The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 8
ACROSS WATERLESS RIVERS
AT four the next morning we were already off in an excellent limousine from Ujda through Tasa to the sultan's capital, the Mecca of African Islam—to Fez, a city of mystery, political intrigue, living saints, erudite theologians and Moorish science developed to its highest point We started in the full darkness that reigns when dawn is still far away. The immense car, slashing the velvet of the night with its great shears of light, twisted and turned through the labyrinths of Ujda streets, scattering with its horn the strings of donkeys and camels on their way to the early morning market.
Once out on the open road, the chauffeur put on speed and carried us like some phantom racers with the dawn past the houses and buildings of sleeping colonists until we left these all behind and found ourselves coursing a stony desert At daybreak we could see ahead of us a barren, dead plain, cut by a strategic narrow-gauge railway, stretching away to the horizon. Along the highway are located at intervals stations with supplies of gasoline, oil and water, while garages equipped for repairs are to be found in the larger villages. Auto-transportation companies, maintaining a mixed service of light passenger cars and the heavier, immense autobuses, have elaborated and organized an ideal system for speed and safety in this unsettled region.
As we sped on we crossed numerous stone bridges, thrown over wads, or small streams. These are dried river-beds, sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, filled with round, white stones over which the water, greedily drunk by the merciless sun, had ceased to flow. However, some moisture had surely remained in porous layers of rock and soil, for at certain spots in the river-beds or just on their banks thick growths of flowering laurel and low tamarisk bushes still flourished. Farther out on the plain, like round nosegays, solitary terebinth trees followed the banks of the dried wads and patiently awaited the return of the waters that would bring down more of the tumbling cobbles and would search their way into the cooler shades of canyons, some of which dropped to a depth of over a hundred feet.
While crossing this first desert that I came upon in Africa, I made an observation which I subsequently confirmed on many occasions. Always and everywhere the North African trees, shrubs and grasses that grow in bunches are topped with a rounded crown. I hazarded the conclusion that the reason for this might be found in the fact that the winds across these deserts blow strong from all directions. There are probably those who would read into this fact the manifestation of a higher mind, that dictates for the plants such a shape as will afford to men and animals tried by the sun the greatest possible amount of shade. It is an uncontrovertible fact that, in the shadow of these rounded trees and bushes, great numbers of birds, small rodents, reptiles and insects spend long hours during the heat of the day, when the sun, like some broken cauldron filled with molten gold, pours out its withering stream.
From time to time we rushed past a native village or a neglected kasha which raised itself out of the fields, too broken and decrepit now to show more than the crumbling ruin of erstwhile powerful walls and towers. These kasbas were fortified enclosures within which native tribes found shelter for themselves, their herds and all their other possessions, sometimes passing their whole lives largely within these walls. At sunrise the single gate of the enceinte was opened and at sunset it was closed, after which no living being could enter. Should even a friend arrive after this hour, he could only pass the night in the open beside his horse or camel; if it were a stranger, he stood a fair chance of being shot by the inhabitant of the kasba who was that night on guard. Today these fortified settlements are empty and their former inhabitants live on separate farms or on the plains, cultivating the soil and guarding their herds, following the example of the Europeans. Many are at present used as night shelters for cattle, while others have gone down before the guns of the French during their struggles against warlike and undisciplined tribes. It is only in the higher regions of the Atlas that the natives continue to live within kasbas and to keep their walls and towers in proper repair.
At intervals, as oases through the desert, white military posts are set down with their buildings for the garrison and their watch-tower encircled with a protecting wall. As we went farther and farther westward over a road as level as a table, the chauffeur carried us along at from forty-five to fifty miles an hour. The white stones set by the military glided by and pointed the traveler on his way to Fez, Rabat and Casablanca, marking as well the side roads and even the paths that were only tracks for mules and led off to Bu Huria and Tinnaburt, or to some village at the foot of the range of Jebel Bu Lajeraf inhabited by industrious agriculturists and expert cattle-breeders of the Beni Bu Zeggu. This is one of the mysterious North African tribes, as they use the Berber language but have their own distinct religious ritual and their special magical practices, claiming also that their original ancestor was a Christian lalla, or woman saint.
Here and there in the desert we also passed carefully built and cemented wells, which had been dug by the French. To make a well in the desert is a deed most pleasing to Allah, according to the Koran. Consequently the French officials and groups of the colonists are not slow to win their way to the hearts of the natives by providing these most necessary stations on the desert road.
Near one of them we drew up beside a pair of native riders, who turned out to be two armed Berbers that were watering their horses at the cement trough near the well. The riders stood waiting near their mounts and kept their faces entirely covered with their bournouses, as they always do when traveling, giving one the impression that they are afraid of burning their already brown or quite black faces. But their own reason for doing this is really quite a different one. Passing through unknown and spiritually unchartered places, they know not the day nor the hour when a djinn may enter their mouths and cause sickness.
The men carried long Arab rifles, with graceful, slender stocks ornamented with silver and mother-of-pearl. When they sprang into their saddles and their horses shot away as though their feet hardly touched the earth, these riders made a picturesque sight with their rifles resting on their hips and their bournouses flying in the wind. But the mechanical speed-king of mountain and plain soon overtook and passed the more picturesque men of the desert on their Arab steeds and then drew alongside a railway train, filled with the white forms of natives and their wives, with haiks drawn over the women's heads. Some of the dark passengers had even scrambled up and were squatting on the roofs of the cars.
Taurirt and Gwersif were two of the largest villages we passed on the way. The first of these is on the left bank of the Sa River and counts a mixed European, Arab and Jewish population. In the story of Morocco this locality, which is crossed by important commercial highways, has figured prominently, for it was here that many struggles took place between the various competing dynasties.
The Taurirt plain, as it stretches southward, merges into the plain of Tafrata, within which is located the city of Debdu, previously the capital of an independent state and today a Jewish town of peculiar interest on account of its folk-lore and the relations that exist between the Jews and the Arabs. These Jews of Debdu very carefully guard their ancient faith but observe even more strictly the old Berber superstitions and the practices of the cabala, or mystic theosophy of the Hebrews. Side by side with wise rabbis one can find here majouses, that is, magi, and kahinas, or fortune-tellers. Whereas it is a well-known fact that Jews living in the Mellah in Moslem towns are despised as unclean and are periodically persecuted because of the fiery hate of the Faithful of Islam, in Debdu the situation is just reversed, for here the Jews hold the upper hand and the Moslems work for them as servants. Seeking some explanation of this, I was informed that the proximity of a tribe that is rather indifferent to the law of the Prophet and regards Ben Sliman as the greatest of the saints may account for it. I feel, however, that this may not be sufficient reason for the unusual relationship between Moslems and Jews and that the real explanation may be found in the fact that the local Jews have been agriculturists for a very long time and have taught the better practice of the science to the natives of Floushe, Hassian el-Jhudi and other localities, assuring them through this a basis of existence at a time when war disrupted the regular commercial life and cut off contact with ordinary sources of supply.
At the point where the Mellulu flows into the largest of Moroccan rivers, the Muluya, there was located in the time of the Ptolemies the ancient city of Galafa. Now in its place one finds only a colonization center with a military post and a small native village, which, taken together, form the little town of Gwersif. This present native settlement was built at the time of Al-Bekri and still has about it the oldest walls extant from this period. Belonging to the warlike tribe of Uled Mesaoud, which roamed the prairies of Beni Bu Yahi, the place was wiped out during the course of inter-tribal wars. It was here that the army of the Almohades was cut to pieces during its retreat from the east.
Beyond Gwersif the road continues on through the stony desert, until suddenly it approaches the single spot in this whole region which resembles a prairie. There, through the presence of some water-supply available over a few acres, yellow grasses and low, bushy palms were sufficient to give life to the plain, though they seemed insignificant enough as verdure. Prairie-larks and other small birds flew about from shrub to shrub, hunting locusts and insects; small field-mice with coats that exactly matched the prairie background showed themselves here and there; while bustards ran out almost from under the wheels of the swiftly moving car. During subsequent hunting expeditions in more southern latitudes I had occasion to shoot some of these African bustards. Generally they were the Otis houbara or Otis Arabs and were distinctly smaller than the Otis tarda, familiar in Europe and Asia but much rarer in North Africa.
From a pile of stones near which we stopped there scuttled down a big lizard, whose brothers I subsequently met in several places. The Arabs call it a "dabb." It belongs to the Agama family and is zoologically designated as Uromastix spinipes. In the southern parts of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia the natives catch these lizards, fatten them and serve them as very récherché dishes. Sometimes they grow to a length of nearly twenty inches. The gall, brain and tongue are used in magic practices, an honor which the poor dabb owes to the fact that the number of rings in its tail counts the magic twenty-one.
This well-inhabited bit of desert soon lay far behind us, and we were once more surrounded by the great spiritless waste, monotonous and dead. The hopeless landscape it made was only occasionally enlivened by a file of laden camels appearing on the horizon or by the square walls of a military blockhouse with a solitary sentinel looking out from the tower.
Finally, after some further hours on the plain, we nosed our way into the gullies and ravines of the Ghiata range, where we again discovered water in the river-beds—water in the form of almost invisible rivulets hiding away between and underneath the rocks and stones, just as if it were trying to avoid its enemy, the sun.
We made our next stop at the custom-house for Tasa, a large town which lay hidden behind the mountains. While our chauffeur was changing a tire, we took advantage of the opportunity to go for a stroll and were no more than started, before we were held up by the curious sight of lizards running straight up and all about the walls of the custom-house. They were from six to eight inches long, had grayish-brown skins and carried long finger-like toes, fitted with disproportionately large adhesive pads. They were the so-called "wall-gecko," or Tarentola Maviretanica, and were looked upon by the natives as a most useful ally, in that they hunted flies, midges, spiders and other insects. On the other hand, when the colonists in the northern part of the Oran district introduced apiculture, these same geckos became very obnoxious, inasmuch as they killed the bees. It is a strange feature of these wall-lizards that they have incredibly fragile tails, as evidenced by the fact that you have only to catch one by his tail or, sometimes, even simply to frighten him into falling from the wall to see his tail break almost as though it were a piece of glass. It makes amends for this peculiar quality by growing again very rapidly. The gecko possesses another distinctive trait in being the only lizard with a voice, which he tries out during his evening hunt by distinct and rather loud cries.
After the geckos we visited Tasa superficially. It is but one of the interesting posts along this road that man has for centuries followed from Algeria to the Atlantic in his struggle for existence and which all sorts of invaders have also taken. In the grottoes of Kifan el-Ghomari and in ancient tombs near the town the natives have found weapons and other objects from the stone age and from the earliest periods of the iron age, while Roman ruins also remain along the Tasa River and in some parts of the city. The place already existed in the seventh century and was early known for its gold-mines. With the varied and destructive repercussions of the many wars adown the centuries certainly no historian will be able to follow all the flags that have waved above this place.
At present there is located here one of the largest military establishments in French Africa, as war with the insurgents of the north who seek to wrest the throne of Idris I, one of the great rulers of Maghreb, from its present encumbent, faithful to France, and with the independent wild mountaineers, Ghiata and Beni Warrene, who do not yet recognize the authority of the sultan, still continues in various parts of the district
We had only time to visit cursorily the ancient mosque, the colorful suks, some humming caravanserais, the bashaws' palaces and a few of the most important buildings of the town, before our chauffeur was honking for us to return. I should have disregarded the importunity of our driver to have remained long among the hundreds of tombs of the old necropolis, were it not that I knew these burial-places had long ago been despoiled of all their treasures and interest by that extraordinary caste of treasure seekers, who work throughout these districts with the aid of Marabouts their own magic incantations and their special talismans, all of which guide them in divining the location of their spoils.
After we had passed through and beyond the oakforested hills of Ghiata, the road began to climb in sharp curves up the slopes of a mountain-range from whose summit we espied in the distance an immense dark-green, almost-black, oasis, the winding blue line of a river and the slender minarets above the shining white spot of a town—Fez, the dominator of the minds and hearts of Maghreb.