This missive, read aloud, evoked great admiration both from Swani and Mohammed el Hosein, and they declared it certainly would have a good effect. So Swani, dressed in a clean white burnous, which Lutaif had with him in his saddle-bags, and with a pair of my new yellow slippers, went off, and with much ceremony handed the letter to the keeper of the gate. Knowing the respect the Moors attach to letters, and the astonishment they show if any Christian can write their characters, I thought perhaps the letter might bring an interview; but thinking of the happy afternoon I had spent with the simple fakirs upon the stony beach, did not care much, knowing the happy hours that a man passes in his life are few, and of more value than much gold or all the jewels of the Apocalypse.
CHAPTER IX.
Though not so sanguine as Lutaif, as to the emollient powers of his epistle, I was pleased to find that for the first time, next morning, we received ample supplies of food, baskets of grapes and oranges, and for the first time people spoke to us without an air of breaking some command.
During the morning a miserable bundle of rags arrived and stood before our tent, asking in broken Arabic if we were the Christians, and on being answered in the affirmative broke out into French. It appeared he was a French deserter from Algeria, having deserted in Ain Sefra, [212] walked to Figig, and pretended to turn Mohammedan, he came by Tafilet, and was about to make his way down to the coast. This, as he said, was his itinerary, but why he should have come round by Tafilet, he did not explain. He certainly was not a personable man; a weasel-faced, pale, and fair-haired Parisian “voyou,” thin, active, and half-starved, foot-sore and weary, dressed in rags, and speaking a jargon of bad Arabic, compared to which that spoken by the Persian and myself became as the language of the Khoreish, or the best literal Arabic which Cairo boasts. He told us that he slept in the mosques, making the profession of his faith if there was any doubt about him before going in; this with a wink, and “Sont-ils bêtes, ces Arabes, à la fin!” After he had eaten and smoked, he said that it was common in Algeria for soldiers to desert, adopt the Arab dress, and make their way into Morocco; some reached the coast, but many disappeared, murdered by the tribesmen or the villagers upon the way. Withal a merry knave, relating how he had served in a Spahi regiment during the war in Madagascar, and that the Arab troopers, when the war broke out, talked of the war with Madame Casba, [213a] and thought she was Sultana of some island, who was fighting with the French. Although he had no arms or money, he did not seem afraid, but trusted to arrive in Mogador or Saffi in a few weeks’ time. We went to bathe and left him smoking under a tree with Swani, talking a mixture of Arabic and French: on our return in half an hour, thinking to see him still before the tent, and make him tell us what he had seen in his long tramp, we found that, without a word to anyone, he had slunk mysteriously away.
Once in Morocco city I met three Englishmen dressed in the red baize rags which form the uniform of the Sherifian troops. Where they came from they did not say, but wanted money to buy magia [213b] and tobacco; I gave them something, and on receiving it with not too laboured thanks, they too mixed with the crowd in one of the bazaars and disappeared.
In the crowded Kaisariehs of the towns, and in the endless processions of noiseless-footed people on the roads, nothing is more surprising than the way in which odd characters come to the surface for a moment (like a fish rising), and then sink back again into the depths from which they rose.
On mules and donkeys, on horseback and on foot, beggars, or travelling well attended, Berbers and Arabs, Jews, Negroes, Haratin, men from the Sahara, and from the mountains of the Riff, Syrians, and Levantines, outcast Europeans, and an occasional Hindu, with Turks and Greeks, and people from the utmost regions of the Oriental world, they all are there, and always on the move, travelling about as if some not too swiftly circulating quicksilver ran in their veins; whither they go or why, whence come from, and what urges them to wander up and down, is to me inexplicable, and forms one of the many of the unfathomed and unfathomable problems of the East. Not that I mean the various passengers whom I have named bulk largely in the population of Morocco, but they are there, and every now and then one feels how all the Oriental world is linked together by nomadic habits, from Bagdad to Wad Nun, and from Shiraz to the oases of the Sahara.
In Morocco the prevailing tone is greyish white; men’s clothes, and houses, towns, bushes, tall umbelliferæ, nodding like ghosts in autumn, all are white; white sands upon the shore, and in the Sahara, and over all a white and saddening light, as if the sun was tired with shining down for ever on the unchanging life. In no part of Morocco I have visited does the phrase “gorgeous East” have the least meaning, and this is always noted by the wandering Easterns, who find the country dull and lacking colour compared to Asia, or as the Arabs call it, “Blad Es Shark.” [214]
Almost all day on the Maidan behind our tent football went on (called in Arabic El Cora), and every one joined in, middle-aged men, slaves, and the various hangers-on about the place, the Kaid’s sons playing furiously and whilst the game went on they were not more respected, and received as full a share of kicks, shoves, trips, and pushes as did all the rest. The ball they used was little larger than a pomegranate; no rules seemed to be observed, for everybody pushed, shoved, bit, scratched, and kicked as it seemed best to him, and as they had no goals, but played simply to drive the other players back, the play was wild, and now and then extremely savage, and I saw a man get his shoulder dislocated after a violent fall. Still I sat watching it with great delight, sometimes for hours, as certainly they played it with their whole souls, shouting and yelling, leaping like roe, and everybody playing off side when it seemed good to him, and glorying in his crime.
Towards midday came the Chamberlain, bringing back our guns with many thanks and offers of purchase, which we had to decline, as neither of the guns belonged to us. With him he brought a double-barrelled hammerless gun in good condition, and with the maker’s name (Green, Haymarket, London) engraved upon it. He said it was the Kaid’s, who set great store by it, having received it as a present from a merchant on the coast, and specially he wished to know if the gun was what would be called of first-rate workmanship in England. I told him that it was and probably cost about twenty pounds, and that the son of our Sultana could buy no better or more expensive weapon, unless, which I said did not seem probable to me, he had his guns adorned with gold or precious stones.