The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 7
OVER THE MOROCCAN FRONTIER
AT one of the railway stations enroute we had the good fortune to find a native orchestra made up of a goodly number of aliyins, or musicians. It greatly interested my wife, as, with her long training and deep fondness for the violin, she was studying and collecting all the original native themes which we could discover throughout the journey. The leader of this orchestra, which was at the same time a chorus that sang to its own accompaniment, himself played upon a violin, with two strings, called a "rbab" in the Arab tongue. Among the other instruments were the kwitsra, closely resembling a mandolin; the terrar and the bendir, drums with bells attached; the thel, similar to the Russian accordion; the raita, or horns; the derbuka and the gwellal, trumpets, and the gwesba, or long flutes.
Zofiette particularly admired her fellow-artist of the violin, though his instrument had only the two strings, tuned very low, and was placed on his knee, just as though it were a small violoncello. She was very anxious to play something of Wieniawski's or Sarasate's on this African Stradivarius, but the guard was signaling for the start, so that we could only listen, just before and as the train pulled out, to a monotonous, rhythmic song rendered by the voices and instruments of this local orchestra, which we later learned took a prominent part in religious and other ceremonies.
Once away from Tlemsen, the line climbs ever higher and higher until it reaches a plateau bordered by greensloped mountains and so well watered that the pasture is not only plentiful but almost as rich as that of Switzerland, a fact which attracts to it many nomads with their herds of sheep and cattle. Close to the railway and farther out across the plain were scattered gituns, or big white tents made of a woolen material and striped in black or brown, around which women in their dark-blue abaiyias, with silver ornaments in their ears and about their necks, and troops of naked children constantly moved. Farther off the herds were grazing under the watchful eyes of the shepherds, clad in their white bournouses and armed with their strong pastoral staffs to guard their flocks against the all-too-possible attacks of the jackals or the occasional hyenas that lie in wait among the rocks of the mountain ravines.
The train passed through tunnels, cut through ridges topped with rock and then rumbled for some distance along a French-built aqueduct that furnished water to some agricultural colonies which the green of their olives and fig-trees and of their smaller shrubbery, covered with the pink blossoms of the laurel, began to bring into our view against a background of the already-yellowing grass. It was here also quite patent that the nomads were profiting by the example of the white immigrants and were beginning to till the soil, evidenced by the fact that we occasionally saw small Arab farms with their vineyards, olives and pomegranates surrounding their adobe barns and houses. These plantations have an interesting defence against the free-ranging cattle in the hedges of the twining and twisted bushes of a thorny plant that is carefully searched for and gathered by the natives for use in their sheltering enclosures around their tents, fields and lambs. A jackal or wild dog cannot penetrate or jump over these hedges, once they are well grown, and even a man can work his way through this veritable barbed wire with only the greatest difficulty and an even greater noise.
Soon the train began to descend through a broken, hilly country, bringing us down from the altitudes around Tlemsen, which is slightly over two thousand five hundred feet above the sea, to the little town of Lalla Marnia with its mosques, chapels and kubbas, at less than twelve hundred feet. The town is situated in a large plain cut by irrigation canals that bring to it water from distant mountain springs. Near it lies Nedroma, where the sultans of the magnificent dynasty of the Almohades had their abode. West of Lalla Marnia the train again began to scramble up the heights, until it reached the plateau of Angad, just over two thousand feet in elevation.
Then we passed the last station in western Algeria, Zouj el-Beghal, and soon crossed the frontier into Morocco to draw up at the border station of Ujda. As the conductor had informed us that we should have to undergo a strict examination by the customs officials, we were soon following the black porters who had our luggage and my arms on their shoulders to the examination room, where the inspectors seemed to gloat over their possible victim, who was attempting to bring arms into Morocco without the necessary special permit. I had not secured the required document, because I had not been told in Paris of the necessity for doing so. During the preliminary discussion one of the inspectors, noticing my name on one of our pieces, announced immediately and with a great show of gravity:
"A-ha! We have orders to direct you to the police."
"Why so?" I asked in astonishment.
"We have received instructions to this effect from the local consul," he answered. "Please follow me."
Accompanying him to the police officials, an older and a younger one, I exhibited our passports and explained to them why I had no special permit for the arms. The older man set his seal on our documents, smiled, turned to his younger associate and directed him:
"Please take care of the lady and gentleman." Then to us: "Good-bye."
Take care of us! These words recalled vividly to my mind an event in my earlier life, when, during my student days in St. Petersburg, some companions and I were rounded up after a meeting and taken to Police Headquarters, from where we were passed on to the office of an official of the gendarmes and were told that these would "take care" of us. This process of "taking care" of us lasted two months and necessitated our residence in prison during that time.
Having nothing on my conscience against France, I felt confident of a better outcome in this application of the phrase and had only to wait a moment to see our luggage with my beautiful London cases for the rifles, carbines and ammunition taken without examination and placed in the car that was waiting to drive us to the hotel. Only then did we learn that the authorities in Ujda had received a telegram concerning our journey and, as a result of this, were so considerate and courteous to us. Once at the hotel, I thanked the younger police official for his kindly help and tried to explain that I should give him no further trouble; but this seemed to have no effect on his evident intention of remaining near me. Even when I was about to enter my room, he asked:
"Will you not go at once with me to the consul?"
"I should prefer to change before paying an official call."
"Oh, that is not necessary. It would be better to go at once, as the office will soon be closed."
Yielding, I went along, learning on the way that the newly appointed consul had not yet arrived and that his place was being temporarily filled by the head of the Figig district. Colonel Jean Pariel.
The Colonel received me at once and was both very courteous and interested, as he was acquainted with my books. To my great astonishment, the police official entered the room with me, and I noted that the consul seemed astonished also. During our long conversation, while we studied maps and books bearing upon my prospective journey, my police escort remained close by.
"You may go," the consul finally announced to him. But the official stood his ground, only looking with a knowing and suggestive glance at the consul, who was finally forced to ask bluntly for the cause of his persistence. As Colonel Pariel approached him, he drew out a paper, from which the former read something and broke out into a hearty, good-natured laugh. Stroking his neat, gray beard, he said to the man:
"Very well, sir, you did everything you could. Thank you. You may go now."
The young official went away with an expression of doubt on his face, while the Colonel, still laughing over the incident, explained to me that he had directed the police to meet us and to facilitate my visit to the consulate. The authorities, taking no chances, understood this to mean that they were not to leave me for a moment, as they did not know why the consulate was so much interested in my arrival. Was the young official perhaps convoying a foreign criminal? In any case he had decided to take no chances and to be my guardian angel.
An hour later Colonel Pariel called upon us and took us for a stroll through the town, which is made up of a Medina, or old Arab quarter, enclosed in a square wall with several gates, and the more modern section, containing the administrative offices, the post, the telegraph, shops, military institutions, schools, the church, villas and very pretty gardens. The houses are for the most part small, low brick structures in a pseudo-Moorish style. As the wind was rather strong, the heat was not too trying, yet clouds of dust filled our eyes and made our throats dry and sore.
With little to be seen in French Ujda, Colonel Pariel proposed that we go in his car to the near-by oasis. We left the town, passed through a part of the Medina and finally came out upon a good motor road, which ran between the low adobe walls that enclosed the houses, gardens and small farms of native proprietors and soon brought us out on the Angad plain, which has the character partially of a prairie and partially of a stony waste. Industrious French and Spanish colonists have, however, subdued it in places to rich plantations of grain of several varieties, tobacco and vineyards and are planning to put in cotton and flax with the confidence that these new crops will give excellent results. The range of Beni Snassen is visible on the horizon, while behind it lies the rich plain of Triffa, patterned by groves of almond-, olive-, and juniper-trees (Juniperus communis) and by forests of oak.
Ahead of us in the distance a long, dark line of vegetation gradually raised itself. As we drew nearer we made out the feathery foliage of palms and, after but a few minutes more, were already within the Sidi Yahia oasis. Olive-trees, terebinths (Pistacia Terebinthus), weeping willows, date-palms, oaks and yoke-elms grow along the banks of the flowing streams whose waters are drawn off into canals and carried down to supply Ujda and the neighboring plantations. The vegetation is rank and exuberant, in places forming thickets almost impossible to penetrate. Behind a white wall and among some tall trees rose the domes of the kubbas of the patron saints of Ujda—Sidi Yahia, Ben Yunes, Bu Cheikh and Sidi Thaleb. The wali Sidi Yahia is respected by Moslems and Jews alike, both of whom believe him to have been John the Baptist, who announced the coming of the Messiah. There has long been dissension among the learned Moslem theologists as to the burial-place of the saint, some maintaining that the interment took place where the kubba now stands, while others point to an old tree, covered with sacrificial streamers and bits of cloth, as the real resting place. The second of the Marabouts was buried under another tree, the shadow of which at noontime is held to be the best cure for hip disease. The water from a well near by, dug by Sidi Yahia himself, is also credited with healing powers.
On the grass near the wall about the kubbas crowds of pious people were sitting and listening to the teachings of some Marabouts; but not even these faithful ones were allowed within the walls of the sacred enclosure.
After a walk across the oasis we re-entered the car and returned to town, where we drew up by the park that begins near the Medina wall. Colonel Pariel invited us to a Moorish café, where we were served excellent coffee; but, remembering my previous experience, I restricted myself to a single cup. The Colonel, who is very genial, learnèd and a lover of the Morocco where he has spent the last thirty years of his life, sketched for us the story of Ujda.
The town was founded in the tenth century and became later the capital of the Zenata dynasty. Other Moroccan dynasties alternately captured and held the place down to the thirteenth century, when the Almohade sultans sought to render it impregnable by encircling it with strong walls, which were, however, destroyed before that century had closed. But they were soon restored again and persisted this time, being the very ones near which we sat drinking fragrant Brazilian coffee prepared by Moroccan hands.
After our coffee we strolled into the Medina through the gate of Bab Sidi Aïssa, beyond which we came upon an entrancing and brilliant scene. Seeing a large crowd of Arabs surrounding a native preacher, we drew nearer and watched with intense interest. In the middle of the circle of listeners a young native of perhaps some thirty years, dressed in a long white garment girt with a cord and holding a pilgrim's staff, revealed a beautiful, inspired face, fiery eyes, a passionate mouth, a long black beard and flowing hair that raised before the mind a picture of John the Baptist, denouncing the sins and evil practices of humanity and preparing the way for the Messiah, or even of Christ Himself, when, angered by the desecrating merchants, he drove them from the temple.
The Arab called upon the names of the saints and swept the circle of his hearers with a passionate voice, one moment with hysterical shouts, the next in mystical whispers, then floating off into an inspired, rhythmical baritone, magnetizing the listeners with his eyes. His audience stood round him with their hands folded as in prayer. As we watched, the emaciated, ascetic figure of the pilgrim began running about from one listener to the other, improvising a prayer, a litany to all the saints of Islam, though most frequently he repeated the names of the local Walis, Sidi Yahia, Bu Cheikh, Sidi Thaleb, Sidi Okba, Sidi Zian and others. Each time that the Arab pronounced the name of a saint and a concomitant phrase of supplication or worship, his two assistants, an old man with a face disfigured with leprosy and a young boy with the expression of an idiot, repeated their master's final words and energetically beat upon their drums. Following this the exhorter called upon all his hearers to make a strict examination of their consciences, reminding them of the dire punishment of sin and the rewards of Paradise, this haven of eternal happiness. It was a prayer, a prophecy, a teaching, a menace and a dissemination of hope for the salvation of the soul, all crowded into one appeal.
Gradually the movements of the speaker grew quicker, more hypnotic and fanatical. Then suddenly he became still and silent, looking intently at his audience and finally fastening his eyes upon a single individual, seemingly peering down into his soul. Such must have been the gaze of the apostle John upon the woman who, according to the legend, boasted that she would entrance the Nazarene with her beauty and her passionate caresses but who, instead, fell to the earth and began to weep in despair while the crowd whispered in terror that the woman made a vain and sacrilegious boast and that it was not He, but John, His Beloved Disciple.
After another moment the inspired improvisations commenced anew, and then one could understand the way in which these mad Mahdis, now chiefs, now fanatical priests and prophets, hypnotized and led away after them whole tribes to the great and bloody work of Holy War. The whole mysticism of Islam, stem and powerful, lay bare before us. In this scene I realized the great difference between the Moslem mysticism and that of the Buddhists of Asia—here in Africa fire and an unaccountable transport of ecstasy, there is a conventional ritual and unemotional thought, bound by superstition.
Once only in Asia did I see a real, though tragic, mysticism, full of deep poetry—the solitary prayer of the blind Living Buddha before the bronze likeness of Buddha Gautama. But it was an exception.
As I watched this wandering prophet and priest, speaking so fervently and with such passion right under the walls of Ujda, where words like his could easily light the fires of insurrection, I turned with an expression of inquietude toward Colonel Pariel, who only smiled calmly and explained that it was but a prayer and a summons to return to the holy life.
Suddenly the Arab broke the flow of his impassioned plea and, tearing and disarranging his hair, shouted in a wild and thundering voice:
"Zkara! Zkara! Zkara!"
The praying, concentrated group immediately threw off its religious mantle, raised its head and began looking round, evidently searching for some one. We saw three men hurrying toward the gate. Some young natives, who had been standing near us, started after them; but the Colonel said something in his calm and even-toned voice that stopped them. Only then the speaker became aware of the presence of the consul, made the sign of the salaam in his direction and at once recommended his improvisation. Everything was silent again, and the murmur of the crowd subsided. In a moment the prophet sent his aides among the hearers to collect their alms and gifts in small baskets.
After we turned away from the preaching pilgrim and traversed the market and the suk, I watched the Arab and Jewish merchants greeting the Colonel with friendly smiles, as I stopped to observe in many places the great number of Russian samovars exposed in the various shops and booths. They were the real products of the factories in Tula and bore Russian trade-marks. In answer to my query as to how they had ever filtered through into this Moroccan town, Colonel Pariel explained that many Berbers had recently returned to Ujda from pilgrimages to Mecca, where they had met their co-religionists from Russia and found that they had come with samovars to exchange for North African products—carpets, saddles and the well-known Moroccan embroideries.
As we wandered along, I also asked Colonel Pariel what could be the meaning of the word "Zkara," which had made such a marked impression on the crowd.
"It is the name of a tribe not far away from Ujda whom orthodox Moslems hate and avoid."
Some months later I learned further particulars about this unorthodox clan. The Zkara, like the tribes of Mlaina and Ghouta, are known for their indifference to Islam and to the laws of the Koran. They recognize only the prophet Sidi Ahmed ben Yusuf of Miliana and his disciple, Omar ben Sliman, who was previously mentioned as a renegade Jew. They have their Marabouts from the family of Ben Yusuf, and the so-called "rusma" is the oldest hereditary priest. The Marabouts of this tribe despise the Moslems, eat the pork that is so severely banned by the Koran, have their own ritual and take their wives exclusively from the women of Marabout families. On the other side Moslems accuse Zkaras of atheism, demoralization of Islam and debauchery. Among the Zkaras, as a matter of fact, there is a ceremony during the feast of Bairam called "Leilat el-Gholta," or "The Night of Error," during which, after prayers and the performance of certain ritualistic ceremonies in the temple, men and women spend a night of debauchery. It is a custom, or rather an ancient rite, similar to those of the "jumping sect" which existed in certain congregations of the Greek Church of Russia. The origin of these and similar practices may be traced back to the old pagan agricultural cults.
That evening we spent in the hospitable home of Colonel and Madame Pariel and met there a monk of the order of The White Fathers, who had come up not long before out of the Sahara, where he was passing his life among the Tuaregs and other half-wild nomads of the desert. The black cross hanging against the white cassock combined with the serious, calm face of this man to tell of some force which the white race is opposing to the irreconcilability of Islam and to the magic cults of lesser importance which still find shelter within the confines of the Dark Continent.
Before we left that evening Colonel and Madame Pariel invited us to pay them a visit in Figig, their pretty oasis on the edge of the Sahara.