now come out in a clean white turban, in view of entering the city: he puzzled us at this point by leading the way off the road to a white wall in the middle of the field, behind which travellers occasionally camp, devout people pray, and sheep are slaughtered at the time of the Great Feast. Here he produced our luncheon. But we, in the innocence of our hearts, would "lunch at a café" in Tetuan, after calling at the British Consulate and leaving our letters of introduction: this, with signs and a Spanish word or two, was brought home to Cadour, and we turned back, skirted the white city wall, reached a gate built in an angle, and rode in under the archway, passing a few figures in jellabs reclining and talking beside a great stone water-trough, which was running with fresh water.
Following one of the worst-paved streets upon Allah's earth, whose slippery rocks and pools of brown manure-water offered no tempting footpath, the first Union Jack we had seen for many a long day appeared above a wall and spoke Britain: towards it we made our way. A soldier in a long dark blue cloak and high-peaked red fez was sitting at the Consul's office door: he took our letters of introduction, and, without our being able to explain ourselves in Arabic, insisted on ushering us straight into the presence of the Consul—Mr. W. S. Bewicke.
We found him surrounded with papers and cigarette-ends: he would most hospitably take no denial in the matter of lunch, but made us come into the house at once. His long, narrow dining-room was flanked by a small kitchen; above, the same shaped, long, narrow sitting-room was flanked by a small bedroom; a flight of narrow, steep stairs divided all four rooms, and completed the Consulate: this simple plan is usual in a Moorish house of the sort, and admirably adapted for the Eastern habits of the people. The Consul considered it inadequate. A sunny, walled garden lay in front; big orange- and banana-trees, both covered with fruit, shaded precious seedlings; a large tank, filled with gold-fish, took up much space under the windows; and in the background a high cane fence penned in turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens, scratching and squabbling under orange-trees. There are no grassy lawns in these gardens: they are devoted to fruit, shrubs, and flowers, bisected into equal divisions by tiled or grass paths.
People in Morocco, as all the world over, collect curiosities nolens volens. Mr. Bewicke's dining-room was no exception. Guns from the Riff, eight feet long; brass powder-horns, knives, daggers, pistols, engraved and inlaid with silver, ivory, and coral; a long brass horn, once blown from the top of the mosque, sacred and difficult to get; copper vessels, pots, pans, jugs, bowls; blue china from Fez; quaint Jewish candelabra and lamps; brown and white native pottery,—all found a place.
A young Riffian named Mohr acted as butler, a coffee-and-cream-coloured boy, with a girlish face and a head with a close weekly shave, all except one long love-lock, which, combed out, fell over one ear in a glossy brown curl. It is worn by all Riffs as good Mussulmans, and serves a double purpose, that of scalp-lock when the head is decapitated by enemies and borne by the lock instead of by the mouth, and that of handle, by which Azrael, the Angel of Death, carries the body to heaven on the last day. Mohr wore a Riff turban of brown string, several yards long, wound round and round his head, a white tunic and belt: his legs were bare; and leaving his yellow slippers behind him on the threshold, he moved noiselessly round the table with gracious manners, and, when he spoke, made nonchalant gestures with his hands.
Had we come a few days earlier, we should have fallen in with a thousand men from the Beni Has`san tribe, who had come down to pay their respects to the new basha (governor) of Tetuan, and to offer him presents.
They had fired off a good deal of blank powder, and a stray bullet or two into the Consul's garden door; had rushed about the feddan (market-place), discharging their guns; and had thrown stones at some one. On their way to Tetuan the thousand odd had pillaged right and left, stealing fruit and robbing houses. Finding some women washing, they stole the clothes, and report said two women as well. At last twenty of them were caught and put into prison, after which the nine hundred and eighty marched back to their own country.
Lunch over, we walked with Mr. Bewicke into the city. While Tangier might be called an anæmic copy of a Moorish town, Tetuan has the strength of a bonâ-fide life-study, and all that is curiously beautiful, strangely obscure, is unsparingly suggested. The longer a European lives there, the more the paradoxes in Moorish life force themselves upon him, and the more tangible grow certain intuitions which his surroundings convey.
It is not only such contradictions as lie on the surface—the squalor of some filthy fondâk, the emaciated raw-skinned donkeys, the bent-backed women, rubbing shoulders with the white-scented robes, the sleek mules, the luxurious tiled houses—these a blind man could see: the under-currents which will puzzle an Englishman more the longer he lives there are known to those only who have dwelt much in Morocco, and they belong by every right to a life which is drawn to the letter in "The Arabian Nights."
The ramifications of the narrow streets in Tetuan would take a quarter of a lifetime to master, and then an unexplored alley might be found, though it is easy to walk across the entire length or breadth of the city in ten minutes. Down a dozen intricacies we dived with Mr. Bewicke, through a labyrinth, half dark in places, where houses built overhead shut out the sun. Looking along the narrow streets, the buildings jostle one another, and the flat blank walls slope backwards out of the upright, at every turn a haphazard colour-scheme in white and mauve and chocolate, in blue and ochre and cream.
