On nights like these and through streets not greatly different, Harun al Raschid fared abroad in Baghdad and lighted upon the wonderful folk who live for all time in the pages of the Arabian Nights. Doubtless I passed some twentieth-century descendants of the fisher-folk, the Calendars, the slaves, and the merchants who move in their wonderful pageantry along the glittering road of the "Thousand Nights and a Night,"—the type is marvellously unchanging in Al Moghreb; but, alas, they spoke, if at all, to deaf ears, and Salam was ever more anxious to see me safely home than to set out in search of adventure. By day I knew that Djedida had little of the charm associated even in this year of grace with the famous city on the Tigris, but, all over the world that proclaims the inspiration of Mohammed, the old times come back by night, and then "a thousand years are but as yesterday."
Happily we were right below the area of rebellion. In the north, round Fez and Taza, there was severe fighting, spreading thence to the Riff country. Here, people did no more than curse the Pretender in public or the Sultan in private, according to the state of their personal feelings. Communication with the south, said the Maalem, was uninterrupted; only in the north were the sons of the Illegitimate, the rebels against Allah, troubling Our Lord the Sultan. From Djedida down to the Atlas the tribes were peaceful, and would remain at rest unless Our Master should attempt to collect his taxes, in which case, without doubt, there would be trouble.
A VERANDAH AT MAZAGAN
He was a busy man in these days, was the Maalem. When he was not baking bread or smoking kief he was securing mules and bringing them for our inspection. To Mr. T. Spinney, son of the British Vice-Consul in Mazagan, we owed our salvation. A master of Moghrebbin Arabic, on intimate terms with the Moors, and thoroughly conversant with the road and its requirements, he stood between me and the fiery-tongued Maalem. This mule was rejected, that saddle was returned, stirrups tied with string were disqualified, the little man's claim to have all "the money in the hand" was overruled, and the Maalem, red-hot sputtering iron in my hands, was as wax in Mr. Spinney's. My good friend and host also found Kaid M'Barak,[7] the soldier, a tall, scorched, imperturbable warrior, who rode a brave horse, and carried a gun done up in a very tattered, old, flannel case tied with half a dozen pieces of string. The kaid's business was to strike terror into the hearts of evil men in return for a Moorish dollar a day, and to help with tent setting and striking, or anything else that might be required, in return for his food. He was a lean, gaunt, taciturn man, to whom twelve hours in the saddle brought no discomfort, and though he strove earnestly to rob me, it was only at the journey's end, when he had done his work faithfully and well. His gun seemed to be a constant source of danger to somebody, for he carried it at right angles to his horse across the saddle, and often on the road I would start to consciousness that the kaid was covering me with his be-frocked weapon. After a time one grew accustomed and indifferent to the danger, but when I went shooting in the Argan forest I left the blessed one in camp. He was convinced that he carried his gun in proper fashion, and that his duty was well done. And really he may have been right, for upon a day, when a hint of possible danger threatened, I learned to my amusement and relief that the valiant man carried no ammunition of any sort, and that the barrel of his gun was stuffed full of red calico.
Our inland tramp over, he took one day's rest at Mogador, then gathered the well-earned store of dollars into his belt and started off to follow the coast road back to Djedida. Perhaps by now the Basha has had his dollars, or the Sultan has summoned him to help fight Bu Hamara. In any case I like to think that his few weeks with us will rank among the pleasant times of his life, for he proved a patient, enduring man, and though silent, a not unedifying companion.
Among the strange stories I heard in Djedida while preparing for the journey was one relating to the then War Minister, Kaid Mahedi el Menebhi, some-time envoy to the Court of St. James's. In his early days Menebhi, though a member of the great Atlas Kabyle of that name, had been a poor lad running about Djedida's streets, ready and willing to earn a handful of floos[8] by hard work of any description. Then he set up in business as a mender of old shoes and became notorious, not because of his skill as a cobbler, but on account of his quick wit and clever ideas. In all Mohammedan countries a Believer may rise without any handicap on account of lowly origin, and so it fell out that the late Grand Wazeer, Ba Ahmad, during a visit to Djedida heard of the young cobbler's gifts, and straightway gave him a place in his household. Thereafter promotion was rapid and easy for Menebhi, and the lad who had loafed about the streets with the outcasts of the city became, under the Sultan, the first man in Morocco. "To-day," concluded my informant, "he has palaces and slaves and a great hareem, he is a Chief Wazeer and head of the Sultan's forces, but he still owes a merchant in Djedida some few dollars on account of leather he had bought and forgot to pay for when Ba Ahmad took him to Marrakesh."[9]
