But better than the guns, or talk of guns, was the invitation which he brought from the Kaid, saying he would like to see us in the afternoon. As such an invitation was, in our position, really a command, I hesitated some time before accepting it. The Chamberlain saw what was passing in my mind, and to gild the pill, remarked that had the Governor not been suffering from his wound, he would have got upon his horse and ridden to our tent. Though I felt sure that what he said was quite untrue, still mankind is so constituted that humbug flatters us, even although we think we see through it. So I accepted, and Si Mohammed departed after many compliments and with a promise to come and fetch us, and usher us into the Presence, in the afternoon. Lutaif lamented bitterly that we had no European clothes with which to endue ourselves, and properly impress the Kaid.
It must not be forgotten that in the East (and Mogreb-el-Acksa, though it means Far West, is perhaps as Eastern as any country in the world) European clothes, hard hats, elastic-sided boots, grey flannel shirts, with braces, mother-of-pearl studs, two-carat watch-chains, and all the beauty of our meanly contrived apparels, are to Mohammedans the outward visible sign of the inward spiritual Maxim gun, torpedo boat, and arms of precision, on which our civilisation, power, might, dominion, and morality really repose. A shoddy-clad and cheating European pedlar, in his national dress, always suggests to Easterns the might of England somewhere in the offing, and though they laugh at the wearer of the grey shoddy rags behind his back, they yet respect him more than if he were attired in the most beautiful of their own time-hallowed garments, which they know no European puts on but for some purpose of his own. But if a European loses respect in wearing Moorish clothes, he gains in another way, for the Moors are constituted like other men, and, seeing a man dressed in the clothes they wear themselves, converse with him more freely, even if, as in my case, his knowledge of the language is so slight as to make conversation through an interpreter a necessity.
So we put on the best we had all cleanly washed, and Lutaif arrayed himself in a brand new white Selham (burnouse), and looked more Biblical than ever as he stood forth to be my Aaron, I having resolved, in order not to make myself ridiculous, to refrain from saying anything in Arabic, unless I saw a chance to get some phrase in pertinently, and with effect.
Punctually at half-past two the Chamberlain, accompanied by a single follower, came for us, and we—that is, Lutaif, myself, Mohammed-el-Hosein, and Swani—walked as majestically as we could across the deserted Maidan, baking in the sun. We passed through several courts in which our friends the horses and the mules were tied, and I observed the wounded cream-coloured stallion of the Kaid tethered alone and guarded by a little boy who flapped the flies away with a green bough. Passing by the door of the Mosque, we saw a preacher holding forth to a congregation all dressed in white and seated on the ground. No coughing drowned his saw, no shuffling of chairs disturbed his eloquence, the listeners sat as solid as limpets on a rock, whilst his voice rose and fell in measured cadences, reminding one of the long rollers in a calm, just off the line. The door of the mosque was a poor specimen of the bronze-plated work adorned with pious sentences, which can be seen to such perfection in the mosque at Cordoba; the knocker of the familiar round Arab pattern, which the Moors have left in half the houses throughout Southern Spain. A narrow passage, where a few Jews and tribesmen sat waiting for an audience, led beneath a horse-shoe archway. Then, climbing up a dark and almost perpendicular staircase, we emerged into a lofty ante-room where several men sat on the floor preparing saffron, which covered half the room with a dense carpet of bright purple blossom, whilst in a corner lay a clean white sheepskin with a mass of orange saffron fibres all gathered in a heap. At one end of the room there was a narrow doorway, where two men with long guns in their hands kept watch, and people going out and in continually; some emerging crestfallen, and others radiant, as in the times when kings, even in Europe, gave personal audience, and their subjects spoke with them face to face.
Here we waited almost half an hour, no doubt on purpose to impress us with the amount of business which the Kaid had to transact. For myself, I was not sorry, as I had full leisure to observe all that was going on. Though all the people in the room and the two guards must have known who we were, no one showed curiosity, and one man talked to me, pretending to comprehend all that I said as if he wished to put me at my ease. We slipped our shoes off at an intimation from our guide and entered the Presence Chamber, a narrow room with an “artesonado” [218] ceiling in the Hispano-Moorish style, but vilely daubed in Reckitt’s blue and dingy red, and with cheap common gilding making it look tawdry and like the ceiling of an old-fashioned music-hall.
In a recess within the wall two boys were sitting doing nothing in rather an aggressive way. To my eye they looked rather androgynous, but not more so than many young men one sees in Piccadilly on a fine afternoon, and who would tolerate even a suspicion about the noble Shillah race! [219a] The room was carpeted with fine, almost white, matting, over which here and there were thrown black and white rugs from Sus, all worked in curious geometric patterns, woven from the softest of wool mingled with goats’ hair, and with long fringes at the edge.
Upon a dark red saddle-cloth [219b] and using an angle of the wall to lean against, his wounded leg stretched out before him on a sheepskin, and with cushions at his back, his Excellency sat. Luckily Arab manners (and in these matters Berbers follow the Arab lead) prescribe no Kiddush, or, most infallibly, situated as we were, we should have been obliged to make it, with the best grace we could. So we advanced, were formally presented by the Chamberlain, shook hands, and after being greeted quietly, but courteously, and after Lutaif had answered quite in the style of Faredi, sat down upon a rug and leaned against the wall, tucking our feet well underneath our clothes to show our breeding, and remained silently waiting to hear what the Kaid had to say.
Mohammed-el-Hosein and Swani advanced, lifted the Kaid’s selham, kissed it, and then retreating sat down, so to speak, below the salt, whilst in the doorway the two sentinels stood as unmoved as if they saw a Christian every day. Two or three elders sat round the room as stolid as josses in a temple, two Talebs, besides our friend the “Taleb of the Atlas,” were writing letters, and the Chamberlain stood at attention till the Kaid waved him to take a seat.
No doubt his Excellency took mental notes of us, and certainly I looked him over carefully, thinking that in a personal discussion upon horseback, out on the Maidan, he would prove a very awkward foe.
Just about forty years of age, thick-set, and dark complexioned, close black beard trimmed to a double point, rather small eyes, like those of all his race, he gave no indication of the cruelty for which he was renowned; not noble in appearance as are many of the Sheikhs of Arab blood, but still looking as one accustomed to command; hands strong and muscular, voice rather harsh, but low, and trained in the best school of Arab manners, so as to be hardly audible. Just for a moment, and no more, I got a glimpse of the inside man as I caught his eye fixed on me, savage yet fish-like, but in an instant a sort of film seemed to pass over it, not that he dropped his gaze, but seemed deliberately to veil it, as if he had reserved it for a more fitting opportunity. By race and language he was a Berber, but speaking Arabic tolerably fluently, and adapting all his habits and dress to those in fashion amongst Arab Sheikhs. His clothes white and of the finest wool, and clean as is a sheet of paper before a writer marks it black with lies. The Talebs never stopped opening and writing letters, now and then handing one to the Kaid who glanced it over and said “Guaha” (“Good”), and gave it back to have the seal affixed with one of the three large silver seals which stood upon a little table about six inches high. The sealing-wax was European, and kept in a box of common cardboard, which had been mended in several places with little silver bands to keep the sides together, as we should mend a lacquered box from Persia or Japan. Behind the Kaid, to mark his seat, upon the wall were painted three “ajimeces,” [221] roughly designed in blue and red and green in the worst of taste. For furniture, in addition to the matting and the rugs and leather-covered cushions, the cover cut into intricate geometric patterns, the room contained a small trunk-shaped box (perhaps entirely stuffed with gold, Allah hualem), a Belgian single-barrelled nickel-plated breech-loading gun hung on a nail, and the before-named double-barrelled English gun (from the Haymarket of the mysterious Londres or Windres, in the isle of Mists), a large pair of double field glasses; some bags of hide, two porous water bottles, a bundle of reed pens, and two or three pieces of bread, the staff of life, which fills so large a place in Moorish thoughts and life, and which an Arab of the old school breaks, but never touches with a knife. Two negro boys with dirty handkerchiefs, and boughs of walnut, stood on the right and left hand of the Kaid, and flapped away the flies.