CHAPTER XI.
LAST DAYS AT TUNIS.
A retrospect — The captain of the Aristides — A curious meeting — Tunis again — Farewell visits — Rich shopkeepers — A last tussle with Mohamed — A real Arab gentleman — The Jewellers’ Bazaar — A visit to the Jewish quarter — An Arabian Night’s Entertainment — Dining, drinking, dancing.
Thursday, November 3rd.—My last day on the shores of Africa has arrived; but before I say “good-bye” to my faithful Afrigan, to B——— and P———, and Mr. Reade, and to the wonderful streets of Tunis, I must indulge in a retrospect, and put together some notes from those pages of my journal which I have been compelled to skip in the course of this narrative. First of all, let me tell how, when the Ville de Naples cast anchor in the gulf yesterday, I was reassured by seeing the Italian steamer for Malta still lying at her moorings. The weather was far too rough to permit of her sailing; the consequence of this is that I shall, after all, be able to reach Malta before the close of this week. Even in the gulf, and within half a mile of the little breakwater of Goletta, the sea was so high that the Falcon gunboat was rolling in a fashion the mere sight of which might have made any squeamish spectator on shore feel sick. Six sturdy Arabs rowed me ashore from the Ville de Naples—a long and somewhat dangerous operation, for which, despite the remonstrances of the economical Afrigan, I felt compelled to pay double the usual fee.
The rain of the past night had converted the main street of Goletta into a swamp; but how gay and delightful the whole place looked after the wretchedness of Susa! Strange indeed is the extent to which our sense of comfort is relative merely. When I sat down under the trees in front of the wretched Italian café of Goletta, I felt almost as much pleased as though I had found myself in the Grand Café at Paris. There were French officers all round me, smoking, gossiping, drinking coffee, and reading the latest number of Figaro, which was being hawked about by a bright little Jew. Presently up came my old friend the captain of the Aristides, the English steamer which was wrecked off Bizerta two days before I first landed in Tunis. He has been kept here ever since, but with British impassiveness seems quite at home at Goletta, and well able to rub along comfortably, in spite of the fact that he speaks no word of any language save his own. We hob-nobbed together over our coffee, and the captain being, like all men in his line of life, a little of a doctor, began to prescribe for Afrigan. He, poor fellow, was in dismal plight. The gale had completed the work which the mosquitoes had begun, and I do not think that anybody could have recognized in this forlorn wreck the gay and lively Afrigan of a week before. But not a word of murmuring escaped his lips. His prevailing feeling seemed to be one of profound thankfulness at having survived the storm and reached land in safety. I expressed my regret for having induced him to go with me to Susa, seeing he had suffered so much from the journey. “Well, sir, you see, it is a good thing I did go. I always have said that I am the best sailor in Tunis, and that nothing would make me ill; but I know now that I did tell a lie when I said so.” And Afrigan shook his melancholy head, and declining to partake of any refreshment on the plea that all Goletta seemed to his dizzy brain to be dancing around, relapsed into silence and a cigarette.
For the first and only time during our acquaintance I was compelled to look after my baggage myself. A sturdy Arab porter was called, and hoisting my portmanteau and a long white waterproof coat upon his shoulders, he set off for the station. Presently, in a moment of carelessness, he let the portmanteau fall into the mud, thus making necessary the slight application of my stick to his back. As we were settling this little difficulty, I heard the voice of an unmistakable Englishman shouting “Bravo! bravo!” and looked round. The face of the speaker was strange to me, but I saw at once that he was a fellow-countryman. “An Englishman, I see,” I remarked casually. “Yes, sir; and you are Mr. Reid, I suppose. I knew it must be you as soon as I saw that English waterproof, for Mr. B——— told me of your being in the Regency. May I ask, sir, if that waterproof coat came from Leeds?” “Certainly,” I answered, feeling rather surprised at the question; “it came from Leeds, and so did I. But what do you know about Leeds?” “Why, I was born there, sir.” And then my newly found friend explained all about himself, and I discovered that his paternal home was within two hundred yards of my own house in a suburb of Leeds. The world is small, indeed; is it not? I have had so many experiences of the fact that I have almost ceased to be surprised at incidents of this kind; but I confess it seemed more than ordinarily strange thus to meet on the shores of North Africa a man to whom the sound of the Headingley Church bells was as familiar as it is to myself. It turned out that he was the locomotive superintendent on the line between Goletta and Tunis, and that he lived in Goletta with his wife and her mother.
Once more I found myself walking along the Marina of Tunis, and entering the Grand Hotel. Little as I liked the place, it almost seemed as though I were getting home again when I entered the familiar doorway and made my bow to Madame. Then I posted off to see B———, who started up in surprise when he saw me, believing that I must have got inside Kairwan by this time. A farewell visit to Mr. and Mrs. Reade, who have now come up to their house in Tunis for the winter, was the next duty I had to discharge. I found a pleasant, youthful-looking man taking afternoon tea with them in the closed verandah of the Consulate, through the Venetian blinds of which you may catch a glimpse of the busy scene in the square below. This gentleman proved to be Captain Selby of the Falcon, and we chatted for some time together, chiefly about the prospects of sport for the captain during the coming winter. He hopes to get some partridge-shooting in Albania, and looks forward to it as a delightful relief to the monotony of sea-life. Then Mr. Reade gave us an account of how he visited Kairwan some thirty years ago, and of the tremendous excitement of the populace when he went to the baths, from which the natives were rigorously excluded on the occasion of his visit. And then I said “good-bye.” May the genial Consul-General and his gracious wife long continue to prosper! So long as England is represented at Tunis by Mr. Reade, the best traditions not only of English hospitality but of English diplomacy are certain to be maintained. One other task still remained to be performed before I could join B——— at a farewell dinner. So once more I toiled up the narrow, winding street which leads to the Bazaar, passing all the well-known shops, where the same well-known figures, clad in their brilliant garments, were seated cross-legged on the little divans, amid the piles of candles, herbs, slippers, silk stuffs, and Manchester goods. Many of these shops it is notorious are not what they seem to be. Their owners have no wish to sell. A good many of them, indeed, could afford to buy up the richest of the visitors from abroad who occasionally come to pester them with their custom. They have simply opened these shops in the Bazaar in order to divert the attention of the Bey’s officials from their accumulated wealth. If they were to give up the pretence of business everybody would know that they had made money, and presently, under one pretext or another, a means of making them disgorge part of their wealth would be found. But as it is, so long as they sit here, in one of the quaint little caverns which are called shops in the Bazaar, they manage to go free from all except the collective extortion to which the whole community is at times compelled to submit. Moreover, the Bazaar furnishes the only source of amusement open to the Tunisian. It is here that he learns all the gossip of the day, and perhaps takes his share in inventing it. He knows nothing of the kind of hospitality which is familiar to us in England. The house of his dearest friend is closed against him, unless it be upon the occasion of a wedding or a funeral; but the Bazaar is his club, his exchange, his coffee-house, his news-rooms, and the chief pleasure of life would be gone if he were no longer permitted to frequent it. I picked my way over the broken pavement of the narrow darkened alleys of the Bazaar until I came to Mohamed’s. He was not in his shop; but his assistant at once ran to fetch him, whilst the inevitable cup of fragrant coffee was served for my benefit. Mohamed seemed much pleased at my return, but his face fell when I told him that I was about to leave for good. This fact, however, did not interfere with a very smart tussle between us over the price of a silk jebba—the principal garment worn by the town Arabs—which I was anxious to possess. I had sent Afrigan home because of his melancholy plight, so I was compelled to rely exclusively upon myself in conducting this bargain. I had, however, a very simple and efficient method of handling Mohamed. I allowed him to ask all manner of enormous sums for the jebba, simply contenting myself with repeating in a monotonous voice “Thirty francs”—that being just ten francs less than the sum I meant to pay.
Never was Mohamed more eloquent than upon this occasion. He had summoned an old Turk who spoke a few words of French to his aid, and this worthy expatiated as well as he could upon the beauties of the particular jebba upon which I had fixed my attention; its colour, its texture, its workmanship were all perfect, and it was worth at the very least 100 francs. When I thought that a sufficient amount of time had been spent in this way I rose, and shaking my head blandly, held out my hand to Mohamed saying as I did so, “Forty francs, and not a caroub more.” The good merchant seized my hand with the utmost cordiality, and the bargain was struck in an instant. Then he made a desperate attempt to induce me to buy some carpets, some of the curious inlaid Moorish tables, and similar articles, of which he possessed a large quantity. Finding, however, that I had now completed my transactions with him, and that no more money was to be made out of me, his whole demeanour changed. But it changed not in the way familiar to me in Constantinople, in Vienna, in Paris, aye and even in civilized London, where the cringing subserviency of the vendor too often turns to rank insolence when he discovers that he has extracted the last sou from the pocket of his customer. This Arab shopkeeper of the Bazaar of Tunis, despite those characteristic failings of which I have spoken, is a noble-minded gentleman; and as soon as he discovered that I had ceased to be his customer, he began to treat me as a guest.
More coffee was brought, cigarettes were lighted, and by the aid of the disreputable old Turk we struck up a friendly conversation, in which a great deal was said about Tunis, about England, and about the French. Mohamed is an Anglomaniac. He believes that the banner of St. George will yet bring freedom to the Arabs of Northern Africa, and he prays morning and evening for the hour when the deliverance of his country shall be effected by means of English courage. “Tell them when you cross the seas, illustrious Englishman, that the Arabs are waiting for your countrymen, and will welcome them with all their hearts; tell them that all that we have is theirs, and that we love them and long for them, because we know we can trust them to do us justice!” One could not look at that handsome, grave, beautiful face, which the picturesque turban set off to such advantage, without feeling that this merchant of the Bazaar was a true aristocrat, and that the race which could boast of such men could not be regarded as altogether effete. Then Mohamed when the time came for me to leave him, begged that I would stay yet a little longer; and presently he produced from some dark recess a small Tunisian purse in scarlet leather, richly embroidered with silver, and asked me to accept the trifle in remembrance of the man whom I had honoured with my patronage. So finally we shook hands once again, and “I went on my way and saw him no more.”
I still had one additional experience to encounter in the Bazaar, however, before I finally quitted it. I was anxious to obtain some of the silver coffee-cup holders which are used by the wealthy Tunisians, and for this purpose I had to visit the jewellers’ quarter. My readers will accuse me of exaggeration if I attempt to give them an exact description of this part of the Bazaar. I regretted whilst I was there that I had not provided myself with a measuring-tape, in order to ascertain the precise dimensions of the streets through which I passed, and of the shops and houses I saw. I seemed to have entered a sort of Lilliput Land; where, however, the inhabitants were of normal size, though all their surroundings were extraordinarily narrow and minute. The little unpaved alleys were in no instance more than three feet wide, and at certain places they were little more than half that width, so that two persons found it difficult to pass each other. The houses were of the size of ordinary English pig-sties, and I am afraid I must say that size was not the only matter in which the resemblance was to be found. Under the guidance of an astute Jew, I threaded my way through a labyrinth of these wonderful passages. On all sides of me were the shops where the workers in silver and gold were hammering the precious metals on tiny anvils, or melting them in little charcoal stoves. At last my conductor, stooping low, entered one of these shops, in which two workmen were busy. Passing them with a nod and a murmured word, he led me into a somewhat larger apartment at the back of the shop. I should think it was about seven feet square. Here, in a glass case, were the objects which I wanted. I bid him a price, but found that my rude method of bargaining was not effectual here. There is a fixed price for the precious metals; and even these delicate silver cups are sold by weight. I bought two of them for a sum which, if not literally “an old song,” was yet hardly more in the figurative sense.