THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
and crying in a hoarse voice, “Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
Awake! Awake!”
In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
of various colours swung on many walls.
The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It
was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
air, and shouting as they went, “Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!”
Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.
It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
tambourines and crying in wild discords, “God bless our Lord!” “God give
victory to our Lord the Sultan!”
The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
“Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!”
Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
even from their roofs.
And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
quarrellings, cursings.
“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!”
“O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!”
“Curses on your grandfather!”
“Allah! Allah! Allah!”
“Balak! Balak! Balak!”
But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
gate.
By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused
and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.
When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
himself was at hand.
First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
transparent.
As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the
Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
“God bless our Lord!”
“Sultan Abd er-Rahman!”
“God prolong the life of our Lord!”
He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
acclamations.
“All's well, all's well,” they told each other, and pointed to the white
horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.
The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
Sultan with a shrill ululation: “Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!”
Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
articulate cries.
He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk
unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold
significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And
this was the way and the word of it:
“She is back in the Kasbah!”
“The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?”
“She has fallen sick.”
“And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?”
“He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.”
“Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
saved from the Sultan.”
“For the present, only for the-present.”
“For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.”
“Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?”
“Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
the--”
“Ya Allah! well?”
“Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--”
“But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?”
“God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!”
“In peace!”