THE EDGE OF THE DESERT
[Illustration: I. M. D.
Porte de Tunis.
Kairouan
Jan. 4. ’23.]
THE EDGE OF
THE DESERT
By
IANTHE DUNBAR
LONDON
PHILIP ALLAN & Co.
QUALITY COURT
_First published in 1923._
_Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Southampton Times Limited, Southampton._
_To_
J. W. H.
TO WHOSE SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I OWE SO MUCH
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. KAIROUAN 9
II. SECTS AND SUPERSTITIONS 21
III. AN ARAB WEDDING 31
IV. SOUSSE 48
V. PASSING THROUGH 56
VI. SFAX 72
VII. OASIS TOWNS 82
VIII. THE SAND DIVINER 96
IX. THE CIRCUS 106
X. ROUND ABOUT GABÈS 118
XI. CUSTOMS 126
XII. TUNIS 137
CHAPTER I
KAIROUAN
It was cold, but a glorious morning when I left by motor for Kairouan.
Soon the white houses of Tunis were left behind. The sun was rising as
we flung its outskirts behind us, and the car headed for open country.
Rocky hills showed themselves on the horizon, and there were abrupt peaks
rising out of stretches of carefully cultivated vineyards, orchards of
olive trees, and broad fields just tinged with the promise of early
wheat. No walls, but occasional cactus hedges. The road climbed a saddle
of hill from whence one could look back on the sea. A few houses here
and there, flat-roofed and built in the Moorish style, were obviously
the homes of the landowners. Not an inch of ground seemed wasted. Arabs
were already at work behind their wooden ploughs, drawn either by
horses, mules, bullocks, or camels. These last looked as if they were
inwardly protesting against the indignity, and stalked along with their
usual disdainful air. After a time the road led into wilder country,
bare stretches covered only with a sort of rough heathery plant, with
scattered encampments of Bedouins, their black tents surrounded by a
zareba of piled thorns. At last we caught the gleam of the white domes of
Kairouan against the sky.
It lies in an open plain, and one’s first impression is of its whiteness.
White-washed mosques and tombs, white flat-topped houses, enclosed in a
high brown crenellated wall. Once inside the gates, all touch of European
atmosphere is left behind. The city is Eastern to the core, “une vraie
ville arabe,” as Hassan said. It is one of the sacred Moslem places and
is a great centre for pilgrimages. The chief mosque is Sidi-Okba, with
its large courtyard and numerous doorways leading into the interior,
where in the gloom one sees the roof supported by row after row of Roman
pillars. The effect in the vast emptiness is striking. The existing
structure is said to date from the ninth century, and the builders must
have ransacked ancient ruins for their materials. Some of the columns are
of red porphyry, and the antique _minbar_ or pulpit-chair is beautifully
carved in wood, but beyond this the decorations are poor.
From the minaret in the courtyard there is a lovely view, the holy city
crouched below with the frequent bubbles of its domed tombs and mosques,
and beyond the wall, wide spaces stretching to distant hills.
But the crowded streets and _souks_, or covered arcades, were the chief
attraction of Kairouan. Nearly all the men wore a burnous with a hood
that came over the head. The women did not wear the ugly face covering
seen in Tunis, but they were so closely wrapped in voluminous black or
white draperies that they looked like walking bundles. Occasionally an
eye peered out from amongst the folds, but one wondered how they could
see to make their way. Bedouin women strode past, good-looking and
haughty, their head-covering thrown back showing their tattooed faces,
their necks covered with coins; whilst the blue of their robes made
a pleasant note of colour. Their men were tall and sinewy with hawk
features, and they wore their sand-coloured burnous like dispossessed
princes. Here and there one saw the vivid green cloak or turban of
some holy man who had done the journey to Mecca, or there was a
splash of madder or burnt orange; but for the most part the crowd was
neutral-tinted. Everything, buildings, streets, mosques, and crowds,
was drenched in a glow of sunlight. Even the shadows seemed warm and
throbbing. The market-place was the great centre, and here it was
almost difficult to push through the throng. Men in grave and dignified
draperies sat outside the cafés, drinking from tiny handleless cups and
smoking meditatively.
I said the place was untouched by modernism, but I must confess that they
were usually listening with grave pleasure to a gramophone reproduction
of the voices of their own singers! It was fortunate when it kept to
that. I was sketching one morning near a café, and through my absorption
I became aware of the gramophone giving piercing shrieks and discoursing
in a high-pitched woman’s voice. It began to worry me. “What on earth is
that record, Hassan?” I asked impatiently, and was appalled at the ready
response that it was a Jewess adding to the numbers of Israel! Needless
to say, Hassan did not use such a roundabout way of expressing himself. I
cast a swift glance at the Arab audience. Impassively they sat, sipping
their coffee, and it was impossible to tell what they were thinking of.
But Hassan assured me it was a favourite record and most amusing; I
hastily became very busy with my painting.
Ali Hassan was my guide in Kairouan and showed an intelligent interest
in points of view to sketch. He was a portly Arab, disinclined to exert
himself, so the job just suited him. And he spoke French well. He told
me he had been born in Kairouan but that he was a travelled man. Had he
not been to Tunis, to Algiers, and even to Marseilles? He claimed kinship
with nearly every person in Kairouan and this proved a great asset. When
I expressed a wish to see the women’s Turkish Baths, “That is easily
done,” said he, “for is not the Keeper of the Baths my mother-in-law?”
As we passed the outer door he thrust his head in and called to her
to come forth. I pushed open a second door, and an old wrinkled crone
appeared in a cloud of steam and led me through the various rooms. None
of the bathers seemed the least embarrassed at my sudden appearance, but
greeted me with smiles as I picked my way through the puddles of water
and the pale olive of nude limbs. There were family parties of mothers
and daughters and even tiny babies of a few months old, all chattering
happily together and plastering themselves with a kind of grey clay. The
outer room, where all the clothes were left, was in charge of a girl
of fifteen or so, and here were numerous clients in various stages of
cooling-off. Arab women in the towns go to the baths two or three times a
week, so it is pleasant to feel that the people under the black shrouds
that one meets in the streets, are at least clean.
On cold days when Hassan sat huddled in his white burnous by my
campstool, looking like an elderly and discontented Father Christmas,
it was usually not long before one of his invaluable relatives appeared
bringing him a cup of coffee. “The waiter at the Snake Charmer’s café is
my sister’s son,” remarked Hassan, complacently sipping, whilst I mused
on the vista of relationships opened up by a plurality of wives. I had
already met two uncles, two mothers-in-law, five or six of his children,
a wife and a nephew. How many more were there? Soon I wanted a small
boy to pose in the foreground of my picture. “I will fetch one of my
sons,” remarked the conjuror, and walked across the street, returning
with a most unwilling small child. “And it is not necessary to give him
anything. The sight of money makes the eye greedy,” said his father,
peacefully relapsing into the folds of his cloak whilst I settled to work.
[Illustration: I. M. D.
The Kaïd
Kairouan]
Were one to sit for long at the doorway of the Baths, facing the gate of
the city, one would see the whole world of Kairouan pass through in the
course of the day. It was New Year’s day, and every one was abroad. A
deputation of notable townspeople came through the old gateway on their
way to present a New Year’s Resolution to someone or something. Their
full flowing robes made a picture of the procession, and I sighed at the
thought of the top hats and glittering watch chains of England.
Then came three old and venerable men clad in snowy white, two of them
supporting the footsteps of the most aged. He was the Kaïd, the authority
in Mussulman law, and was nearly ninety.
It was a fête day too at my tiny hotel, and the proprietor supplied
‘champagne’ with a generosity more apparent than real. There was much
toasting and making of speeches amongst the small bourgeois who formed
the clientèle; and a baby of two was given long sips of champagne by
a humorous father, who then acted the part of a waiter with a napkin
over his arm, to the intense amusement of his feminine belongings. The
rôle suited him admirably. Doubtless Mrs. Noah and the young Shem, Ham
and Japhet were also convulsed with mirth in their day at a similar
buffoonery played by the head of the family. Jokes die hard.
The military quarters, the Government building, and the hotel were all
outside the city gates and provided with small public gardens, full of
the green of palms, of pepper trees, of oleanders. A few trees were
planted down some of the streets of the tiny modern quarter; but it all
ended as abruptly as if a line were ruled across it. Beyond were sand
and cactus hedges and roads that led to the horizon. There is something
attractive about French colonial quarters however small. They are so
trim and neat and provided with the shade of eucalyptus trees, mimosas
and anything that will grow in a sandy soil.
Close to the Gate Djelladine was the Snake Charmer’s café and the sound
of a native drum and the squeal of a pipe led my steps there one day. He
and the two musicians were squatting on a small raised platform at the
end of the low room and I as a European was given the doubtful privilege
of a place in the front row where my knees were pressed against the
platform. The charmer was a strange looking man with a thin wild face,
dressed in a striped burnous and wearing nothing on his mop of long black
hair. On the floor in front of him lay a bag of sacking that stirred
and moved. After the room had filled up with a crowd of Arabs and the
music had been going on for some time, he opened the mouth of the sack
and from an inner jar pulled out a large cobra. This he began to tease,
dancing in front of it, flapping his long hair at it and tapping its tail
with a stick. Naturally annoyed, it reared up ready to strike, but the
constant movement of the man seemed to daze it. It struck at him once or
twice as he swayed and danced in front of it but he took care to keep
just out of range. Then he brought a young snake out of the bag, and this
sat up too and tried to look like its mother. Meanwhile there was dead
silence in the room, except for the drone of the music and the thud of
the charmer’s bare feet as he danced. Every eye was fixed on him, the
Arab waiter with a tray of coffee in his hands stood motionless, staring,
and the dark faces of the audience watched with the intent unblinking
gaze of an eastern race. Again the man dived into the bag and brought
out a yellow snake which he lowered by the tail into his open mouth,
then laughing wildly he took it out and wound it round his head where it
looked like a horrible chaplet in the midst of his rough hair, its head
pointing out over his brow. I asked if the poison fangs of the cobras had
been extracted, and he brought the largest one for me to see, holding it
just below the head. An obliging Arab provided a pin, and with this he
prized open the jaws. I saw the tooth but I think the top of it had been
broken off.
All this time the drone of the native music went on interminably. There
is something curiously compelling about its minor key with the little
quirks and quavers. It seems to get on the nerves and to hammer and
hammer on them insistently. It fits well with the blazing sun and the
intensity of the sky. I heard afterwards that the charmer was a Bedouin,
but had been brought up in Kairouan from childhood. I wanted to paint him
and the musicians, and the sitting was arranged one afternoon.
Hassan was always full of zeal and spurred me to great deeds.
“Mais oui, you must paint them in an open space outside the town, and
then behind them you can paint in the whole of Kairouan and the desert
beyond. It will be a magnificent picture.”
I bowed my head, and only hoped he would forget to look for the accessory
town and landscape when the sketch was finished. The men grouped
themselves very naturally, and even the cobras when the time came seemed
to have an instinct for posing. The oldest musician had lost a finger of
his right hand through the bite of one of the stock-in-trade. They took
a deep interest in the sketch, and the usual small boy that springs out
of the dust whenever one stops for a moment, obligingly kept them posted
as to its progress. I worked for two hours and then shut up my paint box.
Hassan, who had been smoking cigarettes in the background on a chair
brought of course by a relation, seemed hurt at my want of enthusiasm
when he suggested I should now go and paint a mosque. I had worked all
morning as well, and it was now four o’clock, but he evidently thought me
a poor thing.
The wide stretches of country beyond the walls were sandy and bare,
with only a sparse growth of a heather-like plant on which the camels
fed. There were herds of a hundred or more, brown or fawn-coloured or
sometimes white. They are the Arabian species having but the one hump,
over which is fastened a large mat that fits down over it and looks
like a hat, I suppose serving as a protection. The herds are taken out
to graze during the day and brought back at night. These are the beasts
that belong to town owners and that are hired out for caravans. The foals
run by their mothers’ sides, as furry and long-legged as young donkeys. A
good deal of trade is carried on with the Bedouins, who bring grain and
wool, honey, eggs and butter into the town, and go out again laden with
sugar, salt and other goods.
There was a fondouk close by the hotel, and from my window I could hear
the roaring of reluctant camels being loaded in the early morning and
the cries of their drivers. Looking out I could see them standing in the
road, one knee bent, and fastened up by a rope by way of hobbling them.
They are wonderful animals, for at a pinch they will eat anything from
thorns to cactus leaves, and in times of scarcity they are even fed on
date stones. I saw heaps of these being sold in small market-places for
this purpose.
But though he does not disdain such accessory diet, the camel requires a
large quantity of food, and possesses the useful gift of being able to
store up any superfluity of nourishment in his hump, on which to live in
hard times. The popular fallacy that he can go for days without food is
erroneous, but he lays no stress on the punctuality of his meals as a
horse does, and this is a valuable trait in a beast that is used for long
journeys across the desert where fodder is scarce. His strange figure
with its thin, fragile-looking legs that fold up like a pocket ruler
when he lies down, and the small cynical head set on the long swaying
neck, suits the sandy wastes and the exotic charm of the East. He walks
with slippered tread, wrapt in aloofness. One is baffled by his haughty
indifference. He groans and protests as his load is being fastened on,
but only as a matter of form, for his docility is remarkable. Overload
him, or force him to journey when he is ill, still his protests are no
louder. He just dies. Quite quietly and without warning, he lies down and
refuses to live, baffling, in death as in life, the comprehension of the
bewildered European.