THE SAND DIVINER
The little oasis town of Gabès is on the coast, quite in the south of
Tunisia, the line to it being made by German prisoners during the War.
After leaving the broad belt of cultivation that stretches some way out
of Sfax, with its olives and corn and fruit trees, the train ran through
bare open country with scattered flocks of cattle, sheep or camels
grazing on a sparse and wiry grass. Here and there a few Arabs were
laboriously tilling the soil with wooden ploughs drawn by lean bullocks
or camels. The latter are harnessed by means of a broad band of sacking
across the front of their humps, attached by ropes to the plough. But
soon these signs of cultivation ceased, and I looked out on a sandy
and desolate waste, only broken occasionally by tracts of rough grass,
stretching to a far dove-coloured sky. We reached Gabès in the dark. All
night a storm raged, and I heard the thunder of waves on the shore and
the wind and the rain lashing the palm trees of the oasis. The next day
it was still stormy, and the public garden opposite the hotel was bruised
and battered, whilst the palms looked dishevelled and untidy with their
hair all over their eyes.
Gabès is a very small place, just the French military cantonments, one
street, and a few houses and shops. A little river flows into the sea
here, and on its other bank is the oasis, full of running water and palms
and fruit trees. I rode for a long way through it. Arabs were at work
amongst the vegetable gardens or tending the palms. Some of the trees
are tapped for the juice, which is made into an intoxicating drink. When
drawn off, it is colourless and clear and very sweet. The top of the palm
is cut off, a hole made down the centre and a jar put into it. This fills
itself every twelve hours or so. The tree is treated in this way every
two years three times, and it does the growth no harm. One can see by the
notches in the stem where it has been cut.
About a mile and a half from Gabès are the queer little villages of
Jarette and Vielle Jarette, the latter built largely of stone from Roman
ruins. They consist of a perfect rabbit warren of native houses with
passage-ways leading from one to the other, buttressed with old stone
pillars. Huge blocks of carved stone, fragments of acanthus, etc.,
are built into the walls. I went into one minute interior, where two
girls sat on the earth floor weaving at a hand loom, whilst another was
grinding corn in a stone hand-mill. They took a deep interest in me and
fingered my fur coat in astonishment. They were broad featured, with very
thick wavy hair, and were covered with jewellery. My guide Mansour tells
me the Arabs cannot understand why European women wear so few gems.
“Your ladies do not trouble to make themselves beautiful, do they?” said
he. “With us, the women take so much trouble that even the plain make
themselves handsome.”
He was an excellent guide, energetic and intelligent, talking French
well, and had been a good deal with Englishmen on various shooting
expeditions, so understood English ways.
I found the market-place of Jarette very interesting to sketch. There was
always a great crowd in the morning, selling meat, vegetables, grain,
tiny dried fish, poultry, etc. The walls were mostly mud coloured and
the men in clothes the colour of earth, too, with only now and again the
bright red or blue of a woman’s veil, or the striped skirt they wear
in Gabès. But the brilliance of the sun made the whole scene sparkle
and glow. The alley way in which I sometimes sat was roofed with palm
leaf, through which one saw chinks of deep blue sky. The walls seemed
to throb with refracted light, and at the end of the shadowed tunnel
was a vignette of the busy market-place, sharp and clear in the intense
sunlight. Figures squatted round wares arranged on the ground, others
strode past carrying bags of grain. Here a negro was selling oranges, or
a butcher auctioning pieces of horrid carmine to an intent crowd. Small
boys looking like gnomes in their pointed hoods, with brown faces and
bare legs, tiny girls carrying solemn-eyed babies, the black mysterious
figures of veiled women, or a group of lightly veiled village girls
coming past with a swing of drooping earrings and shapely arms holding
burdens on their shoulder, swinging blue and red draperies, long dark
eyes, and the blue tattoo marking on chin and cheek considered beautiful.
Working away at my sketch I got a vague yet distinct picture in my mind
of them as they passed; and the little donkeys, ridden by figures sitting
on the rump and keeping up a flail-like motion of yellow slippered feet
against their dusky sides, and shouting “Aarr-r-rh!”
All was bustle and excitement, and under the shelter of my roofed way
were stacks of green vegetables and the cool purple and cream of turnips.
The sunshine permeated everything outside, flooded market-place and crowd
in a torrent of light, not golden, but a brilliant clear light in which
things stood out sharply etched and distinct. A North African winter
sunshine, amazingly brilliant, yet without much heat. The sun had not
yet become the tyrant of summer, when men fly from his rays, and night
becomes little less breathless than the day, when palms hang motionless
in the sultry glare and people leave their mud dwellings for the shade
of the oasis, when the glittering sea breaks on a blinding beach, and
the earth lies panting and scorched. These are the days, I suppose, when
the mind turns with longing to the grey washes of rain in England, to the
cool depths of summer woods and the freshness of clear springs amongst
green ferns. For the shadow of a rock in a weary land.
On my way back from the market-place one day I passed an old
sand-diviner, who sat wrapped in his neutral-coloured robes by the
roadside, foretelling the mysteries of the future to a negress who
squatted in front of him, evidently come on behalf of her mistress.
On his knee he held a large book, and in front of him was the little
wooden tray spread with sand, in which he made mysterious signs with his
fingers. He was a kindly-looking old man, wrinkled and brown, his grey
beard giving him a reverend appearance. He gave me permission to sketch
him, and went on with his fortune telling. Sometimes he would look at
his book and then peer with his mild eyes into the blue of the sky above
his head, whilst the woman watched his movements with apprehension. I
finished the sketch of him and he was delighted with it, and said:
“Put under it that my name is El Haj Hassim ben Abdallah Na Hali and that
I can tell all things. I know all the stars by name and the power they
have over each man’s fate. Nothing is hid from me.”
[Illustration: I. M. D.
El Haj Hassin ben Abdulla Na Hali: Sand Diviner.
Gabès. 11.1.23.]
I told Mansour to ask him if he could tell what had passed in my life,
and listened, smiling, for his answer. First he must know my name and the
name of my mother. After repeating them with great difficulty he smoothed
the sand in his tray and marked it six times with his finger. Then he
looked up to the sky for a time, and spoke:
“This lady has a hard head; she does not easily believe. She loves to see
new things and to travel to strange lands. Six countries has she already
seen and yet more will she visit. Many times has she crossed great
waters, once in peril of her life. She has been married, and he who was
her husband is dead. Six men have been her friends—” (A little nervous
as to the possible signification of the Arab word ‘friend,’ I hastily
repudiated the last statement)—“and one will take her to a far country
and will leave her there. It is spoken.”
Fortunately my hard head prevented my being much perturbed by the
unpleasantness of the last part of the prophecy, but I was much charmed
by the old man and his simplicity. Every day he sits there, his gentle
face bent over his book, and from far and near people come to consult
him. Mansour was distressed that I had not taken his speech more
seriously.
“Of a truth he knows everything; I when young went to consult him, for
I was greatly in love with a beautiful girl whom I wanted to marry. So
great was her beauty that I could neither eat nor sleep for the thought
of her. But the Sand-diviner said: ‘Lo, my son, put all thought of her
from thy mind, for she will never be thine, not even wert thou to lay a
bag of gold at her feet would she look upon thee.’ And it was even as
he said. She would not look upon me. And for the space of five months I
was grievously ill because of the love I bore her. Thus do I know the
Sand-diviner speaks truth.”
We trudged along the dusty road in silence and then I ventured to ask if
he had married someone else, and the cheerfulness of his answer relieved
my anxiety. Yes, he was married, and his wife was “une vraie Arabe,”
for she made herself beautiful for him, and three times in the week she
went to the baths and perfumed herself, “and this she will continue to
do,” he remarked, “till she has children. Then will she have no other
thought but of her babes, for is not this the nature of women?” he ended
philosophically.
He told me later that he had had three wives (he was a man of about 28,
I think) and his first two he had divorced because they did not get on
with his mother. “But one of them I shall marry again when my parents are
no longer alive, for I am very fond of her, and she is waiting for me.”
He explained to me that the first duty of a Moslem is to his parents.
He brings his wife back to the paternal house, and unless there are too
many children they live there till the death of the older generation.
In any case a son must support his parents all the days of their life.
It is not forbidden to a Moslem to marry a Christian, there is much in
the Bible that is also in the Koran. But never may the Mohammedans have
anything to do with the Jews. They are an accursed people, a people set
apart——
On my way to sketch one day, I saw an Arab funeral at the graveyard and
watched for a time. The body, wrapped in folds of stuff and covered
with a red cloth, lay on a light bier carried shoulder high, followed
by a procession of men intoning verses from the Koran. There was a
service held at the grave side, the professional mourners sitting in
a circle chanting and swaying backwards and forwards. In this case it
was the funeral of a woman, but no women were there, their presence not
being allowed by custom. The foot of the grave had been bricked round
and the corpse was taken from the bier and laid sideways in it, being
then bricked in and the earth filled in on the top. The leader of the
procession went round giving money to each of its members, and one by one
the mourners condoled with the eldest son, kissing him on the shoulder.
Mansour watched from afar, for the dead woman was the mother of a friend
of his, and he should have been attending the funeral.
“Life is but a short gift,” he said, “and soon over. To each of us must
come an hour like this. We come from the dark and we enter the dark
again.”
He told me the near relatives of the deceased must take off all
jewellery, must fast for two days, and for the space of several months
must not cut their hair nor attend entertainments of any sort. I asked
how soon a man usually re-married after his wife’s death and was told
in about six months’ time. He was shocked at our English custom of two
years of widowhood. “It is not good for man to live alone,” he remarked
sententiously.
On the death of one of the family, the women shriek and tear their faces
with their nails. Everything is taken out of the room and the body is
wrapped in a fine cloth and laid on a mattress on the ground, with its
face towards Mecca, where it is visited by relations and friends. The
burial takes place within twenty-four hours of death. When the corpse is
lifted on to the bier, all children who are too young to talk are taken
away from the home, there being a popular belief that they might hear the
three cries said to be given by the dead when leaving his dwelling place,
and so become dumb. Many willing helpers give assistance in carrying the
bier, the Koran promising the remission of ten sins for every step taken
in this way. It also promises forgiveness of a sin to all who follow in
the procession. A piece of reed is placed in the tomb, containing copies
of the prayer recommending the soul of the dead to the angels who will
enquire of him regarding his orthodoxy. The assistants, before the grave
is filled in, say, “Thou hast come from the earth, and to the earth
thou returnest, whither we shall follow thee.” They each throw a handful
of earth into the tomb, and it is then filled in, the gravedigger, when
his work is finished, crying, “May he be forgiven!” The near relatives
may cook no food for three days after the death, but may eat of what is
brought to them. On the third day, readers of the Koran recite verses of
it in the house of mourning, and the ceremonials are then finished.