Haj Addee was a sort of “Infeliz,” as the Spaniards call a man of his peculiar temperament. I am certain that in whatever business he entered into he must have failed, he had so honest a disposition, and his lies were so unwisely gone about, they would not have deceived a Christian child. His rosary, each bead as big as a large pea, was ever in his hand; he said it was made from the horn of that rare beast, the unicorn, and he had brought it with a price at Mecca, from a “Sherif so holy that he could not lie.” It looked to me like rhinoceros horn, and so, perhaps, the Sherif had lied less than he had intended when he sold the beads. In the middle of the string were four blue beads, and between these four beads a piece of ivory standing up like a cone, and called “el Madhna,” [86a] that is the “erect one.” Besides the “Madhna” there was a little comb, shaped like a stable mane comb, and made of horn, which dangled from the rosary, and which Moors use to comb their beards after performing their ablutions, and which they seldom carry in Morocco, except they have performed the pilgrimage.
Haj Addee suffered from rheumatism in the left shoulder. This he called simply “el burd,” “the cold,” and complained that he had exhausted all lawful medicine and was about to try an incantation. [86b] So to us entered a “fakir”—that is, a holy man—fat and white-bearded, and with the half-foolish, half-cunning look, so often to be found in “holy men” who are professors of some faith either inferior to, or differing from, our own. The man of God gave me a scowl, and, I fancy, saw I was a misbeliever, then sat down, after the fashion of his class, in the best seat, and, mumbling something, drew out a dagger and wrote upon it, with the juice of a plant he carried in his hand, some mystic characters. The master of the house, together with a friend, stood up and held two pieces of split cane about a yard in length. Both had the air the Italians call “compunto,” that is, they looked like people walking down the aisle of a crowded church (as if they trod on eggs) after partaking of the Holy Communion, and conscious that it is not impossible they may have eaten and drunk their own damnation, and that before a crowd of witnesses.
The Levite, sitting in a corner, kept on muttering, and underneath the cane rapidly passed the cabalistic dagger to and fro, just in the middle of the reeds, touching them lightly, as the dagger moved almost like a shuttle in his hands. The look of concentration and air of being accomplices after the fact was kept up for almost five minutes, and quite insensibly I find I joined in it, and, looking at Lutaif (a Christian, if such a man there be) at Swani and Mohammed el Hosein, I found that they too were fascinated, much like a rabbit in a snake-house moves towards the snake.
It seems, of all the forces which move mankind, humbug is the strongest, for humbugs are always taken in by humbug, and the very men who practice on the folly of mankind fall easy victims to the manœuvres of their brothers in the art. Gradually the movement of the dagger grew slower, then stopped, and then the mystery man struck the patient gently with the blade upon the arm, broke the two canes across, tied them together in a bundle, and put them on a ledge just where the thatch is fastened to the mud walls of the house.
Admirable to observe the look of faith of all the standers-by. If ever I witnessed a religious action, that is, taking religio and superstitio (as I think the Romans did) to be synonymous, I did so then. Even the Salvation Army, at its most unreasonable, never succeeded in bringing such a look of ovine faith upon the faces of its legionaries. The patient says that he is greatly benefited, and for the first time in my life I see a religious ceremony begun, continued, and concluded (with the result successful), and without apparent sign of a collection being taken up.
Faith should not be divorced from its true spouse, the offertory. What man has brought together, even the act of God should not disjoin, for faith is so ethereal that, left alone, it pines and languishes in a hard world, unless sustained by pennies in a plate, in the same manner as the soul, which, as we all know (nowadays), is eternal, takes its departure when the body dies, and lies unquickened if the head receives a knock.
The function over, we sit and talk, look at one another’s arms, lie as to our shooting powers, and, after careful examination of my pistol, to my astonishment, our host produces a large-sized Smith and Wesson revolver, which it appears he bought in Kahira (Cairo), and seems to think the most important result of all his pilgrimage. Hours pass, and still no messenger, and a fat Saint [88] rolls in, and salutes Swani as an acquaintance of the pilgrimage. They kiss and embrace, hugging one another and alternately placing their beards over one another’s right and left shoulders. As Burton observes, the Arabs are by far the most emotional of the Oriental races. Poetry, or a well-told lamentable tale, moves them to tears, and friends who meet often weep for joy.
Swani privately imparts to me, in Pigeon Spanish, which he tells the Saint is Turkish, that the Saint is a humbug, and that when they last met he would hardly speak to him, for he (Swani) was working as a sailor on board an English pilgrim steamer, and dressed “a la inglesa, saber del trousers, catchy sea boots y todo.”
Still waiting for the messenger, I fall to observing the difference between the Arabs and the Berber race. It is the fashion amongst travellers in Morocco and Algeria to exalt the Berbers, and run down the Arabs. “The noble Shillah race” has become quite a catch-word with every one who sees a Berber and writes down his impressions. Curious that no one talks of the noble “Tuareg race,” yet the Tuareg’s are Berber of the Berbers, and their language, known as Tamashek, merely a dialect of the Berber language, which spreads over the vast area of territory from Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Mediterranean to Timbuctoo. Undoubtedly the oldest known inhabitants of the countries which now are called the Barbary States, they seem to have kept their type and customs unchanged since first we hear of them in history. The Arabs found them in possession of all Morocco, and drove them into the mountains and the desert beyond, and though they forced Islam upon them, still the two peoples are anti-pathetic to one another, have blended little, and you can tell them from one another at a glance.
The Arab, one of the finest types of all the races of mankind, tall, thin, fine eyes, aquiline noses, spare frames; walking with dignity; a horseman, poet; treacherous and hospitable; a gentleman, and yet inquisitive; destroying, as Ibn Jaldun assures us, the civilisation of every land they conquer, and yet capable of great things, witness Granada and Damascus; a metaphysician and historian; sensual and yet abstemious; a people loveable, and yet not good to “lippen to,” as Scotchmen say; and yet perhaps of all the Orientals those who have most impressed themselves upon the world.