One night his son came to the Dar al Kasdir and brought me an invitation from Sidi Boubikir to dine with him on the following afternoon. Arrived before the gate of his palace at the time appointed, two o'clock, we found the old diplomat waiting to welcome us. He wore a fine linen djellaba of dazzling whiteness, and carried a scarlet geranium in his hand. "You are welcome," he said gravely, and led the way through a long corridor, crying aloud as he went, "Make way, make way," for we were entering the house itself, and it is not seemly that a Moorish woman, whether she be wife or concubine, should look upon a stranger's face. Yet some few lights of the hareem were not disposed to be extinguished altogether by considerations of etiquette, and passed hurriedly along, as though bent upon avoiding us and uncertain of our exact direction. The women-servants satisfied their curiosity openly until my host suddenly commented upon the questionable moral status of their mothers, and then they made haste to disappear, only to return a moment later and peep round corners and doorways, and giggle and scream—as if they had been Europeans of the same class.
Sidi Boubikir passed from room to room of his great establishment and showed some of its treasures. There were great piles of carpets and vast quantities of furniture that must have looked out at one time in their history upon the crowds that throng the Tottenham Court Road; I saw chairs, sofas, bedsteads, clocks, and sideboards, all of English make. Brought on camels through Dukala and R'hamna to Marrakesh, they were left to fill up the countless rooms without care or arrangement, though their owner's house must hold more than fifty women, without counting servants. Probably when they were not quarrelling or dying their finger nails, or painting their faces after a fashion that is far from pleasing to European eyes, the ladies of the hareem passed their days lying on cushions, playing the gimbri[40] or eating sweetmeats.
In one room on the ground-floor there was a great collection of mechanical toys. Sidi Boubikir explained that the French Commercial Attaché had brought a large number to the Sultan's palace, and that my Lord Abd-el-Aziz had rejected the ones before us. With the curious childish simplicity that is found so often among the Moors of high position, Boubikir insisted upon winding up the clock-work apparatus of nearly all the toys. Then one doll danced, another played a drum, a third went through gymnastic exercises, and the toy orchestra played the Marseillaise, while from every adjacent room veiled figures stole out cautiously, as though this room in a Moorish house were a stage and the shrouded visitors were the chorus entering mysteriously from unexpected places. The old man's merriment was very real and hearty, so genuine, in fact, that he did not notice how his women-folk were intruding until the last note sounded. Then he turned round and the swathed figures disappeared suddenly as ghosts at cockcrow.
Though it was clear that Sidi Boubikir seldom saw half the rooms through which we hurried, the passion for building, that seizes all rich Moors, held him fast. He was adding wing after wing to his vast premises, and would doubtless order more furniture from London to fill the new rooms. No Moor knows when it is time to call a halt and deem his house complete, and so the country is full of palaces begun by men who fell from power or died leaving the work unfinished. The Grand Wazeer Ba Ahmad left a palace nearly as big as the Dar el Makhzan itself, and since he died the storks that build upon the flat roofs have been its only occupants. So it is with the gardens, whose many beauties he did not live to enjoy. I rode past them one morning, noted all manner of fruit trees blossoming, heard birds singing in their branches, and saw young storks fishing in the little pools that the rains of winter had left. But there was not one gardener there to tend the ground once so highly cultivated, and I was assured that the terror of the wazeer's name kept even the hungry beggars from the fruit in harvest time.
STREET IN MARRAKESH
The home and its appointments duly exhibited, Sidi Boubikir led the way to a diwan in a well-cushioned room that opened on to the garden. He clapped his hands and a small regiment of women-servants, black and for the most part uncomely, arrived to prepare dinner. One brought a ewer, another a basin, a third a towel, and water was poured out over our hands. Then a large earthenware bowl encased in strong basketwork was brought by a fourth servant, and a tray of flat loaves of fine wheat by a fifth, and we broke bread and said the "Bismillah,"[41] which stands for grace. The bowl was uncovered and revealed a savoury stew of chicken with sweet lemon and olives, a very pleasing sight to all who appreciate Eastern cooking. The use of knives being a crime against the Faith, and the use of forks and spoons unknown, we plunged the fingers of the right hand into the bowl and sought what pleased us best, using the bread from time to time to deal with the sauce of the stew. It was really a delicious dish, and when later in the afternoon I asked my host for the recipe he said he would give it to me if I would fill the bowl with Bank of England notes. I had to explain that, in my ignorance of the full resources of Moorish cooking, I had not come out with sufficient money.
So soon as the charm of the first bowl palled, it was taken away and others followed in quick succession, various meats and eggs being served with olives and spices and the delicate vegetables that come to Southern Morocco in early spring. It was a relief to come to the end of our duties and, our hands washed once more, to digest the meal with the aid of green tea flavoured with mint. Strong drink being forbidden to the True Believer, water only was served with the dinner, and as it was brought direct from the Tensift River, and was of rich red colour, there was no temptation to touch it. Sidi Boubikir was in excellent spirits, and told many stories of his earlier days, of his dealings with Bashadors, his quarrel with the great kaid Ben Daoud, the siege of the city by certain Illegitimate men—enemies of Allah and the Sultan—his journey to Gibraltar, and how he met one of the Rothschilds there and tried to do business with him. He spoke of his investments in consols and the poor return they brought him, and many other matters of equal moment.
It was not easy to realise that the man who spoke so brightly and lightly about trivial affairs had one of the keenest intellects in the country, that he had the secret history of its political intrigues at his fingers' ends, that he was the trusted agent of the British Government, and lived and throve surrounded by enemies. As far as was consistent with courtesy I tried to direct his reminiscences towards politics, but he kept to purely personal matters, and included in them a story of his attempt to bribe a British Minister,[42] to whom, upon the occasion of the arrival of a British Mission in Marrakesh, he went leading two mules laden with silver. "And when I came to him," said the old man, "I said, 'By Allah's grace I am rich, so I have brought you some share of my wealth.' But he would not even count the bags. He called with a loud voice for his wife, and cried to her, 'See now what this son of shame would do to me. He would give me his miserable money.' And then in very great anger he drove me from his presence and bade me never come near him again bearing a gift. What shall be said of a man like that, to whom Allah had given the wisdom to become a Bashador and the foolishness to reject a present? Two mules, remember, and each one with as many bags of Spanish dollars as it could carry. Truly the ways of your Bashadors are past belief." I agreed heartily with Sidi Boubikir; a day's discourse had not made clear any other aspect of the case.