OASIS TOWNS
From Sfax I went by train to Gafsa, an inland oasis town lying most
picturesquely in a sandy plain, surrounded by rocky mountains that rise
sheer from it. It is about three miles from the station of the same
name, and the drive to it leads from the bare plain to the thick olive
groves and the clustering palms that form the oasis. It is just a little
Arab town, with the usual handful of French government offices and the
fort. There are several mosques, and from the minaret of one I watched
the magnificence of the sunset across the plain. There are more than
thirty-eight springs about here, so the place does not lack water, and
every stream is full of small water tortoises. The remains of the Roman
baths are still to be seen. A group of village women were washing their
jars in the clear blue-green water, whilst small boys offered to dive for
coins.
[Illustration: I. M. D.
A village Marketplace]
The cultivation of olives is the chief industry of the place and I went
to see a native olive press in the evening. The air was thick with
the heavy cloying smell of oil, and in the long low building men were
turning a press from which oozed a dark fluid. A smoky lamp was the
only light, and their dark glistening arms and faces showed up fitfully
as they moved. In the dim light they might have been denizens of the
nether regions, busied over some horrid rite. From the shadows came the
sound of muffled feet, where the gaunt pale figure of a camel circled
interminably, turning a stone mill that crushed the fruit. Huge barrels,
shining greasily, stood about filled with pure oil. The ground was
slippery and uneven, and a heap of the crushed skins and pulp lay in the
yard outside, staining the earth a dull crimson.
I seemed to be the only European traveller in the little town, and my
first attempt at finding a hotel had not been very happy. There had been
a doubt as to which to recommend me, and I had engaged a room by telegram
in advance, but my heart sank as my dilapidated carriage drew up at it.
It looked like a small drinking booth, with a floor of beaten earth and
a few ricketty tables. From the background appeared a sodden-looking old
man, who had evidently been sampling the hotel wine freely. He took me
across a muddy yard inhabited by dejected hens and showed me through a
rough room full of women ironing clothes, into a dreadful bedroom strewn
with untidy garments. Out of it opened another which he offered me. But
one glance was sufficient for me and I fled.
The next attempt turned out to be another little café place, but it had a
block of buildings down the street where guests were put up, and which
was clean and neat. No one else, not even a servant, lived in it. I was
given two enormous keys, one for my bedroom and one of the front door,
and after dining in the little café, where a wooden screen separated
me from the Arab clientèle who were drinking coffee and playing cards,
I returned to my fastness. It struck chill and bare as I locked myself
in. Not a sound. Luckily the furniture was too meagre to give cover for
thieves. There were about ten other rooms in the building, all empty
... no servants and no means of calling one. I woke late in the night,
thinking I heard a sound in the passage. The night was pitch dark and
silent, and the village seemed dead. From somewhere came the drip-drip
of water. I listened, but could hear nothing else, and when I woke next,
daylight was struggling through the curtains. All the accessories for a
splendid ghost story had been there, but fortunately there was no actor
for the chief part.
[Illustration: I. M. D.]
The oasis is very beautiful and my guide said that in the time of orange
blossom one is forced to muffle one’s face because of the overpowering
scent. It may be true. He was a sallow melancholy Arab youth, who had
served at Salonika and had lost an arm there. He did not talk much, but
warmed up on the subject of his wound and gave me a horribly realistic
account of it. “And why,” he asked, “were the English fighting the
French?” I tried to enlighten him, but with little success. He had been
well cared for in hospital at Salonika by a lady who was very good to
the wounded. French? He did not know. Perhaps she was, or English or
German. Anyway she talked French and she had wept over his wounds and
had given him chocolate and had taught him to write with his left hand.
So her memory is still cherished in this remote little town of Tunisia.
His cousin had also been sent to the War and they were always together.
They had not then felt so alone. His cousin had made him promise that
if he were killed Yousuf must see he was buried as a good Moslem, and
must write and tell his family. Should it be Yousuf who fell, then Ali
would carry out the same good offices for him. They were together when
there was a loud explosion and his cousin fell upon his face. The boy ran
to pick him up and found him dead, and casting up his hands in despair,
at that moment he himself was struck and his arm torn off. When he came
to himself the stretcher-bearers were carrying him away. And he said
“Take also my cousin, for I must see that he has proper burial,” but
they answered “We must take you first,” and so he was carried into the
darkness and never saw Ali’s body again. “What could I have done? They
would not listen to me, and I know not how my poor cousin was buried.
Ah! he knew that he would not live,” said Yousuf. “When we first put
on gas-masks, then Ali wept, for he felt Death touch him. And so it
happened.” He was silent.
As we rode, a sudden storm of rain came up. The mountains were blotted
out, and a tiny marabou stood out startlingly white of a sudden against
the blue black of the clouds. Two pigeons flew across them looking like
bits of white paper, a heavy drop or two fell, digging deep into the
loose sand, the palms stood motionless waiting, and then with a great
rush came the rain.
From there I was going on to Tozeur, and the only train left at the
dreadful hour of 5 a.m. Motors were non-existent, so I had to start
for the station soon after 4 a.m. in a cross between a hearse and a
bathing machine known as the hotel omnibus. I shared it with various
muffled figures who emerged sleepily one by one from blank shuttered
houses on the way. Usually they first had to be wakened by loud thumps
on the door and shouts that we could not wait for them. It felt like a
dream, and I wondered if perhaps I had got into some enchanted place
which I could never leave again. Supposing we were to miss the train,
how often might not this performance be repeated? I became aggressively
English and determined. At the last stopping place I declared if I were
kept waiting any longer I should complain to the Contrôle Civile. I was
rather vague as to the power I was threatening to unleash, but the mere
thought of it roused the driver and Yousuf to a frenzy of action. They
rushed simultaneously upon the barred door and kicked and knocked to such
purpose that the last traveller appeared blinking and still arranging his
turban. And then when we got to the station, the train was late and we
had half an hour to wait.
As I steamed away across the wide stretches of tawny plain with the dark
blur of the oasis of Gafsa in the distance and the mountains already
turning purple in the sickly dawn, the unreality of the place seemed to
accentuate itself in my mind. Had I really been there? Really wandered
through the oasis, and watched the troops of camels coming along the
dried river bed? Really heard the call of the muezzin across the sleeping
Arab town? Or had it all been a dream? I scarcely knew.
It was wet when I reached Tozeur, and I stumbled down sandy roads in a
chill rain, to the hotel. It was more the oasis of one’s imagination
than anything I had yet seen. Beyond the thick grove of palm and fruit
trees and the little native town built of earth bricks there stretched a
great waste of yellow sand, in which the modern station buildings stood
absurdly by themselves. To the east there glistened the vast Shott, a
kind of quicksand with a salty crust. There are safe tracks across it
for camels and mules, but a step to right or left may engulf the unwary
traveller. In the distance it looks like an immense lake, the salt
surface shining like water, and after rain it does become a shallow lake
in places. It has been a terror to travellers for many generations,
and rumour exaggerated its dangers. One of the earliest accounts of it
was written in the fourteenth century, by Abou Yaga Zakkaria, who told
terrible stories of hundreds of camels being swallowed up and leaving
no trace, through straying from the safe path. All round it stretches a
sandy solitude, broken only by the dark palm groves of Tozeur, and far
away, those of Nefta.
[Illustration: I. M. D.
Grain Market. Tozeur.]
All this part is called the Djerid, and here one feels the intense
solitude of the desert. It is on the edge of the Sahara. In summer the
heat is terrific, and the air vibrates as above an oven. The small town
is surrounded by a sea of sand; the streets are ankle deep in it, and it
stretches as far as one can see. It is picturesque, the houses built of
earthen bricks set in patterns and with arched and tunnelled passages.
‘Town’ is rather a misleading term; it is just a collection of buildings
clustering round a market-place, the roads wandering off vaguely from it
into the desert.
The oasis is beautiful, streams of blue-green water everywhere, and
a tangle of fruit trees amongst the slender trunks of the palms. It
is about 2,500 acres in extent, the dates being renowned for their
flavour. Alas! all were exported, and as unprocurable as fresh fish at
a seaside resort. A minaret near a door covered with green tiles caught
the eye, but most of the buildings were low and only remarkable for the
picturesque way in which the bricks were set, forming attractive designs.
The grain market was held under a modern roof, but the rest was in the
open air, and the wide space was covered with an immense crowd. The
women dressed in dark blue cotton with one white stripe the length of
it, and they held the head covering across their faces. There is a large
admixture of negro blood, which has spoilt the Arab type.
The population is occupied almost entirely in the care of the date palms.
When first planted the small tree is watered once a day and sheltered
from cold winds. It begins to bear a little when 10 or 12 years old. From
the age of 20 it produces an annual harvest of fruit and at 30 it is at
its greatest vigour and continues in full bearing for another 30 years or
so. Then its produce lessens by degrees and it is used for the extraction
of palm wine or _nagmi_ as it is called; but this is only practised on
trees whose yield is poor, or which are already worn out.
Truly the palm is the Arab’s friend. The fruit is his staple food; its
leaves are made into baskets and panniers, or serve as hedges, its stem
for gate posts and the beams of houses; while the fibrous stuff that is
near the root is made into rope, mattresses and a sort of cloth. Even
the date stones are eaten by camels. The Arabs have a saying that were a
camel to walk into a palm grove, he could come out completely equipped
with bridle, saddle and panniers and even with the palm leaf stem as a
whip. It is in a palm-leaf cradle that the desert Arab is rocked to sleep
as a child; his life passes below its shade, and it is under boards of
its wood that he takes his last rest.
Twenty-four kilometres from Tozeur is the little town of Nefta. I motored
there on a beaten road across the stretches of sand. To our left the
Shott shone like a great lake, streaked with faint grey and purple. As
far as we could see, the desert stretched away interminably till it met
the horizon. The track followed the telegraph posts, and we passed a
few groups of Arabs with their camels, plodding along at a pace which
they can keep up for days at a stretch. One seemed to be moving for ever
through an immense space, almost with a feeling of being hypnotised.
Then, ahead, there was a dark blur in the expanse. “Voilà Nefta!” said
the chauffeur.
It is entirely an Arab town, the flat-topped houses and the clothes of
the inhabitants all of the same colour as the surrounding sand. Thick
groves of palms cluster along the streams that flow from a quantity of
springs. The oasis is called the ‘corbeille’ and is aptly named, for
it lies in a hollow over which the village, straggling along two small
heights, looks down. The palms grow all up the edges of this cup, and
through their stems one sees the glow of sand against a pale blue sky.
Springs of clear water bubbled up everywhere in the oasis and round the
feet of the palms was the tender green of growing things. Bushes of white
jasmine scented the air. And within a stone’s throw of this verdure is
the vast emptiness and silence of the desert. Far, far on the horizon,
like the tender tints of Venetian glass, was the pale blue and rose of
distant rocky hills.
The tiny hotel was in the market-place, and from its verandah we looked
down on an animated scene. Camels laden with firewood came in from the
far country, driven by uncouth-looking men wrapped in ragged cloaks,
their feet covered with rough shoes made of camel’s hide tied round
the ankle. Tiny children, naked but for their one hooded garment, crept
to warm themselves by the fires where cooking was going on. The people
seemed very poor, their clothes tattered and scanty. Small booths were
set up in the market-place, where unappetising meat was sold, and flat
loaves of bread. One shopman dealt in primitive rings set with beads,
sheathed knives and the flat mirrors that the Arab woman loves to wear
hung round her neck. Far into the night I heard the sound of voices in
the market-place below, and caught the occasional flicker of a fire.
[Illustration: I. M. D.]
Nefta seemed full of children, queer little elfin figures in their
pointed hoods with their thin unchildlike faces. There had been three
bad harvests in succession, and everyone was poor and hungry. I watched
a tiny boy of about four years old who was left on guard over a heap of
grass straw that his father had brought for sale. The little creature
took his task very solemnly and hour after hour he sat there gravely,
his trailing garment folded over his bare feet. It turned very cold as
the sun went down, but still the small Casabianca stuck to his post. It
began to grow dusk, and yet he sat there motionless, his eyes fixed on
the bundles of straw. I thought how pleasant it would be to slip a coin
or two into his frozen hands and started out full of this benevolent
intention. But the sight of me was more than the poor little hero could
stand. He had faced cold and hunger and the danger of possible thieves,
but the terrifying sight of a white woman in strange garments was too
much for him. He stood his ground bravely for a moment, but as it became
certain I was coming straight to him, he fled, but hovered nearby in
terror and perplexity like some shy bird whose nest is approached. I held
up the money for him to see, but he did not understand. It proved useless
to try to coax him back, and I went away, watching from a distance for
his return. Like the bird, he slipped back to his post in the dusk as
soon as he thought me safely gone, and now I waited till his father
had appeared and then tried again. Again he wavered and turned to run
as I drew near, but the father understood my gestures and caught him,
smiling, by a flying end of his cloak. And so he stood, frightened but
valiant, whilst I closed his tiny cold hand over the coins. I left him
still bewildered, and could only hope the money served to buy a hot
supper and perhaps firewood for the family.
Next day I rode along the route to Tougourt, in Algeria, a nine days’
journey by caravan. There seemed nothing to mark the road from the ocean
of sand. It was edged in some places with a low parapet of banked sand
and dry grass. Far below us was the dark mass of the ‘corbeille’ and
above it the village of Nefta with its irregular line of houses, pricked
here and there by a minaret and dotted with the white bubbles of marabou.
On the other side, desert. The red-roofed douane on the frontier between
Algeria and Tunis, looked like a child’s forgotten toy. Far off the
minute silhouettes of distant camels paced slowly across the immensity.
The air was clear and thin. One seemed alone in the world.
And suddenly, there at our feet we saw the delicate faces of tiny
crocus-like flowers gazing at us from the level of the sand itself.
Flushed with a faint lavender, the slender stamens stained with orange,
they seemed indeed a miracle. From what nutriment had they woven their
frail loveliness? The sand was friable and bare, the cold winds of night
must pass like a scythe over these lonely places. But mysteriously,
defying the vast world, minute trembling roots must have crept from
the small bulbs, mooring the little plants to a firm anchorage. And the
first few drops of warm rain had brought them to a fragile flowering.
Crushed by the spongy feet of passing camels, unregarded, ignored, they
spread their delicate carpet, earnest of the later more bounteous gifts
of Spring. And in this land of life reduced to bare necessities, of a
people living from hand to mouth, of the harsh nomad existence led by
Bedouin tribes, these little flowers seemed a message linking us to a
more gracious existence, a land of kindlier aspect, of softer skies, with
its largesse of blossoms of which the desert knows nothing.