Nothing would get out of his head at first that I was not an agent of the Globe Venture Syndicate, or had a mission from the British Government to try and establish some sort of undertaking with the chiefs of Sus. His apprehensions set at rest, or at the least so he pretended, he, too, began to give his views upon the state of current politics. All that the Sherif of Tamasluoght had said he quite corroborated, but with the difference that what he said was the opinion of a quick-witted, clever man, and therefore, to my mind, to some extent brought less conviction than the mere wanderings of the artless “saint.”
Most Arabs of the richer class are quite incapable of seeing anything but from a personal standpoint, and thus it is that, bit by bit, their national power has fallen into decay. In Spain, Damascus, Tunis, and the Morocco of to-day chiefs have arisen, and their sole idea has been to push their individual fortunes. Except the Emir Abd-el-Kader, none have had even a glimpse of trying to restore the Arab power.
So Abu Beckr regaled us with stories of Ba Ahmed’s villainy, his own position and personal insecurity, and assured me that the end was near, and that if England still stood hesitating, France would step in, and lastly, getting for a moment out of his egotism, said, “What avails it that I am so rich when my favourite son died of smallpox only three weeks ago, and I have no one to whom to leave my wealth?” Then he got up and said he had never showed his wealth to anyone, but as he found me so sympathetic to his views (I not having said a word), he would show me all his treasures and his house. Accordingly, we followed him into an interior court, on one side of which a door with about twenty padlocks stood.
Sidi Abu Beckr having assured himself that no one but ourselves was looking on, began to clash and bang amongst the locks and bars, piling the padlocks on the ground, unloosening chains, and making as much noise as a battle of armour-plated knights must have produced in the never-to-be-forgotten days of chivalry, when, in their mail, the scrofulous champions tapped on one another’s shields. At last the door swung open and disclosed a room packed full of boxes, silver dessert services, china of all sorts, lamps, clocks, and every kind of miscellaneous wealth collected in the long course of an honourable career by strict attention to all economic laws. Boxes were there of iron painted in colours, made in Holland and in Spain, standing beside hide cases, teak chests, and old portmanteaux, Saratoga trunks and safes, cash boxes, sea chests, and packing cases, and all apparently stuffed to the very lids. With pardonable pride, and with a flush stealing upon his parchment cheek, he did obeisance to his gods. “This is all silver Spanish dollars, this Sultan Hassan’s coins, this packing case is jewellery. I had it all in pledge. This, silver in the bar, and these hide bags are gold dust, but the king of all,” and here he touched an antiquated safe, “is el d’hab (gold), chiefly in sovereigns. Yes, I know the waste of interest, but do not think you see half of all my wealth; the bulk of it is safely placed in England—consols, I think they call it—safe, but small returns, and smaller since the accursed Goschen lowered the rate. This that you see I keep beside me, partly from caprice, for el d’hab has always been my passion, passing the love of women, horses, or of anything that God has made to ease the life of man.” As he spoke he patted the safe with his slippered feet, and looked as if he knew a special providence watched over him; but knowing did not truckle to the power, but rather took it as a tribute to himself and his ability, as being well assured that providence is always with the strong. As I looked at him, proud of his wealth, his cunning and his good fortune, it seemed as if our nation, with its power, its riches, and its insensibility, was fitly represented by the worthy man, who, from a camel driver’s state, by the sheer force of industry and thrift, had made his fortune.
Blessed are those who rise, to them the world is pleasant and well ordered, all things are right, and virtue is rewarded (in themselves); thrice blessed are the pachydermatous of heart, the deaf of soul, the invertebrate, insensible, the unimaginative; nothing can injure, nothing wound them; nature’s injustice, man’s ineptitude, fortune’s black joking, leaves them as untouched as a blind cart-horse, who, in struggling up a hill, sets his sharp, calkered foot upon a mouse. But as mankind, in strangeness and variety of mind, is quite incomprehensible, Sidi Abu Beckr had but hardly locked the door upon his hoards than he set to bewail his sonless state. “Allah has given me children (so he said), sons, grown to men’s estate, but all unprofitable, idle and profligate, and of those who spend their time in folly, all but one, a boy to whom I hoped to leave my wealth. All that you see was to be his, the silver, gold, this house, my lands, investments in your country, all I have, and as I thought that Abu Beckr had not lived in vain, the pestilence fell on my house and left me poorer than when I was a camel driver; but it was written; God the most merciful, the compassionate, the inscrutable, he alone giveth life, and sends his death to men. Come let me show you where my blessing died.”
Lutaif, who, since the word smallpox had first been mentioned, had held his handkerchief up to his nose, now for the first time in the journey almost broke into revolt. Pulling my “selham,” he whispered, “Let us go, the infectious microbes stand on no ceremony,” and, in fact, wished to retreat at once. Not from superior bravery, but because I knew if there was mischief it was already done, I laughed at all his fears, told him to trust providence, as a good man should do, and that for microbes, probably by this time a new school of scientific men said they were non-existent, and put down all diseases to some other cause. Seeing he got no sympathy from me and perhaps after prayer (prayers, idle prayers) he followed, and Abu Beckr conducted us to a room and opened wide the door. Within, piled up upon the floor were heaps of rugs, and evidently no window had been open for a month. “Here (he said) died my son, and nothing has been touched since he was buried; upon this very rug he breathed his last.” And as he spoke, he lifted up a carpet from the Sahara, woven in blue and red, and moved it to and fro so that the microbes, if there were any, must have had fair play to do their work. Lutaif turned pale, and once more pleaded to be off; but Abu Beckr was inexorable and putting down the rug, led us again through a long passage and opening yet another door, said, “Here the mother died, and nothing has been altered since her death.” At last Lutaif grew desperate and seeing there was no escape began to grow at ease and followed us through countless passages, peeping into rooms in each of which some member of the family had died.
On our return to the alcove, where tea awaited us, we passed a figure swathed in white which turned aside to let us pass, its face against the wall. Abu Beckr took it by the hand and introduced it as the mother of the dead boy’s mother, and a hand wrapped in a corner of a veil stole out, and for a moment just touched mine, but all the time the eyes were fixed upon the ground, after the style of Arab manners, which ordains that a woman must not look a strange man in the face. Something was mumbled in the nature of a complimentary phrase and then the sheeted figure slipped mysteriously away, but no doubt turned to look at the strange animals through some grating in the wall.
Lutaif explained that the honour done us was remarkable, and that no doubt Abu Beckr had stopped her to show how free from prejudice he was. The visit ended with more tea and a long talk, in which again I was assured the end was near, and that the Grand Vizir had made the life of every one intolerable, ruined the land, rendered the Sultan despicable, and that all educated men longed for the advent of some European power. Having heard the same tale from the Sherif of Tamasluoght, and as I knew both he and Abu Beckr were rich men and above all things feared attacks upon their wealth, I mentally resolved to talk the matter over with some Arab of the old school and hear his views.
Standing before the door, we found a soldier with a lantern waiting to see us home. We bid farewell to Abu Beckr, watching him stand beneath the archway of his house in his green robe and white burnouse, looking a figure out of the pages of the “Arabian Nights”; but with a scheming brain and subtle mind, able to hold his own with trained diplomatists and to defeat them with the natural craft implanted in him by a wise providence which arms the weak with lies, makes the strong brutal, and is apparently content to watch the struggle, after the fashion of an English tourist gloating upon a Spanish bull fight on a fine Sunday afternoon.
After a two days’ stay, with mules and horses well fed, I left the city, passed through the battlemented gates, and saw the walls, the gardens, palm trees, towers, and last of all the Kutubieh sink out of sight, then set my face westward to cross the hundred and thirty miles of stony plain which stretches almost to Mogador. After the first day’s ride, our animals showed signs of giving out, the starving at Thelata-el-Jacoub having reduced them so much in condition that the two days’ rest had done but little good. Those who have ridden tired horses, through stony wastes heated to boiling point by the sun’s rays, and without chance of finding water on the road, can estimate the pleasure of our ride. On the third day, just about noon, and after toiling painfully at a slow walk through interminable fields of stone, we reached the Zowia of Sidi-el-Mokhtar, where a portion of the tribe Ulad-el-Bousbaa (the sons of Lions) were established, the other portions of the tribe being respectively in Algeria and in the Sahara.