Brought Forward

by R. B. Cunninghame Graham

So when the evening prayer was called, and all was silent in his house, the faithful duly prostrate on their faces before Allah, who seems to take as little heed of them as he does of the other warring sects, each with its doctrine of damnation for their brethren outside the pale, the Sherif, who seldom prayed, knowing that even if he did so he could neither make nor yet unmake himself in Allah’s sight, called for his mule, and with two Arabs running by his side set out towards the unbeliever’s camp.

Though the Sherif paid no attention to it, the scene he rode through was like fairyland. The moonbeams falling on the domes of house and mosque and sanctuary lit up the green and yellow tiles, making them sparkle like enamels. Long shadows of the cypresses cast great bands of darkness upon the red sand of the avenue. The croaking of the frogs sounded metallic, and by degrees resolved itself into a continuous tinkle, soothing and musical, in the Atlas night. Camels lay ruminating, their monstrous packs upon their backs. As the Sherif passed by them on his mule they snarled and bubbled, and a faint odour as of a menagerie, mingled with that of tar, with which the Arabs cure their girth and saddle galls, floated towards him, although no doubt custom had made it so familiar that he never heeded it.

From the Arab huts that gather around every sanctuary, their owners living on the baraka, a high-pitched voice to the accompaniment of a two-stringed guitar played with a piece of stiff palmetto leaf, and the monotonous Arab drum, that if you listen to it long enough invades the soul, blots from the mind the memory of towns, and makes the hearer long to cast his hat into the sea and join the dwellers in the tents, blended so inextricably with the shrill cricket’s note and the vast orchestra of the insects that were praising Allah on that night, each after his own fashion, that it was difficult to say where the voice ended and the insects’ hum began.

Still, in despite of all, the singing Arab, croaking of the frogs, and the shrill pæans of the insects, the night seemed calm and silent, for all the voices were attuned so well to the surroundings that the serenity of the whole scene was unimpaired.

The tents lay in the moonlight like gigantic mushrooms; the rows of bottles cut in blue cloth with which the Arabs ornament them stood out upon the canvas as if in high relief. The first light dew was falling, frosting the canvas as a piece of ice condenses air upon a glass. In a long line before the tents stood the pack animals munching their corn placed on a cloth upon the ground.

A dark-grey horse, still with his saddle on for fear of the night air, was tied near to the door of the chief tent, well in his owner’s eye. Now and again he pawed the ground, looked up, and neighed, straining upon the hobbles that confined his feet fast to the picket line.

On a camp chair his owner sat and smoked, and now and then half got up from his seat when the horse plunged or any of the mules stepped on their shackles and nearly fell upon the ground.

As the Sherif approached he rose to welcome him, listening to all the reiterated compliments and inquiries that no self-respecting Arab ever omits when he may chance to meet a friend.

A good address, like mercy, is twice blest, both in the giver and in the recipient of it; but chiefly it is beneficial to the giver, for in addition to the pleasure that he gives, he earns his own respect. Well did both understand this aspect of the question, and so the compliments stretched out into perspectives quite unknown in Europe, until the host, taking his visitor by the hand, led him inside the tent. “Ambassador,” said the Sherif, although he knew his friend was but a Consul, “my heart yearned towards thee, so I have come to talk with thee of many things, because I know that thou art wise, not only in the learning of thy people, but in that of our own.”

The Consul, not knowing what the real import of the visit might portend, so to speak felt his adversary’s blade, telling him he was welcome, and that at all times his tent and house were at the disposition of his friend. Clapping his hands he called for tea, and when it came, the little flowered and gold-rimmed glasses, set neatly in a row, the red tin box with two compartments, one for the tea and one for the blocks of sugar, the whole surrounding the small dome-shaped pewter teapot, all placed in order on the heavy copper tray, he waved the equipage towards the Sherif, tacitly recognising his superiority in the art of tea-making. Seated beside each other on a mattress they drank the sacramental three cups of tea, and then, after the Consul had lit his cigarette, the Sherif having refused one with a gesture of his hand and a half-murmured “Haram”—that is, “It is prohibited”—they then began to talk.