Real highway robbery seemed not to flourish in Morocco, perhaps because the atmosphere of monarchy was less congenial to it than the free air of a republic, though that could surely not have been the case, as virtue is a plant that grows from the top downwards, and both the President and Sultan, at the time I write about, are robbers to the core.
Occasionally in the Shereefian Empire, a Jew returning from a fair was set upon and spoiled, and now and then in lowered voices, as you jogged along the road, were pointed out to you the place where Haramin [102a] had slain a man thirty or forty years ago.
This is the case in all those portions of Morocco where Christians travel; that is to Fez, to Tetuan, from Mazagan to the city of Morocco, and generally about Tangier, the coast towns and the Gharb. [102b] Outside those spheres the case is different; and in the Riff, the Sus, Wad Nun, or even a few miles outside of Mequinez, a Christian’s life, or even that of a Mohammedan from India, Persia or the East, would not be worth a “flus.” [102c] We rested for our mid-day halt upon the open plain under the shadow of a great rock, the heat too great to eat, and passed the time smoking and drinking from our porous water-jars, until the “enemy,” as the Arabs call the Sun, sank down a little; then in the cool we went on through a wilderness of cactus and oleanders, almond and fig trees, with palms and apricots, till sandy paths zigzagging between aloe hedges with a few tapia walls backed by a ruined castle, betokened we were near Asif-el-Mal. Asif means river in Shillah, and at the foot of the crumbling walls a river ran, making things green and most refreshing to the eyes after ten hours of fighting with the enemy, enduring dust, and kicking at our animals after the fashion which all men adopt upon a journey; not that it helps the animals along, but seems to be a vent for the impatience of the traveller. Norias [103a] creak, a camel with a donkey and a woman harnessed to one of them, water pours slowly out of the revolving “Alcuzas,” [103b] and at the trough the maidens of the village stand waiting to fill their water-jars, shaped like an amphora, which they carry on the shoulders with a strap braced round their hands. Asif-el-Mal boasts a Mellah, and Jews at once came out to offer to trade with us, to talk, and hear the news. Intelligent young Jews, Moisés, Slimo, and Mordejai with Baruch, and all the other names, familiar to the readers of the Old Testament, flock round us. All can read and write, can keep accounts, as well as if they had been born in Hamburg; most have ophthalmia, some are good-looking, pale with great black eyes, and every one of them seems to be fashioned with an extra joint about the back. Yet hospitable, civil and a link with Europe, which they have never seen; but about which they read, and whose affairs they follow with the keenest interest, all knowing Gladstone’s name and that of Salisbury; all longing for the day when they can put on European clothes and blossom out arrayed after the gorgeous fashion of the tribe in Mogador. Each of them wears a love-lock hanging upon his shoulder, and, without doubt, if they were but a little bit more manly-looking, they would be as fine young men as you could wish to see.
Their race almost controls the town, Berbers are few and hardly any Arabs but the Sheikh and his immediate following live in the place. A proof the land is good, the soil productive, and the water permanent; for when did Jews set up their tabernacles on an unproductive soil, in a poor town, or follow the fortunes of any one who was not rich? Their chief, Hassan Messoud, a venerable man, dressed in a long blue gown, a spotted belcher pocket-handkerchief over his head and hanging down behind in a most unbecoming style, advanced to greet us. Perhaps he was the finest Eastern Jew I ever saw; a very Moses in appearance, as he might have been on Sinai a little past his prime, and yet before the ingratitude of those he served had broken him. Beside him walks his daughter, a Rebecca, or Zohara, bearing fresh butter in a lordly tin dish, and bread baked upon pebbles, with the impression of the stones upon the underside. Such bread the chosen people have left in Spain, and still in Old Castille amongst the “Cristianos Rancios,” who hate the very name of Jew, and think that the last vestige of their customs has long left Spain, the self-same bread is eaten at Easter, if I remember rightly; and so, perhaps, the true believer (Christian this time) unwittingly bakes bread which yet may damn him black to all eternity.
Hassan comes quickly into the tent, and bids us welcome in Jewish Arabic; and waiting cautiously till even our own Moors have left the tent, breaks into Spanish and asks me of what nationality I am. I tell him from “God’s country,” and he says, “Ingliz,” to which I answer, “Yes, or Franciz, for both are one.” He grins, squatting close to the door of the tent, servile, but dignified, full six feet high, his black beard turning grey, and hands large, fat, and whitish, and which have never done hard work. We talk, and then Hassan takes up his parable. Glory to Allah he is rich, and all the Governors are his dear friends, that is they owe him money; and as he talks the old-time Spanish rhyme comes to my memory, which, talking of some Jews who came to see a certain king, speaks of their honeyed words, and how they praised their people and boasted of their might.
“Despues vinieron Don Salomon y Don Ezequiel,
Con sus dulces palabras parecen la miel,
Hacen gran puja, de los de Israel.”
And yet Hassan was but easy of dispense, wearing the clothes of an ordinary Morocco Jew, with nothing to indicate his wealth.
As we sat talking to him of the exchange in Europe; about the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Oppenheims, and others of the “chosen” who bulk largely in the money columns of the daily press of Europe (all of whom he knew by name), and interchanging views about the late Lord Beaconsfield, whom Hassan knew as Benjamin ben Israel, the daughters of God’s folk came out upon the house-tops, dressed in red and yellow, with kerchiefs on their heads, eyes like the largest almonds, lips like full-blown pomegranates, and looked with pride upon their headman talking to the Sherif or Christian Caballer, whichever he might be, on equal terms. Strange race, so intellectual, so quick of wit, so subtle, and yet without the slightest dignity of personal bearing; handsome, and yet without the least attraction, conquering the Arabs as they conquer Saxons, Latins, or all those with whom they come in contact upon that modern theatre of war—the Stock Exchange. Hassan Messoud having protested that by the God of Abraham we were all welcome, retired and left us to pitch our tent upon a dust-heap in a courtyard, between some ruined houses and the village wall.
Under the moonlight, the distant plain looked like a vast, steely-blue sea, the deep, red roads all blotted out, the palms and olives standing up exactly as dead stalks of corn stand up in an October wheat-field. The omnipresent donkeys and camels of the East hobbled or straying in the foreground beneath the walls, and the mysterious, silent, white-robed figures wandering about like ghosts, the town appeared to me to look as some Morisco village must have looked in Spain when the Mohammedans possessed the land, and villages brown, ruinous, and hedged about with cactus like Asif-el-Mal, clung to the crags, and nestled in the valleys of the Sierra de Segura, or the Alpujarra.
At daybreak, Hassan Messoud appeared with breakfast at our tent, olives and meat in a sauce of oil and pepper, not appetising upon an empty stomach, but not to be refused without offence. Then, throwing milk upon the ground from a small gourd, he blessed us, and invoked the God of Israel to shield us on our way. A worthy, kindly, perhaps usurious, but most hospitable Israelite, not without guile (or property), a type of those Jews of the Middle Ages from whom Shakespeare took Shylock, and in whose hands the lords, knights, squires, and men-at-arms were as a Christian stockbroker, cheat he as wisely as he can, is to-day in the hands of any Jew who, a few months ago, retailed his wares in Houndsditch; but who, the Exchange attained to, walks its precincts as firmly as it were Kodesh, and he a priest after the order of Melchizedec. Riding along the trail which runs skirting the foothills of the Atlas, and forces us to dive occasionally into the deep dry “nullah,” for there are only six or seven bridges in all Morocco, and none near the Atlas, the vegetation changes, and again we pass dwarf rhododendrons, arbutus, and kermes-oak, and enter into a zone of plants like that of southern Spain, with the exception that here the mignonette becomes a bush, and common golden rod grows four feet high, with a thick woody stem. White poplars, walnuts, elms, and a variety of ash are planted round the houses. From the eaves hang strings of maize cobs; bee-hives like those the Moors left in Spain, merely a hollow log of wood, or roll of cork, lie in the gardens; grape vines climb upon the trees, producing grapes, long, rather hard, claret-coloured, and aromatic, the best, I think, in all the world, and which have fixed themselves upon the memory of my palate, as have the oranges of Paraguay.