ALGIERS AND BEYOND
To get into the interior back of Algiers, you make your start from
Maison Carrée. Here one gets his first glimpse of the real countryside
of Algeria. These visions of the Arab life of olden times are quite the
most interesting features of the country. Civilization has crept in and
rubbed shoulders very hard here and there; but still the Arab trader,
workman, and shopkeeper conducts his affairs much as he did before he
carried a dollar watch and lighted his cigarettes with safety matches.
The kaleidoscopic life of the market at Maison Carrée is one of the
sights of suburban Algiers. Here on a vast, dusty down, packed
everywhere with donkeys, mules and blooded Arabians, and there in a
great enclosure containing three or five thousand sheep, is carried on
as lively a bit of trading as one will observe anywhere outside a Norman
horse-fair or a land sale on some newly opened reservation in the Far
West.
Horses, donkeys, mules, and sheep cry out in all the varied accents of
their groans and bleatings, the sheep and their lambs, lying with their
four feet tied together, complaining the loudest. Hundreds of Arabs,
Kabyles, Turks, Jews, and Europeans bustle and rustle about in
picturesque disorder, doing nothing apparently, but vociferating and
grimacing. All sorts of footwear and head-gear are here, turbans, fezes,
_haiks_, sandals, sabots, and _espadrilles_. Gay broidered vestments and
dirty rent burnouses jostle each other at every step.
Mutton is up or down to-day, a sheep may sell for eight francs or it may
sell for twenty, and the buyer or seller is glad or sorry, he laughs, or
he weeps,--but he smokes and drinks coffee at all times nevertheless.
In a snug corner are corralled some Arab steers and cows, a rare sight
even in the markets of Algiers. One eats mutton all the time and
everywhere, but seldom beef. The butchers of Algiers corner it for the
_milords_ and millionaires of the Mustapha hotel, who demand "underdone"
beefsteaks and "blood-running" roasts of beef for breakfast, dinner, and
supper.
An Arabian horse, so-called, but not a blooded beast, sells here for
from eighty to two hundred francs. High-priced stock is rare here,
hence there is little horse-trading of the swindling variety, and no
horse thieving. The Arab _maquignons_, dressed in half European and half
desert fashion, bowler hats and a burnous, sandals and bright blue socks
with red clocks on them, are, however, more insistent, if possible, than
their brothers of Brittany.
"You want to buy a horse, _un chiv'l_?" says a greasy-looking
blackamoor. "_Moi, z'en connaiz-un, 130 francs, mais z'i peux ti l'avoir
pour 95._" You don't want to buy a horse, of course, but you ask its
age. "_Moi, s'i te sure, neuf ou dix ans peut-être--douze ans, mais ze,
ze le connais, il trotte comme la gazelle._" It's all very vague,
including the French, and you get away as soon as you can, glad at any
rate that you have lost neither time nor money.
All the trading of the Arab market is, as the French say, pushed to the
limit. Merchandizing describes the process, and describes it well. A
hundred sous, a _pièce_ only, refused or offered, will make or break a
bargain almost on the eve of being concluded.
An Arab trader in--well, everything--has just sold half a ton of coal to
a farmer living a dozen kilometres out in the country. The farmer bought
it "delivered," and the Arab coal merchant of the moment bargains with
a Camel Sheik for fifty sous to deliver the sooty charge by means of
three camels. Three camels, twenty-four kilometres (a day's journey out
and back), and a driver costs fifty sous, two francs and a half, a half
a dollar. It's a better bargain than you could make, and you marvel at
it.
A troop of little donkeys comes trotting up the hillside to the market,
loaded with grain, dates, peanuts, and some skinny fowls and ducks. They
have "dog-trotted" in from Rovigo, thirty kilometres distant, and they
will trot back again as lively after breakfast, their owner beating them
over the flanks all the way. Poor, patient, clever little beasts,
docile, but not willing! Yes, not willing; a donkey is never willing,
whatever land he may live in.
Booths and tents line the sides of the great square, filled with the
gimcrack novelties of England, France, Germany, and America,--and the
more exotic folderols of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Jews sell
calico, and Turks and Greeks sell fraudulent gold and silver jewelry and
coral beads made of glass melted in a crucible. Merchandise of all sorts
and of all values is spread on the bare ground. A pair of boxing gloves,
an automobile horn, a sword with a broken blade, and all kinds of
trumpery rubbish cast off from another world are here; and before night
somebody will be found to buy even the boxing-gloves.
Europeans, too, are stall-holders in this great rag-fair. Spaniards and
Maltese are in the greatest proportions, and the only Frenchmen one sees
are the strolling gendarmes poking about everywhere.
Noon comes, and everybody with a soul above trade repairs to a
restaurant of the middle class near by, a great marble hall fitted with
marble top tables. Here every one lunches with a great deal of
gesticulation and clamour. It is very primitive, this Algerian
quick-lunch, but it is cleanly and the food is good. For twenty-five
sous you may have a _bouillabaisse_, a dish of _petits pois_, two
_oeufs à la coque_, goat's-milk cheese, some biscuits and fruit for
dessert, a half-bottle of wine and _café et kirsch_. Not so bad, is it?
"The better one knows Algeria," says the brigadier of gendarmes, or the
lieutenant in some army bivouac, "the less one knows the Arab." The
point of view is traditional. The serenity and taciturn manner of the
Arab is only to be likened to that of the Celestial Wong Hop or Ah Sin.
What the Arab thinks about, and what he is likely to do next no one
knows, or can even conjecture with any degree of certainty. All one can
do is to jump at conclusions and see what happens--to himself or the
Arab.
When the Duc d'Aumale conquered Biskra, the Arabs promptly retook it,
practically, if not officially, and gave themselves up to such abandoned
orgies that not even the military authorities could make them tractable.
The authorities at Paris were at their wits' ends how to win the hearts
of the Arabs, and conquer them morally as well as physically.
Louis-Philippe made a shrewd guess and sent Robert Houdin, the
prestidigitateur, down into the desert. From that time on the Arab of
Algeria has been the tractable servant of the French.
Straight south from Maison Carrée, across the Mitidja, eighteen
kilometres more or less, lies Arba, the beginning of the real open
country. A steam-tram goes on ten kilometres farther, to Rovigo. At
Arba, however, the "Route Nationale" to the desert's edge branches off
via Aumale to Bou-Saada and beyond, where the real desert opens out into
the infinite mirage.
The nearest the camel caravans of the desert ever get to Algiers is at
this little market town of Arba. Here on a market day (Wednesday) may
be seen a few stray, mangy specimens of the type loaded with grapes,
figs, or dates, though usually the _bourriquet_, or donkey, is the beast
of burden. The Arab never carries his burdens himself, as do other
peasants. It is beneath his dignity; for no matter how ragged or rusty
he is, his burnous is sacred from all wear and tear possible to be
avoided.
Except for its great market back of its modern ugly mosque, there is not
much to see in Arba. Here is even a more heterogeneous native riffraff
than one sees at Maison Carrée, Blida, or Boufarik. And indeed it is all
"native," for the Turks and Jews of the coast towns are absent. The
trading is all done in produce. And if the native merchant, in his
little shop or stall where he sells foreign-made clothes and gimcracks,
cannot sell for cash, he is willing to barter for a sack of grain or a
few sheep or some goat skins. The Jew trader will not bother with this
kind of traffic. He wants to deal for cash, either as buyer or seller,
he doesn't care which.
Here a native shoemaker, or rather maker of _babouches_, sits beneath a
rude shelter and fashions fat, tubby slippers out of dingy skins and
sole leather with the fur left on. On another side is a sweetmeat
seller, a baker of honey cakes, and a vegetable dealer, and even a
butcher, who tries to lead his Mussulman brother astray and get him to
become a carnivorous animal like us Christians. He doesn't succeed very
well, because the Arab eats very little meat.
In a tent, beneath a great palm, sits the physician and dentist of the
tribe, with all his paraphernalia of philters and potions and
tooth-pulling appliances. Like the rest of us, the Arab suffers from
toothache sometimes; and he wastes no time but goes and "has it out" at
the first opportunity. The procedure of the Arab tooth-puller is no more
barbaric than our own, and the possessor of the refractory molar has an
equally hard time. All these things and more one sees at Arba's weekly
market. It is all very strange and amusing.
Aumale is nearly a hundred kilometres beyond Arba, with nothing between
except occasional settlements of a few score of Europeans and a few
hundreds of Arabs. Communication with Algiers from Aumale is by a crazy,
rocking seven-horse diligence which covers the ground, by night as often
as by day, in nine or ten hours, at a gait of six or seven miles an
hour, and at a cost of as many francs.
Aumale is nothing but the administrative centre of a _commune_ blessed
with two good enough inns and a long, straight main street running from
end to end. As the Auzia of the Romans, it was formerly occupied by a
strong garrison. The Turks in turn built a fortress on the same site,
and the French occupied it as a military post in 1846, giving it a
second baptism in the name of the Duc d'Aumale, the son of
Louis-Philippe.
From Aumale on to Bou-Saada is another hundred and twenty-four
kilometres over a new-made "Route Nationale." It is a good enough road
for a diligence, which makes the journey in sixteen or eighteen hours,
including stops. There is no accommodation _en route_ save that
furnished by the government _bordjs_, the _caravanserai_ and the
_café-maures_.
Here, at last, one is launched into the desert itself. The journey is
one of strange, impressive novelty, though nothing very venturesome. In
case of a prolonged breakdown, there is nothing to do but to drink the
water of the _redir_ (a sort of a natural pool reservoir hollowed out of
the rock), and be thankful indeed if your curled-up Arab travelling
companion will share his crust with you. To him white bread, if only
soaked in water, is a great luxury; to you it will seem pretty slim; but
then we are overfed as a rule and an Arab dietary for a time will
probably prove beneficial. The life of the nomad Arab is a very full
one, but it is not a very active nor luxurious one.
Through wonderful ocean-like mirages and clouds of dust whirled up by
the sirocco, a veritable "_tourbillon de poussière_," as Madame de
Sévigné would have called it, we rolled off the last kilometres of our
tiresome journey, just as the last rays of the blood-red sun were paling
before the coming night. We arrived at Bou-Saada's Hotel Bailly just as
the last remnants of the _table d'hôte_ were being cleared away, which,
in this little border town, half civilized and half savage, means thrown
into the streets to furnish food for chickens. How the inhabitant of the
Algerian small town ever separates his own fowls from those of his
neighbours is a great question, since they all run loose in the common
feeding-ground of the open street.
Bou-Saada is even of less importance than Aumale to the average person.
But for the artist it is a paradise. It is not Tlemcen, it has no grand
mosques; it is not Tunis, it has no great _souks_ and bazaars; but it is
quaintly native in every crooked street huddled around the military post
and the hotels. The life of
[Illustration]
the leather and silver workers, and of the butcher, the baker and the
seller of blankets and foodstuffs is, as yet, unspoiled and
uncontaminated with anything more worldly than oil-lamps. The conducted
tourist has not yet reached Bou-Saada, and consequently the native life
of the place is all the more real.
Here is an account of a café acquaintance made at Bou-Saada.
Zorah-ben-Mohammed was a pretty girl, according to the standards of her
people, with a laugh like an _houri_. She confessed to eighteen years,
and it is probable that she owned no more. The rice powder and the
_maquillage_ were thick on her cheek, whilst the rest of her face was
frankly ochre. For all that she was a pretty girl and came perilously
near convincing us of it, though hers was a beauty far removed from our
own preconceived standards.
Great black eyes and a massive _coiffe_ of raven-black hair topped off
her charms. Below she was clad in a corsage of gold-embroidered velvet
and an ample silk _pantalon_ that might indeed have been a skirt, so
large and thick were its folds. Bijoux she had galore. They may have
been of gold and silver and precious stones, or they may not; but they
were precious to her and added not a little to her graces. Bracelets
bound her wrists and her ankles, and her finger-tips were dyed red with
henna.
Zora or Zorah Fatma, or in Arab, Fetouma, are the girlish names which
most please their bearer, and our friend Zorah was a queen in her class.
Zorah served the coffee in the little Moorish café in Bou-Saada's
market-place, into which we had tumbled to escape a sudden sandstorm
blown in from the desert. Her powers of conversation were not great; she
did not know many French words and we still fewer Arab ones, so our
respective vocabularies were soon exhausted. We admired her and made
remarks upon her,--which was what she wanted, and, though the charge for
the coffee was only two sous a cup, she was artful enough to worm a
_pourboire_ of fifty centimes apiece out of us for the privilege of
being served by her.
As we left, Zorah, with her professional little laugh on her lips, cried
out, "_redoua, redoua!_" (to-morrow, to-morrow!) "Well--perhaps!" we
answered. "_Peut-être que oui! Peut-être que non!_"
A visit to the marabout at El Hamel, fifteen kilometres from Bou-Saada,
is one of the things to do. We descended upon him in his hermit shrine,
and found him seated on a great carpet of brilliant colouring and
reclining on an enormous cushion of embroidered silk,--not the kind the
Tunisian workers try to sell steamship-cruising tourists during their
day on shore, but the real gold-embroidered, silky stuff, such, as
dressed the characters of the Arabian nights.
Hung about the marabout's neck was his chaplet of little ebony beads,
and behind his head hung an embroidered silken square, its gold olive
branches and fruit glittering with sun's rays like an aureole.
Grouped about the marabout in a squatting semicircle and listening to
his holy words were a half-dozen or more faithful Mussulmans. One of
them was very old, with a visage ridged like a melon rind, and a fringe
of beard that once was probably black, but was now a scant gray
collaret. His face was the colour of brown earth, but he was manifestly
a pure blooded Arab; there was not even the telltale pearly-blue tint in
the eyes which always marks the half-bred Berber-Arab type. Another,
rolled snug in an old burnous, was by his side, his eyes quite closed
and his head and body rocking as though he was asleep. He probably was.
A third was younger, of perhaps three and thirty, but he was quite as
devout as his elders, though he was more wide-awake, and looked
curiously and interestedly upon us as we stood in the doorway of the
little white temple of a sanctuary awaiting the time when the marabout
should be free of his religious duties.
Our visit was appreciated. We had brought the holy man a few simple
gifts of chocolate, matches, and a couple of candles, and donated twenty
copper sous to his future support. After the adieux of convention were
exchanged, we jogged our little donkeys back to the town by a short cut
through the bed of the Oued Bou-Saada.