IV

I spent the evening in the _Café Maure_ of the Ouled-Naïls. They

are _la femme_ of the Sahara, daughters of a tribe whose centre

is at Djelfa, not far from Laghouat, leagues away to the west, and

thence they are dispersed through the desert, adept dancing-girls

who perform in cafés; and in that primitive society, it is said,

no reproach attaches to their mode of life, which yields them a dowry

and brings them at last a husband. The custom is not peculiar to the

Sahara; I have read of its existence in Japan and in the north of

Scotland in the eighteenth century. I had met with them before, and

was familiar with their figures, but always in a tourist atmosphere;

here they were on their own soil, and _au naturel_, and I expected

a different impression.

The room was rather large, with the furnace and the utensils for

coffee in the corner near the entrance; four or five musicians,

on a raised platform, were discoursing their shrill barbarian art,

but it pleases me with its plaintive intensity and rapid crescendos,

in its savage surroundings; a bench went round the wall, and there

were tables, at one of which Hamet and I sat down, and coffee was

brought. There were not many in the room—a sprinkling of soldiers,

mostly in the blue of the tirailleurs, Arabs, old and gray-bearded,

or younger and stalwart like Ali, whom I had lost sight of and

now found here, much more attractive than I had thought possible,

with a desert rose in his mouth and a handsome comrade. A few women

with the high head-dress and heavy clothes they wear were scattered

about. Close behind me, and to my left, was a wide entrance to the

dark shadows of the half-lighted court whose cell-like rooms I had

inspected in the morning, and men and women were passing in and

out, singly and in groups, all the evening. For a while there was

no dancing—only the music; but at some sign or call a full-grown

woman, who seemed large and heavy, began the slow cadence and sway

of the dance. I had often seen the performance, but never in such

a setting; at Biskra and in the north it is a show; here it was

a life. She finished, and I beckoned to a young slip of a girl

standing near. She came, leaning her dark hands on the table, with

those unthinking eyes that are so wandering and unconcerned until

they fill with that liquid, superficial light which in the south

is so like a caress. I offered her my cigarettes, and she smiled,

and permitted me to examine the bracelets on her arms and the

silver ornaments that hung from her few necklaces; she was simply

dressed and not overornamented; she was probably poor in such riches;

there was no necklace of golden louis that one sometimes sees; but

there were bracelets on her ankles, and she wore the head-dress,

with heavy, twisted braids of hair. A blue star was tattooed on her

forehead, and her features were small but fine, with firm lines and

rounded cheek and chin; she was too young to be handsome, but she

was pretty for her type and she had the pleasant charm that youth

gives to the children of every tint and race. She stood by us a while

with a little talk, and as the music began she drew back and danced

before us; and if she had less muscular power and vivacity than the

previous dancer, she had more grace in her slighter motions. She

used her handkerchief as a background to pose her head and profile

her features and form; and all through the dance she shot her vivid

glances, that had an elasticity and verve of steel, at me. She

came back to take our applause and thanks, and talked with Hamet,

for her simple French phrases were exhausted; there was nothing

meretricious in her demeanor, rather an extraordinary simplicity

and naturalness of behavior; she seemed a thing of nature. The room

began to fill now; three women were dancing; and she went over to

the bench by the wall opposite, and I noticed a young boy of eight

or ten years ran to sit by her and made up to her like a little

brother. There were three or four such young boys there.

The scene was now at its full value as a picture; not that there

was any throng or excitement, and to a European eye it might seem

only dull, provincial, rude; the rather feebly lighted room was

obscure in the corners and the walls were naked; the furnace corner,

however, was full of dark movement, the sharp music broke out afresh,

the dance was almost sombre in its monotony, seen mechanically and

without any apparent interest by the Arabs, wrinkled and grizzled,

banked together or leaning immobile on the bench by the wall; and

the cavernous shadow of the court behind me made a fine background

to the figures or groups that disappeared or emerged, or sometimes

stood stationary there in the semi-obscurity. To my color and

shadow loving eye it was an interesting scene; and its rudeness

enhanced its quality. I noticed many a slight thing: a tall negro

stalked along the opposite wall with a handful of candles which

he offered to a woman and found no welcome for, and he went away

apparently exceeding sorrowful. And I sat there long in the midst

of it, thinking of striped tents by the city wall in the sand near

the graves; of streets in the Orient and the north where the women

sit by the door-post like idols; and especially reconstructing in

imagination the scenes of a romance by an Arab, which I had lately

read, depicting the life of an Ouled-Naïl along these very routes

where I had been passing, a book full of desert truth—“Khadra,”

it is called. Toward ten o’clock we rose to go, and I caught the

eye of the young girl I had talked with, and had a smile for good-by.

V

The horses stood at the door early the next morning for a drive to

Temacin, some thirteen kilometres south. We were soon out of town,

travelling beside an oasis on the left and going in the open desert;

a boy joined us from the oasis and excitedly struggled to keep up

with the carriage, no difficult task, for the route was heavy with

sand; two other boys on donkeys ahead were having a race; and the

route had always some touches of travel. The openness of the view

was boundless, and I had not seen finer sands, stretching away in

long rolls and ridges, and mounded into splendid dunes, with palms

here and there for horizon lines. There were always groups and little

strings of camels, isolated but living, in the expanse over which the

eye roamed; we passed from time to time within view of clumps of lost

palms, little oases buried and left in the sands, half-submerged,

derelicts; now there were Bedouin tents, low, striped shelters,

by ones or twos, pitched on the sterile waste, looking infinitely

solitary, at a distance from a small village on a ridge, that

itself seemed a heap of ruined and ribbed walls left abandoned. The

morning was hot, the sun beat down, and every line and tracery

of the wind was visible on the sand. The surface of the dunes was

beautiful—light and full of the spirit of fantasy; the modulation

was exquisite, ribbed and fretted, furrowed in lines and touched all

over with little disks and curves, like the imprint of small shells;

and their mottled and wavy surfaces broke the monotony of the vast

slopes and dunes like an infinite enamelling of nature. It was the

land of the blue distance, the simple in the grand, the apotheosis

of paucity in the means, of poverty in the substance, elemental,

abstract, superb: the glory of the desert. I never so felt it as

on that morning. I watched the slender, film-like, far-off minaret

of Temacin take body and height as we drew nearer and nearer, and

saw plainly and distinctly at last the boldly perched, irregular

oblong of walls and roofs that topped a rising ridge of the sands,

with its minaret like a dark, mediæval tower standing in heaven with

a lance-like solitude. Its top was bordered with a broad frieze of

colored tiles and capped with a pyramidal head or balcony pierced

with slim Moorish arches. There were men working under the wall; but

the town looked marvellously silent and alone, dark and withdrawn,

like an impenetrable earthen ruin, incommunicable; it rose as if

made of the earth itself, with the dilapidation of old earthworks,

forbidding and melancholy, with no touch of life except the gleam

of its tiled minaret; in all that sun it seemed sunless—ruinous,

decadent, infinitely old. Soon after we passed another heap of

earth walls on a sand-mound, a small village, and came almost at

once to Tamelhat, the zaouia, which we had set out to see.

High walls surrounded the enclosure, which was extensive. Tamelhat is

a holy village, a chief seat of the religious order of the Tidjania

and daughter of the mother zaouia at Aïn Madhi, near Laghouat,

with which it shares the devotion of this important brotherhood,

one of the most influential of the Moslem associations in North

Africa. The zaouia is a sort of monastery or abbey; but I was not

prepared to find it so large an establishment. We left the carriage

at the gate and passed in to a second gate, and I was struck by the

ornamental work and texts on them and on the walls. A straight avenue

led down to an open space where the mosque stood on the right side

of the street as we turned sharply upon it. Three square windows

set in little ornamented arches in the centre broke the broad

white space of the wall, and there were other windows irregularly

placed. A little to one side was a heavy door, with a double row of

faience set over its square top and descending on beautiful onyx

pillars. An octagonal dome, tipped with a shaft of three golden

balls, completed the building above. It was a pretty exterior with

a touch of art in the line of windows, and as I passed into the

interior by the lovely onyx columns it seemed like a reminiscence,

almost a renaissance, to find before my gaze the familiar blue

and green tiles, plaques of wrought plaster in arabesque, pretty

bits of faience adornment—forms of the ornament and color so

delightful to me. The interior was roomy, with good spaces, and

lofty above; in the main fore part a palanquin was in one corner,

and a few tombs were placed here and there; but the shrine, the

tomb of the Marabout who founded the zaouia, stood in the space to

the left, directly under the dome, as in a chapel. It was heavily

covered with stuffs, as usual, and overhung with many banners; a

grill ran round it, and outside of that a wooden rail; the tomb also

bore Arabian texts. The whole effect, notwithstanding the bareness,

the few elements, the uncostly materials, had the grand simplicity

of the Moslem faith; it was impressive—imposing to a simple soul;

but, beyond the restful sense of the neighborhood of beautiful and

sacred things in that far and desert solitude, what pleased me most

and the feature I carried away to be my memory of it was the ample

lights in the cool spaces by the open windows above the tomb toward

the street, where the birds were continually fluttering in and out,

unfrightened and undisturbed, as if this was their quiet home.

I thanked the Arab sacristan who stood looking at me with old

and tranquil eyes, and we went out and walked up the street,

which seemed like a long cloister. There were grilled windows on

the well-built walls at intervals; a few men sat here and there

on benches along the way; it seemed a place of peace. The street,

which was quite long and straight, ended in a large court near which

was the dwelling of the Marabout. Hamet asked me if I would like

to see him, and I gladly assented. After a brief interval an Arab

came to us, to whom I gave my coat and what things I was carrying;

and leaving them below, he guided us up an irregular stairway,

as in an old house, and took us into a rather large, high room,

plainly plastered and bare. The desert saint—such he was—was

seated on the floor in the middle of one side by the wall on a

rug; he was old and large, white-bearded, with a heavy look, as

if he were used to much repose and was aged. He gave me his hand

as I stooped down to him, and after a word or two invited me to

be seated at a plain table before him in the middle of the room;

and attendants silently brought food. There was already in the

room the caïd of Temacin, a stout and prosperous-looking Arab,

to whom Hamet presented me, and the three of us sat down to what

turned out to be a hearty breakfast. Two or three other tall Arabs,

apparently belonging to the family, sat by the wall to my left,

as I faced the Marabout, and at a doorway in the corner on the

right stood a group of different ages, younger, with one or two

boys, intelligent and bright-eyed. The caïd and myself talked in

low tones, and no one else spoke, except from time to time the

Marabout gave some direction to the attendants, apparently of a

hospitable nature, as each time it resulted in fresh dishes. There

was pastry that resembled rolls, and after a few moments, served in

another form, hot with sugar, it resembled pancakes, but I dare say

it was something quite different, and the Marabout urged it upon

me; there was another combination that reminded me distantly of

doughnuts, with which the hot food ended; but there was a dessert

of French cakes, almonds, and a dried aromatic kernel like peas,

and much to my surprise there were oranges that must have come on

camel-back from Biskra. There was coffee, too, with a curious pot

and sugar-bowl, and the whole service was excellent, the attendants

kindly and pressing, though very quiet. It appeared afterward that

no one ever sees the saint eat; his food is brought and left, and

he takes what he likes alone. I observed him through the meal,

and occasionally he addressed a sentence of inquiry or interest

to us. The impression he made on me was one of great indolence,

as if he had never done anything for himself, and also of what I

can only describe as a somnolent temperament, heavy and rousing

himself at times; but it may have been only age. The profound

silence and atmosphere of awed respect were remarkable; the few

words spoken were hardly above a whisper, and the caïd and I used

low tones. It was a hospitable and generous breakfast, however, and

the manner of it wholly pleasant and friendly; and as I again took

the old Marabout’s large, soft hand, and expressed my pleasure and

thanks for having been thus received, he seemed to me very cordial

and kind; and for my part I was glad that I had found the unusual

experience of breakfasting with a saint so agreeable. The caïd and

I parted below, and I walked back through the tranquil street and

by the mosque with the bird-haunted windows and the onyx portal,

well pleased with my morning in such a place of peace and good-will.

We drove back through the hot horizons of a burning noon; by sombre

Temacin with its far-seen tower, old watcher of the desert; by the

distant western oasis with its two gleaming koubbas, that seemed

to dissolve between the sands and the blue; by the Bedouin tents

crouched in the long drifts below the brow of the earthen ruin

whose walls gaped on the hill with fissure and breach. We passed a

bevy of bright-colored Bedouin women hurrying in their finery to

some Marabout to pray. The long slopes and mounded dunes had not

lost that wonderful enamel of the breath of the wind. All nature

seemed to stretch out in the glory of the heat. It was spring on the

desert; it was a dreaming world. “_Le vrai Sahara_,” said Hamet,

half to himself. And slowly over the palmy plain, beyond the lost

oasis, the tower and minaret of Tougourt, slim lines on the sky, grew

distinct in their turn, and solid, and near, and we drove in through

the garden green as over a threshold of verdure. It was a great ride.

The day ended lazily. I had the pleasure of a few courteous

words with the agha of Tougourt, to add to my hospitable

distinctions. “He is an Arabian prince,” said Hamet proudly, as

we walked away. Along the arcade I saw a Jew seated cross-legged,

with his back to the jamb of his shop; he held a heavy folio

volume on his lap and seemed to peruse it with grave attention;

that was the only time I ever saw a native reading a book in North

Africa, and I looked curiously at the fine venerable face. The

boys were playing leap-frog before the hotel as I came back from

my walk; they had thrown off their haiks, or jackets, or whatever

their upper garment might be. How they played! with what strong,

young sinews and vivacity of rivalry and happiness! though the

children of the street seemed often poor, destitute, and with

faces of want. I photographed two of these Bedouin boys, with whom

I had made friends. In the evening I sat outside and watched the

camp-fires burning by the camels in the square. I thought of the

massacring of the French garrison here forty years ago, and of the

protests that a military interpreter, Fernand Philippe, records from

the lips of the soldiers when a year or two later the government

contemplated withdrawing from this advanced desert post. It was a

place of home-sickness, of fever, and of utter isolation; but the

soldiers wished to stay—withdraw? never!—and all this peace

and prosperity that I had witnessed was the French peace.