I was sorry for Tahara. She was left behind with her old enemy—S`lam's mother. He left the mother money, but Tahara not one flus. He said, too, that when he came back from Morocco City he should go straight off to the Riff and get work there; and Tahara would be left again. Such is the custom of the country: the husband may go off for a year, at intervals returning to his wife, whom he leaves generally under some sort of supervision. So poor little Tahara, who had no voice in her marriage, but had wept all the way to Tetuan under the escort of her bridegroom and brother, was left penniless in the old mother's clutches. She had no relatives near to help her, otherwise I have no doubt that she would have got a divorce. We could only ask Z—— to keep an eye on her, for interference in the Moorish domestic hearth on the part of a European would be a fool's work indeed.
It was March 19 when we began to wander once more, having handed the keys of Jinan Dolero back to its owner and cleared out the little white house. Unfortunately we pitched on the Aid-el-Kebeer (the Great Feast), starting the very day before it was due; and, in consequence of the Mohammedan-World being upside-down with joyful anticipation, could get no good mules, nor induce any one but a Jew to leave Tetuan at such a time. S`lam looked forward to feasting with his brother at Tangier, and started off with a good grace. A more serious miss than either Moorish servants or reliable mounts was perhaps a tent. There was none to be had in Tetuan at just that time, and a night had to be passed upon the way. However, there was no help for it: we set off as we were, and arrived towards sunset at the half-way caravanserai, the little white-walled fondâk on the top of the hills, where we passed such a windy night, on our way over from Tangier in December, under canvas.
It was a good ride, and our mules travelled badly: saddles and bridles were tumbling to pieces too. For the last mile or so we both walked and sent the baggage on ahead. From a bend round the crest of a hill we said farewell to an uneven white streak set at the foot of the distant hills—Tetuan—and saw it no more. The fondâk was in front of us, four lonely walls exposed to every change of weather, and no life stirring outside. We walked through the arched gateway into the square, which is surrounded with Norman arches, and found a company of mules and donkeys, of owners and drivers, taking shelter for the night: our own baggage animals were already hobbled in a line in front of the arches, under which the muleteers sit, and drink, and smoke, and sleep the hours away, till the first streak of dawn.
We scrambled up an uneven stone staircase at the corner of the square, and investigated the two little rooms at the disposal of travellers. One look: there were suggestions of the insect world in both. We recrossed the thresholds and sought further: the flat white roof above the arches round the square, if windswept, was too airy to be anything but fresh and wholesome,—it should meet all our demands. Here then, out in the open, under the sky, our two beds were arranged, in the lee of a few yards of parapet which had been built to shelter the west corner of the roof. S`lam had a small pan of charcoal also up on the roof in our corner, over which to get something hot for us to eat; and as soon as the odd little meal was finished we turned in.
The precipitous twilight had shadowed down sufficiently to undress in more or less privacy even upon a housetop; over our beds we spread a thin woollen carpet to keep off the dew; the moon, which was beginning its last quarter, faced us full, in a sky picked out with a few stars, against which the dark outline of the hills was cut clear; there was hardly a fleck of cloud in that best roof under which a man can sleep.
A Breezy Camping-Ground on a Roof-Top.
Below, down in the square, the picketed mules stamped and munched barley; the muleteers' voices, back under the arches in the colonnade, arose and fell, round a fire where green tea was brewing and much kif was in course of being smoked; occasionally an owl hooted. Waking from time to time, the moon was always staring down (I shall never forget that moon); but at each interval it had moved farther round overhead. At last it sank behind the field of vision, and up "in that inverted bowl we call the sky" the remote and passionless stars had it all to themselves.
About half-past three in the morning we were awakened suddenly by the patter of rain on our faces, great single drops, which quickened into a hurrying shower; while gusts of wind from the south-west rose and swept round the corner of the low parapet against which we had put the heads of the beds. One glance showed that the sky was overcast; it was very dark, most of the stars were hidden, and there was an ominous sound of rain in the wind. The fondâk is notably a wet resting-place, for it lies on the top of the watershed which divides the plains of Tetuan and Tangier, and it draws the clouds like a magnet.
One of us put up a sun-umbrella, which had been useful on the hot ride the day before; it kept an end of one bed more or less dry, and fortunately the shower did not last long, while underneath warm bedding it was possible to keep dry for a time. The wind rose, however, and forced itself in at every fold of the bedclothes. We had carefully arranged all our kit under the parapet close to the beds, partly to prevent its being stolen, which sometimes happens if left out of the owner's reach, partly to prevent its rolling or blowing off the unprotected edge of the roof.