Father, what voice was it that rang in my ears and cried, "Stay, do not
travel; all your past from the beginning until to-day, all your future
from to-day until the end, hangs on your action now; go, and your past
is a waste, your fame a mockery, your success a reproach; remain, and
your future is peace and happiness and content!" What voice, father,
what voice?
I shut my ears to it, and six days afterward I arrived at Fez. My
journey had impressed two facts upon my mind with startling vividness;
first, that the Moor would stick at nothing in his jealousy of the honor
of his faith, and next, that I was myself a changed and coarsened man. I
was reminded of the one when in El Kassar I saw an old Jew beaten in the
open streets because he had not removed his slippers and walked barefoot
as he passed the front of a mosque; and again in Wazzan, when I
witnessed the welcome given to the Grand Shereef on his return from his
home in Tangier to his house in the capital of his province. The Jew was
the chief usurer of the town, and had half the Moorish inhabitants in
his toils; yet his commercial power had counted for nothing against the
honor of Islam. "I," said he to me that night in the Jewish inn, the
Fondak, "I, who could clap every man of them in the Kasbah, and their
masters with them, for moneys they owe me, I to be treated like a dog by
these scurvy sons of Ishmael--God of Jacob!" The Grand Shereef was a
drunkard, a gamester, and worse. There was no ordinance of Mohammed
which he had not openly outraged, yet because he stood to the people as
the descendant of the Prophet, and the father of the faith, they
groveled on the ground before him and kissed his robes, his knees, his
feet, his stirrups, and the big hoofs of the horse that carried him. As
for myself, I realized that the atmosphere of the country had corrupted
me, when I took out from my baggage a curved knife in its silver-mounted
sheath, which I had bought of a hawker at Tangier, and fixed it
prominently in the belt of my Norfolk jacket.
The morning after my arrival in Fez I encountered my American companion
of the voyage. Our meeting was a strange one. I had rambled aimlessly
with my guide through the new town into the old until I had lighted by
chance upon the slave market in front of the ruins of the ancient Grand
Mosque, and upon a human auction which was then proceeding. No scene so
full of shame had I ever beheld, but the fascination of the spectacle
held me, and I stood and watched and listened. The slave being sold was
a black girl, and she was beautiful according to the standard of her
skin, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad as lightly over her body as
decency allowed, so as to reveal the utmost of her charms.
"Now, brothers," cried the salesman, "look, see" (pinching the girl's
naked arms and rolling his jeweled fingers from her chin downward over
her bare neck on to her bosom), "sound of wind and limb, and with rosy
lips, fit for the kisses of a king--how much?"
"A hundred dollars," cried a voice out of the crowd. I thought I had
heard the voice before, and looked up to see who had spoken. It was a
tall man with haik over his turban, and blue selam on top of a yellow
kaftan.
"A hundred dollars offered," cried the salesman, "only a hundred.
Brothers, now's the chance for all true believers."
"A hundred and five," cried another voice.
"A hundred and ten."
"A hundred and fifteen."
"A hundred and fifteen for this jewel of a girl," cried the salesman.
"It's giving her away, brothers. By the prophets, if you are not quick
I'll keep her for myself. Come, look at her, Sidi. Isn't she good enough
for a sultan? The Prophet (God rest him) would have leaped at her. He
loved sweet women as much as he loved sweet odors. Now, for the third
and last time--how much? Remember, I guarantee her seventeen years of
age, sound, strong, plump, and sweet."
"A hundred and twenty," cried the voice I had heard first. I looked up
at the speaker again. It was the American in his Moorish costume.
I could bear no more of the sickening spectacle, and as I turned aside
with my interpreter, I was conscious that my companion of the voyage was
following me. When we came to some dark arches that divided Old Fez from
New Fez the American spoke, and I sent my interpreter ahead.
"You see I am giving myself full tether in this execrable land," he
said.
"Indeed you are," I answered.
"Well, as the Romans in Rome, you know--it was what I came for," he
said.
"Take care," I replied. "Take care."
He drew up shortly and said, "By the way, I ought to be ashamed to meet
you."