The court, about two hundred feet across, was full of animals, belonging some to the Sheikh himself, and others to the various travellers who had sought shelter for the night within his walls.
We had a letter from the consul in Mogador setting forth that we are friends of his, but not descending to particulars, so that we were ushered into an airy upper room, and bread and butter, in a tolerably lordly dish, was set before us. We were uncertain whether Sheikh el Abbas penetrated my disguise, but if he did he made no sign; nor did it matter much, as I intended to be taken for a Christian travelling in Moorish dress to escape observation (as is often done), till near the place where we break off into the wilds, and leave the main road to Morocco city. Had all gone well, I hoped this would confuse the hypothetic persons, and jumble up their substance to such an Athanasian extent as to make recognition quite impossible.
Lutaif discourses much of eastern lands and reads el Faredi, an Arab poet, to the admiration of the assembled elders.
Swani makes tea and Sheikh el Abbas drinks the three cups prescribed by usage, lapping them like a dog, and drawing in his breath like a tired horse at water, to show his great content. The upper room looked out upon the court; and in the moonlight I saw a shepherd, assisted by a little ragged boy, engaged in separating the goats from amongst the sheep, and ranging them in two little flocks, after the fashion that the good are to be divided from amongst the wicked, when this foolish affair of life is finished with; though with this difference, that whereas in this case the two flocks were nearly equal, who can suppose but that after the last count, the goats will not exceed the sheep by at least ten to one. In a corral hard by the horses eat, some camel drivers crouch round a fire, and as I look at the unchanging Eastern life the call to prayers reminds me that Allah has blessed it by continuity for a thousand years.
The Sheikh sat long, talking of things and others, of the decline of British prestige, the advance of Russia, the new birth of Turkey, and of the glory of the Moorish kingdoms in the Andalos (Spain); and then of business, and how the Brus (Germans), a nation which he says seemed to have come into the world but recently, from some high mountains, are bidding fair to be the first of Franguestan. The German Emperor strikes him as being a great king. He is a Sultan, says the Sheikh, after the fashion that the Spaniards used to say when Ferdinand VII. had perpetrated some atrocity, “es mucho rey,” that is, he is indeed a king. [68]
I fancy that he knows I am a Nazarene, although my conversation is quite evangelical, that is, yea and nay, and now and then a pious sentence muttered very low to hide the accent. Lutaif and Swani answer for me, as if I were an idiot, and step in, so to speak, between me and the Sheikh, as when he asks, for instance, if I have seen the war ships of the Christians, when they at once respond I have, and give particulars invented at the moment, and I learn that ships steam more than fifty miles an hour, guns carry twenty miles, to all of which I nod a grave assent, and the Sheikh sips his tea and praises God for all his mighty works.
Lutaif tells of a vessel at Beirout, a Turkish war ship, sent by the German Emperor to the Sultan (he of Brus), so large that two young Syrians of his acquaintance, who had shipped as sailors and got separated, vainly sought each other for seven years, at night climbing to the masthead, by day descending to the hold, but all in vain, because the vessel was so huge; the Sultan could step aboard of her out of his palace on the Bosphorus and after walking all day land in whatever country he desired. This meets with great approval, and I have to confirm it to the letter, and do so with a nod.
The night is hot and the mosquito hums in his thousand; but the Sheikh as he goes warns us to bar the door, because, he says, “Sleep is Death’s brother,” meaning that when one sleeps death may be near and yet the sleeper be unconscious of it.
The muleteers retire to sleep beside their mules. Swani wraps up my feet in the hood of one “djellaba,” and draws another up to my head ready to cover it when I feel sleepy, and as we lie upon the floor, on sheepskins, watching the moon shine through the glassless window, Lutaif puts out the flickering wick, burning sustained by argan oil in a brass bowl, exclaiming, as he did so, “Oh, Allah! extinguish not thy blessing as I put out this light.” How much there is in names; fancy a deity, accustomed to be prayed to as Allah by Arabs, suddenly addressed by an Armenian as Es Stuatz, it would be almost pitiable enough to make him turn an Atheist upon himself. I feel convinced a rose by any other name would not smell sweet; and the word Allah is responsible for much of the reverence and the faith of those who worship him.
We left Meskala early and in rain, which soon was over, and entering on a little bit of desert country, the Atlas range appeared like a great wall of limestone capped with white in the far distance.
For three hot hours we passed through a miniature Sahara, rocky and desolate, stones, stones, and still more stones and sand, a colocynth or two lying amongst the rocks, some orange-headed thistles, Ziziphus Lotus here and there, some sandarac bushes now and then; the horses stumbling on the stones, mules groaning in the sand, and no great rock in all the thirsty land to shelter under from the sun. Three hours that seemed like six, until a line of green appears, a fringe of oleanders on the margin of a muddy stream in which swim tortoises, and by which we lie and lap like dogs, and understand wherefore the Psalmist so insisted on his green pastures wherein his Allah made him lie.
In England your green pastures have no significance, and call to mind but recollections of fat cattle and sheep with backs as square as boxes, in the lush grass between the hedges, as the express whirls past and the stertorous first-class passengers hold up their wine glasses against the light and praise the landscape as they eat their lunch. [70]
But in Morocco and Arabia green grass means life, relief from thirst, and still to-day their poets stuff their verses full of allusions to the pastures rare to them, but which with us make one at times long for a bit of brown to break the sea of dull metallic green. Fig trees and olives, oleanders [71a] with pomegranates, and a few palms make an oasis in the little desert, and on a sheepskin spread on some cobble stones close by a rock, exactly like the one that Moses is depicted striking in old-fashioned Sunday books, the water rushing out in a clear stream, we lie and smoke and fall a-talking of our chances of reaching Tarudant.
Mohammed el Hosein gave it as his opinion that if he could conduct a Rumi [71b] there, he would make his name in Mogador as the best muleteer in all the south, and all his previous fears seemed to vanish as he descanted on the line of conduct to pursue when once inside. He seemed to think the risk, if known to be a Christian, was considerable, and counselled that we should encamp outside the gates and reach the town a little after dawn when people were arriving to sell provisions, and then go instantly to the Governor’s house which was close to the gates, and claim protection from him. Swani, who, as a native of Tangiers, though he had seen the world and twice performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, yet was a little uneasy in South Morocco, and thought it best that we should go to some caravansarai (called in Morocco fondak) and try our best to escape detection, I shamming ill, and Lutaif giving out he was a Syrian doctor.
Ali the muleteer, who learned for the first time our destination, was in an agony of fear, and said he must return at once; but when we pointed out to him that he would then not only lose his wages but perhaps his mule, he made his mind up, on condition I procured him a letter of protection from the English consul in Mogador. Mohammed el Hosein, before he left the town, had made me sign a paper stating I had engaged him for all his life, and, fortified with this protection, I understand he now bids all his governors and masters absolute defiance, wrapped, so to speak, within a tatter of the British flag. Lutaif, who knew the Governor of Tarudant, one Basha Hamou, who had been Governor of Mequinez—a negro, and a member of the famous Boukhari [72] Pretorian bodyguard—gave his opinion that Mohammed el Hosein was right, and that though Basha Hamou might not be pleased, he would be obliged to give