The land of the Bey

by T. Wemyss Reid

CHAPTER VII.

WALKS ABOUT TUNIS.

The English burial-ground — A sad spot — The author of “Home, sweet Home” — An Arab fortune-teller — On the top of a volcano — The “fanatical quarters” — More eastern than the East — Shopping in the bazaars — Mohamed the shopkeeper — Driving a bargain — Time versus money.

Saturday, October 22nd.—The story of my life from day to day in Tunis might be apt to weary some people if it were told in the fulness of detail which might be used. It is a story of walks and drives in and around this wonderful city; of visits to the quarters inhabited by the most fanatical of the Arabs, of risky trips into the surrounding country, when it has been absolutely necessary to watch closely any chance wayfarer whom one might encounter, in order to be ready to have the first shot in case of need; and of interviews with some of the notabilities of the place. Perhaps I cannot do better than sum up in one general survey the events of the past three or four days, and my experiences during that time. On the morning after my visit to Carthage I was up betimes, in order to speed the two English ladies who had dispossessed me of my room, on their way to Malta. They were very proud of having made a hurried raid into the bazaar under the guidance of Afrigan on the previous afternoon, and they bore away in triumph a piece of loot in the shape of a large brass salver, curiously engraved in Arabic.

Having seen mother and daughter safely deposited in the train for Goletta, I set off to visit the English burying-ground. I have seen many burial-places in the course of my life, but none by which I have been so much impressed as by this last resting-place of so many of my fellow-countrymen in “a strange land.” It is very small, certainly not more than half an acre in extent, and is entered through a vaulted archway. The gate is kept locked, though I believe that no outrage has ever been committed. Passing out of the crowded streets of the native town into this silent and deserted graveyard, a strange feeling of unreality came over me. Somehow or other, I was reminded of the wonderful passage in “Esmond” in which the hero describes his visit to his mother’s grave in the burying-ground of the Belgian convent. Like Esmond, I seemed, as I moved across that solemn plot of ground, to be walking beneath the sea and treading among the bones of shipwrecked men. But here there were no nuns raising their voices heavenward, nor any chapel into which one of my own faith might creep to meditate and pray. All round were the high walls and barred windows of the Arab houses—a strange, unfriendly outlook from these mouldering graves. The noise of the city penetrated even into the silent place of the dead; but it was a strange and unfamiliar noise, having little in common with the sounds of city life at home. The fierce sun was beating down upon the narrow graveyard; all round me were tombs and flowers.

For nearly two hundred years those of our race who finished their days in this strange country have been buried here, and the rose, the heliotrope, and the myrtle have been left to flower and fade luxuriantly above their dust. Many English Consuls are buried here; some of them having been the representatives of England at the Court of the Bey at the time when Tunis was a nest of pirates, and when cruelty and lust such as nowadays it hardly enters into one’s mind to conceive were rampant on this spot. And there are “merchant adventurers” of the last century, who must have had bold hearts when they came hither in search of fortune. All that remains of them now is, here and there, a quaint inscription telling us how they feared God and honoured the King; how they loved their fellow-men, and amid all the temptations of Babylon were true to the faith of their fathers and of their far-off native land. Then there are the graves of women, the wives of the few Englishmen who have from time to time sought fortune here; and—saddest of all—the graves of little children who bore English names and had English blood in their veins, but who were fated never to know the dear mother country and the blessings of home. My heart was too full for utterance, as I moved about among these graves. Only some two or three of my fellow-countrymen were to be met with in the whole Regency among the living; but here among the dead I found myself surrounded by many familiar names, and by inscriptions in the English tongue, which bore texts of Holy Writ that were graven as deeply upon my own heart as upon the stones of the burial-ground.

For the first time since I came to Tunis a great wave of home-sickness swept over me. How far off we—I and the silent dead beneath my feet—seemed to be from the land of our birth! And even as this thought was surging through my heart, my eye fell upon one special grave for which I had been searching. There was a plain stone slab, surrounded by a little bed of heliotrope and dwarf roses, and it bore an inscription telling how beneath it lay “Colonel John Howard Payne, a citizen of the United States of America,” and how this monument had been erected by his grateful fellow-countrymen in honour of the author of “Home, sweet Home.” Strange indeed is the irony of Fate. We shape our own destinies in fancy; we plan and plot and labour and contrive; and each one of us for himself has formed his own ideal of the end at which, in due season, in the fulness of his time, he is to arrive: and probably not once, in the whole history of the human race, has that end, when it did come, been in harmony with the visions thus indulged in. But surely, of all the strange freaks of malicious fortune, there has been none stranger, none sadder, than that which sent the man who wrote “Home, sweet Home” to die an exile on African soil, and which has left him to a grave here among our English dead of Tunis! I cleared away the mass of fallen leaves from that gravestone, and reverently plucked a spray of heliotrope and a few leaves from the rose-trees, and turned and went on my way again, filled with the feeling that, for a brief season, I had been moving in quite another world from that of the living, and that within the narrow boundaries of that pathetic graveyard of my kinsmen in a strange land, I had been holding the most solemn and the most real communion with the dead.

It was on the following day that, returning from a walk with Afrigan through the bazaars, I encountered a curious figure seated at the roadside which instantly attracted my attention. This was an Arab fortune-teller. At the moment when I came up to him he was busy unwinding the long folds of his turban; and like most of the Arabs with whom I came in contact in Tunis, he showed no disposition to court my support. In front of him was a tray on which fine sand was spread. This I need hardly say is the ordinary writing-tablet of the Arab, the slate by means of which he makes his calculations. At the side of this slate were a pile of tattered Arabic books, a dirty pack of cards, and one or two other articles appertaining to the trade of divination. My fortune-teller was a shrewd, elderly Arab, with a quick and sinister eye, but a not unpleasant expression upon his somewhat greasy face. Afrigan acting as interpreter, I explained to him that I wished to consult him. I was told to take a caroub (a penny) in my hand and to think meanwhile of the person or subject on which I wanted information, and then to give the coin to the fortune-teller. This I did accordingly. The Arab looked earnestly for a moment at the caroub, and then began to count with great rapidity, at the same time marking down various figures upon his tray of sand. When he had arrived at certain results he smoothed the sand, thus wiping out the figures, and began again. This went on for a considerable time, until at last he seemed to have reached his desired end. He gave a last triumphant dash of the hand over his curious slate, and then turning to me, said, “You are going away soon; you will have a stormy voyage and a long one, but you will travel in safety; those about whom you were thinking just now are quite well, and they are thinking much of you now, when you are absent; more even than they did when you were with them. All is well.” What could be more satisfactory than this, and how could I avoid giving the man an extra fee for his good news?

Strange, indeed, are the workings of the human mind. I knew perfectly well that the cunning old Arab was the veriest charlatan, and that the glib phrases he had uttered were merely the common-places with which he gratified all travellers who came to him for advice, whether they were tawny Bedouins from the Sahara, coal-black negroes from the Soudan, or pale-faced infidels from beyond the seas: yet I declare I positively resumed my walk after my short interview with the rogue in better spirits than I had been in before. After all, was he not probably right? I said to myself; and were there not kind thoughts speeding across land and sea in my direction from those whom I loved at home? Let it be noted in passing that one or two of the fortune-teller’s fellow-countrymen had gathered round whilst he was thus foretelling my lot, and that evident gratification was depicted upon their faces when they found that my fate was to be a favourable one. After all, even in the midst of this seething mass of fanaticism, a great deal of “human nature” is to be found; and so far as my experience of it goes, human nature is, as a rule, very apt to be kindly and lenient in its disposition.

And yet what a volcano is that upon which we are treading here in Tunis! Yesterday afternoon my good friend Mr. B———, who is showing himself most kind and attentive in all possible ways, went with me for a drive through the worst quarters of the town. B——— did not conceal either from himself or from me the fact that there was considerable risk in the expedition. But he believed that it must be undertaken if I were to have any real knowledge of Tunis; and therefore, disregarding the chance of a stray bullet being directed at us by some fanatic, we set off to explore those parts of the city where the natives are most closely packed together, and where the anti-Christian feeling runs highest. Without the aid of a pencil, or rather of a brush glowing with colours of many hues, I cannot pretend to give any adequate idea of the sights that I encountered during that delightful and exciting ride. Very soon after leaving the Marina we found ourselves involved in the midst of a labyrinth of the narrowest, the most tortuous, the most tumble-down lanes and alleys that ever represented the streets of a great town. Very often the carriage grazed the walls on both sides as it passed along. At other times we found ourselves traversing long dark vaulted passages beneath the houses, which in Tunis, as I have already said, are often built over as well as at the side of the thoroughfares. On each side of us for almost the entire distance were shops and Arab coffee-houses. They all looked as though they had been transferred bodily, by some deed of magic, from the pages of the “Arabian Nights.”