In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

Couches and divans filled up the corners; glowing colours and fine snowy linen abounded. It was a house in which to spend a sleepy Sabbath afternoon on a hot day, if it must be spent indoors. Cool air blew through the high rooms; the splash and ripple of fountains rose and fell in the cool marble patio below, and echoed up the tiled staircase; while back, far in the shade of the secluded rooms, among avenues of pillars, vistas of light and shade, women like butterflies, in mauve and yellow and white, rose from some soft scented divan and flitted across. And in the centre of it all, a little king, Ci Hamed Ghralmia—a pale, café-au-lait complexioned man, who looked as if life had never shown him one of its angles. He was fat and lineless: soft white hands, fleshy ankles, no knots of muscle in so well-turned-out a mould of cream, not a spot, not a flush, no sign of liver; the lips slightly suggested sensuality, and there was a line of cruelty round the mouth, but no further indication of self-indulgence; he might have lived on sugar and chicken coos-coosoo all his life, and altered in nothing but size since he was a year old, except for a beard on the soft white chin, and his eyes, which were infinitely cunning. Brown and cold, like polished marbles, they had not reached that stage of cunning which veils its cunning, but would still gleam at the sight of money and express satisfaction over a well-made bargain. They were suspicious, as the ignorant generally are, and believed in little that they saw. The old Biblical characters who walk Morocco to-day have most of them the same failing: they are sly.

Ci Hamed Ghralmia was an "advanced" Moor—that is to say, in the afternoons, lying on his divan, he read Arabic books. He had bought some French knick-knacks too. He told us that he rented a shop, in which he sat in the mornings and chatted to his friends, using it not in any way to dispose of any goods, of which it was devoid, but as a sort of "club" or meeting-place. Then in the afternoons he occasionally rode out on his mule. He had a garden, I think, outside the city. Or he played chess with a friend, or read. Perhaps he would use his hummum (Turkish bath); he would pray at his own particular mosque, regularly, so many times a day; and he would drink much green tea, and consume sugar, and sleep inordinately.

Thirty years of this life in Tetuan found Ci Hamed Ghralmia still a contented man—supremely so. Wrapped in the finest white wool and muslin clothes, he lay along a divan opposite to us upon one elbow, the picture of ease, and talked away. No Moor was ever anything but self-composed. Upon our camera's coming out, he was much interested; and to prove his progressive and enlightened state of mind, let us photograph him just as he lay there—a vast, voluminous white chrysalis. Then he took us to see his wives and slaves—a large party of them. They were allowed to come out on to the staircase and talk to us; but when the interview had lasted five minutes, Ci Hamed Ghralmia clapped his hands twice—we had seen enough—every wife and every slave vanished like magic.

The Author Fording the Wad-el-Martine.

The next morning we made one of many expeditions up into the hills on the opposite side of the river, towards the south, and in the direction, though somewhat west, of the Riff. We rode in turns, it being somewhat of a rest to scramble along on foot, to say nothing of exercise. The big grey donkey had our lunch, a camera, some field-glasses, and a box for botanical specimens slung about him. We had a fairly intelligent boy—Mohammed, a Riffi—and managed to understand a word or two he said. It had been explained to him by S`lam that we wished to get to the Blue Pool if possible. Arrived at the river, we found nobody—not being market day, it was utterly deserted. The current was still swirling in a forbidding fashion, but Mohammed led the donkey straight in with R.; he tucked up his clothes, held his yellow slippers high in one hand, and after some goading they landed on the opposite bank. Mohammed left his slippers, rode back through the river for me, and in due time I was deposited on the shingle. Off we set—first by a narrow path, thick on each side with scented violets, and closed in with the usual ten-foot-high cane fence. More streams had to be forded, but they were small and the donkey strong; so, to save time, I sat above his tail, behind R., and he carried us across in one journey.

So far we were still down on the flats; the hills towered in front of us; and among the streams, and where the river in its vagaries had often flowed, there was deposited many a rich bed of fruitful mud, turned into valuable land, the very soil par excellence for oranges. And they were all around us—garden after garden, acre after acre, foliage studded with gold knobs by the million. And among them, and as far as the eye could reach, up into the gorge between the hills, picturesque white garden-houses showed through rifts in the half-tropical foliage, or over hedges of prickly pear and oleander. Fig-trees, a hundred years old, made faded grey blotches amongst the vivid greenery; the pink bloom of apricot was stainless against stained-yellow walls. In such a place, the inexorable realism of the age in which we live, was shaken—spirits there surely were which should appear.

We passed an old countrywoman with a tiny donkey carrying two great panniers full of green-stuffs: she was in difficulties, having a wrestle to make it cross a little stream. Mohammed went to her assistance. Once over, she climbed on its small back with the help of a stone, putting her foot on its neck to get into her place.

And now, leaving the orange gardens and their wealth, our path took an upward turn into a more rugged country, a less fruitful soil. We left a field of pale blue flax on the left—a "blue pool" indeed; and about this point the donkey's pack, which had no breastplate, slipped over its tail; but Mohammed's knife, and some string, and the britching, put all to rights for the time being. Later on a stirrup-leather broke.

Following our winding path, we reached at last a white saint-house, which dominated a little hill overgrown with gnarled grey olives, and acted guardian over a large and flourishing village which lay below,—at least it was a collection of mud huts, and more of them than usual, but, like so many of these "villages," seemed to all intents and purposes deserted—a city of the dead. Many of the inhabitants were out no doubt, but those who were in were not tempted by curiosity to stare at us: without windows there can be no signs of the rites which are carried on inside the houses. All we saw were dogs, fierce brutes, which stones alone kept at a distance, where they sat showing their teeth and bristling their crests ominously.