In outward visible appearance he was a perfect Kurd, squat and broad-shouldered, his beard so thick that had you dropped a pin in it it would not have touched the skin, eyes black and piercing, face like a walnut, and a long love-lock hanging from his shaven head down on his shoulder; in one ear he wore a silver earring, and he was gifted with a voice perhaps the strongest that I ever heard in man. Both a musician and a philosopher, but yet a moralist, and a fanatic preacher of the graces of Mohammed, but still a sceptic at the heart, and above all a traveller, “for by travelling a man, although his purse grows light, still lays up treasures on which to live when he is old. What is a Sultan, Kaid, Pasha, or Governor, compared to him who is the Sultan of the world, when where night catches him he rests and looks upon the stars?”
So, starting from Shiraz (occasionally Tabriz), he had run over almost all Europe, Turkey, and a portion of the Northern States of Africa. Had been in Serbistan, Atenas, and in Draboulis (Tripoli), Massr-el-Kahira (Cairo), Stamboul, and Buda Pesth, and of all lands in Europe thought most of Magyarstan; “for there the women have eyes like almonds, though they drink too much beer, the men are tall and fierce, handsome (husnar besaf), the horses large and elegant, they run as lightly as gazelles on stony ground; and had the people but the blessing of the true faith, he never would have left their land.” Their city, Buda Pesth, was larger than Stamboul, more fine than Paris, Vienna, or than Shiraz, and in the middle ran a river on which went steamboats, in which he used to travel and pay his passage with a tune, for the Magyars, he said, loved music better than they loved their God. In this famed city he had known one Bamborah, who by interior evidence and after cogitation I found to be Professor Vambery. Large-hearted was this Bamborah, and speaking Persian, a Christian dervish, knowing all the East, having read all books, explored all countries, mastered all sciences and learning; the friend of kings, for had not the Sultan Abdul Hamid (whom may God preserve) sent him a ring of “diamont” worth a thousand pounds, and Bamborah had shown it whilst they sat discoursing in his hospitable house.
In fact of all the men, Christian or Moslem, he had ever met, this Bamborah appeared to him the fittest to stand before a king. But for himself even in Buda Pesth, the travelling fever had impelled him to embark aboard a “chimin de fer,” and go to Vienna, travelling all through the night and reaching Vienna about the feyzir (day break), and straying up and down the streets until at last he met a Turk who sold red slippers, and lodged with him; but after several days spent in the place, which gave him neither pleasure nor material gain, went on to Baris to find upon the journey that the customs of the East and West did not agree. The Christians know no God. With them it is all money (Kulshi flus), with them no stranger, no wayfaring man, for in that train to Baris he asked a woman for some water to wash his hands so as to address Allah after the fashion laid down in the holy books; she brought it, and after washing, and his prayers all duly said, the passengers, as he informed me, crowding about in an unseemly way to see him pray, he smiled and thanked the woman, and taking out a cigarette tendered it to her with his thanks. But she, born of a dog, knowing no God and dead to shame—for is it not set down “to strangers and to wayfarers be kind”?—laughed an ill laugh and asked for half-a-franc: franc, franc, and always franc, that is the Christian’s God.
Thus talking of the Alps and Alpujarras the time wore on, and after saying again most earnestly “May God not open the door of our Lord the Sultan to you,” he took his leave, and as he went it seemed our only friend had gone.
Next morning found the situation still unchanged, and we began to look about us and found out that we had several companions in adversity. Camped in a tent about a hundred yards away were three Kaids (Biblicé kings), from the province of the Sus, who had been waiting more than a month for an audience of our captor, he having summoned them to wait upon him to confer, as the gipsies say, about “the affairs of Egypt.” One of the “kings” turned out to be a “saint” of some repute, a tall fine man of Arab type and race, dressed all in spotless white, and reading always in a little copy of some holy book under an olive tree, showing no trace of trouble at his long wait, although he must have passed through much annoyance and incurred considerable expense, as almost all his animals had died through lack of food and the change of climate from the warm lands of Sus to the cold winds of the interior Atlas range.
Under the olive tree I sat and talked to him, chiefly through the medium of Lutaif, and asked him much of Tarudant, from whence his house was situated but a long day’s ride. It appeared that in the main the account of Gerhard Rohlfs, [161a] the Hamburg Jew, who visited it some thirty years ago, is applicable to the city of to-day. The Sherif spoke of the high walls mentioned by Rohlfs and Oskar Lenz; [161b] of the five gates called Bab-el-Kasbah, Bab-el-Jamis, Bab-Ouled ben Noumas, Bab Targount, and Bab Egorgan; of the high Kasbah, occupying, as Rohlfs says, a space of 50,000 square metres, and cut off from the town by a high crenelated wall. He dwelt upon the cheapness of provisions, said that six eggs were bought for a little copper coin called a “musonah” (known to the Spaniards as “blanquillo”) and worth perhaps a farthing. He said a pound of meat cost two or three “musonahs,” spoke of the trade in brass and copper vessels, and gave us to understand, of all the towns within the empire of his Shereifian Majesty, that Tarudant was cheapest and pleasantest to live in, and inferred it was because the people had no dealings with the infidel. For, said he, “the infidel are Oulad el Haram” (sons of the illegitimate), ever a-stirring, never contented with their lot, afraid to be alone, seeing no beauty in the sun, not caring for the sound of running water, and even looking at a fine horse but for his worth; men bound to a wife, the slave of all the things they make; then, recollecting that I too was one of the dog descended, he gravely drew his hand across his beard, and said, “but no doubt Allah made them cunning and wise for some great purpose of his own.”
No doubt, in every town throughout the East, the presence of even a small quantity of Europeans forces prices up, upsets the national life, unsettles men, and after having done so, gives them no equivalent for the mischief that it makes.
The mosques were three in number, one in the Kasbah, two in the town, of which the principal was El Djama-el-Kebir, and the most sacred Sidi-o-Sidi, the Saint of Saints, by which name people of a serious turn of mind call the whole town in conversation, as who should say, speaking of London, the city of St. Paul.
I questioned him about the sugar-cane plantations, of which both Luis de Marmol [162] and Diego de Torres [163a] speak in their curious books written in the middle of the sixteenth century, but he had never heard of sugar-cane near Tarudant. This forms another proof of the decadence into which all the land has fallen, for the climate and soil of Tarudant should be at least as favourable for sugar-cane as is the strip of territory in Spain which runs along the coast from Malaga into the province of Almeria, where the Moors first introduced the canes which grow there still to-day.
It appeared according to the Sherif that the town contained some 1,400 houses, and a population which he estimated at 10,000, [163b] mostly in easy circumstances, but very ill-disposed towards all foreigners. Much information he imparted as to the mineral riches of the province; but without descending to particulars, with the exception of sulphur, which he said was found close to the town. Romans, of course, had left their castles near the place, in the same way the Moors have done in parts of Spain to which they never penetrated; but who those Romans were remains for some more well-graced, or fortunately starred traveller than I to tell of, commentate upon, and weave a theory to content his public and himself. Caravans, it seems, go straight to Timbuctoo taking European goods, and bring back slaves and gold-dust, with ostrich feathers and the other desert commodities, as in the time of Mungo Park. At least they did; but I suppose the French in their consuming zeal for freedom may have stopped slaves from being bought in these degenerate days. I learned the chief fondak or caravansary was kept by one Muley Mustapha el Hamisi; but most unluckily an unkind fate deprived me of the opportunity of entering his hospitable walls. The city seemed to resemble, from the account of the Sherif, Morocco city, that is, to occupy a relatively enormous space, as almost every other house had a large garden, and several of the larger houses gardens of many acres in extent; so that, as the Sherif explained, “the town looks like a silver cup [164a] dropped in a tuft of grass.” This, as I did not see it, I take on trust, believing perhaps that Moses had died happier had he not had the view from Pisgah’s summit over the plains of Canaan. [164b]