THE FACTORY OF STRANGE ODORS
The extraordinary success which has marked the rule of the French
in North Africa is in large measure attributable to their policy of
scrupulously refraining from encroachment on native life. Instead of
being ruthlessly mutilated to make way for boulevards and plazas, as
Baghdad and Delhi have been by the British, the old cities have been left
intact; and the French quarters, with their public buildings, theaters,
shops, and restaurants, have grown up outside the walls; so that the
Europeans and the natives really dwell apart, which is best for them both.
The happy results of this policy are particularly noticeable in Tunis,
where the French have made no attempt to modernize the ancient city, the
Medina, access to which is gained from the European quarter through the
old water-gate, Bab-el-Bahar, now known as the Porte de France. Though
electric tramways encircle the city and run far into the suburbs—the
service between Tunis and Carthage, I might remark in passing, is
surpassed only by that between Yokohama and Tokio—all proposals to
disfigure the picturesque native quarter have met with a stern refusal
from the authorities. Street-names, lighting, and sanitation have been
introduced, however, and the old town itself is incredibly clean for
an Eastern city; cleaner by far than many cities in Italy and Spain.
In fact, Tunis merits the title of “The White,” which it has so long
enjoyed, almost as much by virtue of its astonishing cleanliness as
because of its snowy buildings, which mount, tier above tier, to the
citadel, like “a burnous with the Kasbah for a hood.”
In these Moslem lands, where religious fanaticism goes hand in hand with
suspicion of the foreigner, the French have had to exercise the utmost
tact in effecting even the most urgent sanitary reforms. M. Jusserand,
for years French ambassador to the United States, once told me that, when
he was chief of the Tunisian Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the city of Tunis was threatened by an epidemic because the bodies in
the local cemeteries were too near the surface. Instead of arbitrarily
ordering the graves to be deepened, an action which inevitably would have
aroused native resentment and perhaps have precipitated serious troubles,
the French resident-general sent a politely worded message to the chief
cadi, the head of the Moslem religious community, inquiring whether
the depth of graves was specified in the Koran. He was informed that,
according to Koranic law, graves must be deep enough to cover a standing
man to his shoulders. Thus scripturally fortified, the resident-general
called the attention of the chief cadi to the failure of the Tunisians to
abide by the tenets of their own religion, whereupon the natives lost no
time in deepening the graves themselves.
The principal approach to the old city is through the Avenue Jules Ferry,
a wide and handsome boulevard lined on either side with shops, banks,
cafés, and theaters and having a sort of park running down the center.
With its broad pavements, its fine trees, its beds of brilliant flowers,
and its throngs of promenaders, it is strongly reminiscent of the Rambla
in Barcelona. It terminates in the Place de la Résidence, a spacious
plaza flanked on one side by the cathedral, a conspicuous building of
dubious architectural merit which is the seat of the primate of all
Africa, and on the other by the palace of the French resident-general,
so that the representatives of church and state directly face each
other. The residency is a low, unpretentious building with fine gardens,
before whose gilded gates pace sentries in the brilliant uniform of
the Garde Beylicale. Forming a continuation of the Avenue Jules Ferry
is the shorter and narrower Avenue de France, which terminates at the
Bab-el-Bahar, the entrance to the Medina, or old town. Though the Medina
was formerly encircled by walls, these have in large part disappeared,
leaving the gates of the city isolated, like those of Paris.
To pass through the Bab-el-Bahar is to enter another world, to go back
into history for a thousand years, to step from the Europe of to-day
straight into the Orient of the Middle Ages. I can recall few, if any,
places where so abrupt a change takes place within a few paces, where the
contrast is so startling. The gate, in itself quite unimposing, opens
upon a kaleidoscope of color, a chaos of confusion, a pandemonium of
noise. Here wheeled traffic virtually ceases, not because it is forbidden
but because it is impracticable by reason of the extremely narrow and
densely crowded streets. Here the raucous honk of motor-cars is replaced
by the imperative “_Barek balek!_” (take care!) of Arab muleteers. Here,
instead of carts and camions, the draft work is performed by files of
mangy, moth-eaten camels, as far removed from the graceful _méhari_
of the desert folk as a work-horse is from a thoroughbred; by droves
of diminutive donkeys, blue beads festooned around their necks for
superstitious reasons, their ears and tails alone visible beneath their
enormous burdens; and by brawny porters, twin brothers to the _hamals_
of Turkish cities, who stagger along beneath bales and boxes which would
cause an American express-man to go on strike were he asked to handle
them, but which they seem to carry with comparatively little effort by
means of a rope passed round the forehead, like the tump-line of an
Indian guide. I saw one of these fellows, a bare-armed, bare-legged
Hercules, walk off quite matter-of-factly with a grand piano on his back.
Guides, touts, and Jewish shopkeepers do their utmost to ruin the
visitor’s enjoyment by their incessant importunities and whines. “Good
morning, meester.... Good morning, madame.... How are you?... Look
here.... I show you sometheeng ... sometheeng ver’ fine ... ver’ cheap
... no charge ... you come in quite free ... you not buy anything unless
you wish.... No, sare, I not damn nuisance.... I ver’ honest fellow....”
Cringing, impudent, and furtive-eyed, they are as pertinacious as flies
and as irritating as fleas, the only wonder being that they are not
occasionally murdered by Europeans who have been exasperated beyond
endurance. On one occasion I saw a Frenchman kick one of these parasites
the entire length of a _souk_, and I felt like shaking hands with him as
a public benefactor.
Now and then a gorgeously appareled _caïd_, a figure out of the Arabian
Nights, clatters through the narrow streets astride a snorting Arab,
negro slaves trotting at his stirrups. Snake-charmers, fire-eaters,
story-tellers, do their hackneyed stuff in the open spaces before the
city gates, surrounded by spectators packed four-deep who applaud the
performances with the naïveté of children. The faithful squat beside the
fountains of the mosques, bathing their hands and feet and rinsing their
mouths in running water, as the Koran prescribes, before entering the
sanctuaries to prostrate themselves in prayer with their faces toward the
Holy Places. Occasionally one sees a wild-looking scarecrow of a figure,
a holy man from the desert, caked with filth, his hair and beard matted,
his patchwork rags of many colors, beseeching the passers-by in a shrill
whine for alms in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful—and
cursing them with enviable fluency if his importunities go unheeded.
The most characteristic and interesting feature of Tunis is the _souks_,
or covered bazaars. Nowhere in the Nearer East are there any _souks_
which can equal them; for in Constantinople, by virtue of the Angora
government’s passion for westernizing everything Turkish, the men have
been compelled to discard their turbans and tarbooshes for hats and
caps and the women to doff their mystery-suggestive veils, more’s the
pity! The bazaars of Cairo are not only deficient in architectural merit
but, particularly during the tourist season, are not much better than
the Oriental section of an exposition. In Damascus the bazaar buildings
resembled railway-stations even before French shells laid in ruins the
Street Which Is Called Straight. Indeed, one would need to go as far
eastward as Tehran or Ispahan to find _souks_ which can compare with
those of Tunis in extent, beauty, color, and picturesqueness.
The bazaar quarter of Tunis is, as it were, a whole city under one roof—a
city teeming with Oriental life; carrying on its trade in the traditional
Eastern fashion; transacting its business without tables or chairs in
doorless, windowless stalls, raised three or four feet above the ground
and most of them only a few yards square, which their owners close
at night by means of stoutly built, gaily painted shutters. In these
recesses the merchants sit cross-legged, like so many Buddhas, with their
merchandise spread about them, dozing, smoking, sipping black coffee, and
gossiping with their neighbors.
The _souks_ of Tunis cover an enormous area. They consist of a labyrinth
of narrow, tortuous, wholly irregular streets, lanes, alleys, and
passages; some of them vaulted, lighted only by shafts of sunlight
falling through square apertures overhead; others roofed with sloping
planks, uneven and rotting with age but highly picturesque, their gaping
crevices permitting the street below to be flooded with sunshine or with
rain. But most fascinating of all, at least in clement weather, are those
bazaar lanes which are shielded from the elements only by vine-covered
trellises, like pergolas, the sunlight, sifted and softened by the
leaves, casting shadows of lace-like delicacy upon the worn, uneven
pavement.
Each of the trades has its own _souk_, and each _souk_ has its own
distinctive character. Thus one street is devoted to perfumes, another
to shoes, a third to jewelry, a fourth to saddlery, and so on; an
arrangement which tends to make shopping easy, as the visitor in quest
of a particular article is enabled to compare prices and quality and,
not infrequently, to play off one merchant against another. Some of the
_souks_ contain only goods for sale, but most of them are workshops as
well, the goods being made by native artisans on the premises. Here, if
you require an article of special design, the merchant does not tell you
that he will “order it from the factory,” but instead he cuts it, or
carves it, or paints it on the spot and under your supervision. They are
as enchanting as they are bewildering, these Tunisian _souks_—a source
of unending novelty, a panorama of pure color, the dusky light which
prevails beneath the vaulted roofs serving to harmonize the tints, to
soften the harsher outlines, to fill the dark recesses with mystery.
And everywhere is the loot of Carthage. Those fluted marble columns, now
striped in green and scarlet, like sticks of peppermint candy, may once
have supported the roof of Dido’s palace. Those exquisitely sculptured
capitals, their delicate tracery all but concealed beneath repeated
coatings of whitewash, were in all likelihood executed by Phenician
workmen, dead these twenty centuries and more, for the temple of the
goddess Tanith. Yonder slab of polished stone, on which the shoemaker is
seated, quite possibly stood in ancient times before the statue of the
great god Baal, dripping with the blood of human sacrifices. Who knows?
On a first visit to the _souks_ it seems impossible to think of
finding one’s way unguided through this bewildering network of narrow,
winding thoroughfares, this human rabbit-warren. Here, as in the even
more extensive and confusing bazaars of Tehran, I felt like taking
a ball of string along and unwinding it behind me, like an explorer
of a subterranean cavern, so that I might find my way back to my
starting-point again. But after a time the general topography becomes
clear, and then it is easy to wander in and out at will, with the
assurance that confusion, or even a total loss of bearings, means nothing
worse than an extra turn or two and then the sight of some unmistakable
landmark, such as the green sarcophagus which all but blocks the narrow
way through the street of the leather-workers. It is the coffin of a
marabout—an itinerant holy man—set there to confer a special blessing
on the _souks_ by its presence. It is painted a vivid green, ornamented
with designs in red and yellow, and the garments of the endless stream
of humanity which pushes past it have put a high polish on its edges.
Personally, were I a merchant, I should not care to have a coffin resting
permanently at the front door of my business premises, but the Tunisians
seem to regard it very much as Grant’s Tomb is regarded by the dwellers
on Riverside Drive.
[Illustration: HERE SCHEHERAZADE MIGHT HAVE TOLD HER TALES
Seated cross-legged on the cushion-piled divan, with silken carpets at
her feet, soft music of flute and viol floating down from the balcony,
the air heavy with the fragrance of flowers and incense, black slaves to
wait upon her, and guardian eunuchs at the gate]
Sooner or later every visitor to Tunis finds his way, or is led by
his guide, to the Souk-el-Attarin, the street of the perfume-sellers.
Architecturally, this is one of the finest bazaars in the city and
probably one of the oldest. From its hole-in-the-wall shops drift the
scents of all the world—attar of roses and ambergris, musk and incense,
violet and orange-flower, jasmine and lily-of-the-valley. Before the
shops stand sacks stuffed with the dried leaves of aromatic plants from
which is made the incense used in the mosques and the henna with which
the native beauties redden their hair and their finger-tips and the soles
of their feet, for even the veiled women of the East are addicted to the
use of war-paint.
The scents are very powerful, and for toilet purposes must be largely
diluted with alcohol. Nor are they by any means inexpensive, even
according to American standards, a tiny vial of certain of the rarer
essences frequently costing several hundred francs. They are sold in
slender, fragile bottles, charmingly decorated with gold and color,
but, unfortunately, their glass stoppers rarely fit, and, as my wife
and daughter learned by costly experience, the scent will evaporate
unless the stopper is replaced with a cork. Here one’s nostrils are
assailed not only by the old familiar perfumes but by the strange scents
characteristic of the East—musk, amber, incense, attar of roses, and,
of course, the celebrated _parfum du bey_. The last-named is the royal
scent, a composite essence, the odor of which is alleged to change from
hour to hour and which is unobtainable, at least in theory, save by those
connected with the court or who are honored by the bey.
The perfume-sellers are the aristocrats of the _souks_, claiming to be
descended from the Moors who were expelled from Spain and to possess the
keys of the Andalusian castles owned by their ancestors. Be this as it
may, they are very haughty and condescending, deeming it vastly beneath
their dignity to haggle with their customers or to solicit the patronage
of the passers-by. In fact, these small, luxuriously furnished shops,
with their silken cushions, their seven-branched candlesticks, their
array of slim, glass-stoppered bottles inscribed in gilt with mysterious
Arab characters, and the hint of incense in the air, resemble shrines
of Venus rather than places of business, the sleek, urbane proprietors
exhibiting their wares with the reverence of officiating priests.
Here the purchase of scent is not a commercial transaction but a
ceremony. The customer is seated upon a divan, piled high with cushions,
and the turbaned merchant takes his place behind a table, on which
are laid out fantastically shaped vials and vessels, like a sorcerer
about to begin his mystic rites. The perfumes sold here, remember,
are not the ordinary scents of commerce with which we Westerns are
familiar, but concentrated quintessences, the merest drop of which
upon a handkerchief or glove or sleeve confers a fragrance which will
last for days. A silent-footed attendant serves tiny cups of coffee,
thick, sweet, and black as molasses, and scented cigarettes. A charcoal
brazier is smoldering in the corner, and from it rises a faint
suspicion of incense. Daintily opening with delicate, tapering fingers
the glass-stoppered bottles ranged before him, the perfume wizard runs
through the whole gamut of odors; he plays upon the sensitive olfactory
nerves as a great musician plays upon an organ. For, of all the senses,
that of smell is most closely associated with remembrance. It can
recreate a vanished vision on the human motion-picture screen we call
the mind. It can arouse the emotions—pain, pleasure, passion, longing,
sadness—and fan into flame the embers of the past. It can bring back, as
at the wave of a magician’s wand, the thoughts and scenes of far away and
long ago.
Perhaps I myself am more susceptible than most to the effect of perfumes
... I do not know. But the scent of roses brings back with overwhelming
vividness the loveliness of a Capri rose-garden where I wandered with Her
in the fragrance and the moonlight, long, oh, long ago. The redolence
of cedar, and I see in my mind’s eye a carpenter’s shop which I passed
daily when I lived in Syria, with the white-turbaned, patriarchal
carpenter working at his bench amid a litter of shavings, and camels,
laden with logs from the Cedars of Lebanon, kneeling patiently at the
door. Sandalwood conjures up a vision of Indian temples, with shafts of
sunlight striking through the murky interiors to be reflected by brazen
buddhas, inscrutable of face; of twilight on the Ganges at Benares;
of the pink palaces and towers of Jaipur. Geranium, heliotrope, lemon
verbena—these show me once again the stately, white-pillared house in
which I was born, with my grandmother bending lovingly over the flowers
in her old-fashioned garden, the stretches of close-cropped greensward,
the leaves of the old, old elms whispering ever so gently in the summer
breeze.
Because I am a collector of weapons and curios in a modest way, and
because I positively revel in colors, I lose no time when in Tunis
in making my way to the Souk des Etoffes. To my way of thinking it
is one of the most fascinating streets in the world, its tiny shops
literally filled to overflowing with silks, damasks, velvets, brocades,
embroideries, of every tone and texture—turquoise blue, pale green,
amethyst, ruby red, old rose, burnt orange, purple, magenta, vermilion,
saffron yellow—the fruit of looms all the way from India to Morocco.
Stacked high are piles of carpets from Anatolia, Kurdistan, Daghestan,
Persia, Afghanistan, Kairouan; the last-named a Tunisian product,
surprisingly cheap but well worth buying, for it is as thick and soft as
a fur rug, in lovely, mellow shades of ivory, red, and brown.
These Tunisian rug-merchants are past masters in the fine art of
salesmanship; they will fling a silken carpet into the air with the hand
of a magician and permit it to settle gradually upon the floor, not flat
but in little hills and valleys of rich, tempting colors, the folds
serving to reveal the intricacy of the design and accentuating the silky
sheen.
I have no slightest intention of purchasing a carpet, no place to use one
if I had it, but, for the sake of politeness, I feel constrained to ask
its price.
“Twelve hundred pounds,” says the merchant, without batting an eyelash.
“_Trop cher_,” I remark, as though buying six-thousand-dollar carpets was
with me an everyday affair.
[Illustration: CHURCH AND STATE IN TUNISIA
Father Delattre, in charge of the excavations at Carthage
H. H. Sidi Mohamed el Habib, Bey of Tunis]
The merchant shrugs his shoulders as though pitying my ignorance of
values. It is a very fine carpet, he assures me earnestly, very old, very
rare. The “ivory” in it is quite exceptional. Only last week he sold a
pair of such carpets to the American millionaire, Meester Otto Kahn. By
way of convincing me he displays the New York banker’s visiting-card.
“But I am not a millionaire,” I explain.
“Monsieur is pleased to jest with me,” says the merchant flatteringly.
“Is he not an American?”
Realizing that to deny the imputation is worse than useless, I turn my
attention to the other objects in the crowded little room—silver-mounted
rifles with enormously long barrels, their stocks inlaid with ivory,
mother-of-pearl, or turquoise matrix; poignards with jewel-studded
hilts; exquisitely damascened simitars, their curved blades inscribed
with verses from the Koran; Saracenic helmets with hoods of chain-mail;
exquisite embroideries worked by the deft fingers of harem women; quaint
pieces of enamel jewelry out of the Grande Kabylie; miniatures on ivory
of ferocious-looking, fiercely mustached beys and pashas, their turbans
the size of sofa-cushions; strings of perfectly matched amber beads, as
large as cherries and as red.
These things fascinate me, not only on account of their intrinsic beauty
but because they stand for romance and adventure. The diamond-studded
hilt of that simitar hanging on the wall may once have lain in the palm
of Barbarossa and run with Christian blood. It pleases me to imagine that
Scheherazade wound that gold-and-silver girdle about her slender, supple
form. It is within the bounds of possibility, at least, that the strand
of pearls glowing against its velvet background belonged to a Spanish
donna before it was torn from her white neck by the hand of a corsair
chief. Who shall say with certainty that yonder gold-damascened casque
did not once rest on the head of Saladin?
So I spend my money recklessly, for I revel in the possession of
such things. True, they will find a resting-place for the present
in an American museum, but some day, I trust, when I am old and the
wander-fever does not surge so fiercely in my veins, I shall bring them
together under a roof of my own and beguile the long winter evenings in
their contemplation and in the memories which they evoke.
Doubtless more foreign money is spent in the Souk des Selliers—the
saddlers’ bazaar—than in any other of the Tunisian _souks_. Not on
saddles, however, but on the innumerable other articles manufactured
from the vividly tinted leathers—sofa-cushions, pocketbooks, purses,
portfolios, cigarette-cases, and the embroidered sacks which every
Tunisian carries slung over his shoulder by a silken cord. For though
it may be difficult to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear (even though
silk stockings are commonly made from tree-bark), these Tunisian
leather-workers produce the most fascinating things imaginable from the
skin of a goat. Perhaps I should remark parenthetically, however, for the
benefit of those purposing to visit Morocco, that the leather-goods of
Tunis are far inferior in color, design, and workmanship to those of Fez
and Marrákesh.
But the saddlery of Tunis is unequaled throughout North Africa, a
veritable Tunisian saddle being as highly prized by an Arab as a
Whippey is by an English hunting man. The city has been celebrated
for its horse-gear ever since the Middle Ages, when caravans from
Timbuktu, Darfur, and the Sudan brought slaves, gold, gum, ivory,
and ostrich-feathers and took back costumes, embroideries, arms, and
saddlery. And even to-day the merchants of the Souk des Selliers supply
their wares to customers as far afield as Morocco, Algeria, Tripolitania,
and the Saharan hinterland. For, like the American cow-puncher, the Arab
loves his horse and is fond of displaying him to the best advantage,
always being ready to lavish his money on richly ornamented and expensive
trappings.
The Arab saddles, which are usually of scarlet leather embroidered with
ornate designs worked in vividly colored silks, are immensely heavy,
cumbersome affairs, so thick that the rider is perched several inches
above the horse’s back, and so broad in the seat that it is torture for
a European to sit them. The shovel-like stirrups are often of silver
damascened in gold, their sharp edges being used by the rider in lieu of
rowels. The housings used by the wealthy caïds and pashas are generally
of velvet stiff with gold and silver bullion and in some cases ornamented
with leopard-skin. In fact, the leopard-skin holsters on the state saddle
of a _maréchal de France_ are undoubtedly of African origin; a reminder,
no doubt, of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
A sort of by-product of the Souk des Selliers are the enormous hats of
woven grass, somewhat resembling Mexican sombreros, which are to be seen
throughout Tunisia when the weather becomes really hot. They have huge
crowns, thus permitting them to be worn over the turban, and, though
very heavy, are as supple as Panamas. It is their extreme flexibility,
in fact, which brings them to the saddlers’ bazaar, for before they
can be worn the flappy brims must be stiffened by four leaf-shaped
pieces of leather, which are dyed and embroidered to suit the fancy of
the customers. They are fitted with a sliding chin-strap, which can
be loosened so that the hat may lie on the back when not needed as a
protection from the sun. In Tunis itself one sees these gargantuan hats
only rarely, but during the hot season they are worn universally by the
Arabs of the hinterland. Thus panoplied, on their little wiry horses,
when seen from a distance they bear a striking resemblance to Mexican
vaqueros.
Speaking of hats reminds me that the national head-dress of Tunis is not
the high, cylindrical tarboosh of Egypt, nor the lower, more tapering fez
which formerly proclaimed the Turk, but a round-topped affair of soft
red felt, somewhat akin to a skullcap, known as a _chéchia_. They are
provided with thick blue tassels, and wound about them, so as to conceal
all save the top, is a snowy scarf. The making of _chéchias_ was formerly
an important industry of Tunis, but in recent years it has declined, as
they can be manufactured more cheaply in England and Germany. A curious
circumstance, is it not, that the decree of the Turkish government
prohibiting fezzes should have brought hardship to hundreds of Manchester
workmen? It goes to prove how closely the countries of the modern world
are bound together economically.
The Souk-el-Blagdjia, the shoemakers’ bazaar, is a long narrow, winding
thoroughfare somewhat reminiscent of the Street of the Shoemakers in
Athens. It possesses no architectural attractions, but the dyed goatskins
hung up before the shops form charming bits of color. Here are made
the soft, heelless slippers of lemon or pomegranate color which the
natives wear and which the Arab keeps on so easily, to the mystification
of Europeans; of course it is only by shuffling that they can be kept
from falling off. To see an Arab shuffling along in his saffron-colored
slippers is to realize the true significance of the term “slipshod,” for
they are utterly incompatible with energy or haste.
Leaving the bazaars by the Bab Souika, one finds himself in the narrow
Rue Halfaouine. This thoroughfare might more appropriately be called the
Street of the Barbers, for in no other city have I ever seen so many
tonsorial establishments in so short a distance. This multiplicity of
barber-shops is explainable, perhaps, by the fact that Tunisian barbers
do not confine themselves to the duties customarily associated with that
calling, but are likewise manicurists, pedicurists, dentists, and, on
occasion, surgeons. They stand ready alike to trim your beard, to shave
your head—taking care of course, should you be a Moslem, to leave the
little topknot whereby, on the Judgment Day, the faithful may be jerked
to heaven—to manicure your hands, to care for your feet, to extract your
teeth, to cup or bleed you, and to perform any other minor operation.
In warm weather all of these are performed in the publicity of the open
street, thus giving the barber a better opportunity to gossip with his
friends and providing entertainment for the passers-by. By way of giving
confidence to his prospective victims and for purposes of advertising,
the barber sometimes has before his place of business two glass
show-cases lined with velvet. One is filled with the molars, canines,
incisors, and bicuspids which he has extracted. In the other, arranged
like a collection of white and yellow butterflies, are neatly mounted
rows of corns!