IV

The processional is an inherent trait in the desert landscape,

owing to the fewness of the human figures and their concentration in

the vastness of the horizons. Everything seems strung out—herds

of goats, wandering camels, even the scattered palms; and in

the caravans or troops of horse or military trains the feature is

emphasized. It is the trait of a migratory land. The _mise en scène_

for a procession, in the true sense, is superb. The eye centres the

scene on the great space and views it whole and entire at a glance;

one could see the migration of a tribe or the march of an armed

host so.

These reflections came to me the next day when I returned to the

race-ground. The general scene was the same. A procession was

already forming at the upper end of the field. The white-robed

Mzabite group, with brown girdings round their loins and crossing

their backs and lacing their turbans, whom I had seen the previous

day with their guns, squatting about the splendid banner, were the

leaders of the formation, which was on foot. This was peculiarly

the Arabs’ day. On the rising ground the procession gradually

took shape and stretched out against the sky and the low palms,

a long, white line of moving figures, with the high standard borne

proudly advanced, Arab music, guns gleaming and sometimes held in

the air. It moved, not with a martial look in the European sense,

but with an aspect of oriental war. They were marching to be reviewed

by their chief near the centre of the course, and to perform before

him their _fantasia_, an Arab war game, in which one rank advances

rapidly upon another, fires, and whirls swiftly back. They came

down the track in gallant show, and as they passed the old chief

the mêlée began. Those in front turned to face the rank behind;

the second line rushed frantically forward in confusion, every

man for himself, fired their guns almost amid the feet of those

before them, whirled back waving their weapons, and came on again,

repeating the manœuvre. There was a great noise of powder, plenty of

smoke and commotion; their bodies were all in violent action, their

faces distorted with excitement, their garments fluttering. They

came squad after squad, as the groups slowly worked by, and the din

began farther up the line. It was a great game, vivid, spectacular,

with the smell of powder biting the nostrils, the rouse of fighting

blood, the drifting clouds of smoke—a waking dream of personal

combat; and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Then came the turn of the _goum_, the cavalry. The caïds, splendid

figures in their brilliant red burnooses, came first. Each, single

and alone, charged down the course on the gallop with headlong speed,

holding in the right hand a gun in air and in the left a sabre;

and as they passed the old chief they saluted with the sabre and

discharged the gun, and swept on till the thunder of their hoofs died

away down the track. The _goum_ followed, a fine body of horsemen,

with similar tactics. The Arabs are expert in horsemanship as an art

of riding, but it is said they are deficient in that part of the art

which lies in care for the mount; they kill their horses. On that

day the spectacular charging, the discharge of firearms in motion,

the jockey-like cling and rhythm of bodies under the streaming

folds of the riders, the _élan_ of the troop, were fascinating,

as all skilled physical motion and its accoutrement is to my eyes;

but whether my battle sensations were exhausted, or for some other

reason, the sight did not interest me so much as the earlier mimic

combat on foot. It was not the proper setting for the _fantasia_

of the _goum_. One should see it in the desert when the charging

troop comes over the sands to salute some chief or Marabout with

his grouped attendants, riding as if to overwhelm, discharging its

guns at close quarters, wheeling just in time to avoid the shock

of the horses. Here on the race-course it was a show; there in the

sands it is a native custom, vivid and gallant with the spirit of

a race—a flower of desert chivalry.

What had drawn me to the fête was the desire to see the Arab

temperament in some of its violent manifestations. One habitual

trait of Arab life to the eye is the repose of its figures,

seated or in motion; the grave courtesy, the immobile posture,

the public dignity—the decorum. But, speaking of the race, this

is the repose of a tropic animal; it wakes to an instant intensity

of action, to a tiger violence. It was something of this side of

Arab nature that I sought; and I found some suggestion of it in

the mimicry of personal combat, the excitement, the confusion,

the distorted faces and bodily vehemence of the play; and also

in the _goum_ some intimation of the look of their leaders, the

old feudality of the desert. It all helped me to reconstruct the

warrior, marauding, internecine, old desert world; but it was only

fragments of vision. What a vivid race in its splendid and gallant

spirit—as full of fascination there as it is dingy in its sodden

poverty, earth-bound and earth-soiled, pitiable in its _misère_.

V

It was the music of the Aïssaouas in the night. The din was

terrific, barbaric, ear-piercing, instruments and voices, as I

entered the little, roughly boarded hall, sufficiently but none

too well lighted, in which hung a slight haze of smoky vapor. There

were upward of a score of the order with their chief standing, and

a few men were seated on one side, who made a place for me among

them. The group in front, close by, filled a small, oblong space,

in the midst of which over a fire was a fuming pot; near by it two or

three musicians were beating the native drum, others struck cymbals,

and a line of men, standing and swaying, lifted a keening rhythm

of human voices in a continuous cry. A monotonous unison governed

the whole music, which came in cadences, falling to a lower note

and slower motion, then rising with swift acceleration to a sort

of paroxysm, shrill and rapidly vibrating, and again dropping

down till a fresh impetus sent the hard, strong, climbing pulse

of the rhythm on its high crescendo. There was never any pause;

again and again it culminated and fell away; but it could no more

stop than blood. Cymbals, drums, voices—continuous din at first,

and then a felt rhythm; it was a whip on the senses. Three or four

of the figures were more excited; occasionally one bent his head

into the fumes of the pot and took long breaths; these would dance,

utter wild cries, creep about with muscular contortions, but no one

seemed to pay much attention except the chief. He was a tall, large

man, of uncommon physical vitality evidently, heavily wrapped in a

white burnoose, turbaned; and it was plain that nothing in the room

escaped his eye for a moment, as he stood to one side overlooking,

and from time to time giving an order of care or restraint for

the more excited participants. Once accustomed to the noise and

the lights, my eyes found much detail. A man just at my right,

with the stare and spasmodic gesture of a halfwitted person, was

devouring pieces of the great leaves of the thorn cactus as if it

were lettuce. Another went about chewing pieces of broken glass,

which he begged for pitifully, to all appearance, and was as pleased

when he got it as a child with candy; he ate it with avidity,

like a ravenous animal. There seemed to be no arrangement about

anything, nothing designated beforehand, but every one did as he

pleased, while the shrill music rose and fell, the feet beat time,

and the few who were given over to the intoxication, turbanless and

half-garmented, swung among their brothers in a kind of exaltation

and partial collapse that were dervish-like.

Suddenly a young man who was standing near me undid his turban,

threw off the blouse he wore, and, entering the central group among

the musicians, bent down his head over the fire and inhaled the

fumes with long gasps. He joined in the cry of the voices, danced,

and grew quickly excited; he drew his shirt over his head, and thus,

half naked, went again to the fire. At a sign from the chief two

other men attended him, one on each side, and supported him; and

shortly after—he may have been ten minutes under the influences,

in all—the chief joined them, and the group came slowly toward

me, making the circuit of the others. The youth knelt directly

between my knees. He was, perhaps, eighteen, with a handsome face

somewhat ascetically lined, but that may have been due merely to

his poverty. He was well formed and muscled, bare to the waist. He

seemed entirely dazed, and dependent for direction on those about

him; his body was bathed in sweat and trembled violently all over;

every particle of his flesh quivered; his eyes rolled, showing the

whites in vivid contrast to his black hair, and he panted, as if he

craved something intensely and blindly. He threw his head far back,

exposing his throat, and one of the men, who held a long, straight

sword over him, sank the point just at the base of the throat. It

was not a deep cut, but the blood flowed freely, trickling down his

breast. The whole took place so near me that I could easily have

touched the youth without reaching; my knees were almost against his

arms. The others helped him to rise, still apparently unconscious,

and led him off to one side. Then the surprising thing occurred. The

chief held the boy in his arms tenderly, stroked him, caressed his

cheeks, kissed him; the boy’s head lay on his breast. Suddenly,

as if with a snap, he came to, and instantly seemed perfectly normal,

with no trembling, no convulsion, no sign of his previous state. He

was let alone, and in the most unconcerned manner put on his shirt

and blouse, arranged his turban, and after standing about a few

minutes went away.

I stayed on, and my attention was attracted by a little fellow of

eight or ten years, a bright street boy, who was wandering about

among the others. He got some sort of permission from the chief,

and they passed a knife through his right cheek—clear through. He

was very proud of the feat, and walked up and down, shaking his head

to make the knife waggle on its outer hilted side; but he was not

at all excited. I remained perhaps an hour, and then shook hands

with the chief, who was gravely courteous, and I went out under

the stars; and the din died away in the distance.

The Aïssaouas are an order of magicians and are widely spread

from Morocco, where they have their centre at Meknèz, through

Algeria and Tunis. Their founder was Sidi Mohammed-ben-Aïssa,

of whom many marvellous miracles are related, but all are of the

nature of prestidigitation; the association is, indeed, in some

ways, a guild of that art. Its repute, however, among the Moslems,

has its roots in the old magic of Africa, and rests on the habits

of superstition which are the common ground of the veneration of

the miracle-working Marabouts. The Aïssaouas claim immunity from

many mortal ills. Nothing that they may eat—scorpions, stones,

glass—can harm them; poisons are innocuous; wounds close at once

and disappear. They are naturally the physicians for such ills

in others, and are snake-charmers and wonder-workers. They are

very nomadic in their habits, and go widely through the land.

Many wild reports are current of their rites at their fêtes,

of their sacrificing animals and tearing the flesh in pieces and

devouring it raw; but these and other like things are traits of

the orgiastic state in the lower stages of civilization everywhere.

It was a faint shadow of the primeval that I had seen. That human

cry, mixed with the sharp cymbals and the drums, frantically

wavering and receding, was an echo from the central forests far

inland; and that fire with the pot was the ghost of fetichistic

rite, perhaps the oldest altar of mankind. The scene, the swaying

figures, the intoxication of the body, the atmosphere, belonged

to the earliest psychic experiences of the race. It suggested the

invisible superstition that lays over and fills the present minds

of the populace and the desert dwellers. I found the little boy

on the street the next day, and he recognized me. I examined his

mouth closely, and there was only a white roughness, like a scar,

on the inside of his cheek and a scratch on the outside. He became

very friendly; and my pleasantest memory of the Aïssaouas is of

his street-boy figure standing on the desert, a quarter of a mile

or more down the railway track, where he had gone to get near to

my train and give me his last good-by with waving hands.