In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 1

In the Tail of the Peac.o.c.k.

by Isabel Savory.

_PREFACE_

_THIS book contains no thrilling adventures, chronicles, no days devoted to sport. It will probably interest only those minds which are content with "the C Major of this life," and which find in other than scenes of peril and excitement their hearts' desire._

_Such as care to wander through its pages must have learnt to enjoy idleness, nor find weeks spent beneath the sun and stars too long--that is to say, the fascination of a wandering, irresponsible life should be known to them: waste and solitary places must not appal, nor trifling incident weary, while human natures remotely removed from their own, alternately delight and repel. Those who understand not these things, will find but a dull chronicle within the following pages._

_If to live is to know more, and to know more only to love more, the least eventful day may possess a minimum of value, and even quiet monotones and grey vistas be found and lost in a glamour born of themselves._

_In this loud and insistent world the silent places are often overlooked, and yet they are never empty._

_ISABEL SAVORY._

WESTFIELD OLD HALL, EAST DEREHAM.

_February, 1903._

CHAPTER I

TANGIER--COUNTRY PEOPLE--THE PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA--MOORISH PRISONS--WE RIDE TO CAPE SPARTEL--DECIDE TO LEAVE TANGIER AND PUSH INLAND.

CHAPTER I

The vague and hazy ideals which the white light of an English upbringing relegates to dreamland and dismisses as idle fancies, rise up in the glare of African sunlight, alive, tangible, unashamed; the things that are, not the things that might be:--the vivid colouring, the hot crowding, the stately men and veiled women, the despotism and stoicism, the unchanging picturesqueness of the Thousand and One Nights, the dramatic inevitability of the Old Testament.--A. J. D.

THERE was no desert in Morocco.

If a country has not been "read up" beforehand, the imagination has free play and forms many false conclusions: yet though it suffer on the one hand rude awakenings, it is on the other compensated by certain new lights--indelible and unique impressions--which come only in the train of things _inconnu_. So though we found no desert, there are other things in Morocco.

It is one of the few countries in the world, and they grow fewer each year, which is still unexplored--unknown. Thousands of square miles in Morocco have never been crossed by a European, or at any rate none have returned to tell the tale: maps mark only blank s.p.a.ces, and have no names for villages, no records of mountains or rivers: there are no roads, still less railways, in the country: the only means of transport along the wild, worn tracks is by camels, mules, and donkeys: he who will not ride perforce walks.

The bare fringe alone of Morocco, its coast towns, and the choice, let us say, of two roads connecting them with its capitals, Fez and Morocco City, are open to travellers; beyond these limits it is difficult and dangerous for Europeans to venture. Of even its coasts towns England knows little enough: a daily paper printed in 1902 describes one flourishing seaport of thirty thousand inhabitants as "a village." There is more vagueness, in fact, about a country three times the size of Great Britain and four days' journey from London than of many a remote corner in the heart of Asia.

The reason is at hand. An old Arabic proverb, "The earth is a peac.o.c.k: Morocco is the tail of it," typifies the entire satisfaction of its inhabitants with their native land. What is, is good; why "civilize" and "progress"? As far as possible there shall no European enter therein.

Realizing that, were new blood allowed to come into Morocco, its own effete and uneducated people would have no chance in the race of life, and end by hopelessly knuckling under to the European, the country isolates itself; nor is it likely that the jealous Powers of Europe will allow any one of their number to disturb that isolation and pluck the tempting fruit.

And so to-day Morocco drowses in an atmosphere of _laissez faire_, a decadent nation, a collection of lawless tribes, who have changed little for the last two thousand years, living still much after the manner of Old Testament days. They are devout Mussulmans. They believe the world to be flat, and to come to an end with the west coast of Morocco. Their country they call _El Moghreb el Aksa_, which means, "The Extreme West,"

or "The Land of the Setting Sun": "Morocco" and "Moors" are entirely European words, and never used by the Moors themselves--the one being a corruption of the name of their capital city, the other having been given them by the Spaniards.

Morocco should be fascinating on the face of it: a great country running into hundreds of thousands of square miles, the only independent Mussulman state of North Africa, with six million followers of the great Prophet, and a perfect climate, soil, and water-supply to boot, needs no extolling. And yet its chiefest fascination lies in things which, from some points of view, ought not to be.

Its remote removal from all appertaining to the twentieth century, its strangely simple, untaught life, the solemn, stately men, the veiled women and their eyes, the steely blue cactus, the white cities and the glaring light, the mystery and the fatalism which intensify the air, are alike oddly inevitable and incomprehensible to a European. The other side of the closed door has always const.i.tuted, for the wandering vagrants among mankind, their hearts' desire. For them there is still Morocco; and the door will be shut in their faces again and again by a people and a faith and customs which they can never understand. And though it be useless they will still go on, because it seems the best thing.

About six weeks before 1902 was due, Rose A. Bainbridge and myself left behind us the last outpost of England--Gibraltar--with its cl.u.s.ter of civilization round the bottom of the great Rock. Four hours brought us across the Straits; and seen from the deck of the dirty little _Gibel Musa_, on to which we had changed from a P. & O. at Gibraltar, Morocco shaped itself into a rugged country, ridge behind ridge of low hills and jagged mountains cutting the sky-line. A long white sand-bank lying back in a bay on the African sh.o.r.e, broken at one end by irregular vegetation, gradually developed upon its slopes a yellowish-white, fantastic city, which resolved itself into Tangier.

Landing at Tangier among vociferating Moors has been described often enough, and needs no further enlargement.

The next morning, November 13, 1901, found us sitting over coffee and an omelette out of doors, on a little balcony opening off the hotel Villa Valentina, over-looking the road to Fez, and facing the broad, blue Straits which divided us from Europe.

It was like a June morning at home, soft and balmy: the city dropped from us down to the beach, and the sun poured upon the flat-roofed houses, coloured yellow to pale cream or washed-out blue, alternating with a lavish coat of glaring whitewash.

Tangier is an example of structure without architecture; at the same time there is a certain fitness in the crude Moorish buildings, whose flat expanse of wall is unbroken either by windows or ornament: they are simple and "reserved." Gleaming in high light under an equally light sky, they huddle almost one on top of the other, built upon every available square yard inside the "papery" old city wall, which looks as if cannon would blow it away. Patches of blue sea break the white city outline, and the towers of the mosques rise above it all: their tesselated surfaces, tiled in shades of green and polished by the years, shimmer in the sunshine like peac.o.c.ks' tails.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROAD TO FEZ.

[_To face p. 6._]

Two or three gateways pierce the drab-coloured city wall, their horseshoe-shaped arches washed over with salmon-pink. The same plaster-work arch repeats itself occasionally in the rough stone- and mortar-work of the houses, all of an inferior quality, short-lived and rebuilt again and again on the _debris_ of successive years, until they stand in time right above the cobble-stones of the narrow streets.

Outside the city wall a few private houses and two hotels lie back among eucalyptus, palms, and bushy stone-pines: several of the legations which represent the European Powers have modern houses, lost in greenery of sorts. Behind these, again, a suburb of jerry-built Spanish houses, with the sc.u.m of Spain, is inclined to grow, which offshoot of fifth-rate Europe gives at last upon the rolling pastures and windswept hills of the open country.

Our breakfast-table brought us face to face with every traveller who pa.s.sed along the great sandy track leading eventually to Fez, which people in Morocco call a road, beaten to-day and for the last two thousand years by the feet of generations of camels, mules, donkeys, horses, cattle, and mankind.

Though the wayfarers, plodding through the dusty hoof-marks, were desultory, it was quiet for few hours even at night, and under our windows we waked to an eternal shuffling in the soft sand, the champing of bits, and guttural Arabic tones.

R. and I leaned over the balcony. Women pa.s.sed us wrapped in voluminous whity-yellow garments--_haiks_--black eyes and red slippers alone showing. Date-coloured boys pa.s.sed us, wearing red fezes and dirty-white turbans. Countrymen pa.s.sed us in great, coa.r.s.e, brown woollen cloaks--_jellabs_--the hood pulled right on over the head, short wide sleeves, the front joined all down, and having scarred bare legs and feet coming out from underneath. These drove strings of diminutive donkeys, a couple of water-barrels balanced across the back of each--supplies of water for Tangier when the rain-water tanks are giving out: there are few wells in the city.

More women, veiled to the eyes, pa.s.sed us, in delightful shoes--milk-coloured leather, embroidered with green: an African woman, black as a boot, with thick negro lips and yellow metal bracelets on her charcoal-sticks of arms. More donkeys pa.s.sed us, carrying vegetables to market, driven by countrywomen in yellowish-white haiks, vast straw hats, and the inevitable veil. Two men pa.s.sed us with an immense open box containing thousands of eggs, hung between them by a pole on the shoulder of each--export for England: forty-eight millions were sent off in 1902, and this morning's omelette might not be our first Morocco egg. A Moor of some means came by, riding at a hard-held ambling walk his star-gazing white mule: the high-peaked saddle and bridle were of scarlet cloth, the stirrup-leathers of scarlet twisted wool; he wore a creamy woollen haik, falling in soft folds down to his yellow slippers, a turban whose snowy disc of enormous size framed his cinnamon-coloured face in symmetrical folds of spotless white, and the top of a scarlet fez showed in the centre of it.

Almost opposite us a beggar had sat himself down at the edge of the road, under the shelter of the high cane fence--a grimy old greybeard, tanned and worn like a walnut, in a tattered jellab and shady turban. "For the love of G.o.d; for the love of G.o.d," he rolled out incessantly in Arabic, ending in a throaty gobble like a turkey; and the country people threw him, as they pa.s.sed, of their bundles--here an orange, there a lump of charcoal--whatever it might be it was crammed into the hood of the jellab; and the sing-song and the gobble began again. In a Mohammedan country it is counted a duty as well as a holy deed to encourage beggars: almsgiving represents to the faithful Mussulman equivalent gain in Paradise; and no one starves in Morocco, though occasionally dismissed with a wave of the hand and "G.o.d provide for you." Mad people are regarded as saints, and credited with the gift of prophecy. It is an exceedingly holy thing to walk about naked. A holy man in Fez was in the habit of sitting at a missionary's gate stark naked; eventually this proceeding had to be put a stop to, because the holy man would insist upon holding the horses of the missionary's afternoon callers.

Our beggar sat in the same spot day after day, hour after hour, fatuitously happy, blissfully content. "G.o.d is great, and what is written is written": remorse, regrets, are alike unknown to Mussulmen; and it is this which dignifies their religion and themselves. Life pa.s.ses lightly over them, and chisels few lines and puckers in the serene patriarchal faces--they may be scamps of the first water, for all one can tell; it sits lightly upon them.

A small boy in a white tunic and red fez, who called himself Larbi, was playing about near the beggar: being able to speak a little English, he made himself useful to visitors, and was rapidly exchanging his good qualities for the drawbacks of the hanger-on: he came out with us for a day or two, smoked several cigarettes in the course of the afternoon, and picked us useless bunches of ordinary flowers. Remonstrance was futile, but when no more little silver coins were forthcoming he left off shadowing us.

We found our own way down to the great _sok_, or market-place, in the wake of some donkeys carrying live cackling fowls, fastened by a bit of string and their feet to any part of the donkey and its baskets which came handy. On each side of the road and everywhere in Tangier the obstinate steely-grey cactus, or p.r.i.c.kly pear, dominates the landscape: its fat fleshy leaves make as good a protection as the sharp-pointed aloe round the irregular plots of cultivated ground. Alternating with them, tall bound cane fences swish and rattle in the wind.

Steely-grey and a yellow-bleached white describe the vegetation of Tangier, set in its white sand-dunes. Morocco is far from having lot or part in the gorgeous East, as tradition says. To begin with, from the end of August to the end of April hazy days greatly predominate, and thirty inches of rain are put in: naturally the country and people take their cue from the general colour of the sky, from its white-yellow light, in which a wan sun is yet able to produce a glare. Morocco is yellow-white, and the Moors themselves run from the colour of cinnamon, through shades of coffee and old gold, to biscuit and skim-milk. Their houses and their clothes take on the same whites and greys, yellows and browns, and the sand and the scrub again and again repeat the tale. Perhaps it has a saddening effect, borne out in the colourless monotone of the lives of its countrywomen.

Presently we pa.s.sed a skin-yard, salted goat-skins, drying by the hundred under the sun, spread upon the ground, upon the flat roofs, wherever a skin could lie, curling with dryness, the empty legs of the late owners standing stiff and upright, like petrified stockings, pointing dismally to heaven.

We overtook a string of camels as we neared the sok, strolling along and regarding the skies, R. and myself with an exaggerated superciliousness.

They were laden with dates, carpets, and slippers from Fez, and, together with mules and donkeys, const.i.tute the vans and railway-trucks of Morocco, subst.i.tuting over the face of the land a dilatory calm in the place of speed and bustle.

But at first it was a real effort to take in a tenth part of surroundings so different from those of England; and when we found ourselves in the sok--the _hub_ of Moorish life--it was to be jostled by donkey-drivers shouting "Baarak! Baarak!" by black water-carriers from the Sus country, by veiled women, by negroes from Timbuctoo, by mules and camels, by men walking, men riding, without one sight or sound familiar, in a dream-world of intense life, recalling nothing so much as the Old Testament. It was worth the journey out from home to see this sok--an open s.p.a.ce crawling with brown-and-white, cloaked and hooded humanity, mixed up with four-legged beasts, also brown, and the whole more like a magnified ant-hill on the flat than anything human. In front of the squatted country people their stock-in-trade lay in piles, gorgeous in tone: oranges and oranges and more oranges, selling at one thousand seven hundred for a shilling; scarlet chillies--hot blots of colour; pink onions; red carrots; white salt, collected down on the beach; green pumpkins blotched with yellow; besides grain of all sorts, basketsful of charcoal, bundles of wood, dried fruit, flat round loaves of bread, cabbages, and what not. The sound of a perpetual m.u.f.fin-bell was ringing backwards and forwards--the _bhisti_ of Tangier, with his hairy goatskinful of water across his back, and two bright bra.s.s bowls hung by a chain round his neck, a bell in one hand, with the other dealing out drinks of water for a Moorish copper coin of which a penny contains fifteen.

We elbowed our way through the _Bab-el-Sok_, or Gate of the Market-place, into the city, and found ourselves in a long, narrow, straight street, dropping down to the _marsa_, or harbour. The irregular, light colour-washed houses jut out promiscuously over the minute cupboard-like shops crammed with oddments of every sort and hue, and leaving scanty room for the owner to squat on some carpet or mattress, until it strikes him that it is time to eat or go to prayers, and he locks up the double doors of his "store cupboard" and strolls away.

Looking down this attenuated Piccadilly of Tangier, over the white turbans and red fezes of the mult.i.tude, right away at the far end a field of blue sea was to be seen: half-way between, the faithful were beginning to pa.s.s into the big mosque one by one for midday prayers, each leaving his shoes behind him and stepping over the high doorstep barefoot on to the marble floor beyond, thence disappearing behind the ponderous green iron doors, where the great line is drawn between Europeans and Asiatics, debarring from entry any except Mussulmen.

The Villa Valentina breakfasted at 12.45, and cut the morning short. We were out again later with a guide--Hadj Riffi he called himself--bent on a visit to the _Kasbah_, or fortress of the city.