The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

So Tsamani hurried down to the hareem and the room where his mother lay upon soft cushions, with her gimbri for company; and she gave her permission readily enough, and called the old lady who had charge of the women’s quarter, and bade her go to the main courtyard and summon two men slaves to accompany Tsamani and his little nurse to see that no harm befell them.

So the little party went out to the gardens that lie round the great green-tiled palace of the Sultan, and when they came to the marsh by the orchard of pomegranates Tsamani cried to his little companion: “O Ayesha, let us stay here and play.” He had seen Father and Mother Stork with their family on the marsh. Then the two men slaves sat in the shade of the red-blossomed pomegranate trees, and little Ayesha picked wild flowers, while Tsamani went up to the stork family and saw the little ones that had only just as many feathers as enabled them to fly feebly for short distances. They splashed about in the shallow waters of the marsh, and tried to catch frogs and little fishes; but they were not skilful enough to do so; they could secure nothing better than a few worms, and would have fared ill but for Father and Mother Stork, from whom no frogs or fishes could escape. When the parent birds caught anything they washed it very carefully in the water before giving it to their young to eat, and no trouble seemed too much for them in satisfying the hunger of their little ones. Tsamani watched them while the two slaves slept under the pomegranate trees; and Ayesha, picking more flowers than she could carry, forgot that the sun’s heat was growing greater.

“You must go home soon,” said Father Stork at last, “or you will be hurt by the sun, and you will have to go to the hospital, just as our family has to go when it is sick or ailing.”

“Is there a hospital for storks?” said Tsamani, very much astonished.

“Certainly there is,” replied Father Stork. “It is in the old northern city of Fez, home of pious and learned Moors, and was founded many generations ago by a good Moslem. All sick or wounded storks are brought there and put in the charge of the pious men who conduct the hospital. The ailing ones are doctored, the hungry ones are fed, the dead are buried. It is not for nothing that we serve Moorish cities.”

“Serve Moorish cities,” repeated Tsamani curiously. “How do you do that?”

“We are the scavengers,” said Father Stork. “In the western countries men are employed to remove the rubbish and refuse from the houses, but here and all over the East we take their places. To be sure, we cannot eat the offal, as the vultures do; but we eat a great deal that would spread sickness through any city if left lying on the ground under the hot sun. If there were no gardens and river-shallows here we could live in the city itself, and would thrive there. Very many of my family keep in the city of Fez, although there is a river and they can go out to the marshes if they felt inclined.”

The summer, and the rainy season that takes the place of winter passed, bringing another spring in their train; and still Tsamani spoke to the storks when the weather permitted him to go upon the roof, and learned a great deal of their lives and ways. With the completion of their feathers and the change of colour in their wing quills from brown to black the young birds had gone afield, and were to be seen in the well-watered meadows by the tomb of Sidi Bel Abbas, the saint who wrought so nobly for the poor in his days on earth that he has become the patron of all the beggars in the white-walled city. One sat on a corner of the tomb itself, the others on the flat housetops near the gardens.

“They will go away with this summer,” said Father Stork. “They will join the hundreds of others that came back from the North before the cold weather sets in. Did you not notice how full the gardens became at the beginning of the winter, and how the streets and the market places were full of birds? They do not like the cold weather of Holland and Denmark and Poland, and other countries of Europe, where they go to rear their young. At a given season of the year the desire for home takes them. In spring they seek a milder clime and leave Africa, so that the people of the countries they favour may know that the summer has come.”

“The swallow and the nightingale go with them. Indeed, they go into countries that my family will not visit. Think what those countries have lost. There is France, and there is Britain, for example; no stork builds in either.”