I had never made a Jewish pilgrimage. The opportunities for one
are rare, for the Jews are not a pilgrim people. There is on the
island, however, a place which is described as a point of their pious
journeying for centuries, and thither I repaired. It is the synagogue
at Hara-Srira, a village of seven hundred inhabitants, which, with
a neighboring and larger village, concentrates the Jewish population
of the island in their segregated life. It was only a few kilometres
away, and I reached it by a more settled and suburban road than that
to Ajim. The little town was a picturesque sight, gathered none too
closely about the synagogue, which was the principal building. The
sexton and his son, grave persons in Arab costume, took charge of me
with polite attention, and after the boy had assisted me to take off
my shoes I was ushered into the little temple. It was divided into
a series of compartments, and although none of the rooms was large,
the general effect was impressive. I was struck by the richness
of the interior, and its look of cleanliness and finish, for my
eyes had been long unaccustomed to such a scene; the bright tiles,
the lights, the walls, all the furnishings seemed quite new and
modern, European in fact, as if I had stepped back at once into
the familiar world; there was nothing barren or austere, nothing
to suggest the neighborhood of the desert and its ways. It was the
shrine of an alien religion, and wore the aspect of civilization and
a better-provided world, a different economic type, not that of the
gray old mosques in lonely places on the sandy downs. The priest in
his vestments, a slight, middle-aged man, a sacred if not a stately
figure, came to welcome me, and pointing out various details led
the way through the half-darkness of the subdued light to a small
chapel-like room where were the treasures that I had come to see.
They were books of the old Law and ancient writings that had found an
asylum in the sands. I was glad to be where the object of pilgrimage
was a Book. These venerated copies of sacred writings, more than
libraries, symbolize to me the glory of letters; they are the founts
of civilizations. I have seldom seen a more beautiful antique
manuscript, or one so solemnly impressive, as the massive volume
he showed me, their chief treasure, which, I think, he said dated
from the eleventh century. It recalled lovely copies of the Koran
that I have sometimes found in the mosques of the Levant. I wished
he would read out of it to me, as the young _taleb_ at Kairouan had
read the Koran to me by the fading evening light in the dark-browed
court of the Mosque of the Barber, nigh the little stone cells of
the students, after I had seen, above, the banner-hung tomb of the
companion of the Prophet in its solemn desert state; the lean Arab
stood, holding the book in his hands, with his face lighted up,
intoning the verses, and a few others listening reverently made the
group. I shall never forget the music of that unknown tongue, like
the sound of winds in the forest or waves on the shore. But I did
not like to ask the priest to read. There were other manuscripts,
perhaps a score in all, and I spent a half-hour over them. It was
pleasant to be in touch with such things once more; for, excepting
the wide volume that I saw the seated Jew reading in the street of
Tougourt, I did not remember having seen a book in the desert. The
priest was proud of these treasures, and the boy also who stood
by watching as I turned the leaves; scriptures and learning of
long ago, that had survived in this remote niche, cared for and
venerated like the gospels of some inaccessible Coptic monastery,
they were worthy of a scholar’s pilgrimage and respect.
As I came out into the open I noticed two lines of figures coming
across country in opposite directions like people returning from
church. They were Mohammedans and Jews, each walking from their
respective cemeteries which lay not far away. I thought it was
a typical and happy scene of two religions dwelling together in
unity and peace. The general appearance of the people was much
the same, humbly prosperous and contented, and they were dressed
alike. The Jews here are completely Arabized, except in the point
of their religion, and it was interesting to observe how much
they had become assimilated to the soil. The women especially
looked to me like Bedouin women, and I was obliged to scrutinize
their features to detect their race; but no burnoose nor haik can
disguise the superior vitality and intelligence of the Jews. On my
return I stopped to stroll through the market, and there they were
much to be seen. It was an abundant market with the usual heaps
and collections on the ground—grains, vegetables, utensils,
and special quarters for wool, meat, and fish. It was a lively
and thronged scene. An auction of donkeys and camels was going
on in one place. My eyes were especially attracted by the piles
of sheepskins and wool, and the men and boys lying lazily on them
waiting for custom, their dark faces and bodies oddly relieved and
picturesque on the wool. There were heaps of black sponges, too;
and I noticed a curious white kilted costume which I had not seen
on these shores, lending a new element to the crowd. Here, too,
wandering about, I experienced the smallness of the world anew;
for I fell in with some travelling merchants who had come to buy
burnooses and blankets of Djerba, and who remembered me from Tunis;
they were plainly pleased to find me in such a remote corner of their
own country. I myself became sufficiently imbued with the spirit of
the place to buy a few dates and figs, and more particularly some
dried orange-blossoms, which were sold by the pound. I had never seen
such a thing in Italy, and it gave me a lively idea of the orange
gardens to the east of the island which were said to be so luxuriant.
As the day wore idly on, I explored the town, Houmt-Souk, for I
believe I have not yet named it, which has fine, broad, curving
streets and large, open places, a mosque with many domes and a high,
square minaret, a tall artesian well, and a public garden where the
French government experiments with plants and trees. The proprietor
of my hotel was the gardener, and took me about and told me stories
of his garden, but the spring was not far enough advanced for the
soil to tell the same tale of its luxuriance and rarity. I had to
content myself with seeing various shrubs and exotic trees. Then
I wandered down to the beach, like all ocean beaches, with heavy,
loose sand and a considerable tide, the broad view, sights of the
sea, and a ruined Spanish fortress; but I went especially to see the
spot where stood for centuries the great mound of Christian bones,
Skull Fort they called it, which the pirate Dragut raised after the
victory in which he broke the Spanish fleet in this offing, in 1560,
taking five thousand prisoners and massacring the garrison. I suppose
he massacred the prisoners, too; and here the ghastly memorial of
his victory stood nigh the beach, till in recent years the bones
were removed and buried in the Catholic cemetery. Before that,
Norman raiders and Sicilians, when they harried all these coasts,
had temporarily held possession in the Middle Ages; and all over
the island are Roman ruins, decayed causeways, baths, temples,
the subsoil of all the Mediterranean world. But nothing now stands
out in the historic memory of the old lotus land except Dragut’s
grim mound.