OUTSIDE the little straw-thatched _café_ in a small courtyard trellised
with vines, before a miniature table painted in red and blue, and upon
which stood a dome-shaped pewter teapot and a painted glass half filled
with mint, sat Amarabat, resting and smoking hemp. He was of those whom
Allah in his mercy (or because man in the Blad-Allah has made no
railways) has ordained to run. Set upon the road, his shoes pulled up,
his waistband tightened, in his hand a staff, a palm-leaf wallet at his
back, and in it bread, some hemp, a match or two (known to him as el
spiritus), and a letter to take anywhere, crossing the plains, fording
the streams, struggling along the mountain-paths, sleeping but fitfully,
a burning rope steeped in saltpetre fastened to his foot, he trotted day
and night—untiring as a camel, faithful as a dog. In Rabat as he sat
dozing, watching the greenish smoke curl upwards from his hemp pipe, word
came to him from the Khalifa of the town. So Amarabat rose, paid for his
tea with half a handful of defaced and greasy copper coins, and took his
way towards the white palace with the crenelated walls, which on the
cliff, hanging above the roaring tide-rip, just inside the bar of the
great river, looks at Salee. Around the horseshoe archway of the gate
stood soldiers, wild, fierce-eyed, armed to the teeth, descendants, most
of them, of the famed warriors whom Sultan Muley Ismail (may God have
pardoned him!) bred for his service, after the fashion of the Carlylean
hero Frederic; and Amarabat walked through them, not aggressively, but
with the staring eyes of a confirmed hemp-smoker, with the long stride of
one who knows that he is born to run, and the assurance of a man who
waits upon his lord. Some time he waited whilst the Khalifa dispensed
what he thought justice, chaffered with Jewish pedlars for cheap European
goods, gossiped with friends, looked at the antics of a dwarf, or priced
a Georgian or Circassian girl brought with more care than glass by some
rich merchant from the East. At last Amarabat stood in the presence, and
the Khalifa, sitting upon a pile of cushions playing with a Waterbury
watch, a pistol and a Koran by his side, addressed him thus:—
“Amarabat, son of Bjorma, my purpose is to send thee to Tafilet, where
our liege lord the Sultan lies with his camp. Look upon this glass bowl
made by the Kaffir, but clear as is the crystal of the rock; see how the
light falls on the water, and the shifting colours that it makes, as when
the Bride of the Rain stands in the heavens, after a shower in spring.
Inside are seven gold fish, each scale as bright as letters in an Indian
book. The Christian from whom I bought them said originally they came
from the Far East where the Djin-descended Jawi live, the little yellow
people of the faith. That may be, but such as they are, they are a gift
for kings. Therefore, take thou the bowl. Take it with care, and bear
it as it were thy life. Stay not, but in an hour start from the town.
Delay not on the road, be careful of the fish, change not their water at
the muddy pool where tortoises bask in the sunshine, but at running
brooks; talk not to friends, look not upon the face of woman by the way,
although she were as a gazelle, or as the maiden who when she walked
through the fields the sheep stopped feeding to admire. Stop not, but
run through day and night, pass through the Atlas at the Glaui; beware of
frost, cover the bowl with thine own haik; upon the other side shield me
the bowl from the Saharan sun, and drink not of the water if thou pass a
day athirst when toiling through the sand. Break not the bowl, and see
the fish arrive in Tafilet, and then present them, with this letter, to
our lord. Allah be with you, and his Prophet; go, and above all things
see thou breakest not the bowl.” And Amarabat, after the manner of his
kind, taking the bowl of gold fish, placed one hand upon his heart and
said: “Inshallah, it shall be as thou hast said. God gives the feet and
lungs. He also gives the luck upon the road.”
So he passed out under the horseshoe arch, holding the bowl almost at
arm’s length so as not to touch his legs, and with the palmetto string by
which he carried it, bound round with rags. The soldiers looked at him,
but spoke not, and their eyes seemed to see far away, and to pass over
all in the middle distance, though no doubt they marked the smallest
detail of his gait and dress. He passed between the horses of the guard
all standing nodding under the fierce sun, the reins tied to the cantles
of their high red saddles, a boy in charge of every two or three: he
passed beside the camels resting by the well, the donkeys standing
dejected by the firewood they had brought: passed women, veiled white
figures going to the baths; and passing underneath the lofty gateway of
the town, exchanged a greeting with the half-mad, half-religious beggar
just outside the walls, and then emerged upon the sandy road, between the
aloe hedges, which skirts along the sea. So as he walked, little by
little he fell into his stride; then got his second wind, and smoking now
and then a pipe of hemp, began, as Arabs say, to cat the miles, his eyes
fixed on the horizon, his stick stuck down between his shirt and back,
the knob protruding over the left shoulder like the hilt of a two-handed
sword. And still he held the precious bowl from Franquestan in which the
golden fish swam to and fro, diving and circling in the sunlight, or
flapped their tails to steady themselves as the water danced with the
motion of his steps. Never before in his experience had he been charged
with such a mission, never before been sent to stand before Allah’s
vicegerent upon earth. But still the strangeness of his business was
what preoccupied him most. The fish like molten gold, the water to be
changed only at running streams, the fish to be preserved from frost and
sun; and then the bowl: had not the Khalifa said at the last, “Beware,
break not the bowl”? So it appeared to him that most undoubtedly a charm
was in the fish and in the bowl, for who sends common fish on such a
journey through the land? Then he resolved at any hazard to bring them
safe and keep the bowl intact, and trotting onward, smoked his hemp, and
wondered why he of all men should have had the luck to bear the precious
gift. He knew he kept his law, at least as far as a poor man can keep
it, prayed when he thought of prayer, or was assailed by terror in the
night alone upon the plains; fasted in Ramadan, although most of his life
was one continual fast; drank of the shameful but seldom, and on the sly,
so as to give offence to no believer, and seldom looked upon the face of
the strange women, Daughters of the Illegitimate, whom Sidna Mohammed
himself has said, avoid. But all these things he knew were done by many
of the faithful, and so he did not set himself up as of exceeding virtue,
but rather left the praise to God, who helped his slave with strength to
keep his law. Then left off thinking, judging the matter was ordained,
and trotted, trotted over the burning plains, the gold fish dancing in
the water as the miles melted and passed away.
Duar and Kasbah, castles of the Caids, Arabs’ black tents, suddra
zaribas, camels grazing—antediluvian in appearance—on the little hills,
the muddy streams edged all along the banks with oleanders, the solitary
horsemen holding their long and brass-hooped guns like spears, the
white-robed noiseless-footed travellers on the roads, the chattering
storks upon the village mosques, the cow-birds sitting on the cattle in
the fields—he saw, but marked not, as he trotted on. Day faded into
night, no twilight intervening, and the stars shone out, Soheil and Rigel
with Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, and the three bright lamps which the
cursed Christians know as the Three Maries—called, he supposed, after the
mother of their Prophet; and still he trotted on. Then by the side of a
lone palm-tree springing up from a cleft in a tall rock, an island on the
plain, he stopped to pray; and sleeping, slept but fitfully, the
strangeness of the business making him wonder; and he who cavils over
matters in the night can never rest, for thus the jackal and the hyena
pass their nights talking and reasoning about the thoughts which fill
their minds when men lie with their faces covered in their haiks, and
after prayer sleep. Rising after an hour or two and going to the nearest
stream, he changed the water of his fish, leaving a little in the bottom
of the bowl, and dipping with his brass drinking-cup into the stream for
fear of accidents. He passed the Kasbah of el Daudi, passed the land of
the Rahamna, accursed folk always in “siba,” saw the great snowy wall of
Atlas rise, skirted Marakesh, the Kutubieh, rising first from the plain
and sinking last from sight as he approached the mountains and left the
great white city sleeping in the plain.
Little by little the country altered as he ran: cool streams for muddy
rivers, groves of almond-trees, ashes and elms, with grape-vines binding
them together as the liana binds the canela and the urunday in the dark
forests of Brazil and Paraguay. At mid-day, when the sun was at its
height, when locusts, whirring through the air, sank in the dust as
flying-fish sink in the waves, when palm-trees seem to nod their heads,
and lizards are abroad drinking the heat and basking in the rays, when
the dry air shimmers, and sparks appear to dance before the traveller’s
eye, and a thin, reddish dust lies on the leaves, on clothes of men, and
upon every hair of horses’ coats, he reached a spring. A river springing
from a rock, or issuing after running underground, had formed a little
pond. Around the edge grew bulrushes, great catmace, water-soldiers,
tall arums and metallic-looking sedge-grass, which gave an air as of an
outpost of the tropics lost in the desert sand. Fish played beneath the
rock where the stream issued, flitting to and fro, or hanging suspended
for an instant in the clear stream, darted into the dark recesses of the
sides; and in the middle of the pond enormous tortoises, horrid and
antediluvian-looking, basked with their backs awash or raised their heads
to snap at flies, and all about them hung a dark and fetid slime.
A troop of thin brown Arab girls filled their tall amphora whilst washing
in the pond. Placing his bowl of fish upon a jutting rock, the messenger
drew near. “Gazelles,” he said, “will one of you give me fresh water for
the Sultan’s golden fish?” Laughing and giggling, the girls drew near,
looked at the bowl, had never seen such fish. “Allah is great; why do
you not let them go in the pond and play a little with their brothers?”
And Amarabat with a shiver answered, “Play, let them play! and if they
come not back my life will answer for it.” Fear fell upon the girls, and
one advancing, holding the skirt of her long shift between her teeth to
veil her face, poured water from her amphora upon the fish.
Then Amarabat, setting down his precious bowl, drew from his wallet a
pomegranate and began to eat, and for a farthing buying a piece of bread
from the women, was satisfied, and after smoking, slept, and dreamed he
was approaching Tafilet; he saw the palm-trees rising from the sand; the
gardens; all the oasis stretching beyond his sight; at the edge the
Sultan’s camp, a town of canvas, with the horses, camels, and the mules
picketed, all in rows, and in the midst of the great “duar” the Sultan’s
tent, like a great palace all of canvas, shining in the sun. All this he
saw, and saw himself entering the camp, delivering up his fish, perhaps
admitted to the sacred tent, or at least paid by a vizier, as one who has
performed his duty well. The slow match blistering his foot, he woke to
find himself alone, the “gazelles” departed, and the sun shining on the
bowl, making the fish appear more magical, more wondrous, brighter, and
more golden than before.
And so he took his way along the winding Atlas paths, and slept at
Demnats, then, entering the mountains, met long trains of travellers
going to the south. Passing through groves of chestnuts, walnut-trees,
and hedges thick with blackberries and travellers’ joy, he climbed
through vineyards rich with black Atlas grapes, and passed the flat
mud-built Berber villages nestling against the rocks. Eagles flew by and
moufflons gazed at him from the peaks, and from the thickets of lentiscus
and dwarf arbutus wild boars appeared, grunted, and slowly walked across
the path, and still he climbed, the icy wind from off the snow chilling
him in his cotton shirt, for his warm Tadla haik was long ago wrapped
round the bowl to shield the precious fish. Crossing the Wad Ghadat, the
current to his chin, his bowl of fish held in one hand, he struggled on.
The Berber tribesmen at Tetsula and Zarkten, hard-featured, shaved but
for a chin-tuft, and robed in their “achnifs” with the curious eye woven
in the skirt, saw he was a “rekass,” or thought the fish not worth their
notice, so gave him a free road. Night caught him at the stone-built,
antediluvian-looking Kasbah of the Glaui, perched in the eye of the pass,
with the small plain of Teluet two thousand feet below. Off the high
snow-peaks came a whistling wind, water froze solid in all the pots and
pans, earthenware jars and bottles throughout the castle, save in the
bowl which Amarabat, shivering and miserable, wrapped in his haik and
held close to the embers, hearing the muezzin at each call to prayers;
praying himself to keep awake so that his fish might live. Dawn saw him
on the trail, the bowl wrapped in a woollen rag, and the fish fed with
bread-crumbs, but himself hungry and his head swimming with want of
sleep, with smoking “kief,” and with the bitter wind which from El Tisi
N’Glaui flagellates the road. Right through the valley of Teluet he
still kept on, and day and night still trotting, trotting on, changing
his bowl almost instinctively from hand to hand, a broad leaf floating on
the top to keep the water still, he left Agurzga, with its twin castles,
Ghresat and Dads, behind. Then rapidly descending, in a day reached an
oasis between Todghra and Ferkla, and rested at a village for the night.
Sheltered by palm-trees and hedged round with cactuses and aloes, either
to keep out thieves or as a symbol of the thorniness of life, the village
lay, looking back on the white Atlas gaunt and mysterious, and on the
other side towards the brown Sahara, land of the palm-tree
(Belad-el-Jerid), the refuge of the true Ishmaelite; for in the desert,
learning, good faith, and hospitality can still be found—at least, so
Arabs say.
Orange and azofaifa trees, with almonds, sweet limes and walnuts, stood
up against the waning light, outlined in the clear atmosphere almost so
sharply as to wound the eye. Around the well goats and sheep lay, whilst
a girl led a camel round the Noria track; women sat here and there and
gossiped, with their tall earthenware jars stuck by the point into the
ground, and waited for their turn, just as they did in the old times, so
far removed from us, but which in Arab life is but as yesterday, when
Jacob cheated Esau, and the whole scheme of Arab life was photographed
for us by the writers of the Pentateuch. In fact, the self-same scene
which has been acted every evening for two thousand years throughout
North Africa, since the adventurous ancestors of the tribesmen of to-day
left Hadrumut or Yemen, and upon which Allah looks down approvingly, as
recognizing that the traditions of his first recorded life have been well
kept. Next day he trotted through the barren plain of Seddat, the Jibel
Saghra making a black line on the horizon to the south. Here Berber
tribes sweep in their razzias like hawks; but who would plunder a rekass
carrying a bowl of fish? Crossing the dreary plain and dreaming of his
entry into Tafilet, which now was almost in his reach not two days
distant, the sun beating on his head, the water almost boiling in the
bowl, hungry and footsore, and in the state betwixt waking and sleep into
which those who smoke hemp on journeys often get, he branched away upon a
trail leading towards the south. Between the oases of Todghra and
Ferkla, nothing but stone and sand, black stones on yellow sand; sand,
and yet more sand, and then again stretches of blackish rocks with a
suddra bush or two, and here and there a colocynth, bitter and beautiful
as love or life, smiling up at the traveller from amongst the stones.
Towards midday the path led towards a sandy tract all overgrown with
sandrac bushes and crossed by trails of jackals and hyenas, then it quite
disappeared, and Amarabat waking from his dream saw he was lost. Like a
good shepherd, his first thought was for his fish; for he imagined the
last few hours of sun had made them faint, and one of them looked heavy
and swam sideways, and the rest kept rising to the surface in an uneasy
way. Not for a moment was Amarabat frightened, but looked about for some
known landmark, and finding none started to go back on his trail. But to
his horror the wind which always sweeps across the Sahara had covered up
his tracks, and on the stony paths which he had passed his feet had left
no prints. Then Amarabat, the first moments of despair passed by, took a
long look at the horizon, tightened his belt, pulled up his slipper
heels, covered his precious bowl with a corner of his robe, and started
doggedly back upon the road he thought he traversed on the deceitful
path. How long he trotted, what he endured, whether the fish died first,
or if he drank, or, faithful to the last, thirsting met death, no one can
say. Most likely wandering in the waste of sandhills and of suddra
bushes he stumbled on, smoking his hashish while it lasted, turning to
Mecca at the time of prayer, and trotting on more feebly (for he was born
to run), till he sat down beneath the sun-dried bushes where the
Shinghiti on his Mehari found him dead beside the trail. Under a stunted
sandarac tree, the head turned to the east, his body lay, swollen and
distorted by the pangs of thirst, the tongue protruding rough as a
parrot’s, and beside him lay the seven golden fish, once bright and
shining as the pure gold when the goldsmith pours it molten from his pot,
but now turned black and bloated, stiff, dry, and dead. Life the
mysterious, the mocking, the inscrutable, unseizable, the uncomprehended
essence of nothing and of everything, had fled, both from the faithful
messenger and from his fish. But the Khalifa’s parting caution had been
well obeyed, for by the tree, unbroken, the crystal bowl still glistened
beautiful as gold, in the fierce rays of the Saharan sun.