TUNIS AND THE SOUKS
"A travers la douceur de tes jeunes jardins
Je m'avance vers toi, Tunis, ville étrangère.
Je te vois du haut des gradins
De ta colline d'herbe et de palmes légères."
By sea one approaches Tunis through the canal which runs from La
Goulette to the _quais_ and docks in the new town of Tunis; and one pays
the company which exploits the harbour works four francs for the
privilege. It's progress if you like, but it's about the most expensive
half a dozen miles of travel by water that exists in all the known
world.
By land one arrives by railway, and is mulcted a similar amount by some
red-fezzed, nut-brown Arab for pointing out the way to your hotel. The
_porteurs_, _portefaix_, and _faccini_ who carry your luggage at Tunis
are most importunate. If they happen to tumble your trunk overboard,
they still strike you for their pay. You say: "_Pourquoi vous
donnerais-je?_" And the answer is: "_Parceque c'est moi qui a perdu
votre malle._" Moral, travel light. You take your choice, it's only four
francs either way. And truly it is worth it, for there is nothing, short
of Constantinople or Cairo, as Oriental as old Tunis, the Tunis of the
_souks_, of the mosques, and minarets. The other Tunis, that one down by
the docks, and the new-made land lying before the Arab quarter, is as
conventionally twentieth-century as Paris or New York. It is very up to
date (a sign of prosperity and progress), and that's what the French and
native government officials are working for. Tunis is the coming land of
exploitation, a little corner of the globe as rich in the products of
nature, mines and fruits and vegetables, as any other wherever found.
The Lake of Tunis is no longer seething with the variegated commerce of
old; things are more prosaic with steam than with sail, but to pass
through her sea-gate is to be surrounded by the people of the Bible, the
Arabian Nights, and the Alhambra of the days of the Moors. Tunis is the
veritable gate of Eastern life, of the life of Haroun-Al-Rachid. The
European city by the harbour is of to-day. The walled native city is
almost unconscious of the existence of modern Europe. It is the most
interesting tourist resort of North Africa, more so than Algiers by far,
with its _souks_, its proximity to Carthage, and its Orientalism.
Tunis is a city of consulates. Not all of them have business to
transact, but still they are there, the consulates of all nations under
the sun. "Do you have many of your country people to look after?" the
writer interrogated of one accredited from a South American government,
a German, by the way, whom he met in a Tunis café. He replied: "But
there are none of my government's people here; they neither live here,
trade here, nor pass through as tourists, as do the English and
Americans." "What then do you do?" he was asked. "I correspond with my
government." "Well, why not be frank about it, that is what most consuls
and consulates do!" The expatriate who wants help or even information
from his government's representative is usually met by some underling,
who at once begins edging him toward the door and says guilelessly:
"This office has no information on that subject," or, "I really don't
know myself; you'll have to see the consul, but just at present...."
These receptions are stupefying in their asininity, but they come to
pass in most consulates, and those at Tunis are no exception.
Tunis' Arab town is less spoilt by the encroachment of outside
influences than that of Algiers. Day or night, it is a wonderful chapter
from the "Arabian Nights" that one lives, as he strolls aimlessly up one
narrow, twisting _ruelle_ and down another. Here is a great towering
minaret of a mosque which seemingly does business at all hours, and
there is a synagogue which has Saturday for a busy day. The
perfume-sellers of the Souk des Parfums are Mohammedans, and intersperse
religion with business; the saddle-makers, jewellers, and
leather-workers are often Jews, and attend strictly to business for six
days in the week and shut up shop on Saturday, make their necessary
devotions quickly and stand around on their door-sills the rest of the
day dressed in their holiday clothes. All castes and creeds are here,
from the Italian chestnut-vendor to the Jew old-clo' dealer, and from
the desert nomad horse-dealer to the town-bred Arab who wears a silk
burnous and carries a cane.
The _souks_ or bazaars of Tunis are the chief delight of the stranger,
and certainly no such "shopping" can be done elsewhere as here; no, not
even at Cairo, for, after all, Tunis is "less spoiled" than Cairo,
though even here the stranger is a fair mark for the Arab trader, who
augments his price a hundred per cent. You must bargain with the
Oriental, be he Arab, Turk, Jew, Hindu, Chinaman, or Japanese, and the
further east you go, the more the necessity for bargaining.
One of the pleasantest features of travel for many, no doubt, is
visiting the shops. Travellers should, however, exercise judgment and
discrimination, and should take a little trouble to ascertain what are
the genuine specialties of the place. "_Articles de touriste_" should at
all times be avoided; nine cases out of ten they are made to sell. At
Tunis, as at Cairo or Constantinople, one is painfully at the mercy of
his guide, who, if he can, takes him to the large shops, which, as a
rule, deal mainly in pseudo-curios, or articles manufactured solely for
strangers. These are invariably the shops where the enterprising
shopkeepers pay the guides the largest commission. No doubt the farce of
solemnly presenting coffee to the purchaser, a custom which the tourist
has been told by his guide-book to expect, is effective "playing-up,"
but the innocent stranger may rest assured that while he is thus
literally imbibing the Oriental atmosphere, he will pay for it as well
in the bill. He may not notice it, but it is there.
[Illustration: _In the Bazaars, Tunis_]
The most characteristic finds to be had in Tunis to-day are the fine old
mirrors, made at Genoa and Florence for wealthy Turks and Arabs of a
hundred or two years ago; _moucharabias_, stolen from some Moorish
house; the thousand and one decorations of tile and baked clay which are
unmistakable as to their genuineness; and good Kabyle silver jewelry.
There are one or two shops in the European quarter where one can be
confident he is getting the real thing, and where they sell it by
weight, at two hundred francs a kilo.
In another category, more or less tawdry to be sure, but ever
fascinating to the stranger, are such things as stuffed lizards,
gazelles' horns and skins, panther and jackal skins, curious engraved
boxes covered with camel-skin, negro tom-toms, castanets, amulets, and
pottery, Arab knives, daggers and muskets, Morocco slippers, saddle-bags
and purses, Touareg weapons and leather goods, ostrich eggs and
feathers, copper bowls and ornaments.
Perhaps the above suggestions will seem prosaic and matter-of-fact to
the sentimental traveller, to whom the very word bazaar offers a
suggestion of romantic adventure, to say nothing of the possibility of
real "discoveries." But in places of tourist resort bargaining is no
longer conducted after the stately fashion of the "Arabian Nights," when
the purchase of a brass tray or an embroidered saddle-cloth was a solemn
treaty, and the bargain for a lamp a diplomatic event, not to be lightly
undertaken or hurriedly concluded. To-day it is simply a businesslike
transaction in which the golden rule plays a no more prominent part than
it does in Chicago's wheat-pit. There is the coffee-drinking left, to be
sure, but that is only part of the game.
The foreign element has made astonishing inroads into the trade of
Tunis, and the Italian, the Greek, the Maltese, and the Jew are
everywhere working at everything. The Jew, more than any other race, has
made the greatest progress, as the following tale, or legend, if it be
not entirely a veracious tale, will show.
A Jew of Tunis a couple of centuries ago commissioned a French merchant
to order for him a cargo of black hats, green shawls and red silk
stockings. When, however, the goods arrived, the Jew repudiated the
order. Haled before the Bey, who in those days administered justice
himself, the Jew denied not only the order, but also all knowledge of
the French merchant. "Where are your witnesses?" asked the Bey of the
Frenchman. "I have none, Sire," he replied, "not even a line of
writing. The order was given me verbally by the Jew." "Then," decided
the Bey, "as it is only oath against oath, I cannot pronounce judgment
in your favour." The Frenchman walked sadly away, knowing that this
meant to him absolute ruin. Hardly had he reached his home, when he was
amazed and alarmed by a great tumult in the streets. Hurrying out to
ascertain its cause, he found a vast crowd, mostly Jews, following one
of the Beylical _entourage_, who was making the following proclamation:
"Every Jew who, within twenty-four hours after the issue of this
proclamation, shall be found in any street of Tunis without a black
beaver hat on his head, a green shawl round his shoulders, and silk
stockings on his legs, shall be forthwith seized and conveyed to the
first court of our palace, where he will be publicly flogged to death."
Within an hour the French merchant's shop was besieged by Jews eager to
pay him any price he chose to ask for his derelict cargo of black hats,
green shawls and red silk stockings.
If the foregoing tale proves anything, it proves hatred of the Jews and
love for the French, and if that state of affairs does not exist to its
fullest extent in Tunis to-day, every competent observer can but remark
that the Tunisian, be he Jew or Berber, under combined French and
Beylical rule is very well cared for indeed.
The life of Tunis is, as might be supposed, very mixed. A Tunisian Arab
will sometimes marry a European, though not often; but never a Jewess.
There is a tale of a certain Arab shopkeeper of the Souk d'Etoffes who
married a stranger from overseas. How the tryst was carried on is not
stated, but married they were, and of course everybody was shocked; not
because it was everybody's business, but because it was nobody's
business.
"Does she really love him?" asked the ladies around the tea-tables at
the Tunisia Palace Hotel when the tale was recounted.
"Well, they look happy," said the discoverer of the _ménage_, "and joy
lasts seven days, or seven years, they say."
"It makes me just sick," said a new-made bride, doing her honeymoon in
the Mediterranean.
"How long has she been married?" asked another; this time a spinster.
"Oh, about two years, and they tell me she gets thinner and thinner each
year. It's the case of oil and water,--the East and the West,--they
can't mix."
This was only gossip, of course, but it was a sign of the times.
The population of Tunis is the most interesting of all nations under the
sun, particularly of a spring or autumn evening as it sits on the broad
terrace of one of the boulevard cafés, well dressed and gay, and the
Arab the gayest of them all. The Arab of Tunis, when he arrives to a
certain distinction, dresses in robes of silk, and silk stockings, too,
which he holds up over his bare calves with a "Boston garter," or a very
good imitation thereof. Certainly an Arab whose burnous, _haïk_,
_gandurah_, _caftan_, socks, and garters are silk must be a "personage."
A curious thing to be remarked in the cafés of Tunis is the avidity with
which the exiled French population devours the Paris papers upon the
arrival of the mail-boat. Another curious thing is the fact that the
newsboys sell them in twos and threes; there not being a mail every day,
they arrive in bunches of two, three, and sometimes four. One glances at
the last one first, but reads it last, at least most people do it that
way. It's human nature.
Throughout Tunis' Arab quarter the wide-spread hand of Fatmah as a sign
of good luck is seen everywhere. It may be stencilled on some shop
window, painted over the chimney in a Moorish café, or even stained upon
the flank of a horse or donkey. The _main de Fatmah_ is the "good-luck"
charm of the Arab, and, as a souvenir to be carried away by the
stranger, in the form of a bangle or watch-charm, is about the most
satisfactory and characteristic thing that can be had.
After the _souks_, the palaces and mosques are of chief interest to the
traveller. One may not enter the mosques--the French authorities hold
the temple of the Mussulman's God inviolate; but the Dar el Bey and the
Bardo, the chief administrative buildings of the native government, may
be checked off the indefatigable tourist's list of "things to see;" as
have been Bunker Hill Monument, the Paris Morgue, and Ellen Terry's
cottage at Winchelsea, for presumably these have been "done" first. Such
is the craze for seeing sights without knowing what they all mean. "Is
it old?" "Does the King, Prince, Bey, or Sultan really live there?" "And
are the blood-spots real?" are fair representatives of
[Illustration]
the class of information which most conventional tourists demand.
The great gates of the inner Arab city of Tunis are most fascinating,
with their swarming hordes of passers-by and their grim battlemented
walls and towers. The new boulevarded streets circle the old town, and
an electric tramway runs in either direction from the Port de France
back again to the Port de France. Outside, all is twentieth-century;
within, all is a couple of hundred years behind the times at least.
High up above all, behind the Dar el Bey and overlooking the roof-tops
of the _souks_ and the town below, is the Kasba and the quaintly
decorated minaret of its mosque, the oldest in Tunis, and quite the
finest of all the decorative minarets of the world of Islam.
Other mosque minarets at Tunis are svelt and beautiful, dainty and more
or less ornate, but they lack the massive luxuriance of that of the
Kasba, which was the work, be it recalled, of Italian infidels, not of
Mussulman faithful.
Within the charmed circle of the outer boulevards Tunis' Arab town has
an appearance as archaic as one may expect to find in these progressive
days. Veiled women are everywhere, and turbaned; high-coiffed, fat,
wobbly Jewesses, and Sicilians and Maltese with poignards in their
belts. It's a mixed crew indeed that makes up the life and movement of
Tunis. This impression is heightened still further when you see the Bey
drive by in state in a dingy carriage drawn by six black,
silver-harnessed mules, the outriders yelling, "_Arri! Arri! Arri!_"
like the donkey-boys of the more plebeian world. This sight is followed
in the twinkling of an eye by a caravan of camels and nomads of the
desert; then perhaps a couple of gaily painted Sicilian carts; an
automobile of a very early vintage; another more modern (the _dernier
cri_, in fact), and finally a troop of little _bourriquets_,
grain-laden, making their way westward into the open country. This
moving panorama, or another as varied, will pass you inside half an hour
as you sit on the terrace of the café opposite the Residency.
At Bab Souika, just without the Arab town, and passed by the tram _en
route_ for the Kasba, is the centre of the popular animation of native
life. In the Halfaouine quarter are the Moorish cafés, at Bab Djedid
still another aspect of Arab loafing and idling, and all of it
picturesque to the extreme.
The Jewish dancers of the cafés of the Place Sidi-Baian are recommended
as "sights to be seen" by Baedeker and Jouanne. These dancers have eyes
like _merlans frits_, and the _ventre doré_, and are of the same variety
that one has become accustomed to on the "Midway" and the "Pike," and in
the "Streets of Cairo," which have made the rounds of recent
expositions. They are no better nor no worse. The only difference is
that here at Biskra, at Constantine, and at Tunis one sees things on
their native heath.
[Illustration: DANCING GIRLS _At_ TUNIS B. McM. 1907]
Everything in the way of a ceremonial at Tunis centres around the Bey
and the Resident-General. The Bey gives a function at the Bardo or at
his palace at La Marsa, and the Governor-General attends. The
Resident-General has a reception at the Residency, and the Bey drives up
behind his six black mules, and, with the first interpreter of his
palace, goes in and pays his respects to the representative of
Republican France, the real ruler of the "Régence." "Bon jour"--"Au
revoir," is about the extent of the conversation expected at such
functions, and with these simple words said, the ceremony is over. But
it is impressive while it lasts, with much gold lace, much bowing and
scraping, much music and much helter-skeltering of the entourage here,
there, and everywhere.
Republican France still holds out for ceremony, and the President's
"Chasse Nationale" each year at Rambouillet is still reminiscent of "La
Chasse Royale" of other days. Not so our bear-hunts in Louisiana
cane-breaks. The Bey of Tunis is still the titular head of his people
and their religion, but the hand that rules the destiny of his Régence
is that of the representative of the French Republic.