VI

It was night. Absalom and I were in the Arab quarter, on our

way to see some Soudanese dancing. There were few passers in the

deep-shadowed, silent, blind streets that grew darker and seemed

more mysterious as we penetrated deeper into the district. We

had gone a considerable distance. From time to time a man would

meet us, and then another. We seemed to be going from precinct to

precinct under some sort of escort. I noticed that Absalom had many

hesitations; once or twice he refused to go further, and there was

something resembling an altercation; then he stopped decisively,

and would not budge until some one whom he desired should come in

person. We stood, a group of four or five, waiting in the obscure

passageway for some ten minutes. At last the man came, a tall Arab,

with a look of rude strength and superiority. He was the chief, and

we walked on with him in that dark network of corners and alleys. I

was beginning to think it a long distance, when we turned under

a heavy gateway into a dark, open court, as large as a small city

square, with houses round it like tenements. A kerosene lamp in a

glass cage flared dimly on one side, and there were a few figures

round the court; but the scene soon took on a livelier aspect.

The chief began collecting his men in the centre, and numbers

of people emerged from the houses and sat on the edges near the

walls of the houses. They were a rough-looking crowd, evidently

very poor and badly clothed, and there were many that made a wild

appearance squatting there in the darkness. Two policemen, attracted

by the commotion, came in, and a street lamp was transferred into

the court. There was now quite a gathering in the centre, where a

fire had been built by which three men were seated; some sort of

incense was thrown into it, and a light smoke with a pungent odor

began to be lightly diffused through the court. There must have

been as many as seventy in the crowd round the fire, and at least a

couple of hundred spectators crouched about the sides; it was more

of an exhibition than I had expected, and from the corner where I

sat with Absalom and two or three attendants the scene began to be

weird. Then the drum beat in the middle; the men, all of whom had

clappers, lifted them in the air, falling into line, and immediately

one of those wild, savage chants shrilled forth, rising and rising

to an acute cry and falling monotonously down, increasing in volume

and mingling with the noise of the sharp clappers and the drum—an

infernal din. The chant of the Aïssaouas, that I had heard in the

desert, was “mellow music matched with this.” And, from the first

moment it never stopped; it was ear-piercing as it reverberated in

the closed court, and at first it was confusing.

The dance began with a procession in double file round the fire, with

the three men seated by the smoky flame. It was a slow walk timed to

the rhythm of the voices and the clappers, gradually increasing in

speed and becoming a jump, with violent gesticulation, twisting, and

long reaching of the arms and legs, while the human cry grew shriller

and more vibrant and rapid in the emotional crisis of the excitement.

Round and round they went, and from time to time the line would break

into parts as the men turned to the centre just before me. There

were three persons who seemed to be leaders: one, whom I named

the Hadji because he answered to my idea of that word, another

dervish-like, and a black man. The dervish interested me most. He

was the head of his group, and as he came between me and the fire,

standing well forward from his band and well in toward the fire, he

would whirl, and then reverse, whirling in the opposite direction;

and—he and the procession moving forward all the time—he would

fall limply forward toward his men almost to the ground, recover,

and fling himself backward, rising high with his clappers spread

far over his head. It was a diabolical posture; and, as he stood

so, his leaping followers bowed down to him, kneeling almost to the

ground but not touching it, and flinging themselves erect far back

with arms spread. I wondered how they kept their balance in that

dancing prostration. Then the group would pass on, and the next

come into play—the Hadji, the black man—with the same ceremony,

but without the whirling. Round and round they went interminably;

the chant rose and fell, the march slackened and quickened, and

every few moments there was this spasmodic rite of the salutation

and prostration at the height of the dance.

The ring of spectators, crouched and huddled round the court, sat

in the imperturbable silence and apathy of such audiences. The

edges of the scene were an obscure mass of serried, half-seen

forms under the house walls, filling the space rather closely;

the smoke of the incense, with which the fire was fed, hung in the

air, and Absalom said it was good for my eyes; the only light was

the blaze of the flame upon the dark, moving forms in the middle,

and the two street lamps over them, and the night-sky above. It was

an unearthly scene, with those strange figures and heavy shadows;

and the fearful din made it demonic. I do not know what the dance

was, its name or origin; but it seemed to me to be devil worship,

a relic of the old African forest, a rite of the primitive paganism

and savage cults of the early world. The three dark men by the fire

with the drum, the grotesque, fantastic ritual of the bowing and

kneeling procession, the atmosphere of physical hysteria and muscular

intoxication, the monotonous, shrill cry in which the emotional

excitement mounted—here were traits of the prehistoric horde,

of a savagery still alive and vibrant in these dancing figures. It

was as if I were assisting at a worship of the Evil One in a remote

and barbarous past.

After a while I began to take notice of particular individuals in

the dancing mass. I was specially attracted by three who seemed

uncommonly strong and tireless and made a group by themselves. They

were poorly but distinctively clad. One was in black, with loose

arm-sleeves showing his bare skin to the breast; one was in white,

with an over-haik of black divided down the back, which streamed out;

the third, who was very tall and lank, one of the tallest figures

there, was in blue, faded and worn; and, as they danced, of course

the folds of these garments spread out on the air, showing their bare

legs in free motion. Their heads were closely covered with white,

except the mouth and eyes—not merely covered, but wrapped. I

turned to Absalom, and said, “Touaregs.” He looked at them,

as I picked them out for him, and said, “_Sì, signor_,” for

he always spoke to me in Italian. I had wished much to see some

Touaregs, and, though I had seen men with covered faces, I had never

been quite sure. They are the finest race of the desert, first in

all manly savage traits, bandits of the sands, complete and natural

robbers, fierce fanatics, death-dealers—the most feared of all the

tribes. They cover their faces thus to protect them from the sand,

for they are pure desert men. I smiled to think that at my first

meeting with the terrible Touaregs I found three of them dancing for

my amusement; but I looked at them with the keenest interest. They

were certainly superb in muscular strength. At the end of an hour

they showed no weariness; and there was a vigor in their motions,

an elasticity and endurance that easily distinguished them from the

others. I watched them long. They were perfectly tireless, and the

dance called for constant violent muscular effort. I shall never

forget that group, whose garb itself, thin and open, had a riding

look, and especially the man in the blue garment, with long, gaunt

arms and legs, who fell forward and rebounded with a spring of iron.

There were some changes in the method and order of the motions,

but the dances for the most part were merely new arrangements of

the same jumping and kneeling performance. I sat in the awful din of

it for two hours, interested in many things, and rather pleased, I

confess, at being alone in such a company. One gets nearer to them so

in feeling; with a companion of the same race, even though unknown,

one stays with his race. I left the dance still in the full tide

of vehemence and glory of uproar, overhung by the light pungent

smoke and dissonance, with the obscurely crouching throng in the

low shadows, and as we lost the sound of it in the deep silence of

the dark lanes, where we met no one, I think the night of an Arab

city never seemed so still. A man with a lantern went ahead to light

the way which was black with darkness; Absalom and the headman went

with me, and a negro followed behind. They attended me to the door

of the hotel, and it was a striking night scene as I stood in the

hallway, the negro guards roused from their straw mats looking on,

and shook hands with the strong-faced, rough-garbed headman who

had had me in his protection that night.