The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 5
THE CITY OF THE MOORS
THE Hadars, or Berbers, are the oldest element in the population. They are mixed with Arabs and are the real Moors of history, whom Europe has many times seen invade her soil and who have brought to her their civilization, the evidences of which remain in the Alhambra, in numerous Alcazars and in other structures throughout Spain.
While we were visiting the northern quarter of Tlemsen, exclusively inhabited by Hadars, Zofiette suddenly stopped and listened. I followed her lead but heard nothing save the twang of an ordinary instrument and a song, sung in a melancholy voice, which came floating out through the door of a dingy-looking café. However, Zofiette continued to listen attentively and finally said:
"They play here the real Andaluza which we heard in Granada."
The trained ear of the violinist had made an interesting ethnographic discovery, which had not long before become a fact established through other and independent channels. Scholars had found among the Hadars descendants of the Andalusian Moors, who returned here from Spain during the fourteenth century and brought back with them these Andaluzas, that are known here as "Garnata" from the Arabian name of Granada and that are sung to this very day in the cafés and market-places and at the wedding ceremonies of Tlemsen.
Here in the Hadar quarter one can also run across ancient weapons, which the Moorish warriors brought back from the wars or the tournaments in which they measured strength with knights of many European lands. As evidence of these feats and of this returning migration the surname "el-Andalosi" often appears in the old Tlemsen families.
Frequently one hears in the Hadar market-place the appellation "kulugli" used in contempt for an adversary in such phrases as:
"You are a Kulugli … You lie like a Kulugli … Kuluglis are slaves, and Hadars are their masters!"
Who are these despised Kuluglis? They are the descendants of Turks and Berber women, white men often having blue eyes and light hair and very frequently possessing bold and intelligent faces. They live in the southwestern quarter of Tlemsen, and, although under the influence of the French administration the deep-seated, virulent hate of the past between Kulugli and Hadar has been largely eradicated, they do not even to this day mingle or hold intercourse with each other. The Kulugli returns to the Hadar contempt for contempt and, though he does not use the name of Hadar as a term of opprobrium, he sings in a way that rankles his vaunted superior:
Hadar, Oh Lady!
What a stupid name have they!
Their necks are the color of the locust's skin,
While their heads are swathed in greasy rags.
This is a Hadar, Oh Lady!
The Hadar clan was, until the conquest of the country by France, continually at war with the clan, or "sof," of the Kuluglis which often fought the reigning sultans and Moorish emirs. Finally, in January of 1836, they helped the French Marshal, Clausel, to conquer Tlemsen and held the Meshwar against all the fiery Moorish attacks.
Not far from this old fortress the gleaming walls of a white mosque raise themselves in aspiration. Though it was erected by the local dynasties during the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, it held nothing of great interest for me, after I had seen that in El-Eubbad. The customary mihrab, adorned with pleasing designs and oriented according to the kiblah, gives to the Iman, the high priest conducting the services, his position, with his face turned toward the wall. Next there is the minbar, or movable pulpit, from which the mufti preaches on Friday. Ancient and modern candle holders drop from the ceiling, just as the inevitable columns, rugs and all the other stereotyped elements of the Moslem temple repeat themselves with unvarying sameness, for the established customs of the Faith leave little freedom of imagination to the builder or decorator.
However, in this great Tlemsen mosque I did come upon one new element which I never found in the appointment of any other until I reached the city of Algiers. Opposite the mihrab in the nave of the mosque stood a platform surrounded by a rail, on which the mokim, or younger mullah, takes his place during the services and announces to the people what parts of the office the Imam will read an d which prayers are to be repeated after him. This platform is called the "sedda," and is to be found only in some of the Algerian mosques, never in those of Morocco. I once saw such a platform, having the same ritualistic purpose, in a pagoda in Nanking, where I learned it was a very unusual feature.
Near one of the columns we were shown a korsi, or raised chair, which is occupied at times by noted muderres, or professors of theology, who explain and interpret the Koran to the assembled Moslems, just as the holy Abu Median, the patron saint of Tlemsen, was wont to do.
Meanwhile, as we studied the interior of the mosque, the sun was dropping so low that we had hardly time to look around the large sahn, or interior court, with its basins and other appointments for the ceremonial ablutions of the worshiper. We were on our way home, when, at one of the comers of Maskara Street, we suddenly heard an indescribable conglomeration of sounds. Innumerable hands seemed to be striking drums and tambourines, while another group of performers were evidently playing upon pipes and flutes and a third busied themselves with protracted crying, which the natives dignified with the name of song, in spite of its wailing, sad tones.
As we could see no one responsible for the performance, we turned to our Mahomet ben M'Hammed for light. He smiled, as he led us through the gathering crowd and explained to us:
"It is a Hadar wedding."
Evidently the procession was approaching, as the noise was momentarily growing more terrible. In addition to the regular din small bombs were set off and Bengal fires lighted as the procession came into view. Ten big men, beating upon the drums, headed the line, followed close by ten others shaking tambourines above their heads, all of them advancing with slow, measured steps and with the gravest expressions on their faces. Then came the other musicians, playing reed instruments and banging cymbals, while all were flanked by a group of bombers and fire-lighters. Between the music and the principal actors in the procession came the singers, so-called, who were also hired participants in the feast and who shrieked out at the top of their voices praises of the bridegroom's nobility, courage and liberality and of the bride's beauty and virtue. From time to time the motif of the Garnata defined itself, only to be immediately drowned in the general din.
The next section of the cortege was made up of a group of the bridegroom's friends, whom he would feast for several days with mutton, tea and coffee. Immediately after these came a select number of his most intimate and trustworthy companions, whose duty it was to ascertain from the bridegroom on the day following the wedding whether he had been cheated or pleased, in taking unto himself a wife whom he had never seen and who had been so completely swathed in her white, thick raiment that he could not even see before the ceremony the character of her eyes.
What a terrible risk and real lottery are these Moslem weddings! What will the young husband see when the haik and ksa veiling the face of the bride are removed for the first time? Perhaps it will be a veritable houri from Paradise, flexible as a reed, graceful as a gazelle in her movements, beautiful as the star of dawn, with eyes of fire, with teeth as white as the Atlas snows and with lips as scarlet and alluring as the heart of a ripe pomegranate. Happy will he be, thrice happy then. But the falling veils may disclose a much-too-somber skin, crossed eyes, only occasional, discolored teeth or purple Negro lips, inherited from the mother, a slave from the Sudan or Tuat. It will be small consolation to him that the black monster is deft in preparing kouskous, soffa, the various tazhin, meshwi and other dainties of the Berber kitchen. The poor husband will also not be consoled by that thought that, thanks to the Tlemsen fashion, his wife has not a tattooed face, as have other inhabitants of this part of Africa, for Nature herself has tattooed her in black from the top of her curly head to the tips of her toes. Unhappy will he be, an hundred times unhappy!
One must add that the hazardous bridegroom has paid to the father of the houri or of the black monster a large dowry and that, from the moment he crosses the threshold of the bride's room, he is compelled to remain in the household of her father and consequently incurs, besides his doubtful investment of capital, the risk of what his treatment by the family will be—that of a member in good standing or that of a servant, almost a slave. I read all these doubts and anxious thoughts on the face of the bridegroom, as he rode toward his goal of happiness or into dire misfortune.
Clad in a white bournous, with a red shashiya encircled by a white turban with a haik thrown over it, he sat stiff and motionless on a splendid white horse, perched high on his silver-embroidered saddle. His yellow-slippered feet rested in wide stirrups designed for boots that carried large spurs, now long fallen into desuetude, as the Arab of this country has forsalcen his horse for a mule or a donkey and traded his curved sword for the muleteer's stick. In the light of the Bengal fires and of the links carried in front of him, the face of the young Arab seemed full of thought. The eyes gleamed brightly, and the teeth showed between half-opened lips; yet withal the face remained only a mask without a muscle moving, with the eyes fixed in space and with the lips as still as stone. Though the horse neighed and snorted, pranced about and shook its head and mane, the rider sat fixed as a statue, filled with that seeming indifference which sprang from his all-pervading belief in Kismet and advancing toward the one who was to become either his fatma, his great happiness, or a monstrous djinn, an ever-present spirit of misfortune.
"And now this Hadar will soon come to the house of his unseen bride," Mahomet began to explain with a very discreet smile, "and, while still in the saddle, will try to break an egg with a shot from his pistol. If he succeeds, it will be taken as a good omen; and an evil one, if he fails. Naturally, he will shoot at close range. Then he will descend from his horse, go straight to the nuptial chamber and there proclaim to the bride awaiting him:
"'I am your husband, Oh maiden!' to which she will answer:
"'Insh Allah!' Then he will raise the haik and the mendil covering her face and will fill his eyes with her beauty or his heart with bitterness over the deception. After that he will fling her upon the marriage couch to show that he is her master and she his slave. The banquet will then begin, and the feasting will continue for several, days. By the time it is finished he will have learned what role he is to play in the household—master, son or servant. If he finds he has been shamelessly deceived, he can secure a divorce; but he will have to spend a great deal for this and will, in any case, lose the dowry. And this is the reason why divorces are rare, sir."
"And you, Mahomet, are you married?" asked Zofiette.
"No, Madame, I am poor and very easily frightened." Following this, he laughed softly but suddenly turned sad and silent. I noted the very indicative change and some days later, when we had become more intimate with our guide, I began to probe lightly into his matrimonial ideas, as I felt sure there was a mystery lurking near. He did not reveal anything in a direct way but unconsciously allowed me to look for a moment into his soul. It was in a café, after we had already spent several days together, that Mahomet began this tale.
"In the army I had a friend, Yusuf ben Ali. We fought together and together we spent considerable time in hospital, after we had both been wounded. Then we were sent to a French town for a three-months convalescence period, and there we fell in love with two very pretty French girls. They, of course, laughed at us and treated us as they might have treated apes who had spoken to them of love. Contempt showed itself in their every word, in spite of the reputations we had won for ourselves and the medals we wore. We realized all too well that it was the contempt and the feeling of disgust of the blood of the white race for the blood of the colored man and we understood that nothing could be done against this. We forgot our days with the French girls, but there was another feeling, something even more serious than our love for Ivonne and Suzanne, which we could not put aside. It was the revelation to us of the humiliating position of the Arab women and of the barbaric form of marriage among our people, which is unworthy of civilized man. We made up our minds that we should have wives, not slaves, free women equal to us men, just as it was there in France and the other countries of Europe.
"After the War Yusuf decided to marry, a step which accorded thoroughly with the wishes of his parents. A wife had already been chosen for him among the daughters of a neighbor, the merchant, Ben Assudi. When my friend asked the parents of his future wife to be allowed to see her unveiled and to be permitted to come to an understanding with her, he received a sharp refusal, on the ground that his wish was in direct contravention of custom and the law. After long deliberation, Yusuf finally agreed to carry through the marriage according to the Islamic procedure. Perhaps he had succeeded in catching a glimpse of the girl when she was going for water and, seeing her beauty, objected no more. I was at the wedding feast, and some days later heard from Yusuf this story of what befell him.
"'When I entered my wife's room, I pronounced the traditional words, and she answered with the usual "Insh Allah." Then I begged her to perform the act of unveiling herself and to hear what I had to say. However, I did not succeed in persuading her to remove the haik and mendil with her own hand and was forced to yield to the established custom and do it myself. Then I explained to her what our marriage must be and that we must be equal in everything. The daughter of Assudi could not understand my meaning; she wept, tore her hair in some superstitious terror and prostrated herself at my feet—she, more beautiful than the pictures we saw in the Louvre but having the heart and mind of a slave! During the whole night I tried to show her that a slave is to be had for the price of ten or twelve rams and to persuade her that I did not want a slave, but a wife, a friend and the joy of my whole life. In the morning she ceased weeping but was deeply offended. She was ashamed to go out of her room or to show herself before her parents. In the evening I discovered her putting some sort of powder in my food, refused to eat it and finally forced her to own that her old grandmother had given her some potion to light love in my heart. The poor little maid did not realize that her beauty had fired my love from the very moment that I saw her charming face, but that I did not want it to be an animal, brutal, elemental love.
"'Two days and two nights passed in this way, in tears, complaints and prayers. Then I did what every Berber does—I flung her on the bed with a curse that I had to tie my life to that of a slave. Incredible as it was to me she became happy and bright, though she continued to look upon me as strange and considered me unsound in mind. The family also regarded me with suspicion. Some weeks later she poisoned me with some herbs that are said to inspire love. Then I beat her and left the house.'
"Such was the story of my friend, who was laughed at, covered with abuse and soon compelled to leave our town. He crossed over to France, where he now works as a stevedore on the piers at Marseilles. And this, Madame, is the reason why I am not married." And thus Mahomet ben M'Hammed, smiling reminiscently and sadly, ended his explanation in answer to my wife's simple question.
Early the next morning we were once more in the town. This time we entered the Jewish quarter, where we passed through streets of dirty, low houses, swarming with people. Women with gaudy bonnets or kerchiefs on their heads and shawls over their shoulders chattered on the doorsteps, while old men with long beards and grave faces, clad in white bournouses that gave to them a biblical appearance, presided over the street shops. All the expressions, even those of the children, were sad and almost tragic, reminiscent of the sufferings which their forefathers had endured in coming to this land with its fierce sky, to these towns and villages where at dawn and at sunset the Moslems call upon the name of their bloody, merciless Prophet. They had come across the sea and scattered over the whole of North Africa, even to the farthest oases and up into the Atlas ranges, during the days when Spain with fire and sword began to persecute and torture them, finally leaving to them the single choice of immigration from the peninsula or death. On African soil they often faced a new persecution, no less terrible, perishing in thousands at the hands of warring Berbers, or from sickness and from the killing rays of the sun.
Centuries passed, during which they gained the silent acknowledgment of the right of existence and work, forming strongly knit local units and becoming rich, loyal citizens of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and even of those desert expanses whose real masters and owners are not clearly defined, since the spahis of the sultan or of the bey, as well as the French officials, have not yet established themselves there. Unquestionably these past centuries of slavery, fear and torture have left deep traces on the faces of these African Jews.
Once through the Jewish quarter, we soon passed the Meshwar and the great mosque of Jama el-Kebir, near which we visited the tombs of the holy men of the Ben Zeiyan dynasty, upon whom were conferred special honor by the natives of tire Beni-Snous tribe, these purest of Hadars. These masters were the holy Ahmed Bel-Hasen el-Ghomari and Mohammed ben Merzug. We were everywhere struck by the great quantity of kubbas, barakkas and tabouts, that is, chapels and tombs for the ashes of saints and local patrons, to whom the crowds of the pious come for miraculous help. Mullahs and professors from the medersas told me that they are greatly opposed to the practices at these sacred shrines, as such a state of affairs works against the unity of Islam and that they see in it the remnants of the old pagan beliefs of the Berbers who, especially in the higher regions of the Atlas Mountains, still remain under the power and domination of sorcerers and largely subject to the influence of magic science.
Outside one of the gates we tarried much longer, observing the native life in the narrow street where the tomb of Sidi Lahsen is situated. When Zofiette could not tear me away from there, she laughed, saying that, as the name of the saint was so much like Lhassa in Thibet, my interest for things Asiatic held me interminably in this little street of a North African town. But she also acknowledged that it was exceedingly picturesque with its white walls, in some places connected by arches above the white-paved street, and its grape-vines dimbing everywhere and often forming a green tent, through which the more bold and daring rays of the sun struck down like blades of shining swords.
Crowds of women swathed in bournouses, the magnificent figures of fine-looking, proud Hadars and groups of noisy children filled the street. Some were passing into the dark interior of the chapel over the barakka of the saint; others were drinking at the holy fountain, whose waters insure health to children, or were catching the precious liquid in variously shaped receptacles; while still others sat and lounged against the house walls, talking, deliberating or even quarreling or crying, as was the case with one old woman who, in her despair, neglected to veil her face and sat there, wringing her hands and scratching her cheeks until the blood ran, sobbing, sobbing. Our guide listened a moment and then explained:
"This woman has already been married ten years and has no children. She has made a pilgrimage to Mulay Brahim and has employed every sort of talisman, but it is all of no avail. Her husband is now asking the cadi to divorce them, and she is pleading that he grant her just one year more."
In the meantime the despairing, childless wife continued to weep, and between her wails we caught the words:
"Ja Bu Medin! Ja Mulay Brahim! Ja Bel Hassen!"
She was imploring her husband's mercy in the name of these holy and wise saints, who knew all the hearts and troubles of men; but the unyielding husband only waved his hand and turned away to the mahakma, or the magistrate's office, which was near by. With a groan the woman sank to the pavement and began to beat her forehead against the kubba of the Wali, who could not help her in her need. As she struck her head against the stones, she continued to wail mournfully:
"Oh great, oh merciful, oh just Bel Hassen! Give aid, give aid!"
The crowd streamed on by, apparently unmoved and indifferent, hardened to such sights and engrossed in its own troubles, from which it sought relief at either the tomb of the holy Bel Hasen or the office of the stout cadi. Suddenly the woman arose and continued her lamentations, from which I caught only the oft-repeated:
"Seida Reriba!"
"What is she saying now?" I asked Mahomet.
"She declares that Seida Reriba, a saint who is greatly revered in Tlemsen, has appeared in her house and wept for her. If you care to, we can visit this saint's tomb also"
When the woman left, we finally turned away from this little street of so much mingled beauty and pathos and crossed to the quarter of El-Corran, in whose mosque the saint, Seida Reriba, is buried. One of the Faithful who were worshiping there told us this story of the saint, who has been dead for centuries but who is still revered and appealed to because of her great miracles.
"When the night is deep, there glides through the silent, sleeping streets the filmy figure of a woman, as light as the autumnal mist in a valley. It is the good Seida Reriba, who is making her nightly round. She enters alike the houses of the rich and the hovels of the poor; she reads the thoughts of her people as well as what is written on the tablets of Fate. Only an innocent child, if one happened to be in the street at such an hour, could see her. Often Reriba enters a house and takes up her place near the hearth, where she remains invisible, even though she may allow herself to be heard. Whenever she laughs or sings a snatch of sweet song, it means that happiness or success are coming to that home; while, if it be sounds of sobbing, sighing or groaning that are heard, it bodes misfortune for the master of the house."
From this tale of one of the natives of the quarter of El-Corran we understood that the childless woman must have heard the sobs of Seida Reriba in her dwelling, foretelling to her the greatest misfortune that can be visited upon an Eastern woman—divorce and after it either the return to her parents' house or the misery of a beggar's life.
Noticing that we had been depressed by this recital and the bearing of it upon the case of the wailing woman, Mahomet called a passing carriage and announced to us:
"I shall take you to Ei-Ourit and show you a beautiful landscape."
Our driver carried us through the town and out upon an excellent macadamized road, leading to Bel Abbes and eventually Oran, which wound itself up the slopes of the Tlemsen range. This highway overhangs and gives a commanding view of the plain below, that is cut throughout its length by the deep ravine of the Safsaf River. On the upper side of the road rocks of warm pink raised above us a receding wall that finally disappeared in the blue immensity of tire sky. Here and there it was broken abruptly by jutting shelves, and then branches of olive-, fig-, plane- and pomegranate-trees appeared over guarding hedges of a cactus known here as the "Berber's fig" and bearing fruit along the edges of the fleshy, spike-covered leaves, which slowly transform themselves into the brown, tough branches of this strange plant, so common throughout all North Africa.
At a turn of the road we were shown the mouth of a deep cave, which, before the advent of the French administration, had served as the den of a band of robbers, who attacked caravans and travelers. The cavern bore the name of "the jackals' grotto," a title well deserved, in that these brigands were a bloodthirsty gang, sacrificing everything to their quest of spoil but cowardly at the same time, as they attacked only in numbers or set upon unarmed travelers.
It was four miles out from Tlemsen that we came upon a group o£ buildings and restaurants clustered around the deep canyon of the Sáfsaf River, that falls from the high plain of Terni above over a series of bounding cascades before it rests for a time in the dark, still lake just near the mouth of the great ravine. Picturesque, threatening red walls of rock, spotted everywhere with bunches of tall grass and bushes, enclose the canyon, across which the French engineers have thrown a railway bridge. Here and there in the cliffs are grottoes, the openings of subterranean galleries and smaller apertures of various sizes. Little streams of water murmur on all sides, and the ceiling drippings are ever forming great stalactites, which range themselves into colonnades of subterranean palaces and temples. But the worthy public shows its usual indifference to Nature's discriminating beauty, for European competes with Arab in scratching names on the rocks and in strewing the whole place with the picnic litter that so often converts a wonderful garden of beauty into a dumping-ground of civilization.
On our way back to town Mahomet pointed out to us little settlements of French colonists at Bréa, Négrier and Safsaf, a little beyond which stood the minaret of Agadir. It is a romantic place, this Agadir; for it was here that one of the Caesars, before the birth of Christ, erected a small fortress and called it Pomaria. Many of the Roman antiquities and fragments of inscriptions which are to be seen in the museum at Tlemsen were found here. At the beginning of the Christian era the Romans withdrew from Africa, leaving behind them the ruins of their towns and fortified posts all the way west to the Atlantic. What was here in this immediate region after the Romans seems not to be known, but the historical records show that during the thirteenth century the Sultan Yarmorasen ben Zeiyan founded on this site a town, which was the beginning of Tlemsen. This was in turn deserted and nothing remains of it save the minaret and a crumbling mosque of the sixteenth century, some canals that were built by the Romans and reconstructed by the Arabs and the kubba of Sidi Daoudi.
On our way from the minaret into town we discovered some soldiers' tents in an olive grove near the road and were informed that it was a camp of a unit of the First Foreign Legion. We stopped to chat with the soldiers in the hope of finding some Poles. It turned out that there were none in this company, though it counted Germans, Russians, Dutch, Swedes, Spaniards and even Greeks.
The Russians talked freely and told us much about themselves. Most of them had joined the legion after the revolts among the Russians fighting on the French front following the peace of Brest-Litovsk. I felt no Bolshevik tendency in their words, but I was very definitely struck by another marked feature of their views—all of them were impregnated with a Eurasian ideology, that is, an ideology which has fastened itself upon many young Russian émigrés who dream of the strengthening of Eastern Christianity and of a return to Asiatic politics following upon the jettisoning of socialism.
"Russia must again be powerful; she must lean upon the moral and physical strength of Asia and must not forget that moment when, at the time of our great tragedy, the West forsook us."
In such wise spoke several of the Russians. The Germans remained silent, evidently fearful of incautious words. There is little doubt that many life-dramas have guided the steps of these men into the African corps, in proof of which it is only necessary to mention the German student whom we ran across at one of the railway stations and the brother of one of the reigning European kings whom we subsequently met—all of them marching side by side, with the same law and treatment for each, across the mountains and sands of this continent, working upon the roads and dying in the battles with the Berber tribes who refuse to acknowledge the Sultan of Morocco under the tutelage of France. But in this hard school of Legion service develop the virile and energetic characters of men of action, such as are today needed in the Europe that is weakening and slipping into sloughs of senility. When these men choose to take their diplomas from this unusual school of energy, they will carry back to their own countries real elements of revivifying force.
This evening we did not dine at the hotel, as the amiable Mahomet had invited us to an Arab supper in the home of one of his friends. He conducted us to a small house entirely surrounded by a high wall with only one entrance and located in the street where the Jewish quarter began. Once within the gate, we found ourselves in a restricted court, off which opened arched doorways, hung with light, colored curtains. Over these were the miniature balconies and small windows of the upper story, from which came whisperings and low laughter, though we saw no one.
Mahomet led us through one of the curtained doorways into a long, narrow, cool room, where we found great heaps of gaudy cushions, on which we were to repose, and in front of them a red-toned rug patterned in black arabesques. On a low table at the edge of the rug there had already been placed a majolica bowl filled with kouskous, the standard native dish made from wheat gruel, prepared with sugar, almonds, figs and raisins and all mixed with a mutton gravy. This is the sweet kouskous, or seffa, and it is a very palatable and nutritious dish, as is all the Tlemsen food, which has a reputation throughout the whole of Algeria and Morocco. With spoons provided for us Europeans, who were so much less deft in manipulating semi-liquid foods with our fingers, our bowl, having yielded, of course, a liberal serving for Mahomet, was soon almost entirely empty.
Zofiette was already quite satisfied and begged for tea, though I tried also a following dish of real taam, or the unsweetened kouskous made with broth and vegetables. Then only appeared an old woman, who cleared the little table and brought in a copper ewer full of tea, a basket of figs and grapes and a plate of round cakes, samsa and mekrout, very rich and tempting, but quite beyond our capacity even to sample. We, however, made inroads on the tea, in spite of the fact that it was infused with fresh mint and terribly over-sweetened. Tea with mint is a very good drink in hot weather and, after the rich native food, is really an ideal beverage in African conditions, if only it is made with a normal quantity of sugar.
After having arranged with Mahomet our plans for the next day we returned to the hotel. Just before reaching it, we came upon a native funeral. A crowd of Arabs hurried along, jostling for places nearest to the bier, on which the deceased lay clothed in the long, thin kfen and wrapped in the conventional shroud, or seddayia. There are certain ancient ritualistic ceremonies now in use among tire Arabs, which have nothing, however, in common with Islam. To such belong the feast after the funeral and the hired mourners, who sob and howl, scratch their faces and pull out their hair. In the cemetery stones are erected or laid flat upon the grave, after which incantations and talismans are used to propitiate or drive away the innumerable djinns, those evil spirits of illness and misfortune.
The hotel servant who stood and watched the procession with us told us that the deceased, whom he knew personally, had but himself to blame for his death, for, having met a tergou, he had neglected to recite the necessary incantation, whereupon the tergou visited upon him the djinns of sickness.
"What is a tergou?" asked Zofiette.
The boy turned his eyes to the ground and was silent, from which I realized that he was afraid of djinns, the more so as it was already late. After a moment's pause Mahomet spoke for him, explaining:
"A tergou is a woman's shadow which has power over a number of different djinns. One is most likely to come upon this shadow at a cross-roads or under a solitary tree; and, when one sees it, it strives to elude one by ascending upward into the sky or by diminishing to the size of a mouse. Then, in order to avoid its baleful influence, one must repeat the magic words: 'El-Khams, El-Mitter, El-Ansodb' and 'El-Aglane.'"
Meanwhile, as we talked, the hired mourners ceased their wailing and joined in droning a dramatic funeral song.
Where is he?
His charger returned, but he himself remained far away.
His rifle returned, but he came back no more.
His sword returned, but he himself remained far away.
His spurs returned, but he came back no more!
To this song of the mourners the sobbing widow answered:
My tent is lone;
An unbearable cold surrounds me.
Where is my lion?
Where shall I find one like him?
Misery and fright are my constant companions.
The procession passed, leaving behind it an impression of those earlier times when Arabs, Berbers and Kabyles spent their lives in the saddle in constant fighting and raids. How little they ever imagined that there would come a time after this persistently warlike life when the only reminder of their fighting days would be the funeral songs sung over date, wool and cattle merchants, who had known no weapons other than a shepherd's staff.
I followed the procession and observed that the corpse was carried head foremost, which is not the custom with either Christians or Jews. When the cortège had reached the cemetery, the turban was taken from the head of the deceased and flung three times upon the ground with supplications to Mahomet. As soon as the body had been lowered into the grave, which was done with great care in order to avoid having it touch anything before reaching its resting place, the grave was filled, and the widow and the parents of the deceased began distributing bread and figs to the beggars, following out the Arab belief that each seed in the figs given at the grave to a beggar will lessen the period of the deceased's punishment in the next world by a year. Mohabad, or tombstones, were then placed at the head and the foot of the grave. As they began their incantations, the burning of incense and fresh lamentations, I turned and left the cemetery, through whose somber cypresses an evening wind from Terni murmured a soft accompaniment to their final funeral rites.
When night had dropped her mantle full upon the earth and the moon had set sail across the sky, augmenting the mystery of everything around us, Zofiette and I, accompanied by an acquaintance, a French official who had long been a resident in Algeria, strolled out of the town along a road that ran between orchards and vineyards in the direction of El-Eubbad. Finally, when we came upon a fountain by the roadside, we sat down on the stones that flanked it and listened to the low murmur of the unbroken stream and to the drowsy notes of birds and insects.
Suddenly a human voice broke this silence, so full of lesser sounds. How strange it is that the stillness of the night remains a silence, though it be replete with sounds, all of which it absorbs and takes within itself without an echo, yet that it is itself frightened and driven temporarily away by one loud note of a human voice.
We looked behind us and discovered a large garden on the other side of a hedge of Berber figs, within which a swing, that hung from a branch of one of the trees, was pulsating through its graceful arc under the rhythmic, supple movements of a young girl. She was dressed in shining white and seemed like a water fairy, who had come up from the mysterious depths of a lake and, in the rays of the moon, was besporting herself in solitary play, full of longing and dreams. As she swung, she sang to herself in a low, melodious voice.
"It is the 'Haoufi,'" whispered the Frenchman, "a favorite song among the Tlemsen girls."
While he was still speaking, the nymph sprang down from the swing and began to dance through a pretty maze of dainty steps and of slow, graceful movements of the whole body. As she moved, she sang again, and our companion repeated for us one of the verses in French.
His mouth is the scarlet of henna;
His teeth are of shining ivory;
His neck is as a battle standard
After a victorious fight …
"The girl must certainly love a young man, who has never seen her without her haik," whispered Zofiette.
Our French friend, on hearing this, nodded his head knowingly and sang back to the girl these lines:
Your breast, Oh maiden, is a spirit—
It is of silver pure.
Your body is like the fleecy snow,
The snow which mantles the summit of Ghamdov.
The water fairy glanced quickly around, gave a soft cry of dismay and disappeared like a faint, intangible shadow of the night. The spring, which seemed throughout the song to have held its breath, began again to murmur, the lizards moved about in the grass and the cicadas once more released their rasping notes.
It was very late before we finally returned to our hotel, as our delightful friend regaled us with never-ending stories of the life of the Berber tribes, more than one of which stirred within me strong imagination and an indefinable longing, so common to those who penetrate toward the heart and soul of this country which has been tramped by the feet of millions of conquering aliens, drowned in the blood and tears of numberless struggles and burned to tinder by the merciless sun—merciless, to be sure, but not strong enough to stamp out life. Once let its face be veiled with clouds and a few drops of rain be given to the thirsty soil, and immediately this apparently scorched earth covers itself with a carpet of bright flowers, the flocks of patient sheep begin to pasture and to play, while men, parched by the blast of the eternal heavenly fire, forget the heat, raise their heads and dream of happiness, love and liberty, these most beautiful gifts of God.
"Msa el-Khir (Good night)," said our French friend.
"Alaikum es-salaam," we answered, having taken from the manual of French-Arabic conversation by Monsieur Delaporte the necessary phrase to meet the requirements of politeness.