IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOSQUE
Old Tunis fortunately remains old Tunis. It has not been spoiled, as has
Algiers, in a way. Its crooked streets and culs-de-sac are still as they
were when pachas kept their harems well filled as a matter of right, and
not by the toleration of the French government.
Surrounding the vast spider's web of narrow streets of old Tunis is a
circling line of tramway, within which is as Oriental an aspect as that
of old (save the electric lights and the American sewing-machines, which
are everywhere). Without this magic circle, all bustles with the
cosmopolitan clamour which we fondly designate twentieth-century
progress and profess to like: automobiles, phonographs, type-writing
machines, railway trains, great hotels, cafés and restaurants, always
the same wherever found.
There is quite as much life and movement in the _souks_ of the old town
of Tunis as on the boulevards of the European quarter, and it is quite
as feverish, but with a difference. The perfume-makers of the Souk des
Parfums still pound their leaves and blossoms by hand in a mortar, and
the saddle and shoe makers still stitch and embroider by hand the
gold-threaded arabesques of their ancestors. You can get all the
products of the _souks_, of the made-in-Belgium variety, which look
quite like the real thing, but in fact are but base "Dutch metal,"
unworthy of Arab, Turk, or Jew, and only fit for strangers. Here in the
_souks_ you must know how to "shop." In Tunis, more than in any other
city along the Mediterranean, one must know how to sift the dross from
the fine metal, and only too frequently the dealer himself will not give
you the frank counsel that you need.
Just off the _Souk des Grains_ is the "Street of the Pearls." In this
romantically named thoroughfare, and huddled close beneath the squat,
mushroom domes of the Mosque of Sidi-Mahrez is a great brass-studded and
bolted doorway, closing an entrance between two svelt marble columns,
stolen from Carthage long ago by some unscrupulous Turk or Arab. Above
is a great Moorish horseshoe arch. This is the sole entrance to a
magnificent, typical Oriental establishment, built three hundred years
since by some Turkish pacha fled from Constantinople for political
reasons and his country's good.
Not long since the proprietor of this fine old house was "sold out." He
wasn't exactly a "poor miserable," but the establishment he was keeping
up was not in keeping with the lining of his purse. He was not as his
forefathers, who, if they toiled not nor yet did spin, had the good luck
to gather riches by some means or other while they lived. Whilst he, on
a scant patrimony to which nothing was being added, was going the pace a
little too fast.
His creditors called in the bailiff, and the bailiff called in the
auctioneer, and the "_bel immeuble_," a "_vaste bâtiment 30 mètres
carrés, avec cour, fontaine et plusieures pièces au rez-de-chaussée, et
balcon_," was put up at auction.
There were no takers, it appeared,--at the price. The "knock-down" was
thirty thousand francs, and it was worth it, the finest house in the
Oriental quarter of Tunis, high and dry and built of marble and tile,
and safe-guarded by the _pigeons de bonheur_, which lodged on the great
central dome of the mosque which overhung the roof-top terrace.
French and Italians, and strangers of all nationalities (including some
affected Mussulmans as well), were piling themselves story upon story in
great apartment houses in the flat, monotonous new town below, laid out
on what a quarter of a century ago was a reedy marsh.
Not one of them would consider for a moment the question of taking on
this fine establishment for a dwelling all his own. They all had their
summer-houses out at Carthage, where they were spoiling the landscape,
as well as that magnificent historic site, by erecting villas of
questionable taste. For their town dwellings these ambitious folk were
one and all bent on living in a flat.
It was in this manner that this fine example of Oriental domicile fell
to our friend, the attaché of the Embassy. He, at least, knew a good
thing when he saw it, and, though he was a bachelor (and never for a
moment thought of setting up a harem in the vast _zenana_ at the rear),
he relished with good will the delights of dwelling in marble halls of
his own,--particularly such splendid ones.
It was a problem as to what our friend should do, on account of the
great size of the many apartments of this Moorish-Arab house; but like
the Japanese and the Moors themselves, he did not make the mistake of
filling them with trumpery bric-à-brac and saddle-bag furniture.
It was more or less a great undertaking for a young man to whom
housekeeping had hitherto been an unknown accomplishment,--this taking
of a great house to live in all alone. For days and weeks, as occasion
offered, he stalked its marble halls and pictured the "Arabian Nights"
over again, and hazarded many soft and sentimental imaginings as to the
personalities of the veiled beauties who once made it their home.
Our friend's first possession was a servant, of the indefinable species
called simply a "man servant;" he at any rate could keep the marbles
white and the tiles burnished, and the dust from out the crevices of the
carved stone vaultings, if there was nothing else to do.
The serving man was readily enough found. He bore the name of Habib, the
Algerian, at least that was the translation that he gave in French of
its queer Arab characters, though his explanation as to how he came to
descend from parents who were born in Kairouan, the Holy City of
Tunisia, and still have the suffix of "_the Algerian_" tacked on at the
end, was not very lucid.
Habib was gentle and faithful, but vain and superstitious. To begin
with, he was perfectly willing to become a part and parcel of the
_ménage_; but he must take rank as a body-servant (whatever his duties
might be), and would not be a mere caretaker or a concierge. For that
M'sieu René must have a Moroccan, the _chiens fidèles_ of North African
concierges, or he must go without. Sleep in the house Habib would not;
the spirits of past dwellers--some of them perhaps wraiths of folk who
had been murdered--would rise up in the dark hours and prevent that; of
that he was sure. Stranger infidels might not believe in spooks and
spirits, but it was a part of Habib's faith that he should not put
himself in a position where they might destroy his rest. Nothing of the
kind had ever happened to him up to now, but the fear was always
present, and he was minded to take all possible precautions.
Habib ultimately capitulated, and came to "sleeping in." He made his
plans stealthily for taking up his residence under the shadow of the
mosque. Though Habib's belongings were few, his preparations for moving
in were elaborate and lengthy.
Habib had not much more than the clothes on his back,--and a
silver-headed cane, without which he never walked the streets of the
European quarter, day or night. "In the Arab town you were safe," he
said, "but '_là-bas_,' with all the civilized and cosmopolitan riffraff
of a great Mediterranean seaport, one's life was not worth a piastre
without a weapon of defence."
You must have a license to carry a revolver in Tunis, a permission which
the authorities do not readily grant to an Arab; and anyway Habib was
afraid of firearms (he was afraid of most everything, as it appeared
later, even work), so he resorted to a cane.
With Habib's clothes on his back, and his cane, arrived a little plush
pillow about the size of a pincushion. This was to be his protection
against the real, or fancied, evil spirits which he still believed were
lurking away between the walls, as indeed they probably had been for
centuries. This little plush cushion had been deftly fashioned for him,
doubtless, by some veiled Fatmah or Zorah. It may have honestly been
thought by its maker, and of course by Habib, to be an effective
antidote for the wiles of roving spirits, but certainly no one would
ever attribute to it the least virtues as a pillow. The Japanese wooden
head-rest were preferable to Habib's spirit-charmer for wooing
Morpheus.
Habib at last had taken the fatal step, he had become a part and parcel
of the establishment. To be sure he had not much to do; the new patron,
being alone, had furnished only a part of the chambers, apartments, and
salons in semi-European fashion, and Habib's chief duties consisted only
in "turning them out" in succession, on consecutive days, and putting
them in order again. There is not a great quantity of grime and dirt
that ever penetrates beyond the courtyard of an Arab house, and the
actual labour of keeping it clean would please the indolent mind of the
laziest "maid of all work" that ever lived.
Habib handled the situation as well as might be expected--for a time.
Afterwards he fell off a bit. He was faithful, obliging, smiling and
sentimental, but he still slept bad o' nights, or said he did. The
powers of his pincushion pillow were evidently negative or neutral so
far as the particular spirits which lodged here were concerned.
With his new station in life Habib came to an increased importance, and
from a loose white cotton robe or burnous, he came to be the proud
possessor of a flowing creation in crimson silk which was the envy of
all his acquaintances. Beneath it he wore a yellow embroidered vest, red
silk stockings, and yellow boots of Morocco leather, not really boots,
nor yet shoes, but a sort of a cross between a shoe and a moccasin,
which cost him the extravagant sum of twenty francs, half a month's pay.
On his head was perched the conventional red Tunisian fez, with an
inordinately long tassel dangling down behind, as effective a
_chasse-mouches_ as one would want. This was not all. A dollar watch,
with a silver-gilt chain and fob of quaint Kabyle workmanship,--worth
probably twenty times the value of the watch,--completed his personal
adornment.
As an accessory, Habib became the proud possessor of a visiting-card,
which, more than all else, was successful in impressing his confrères
and the neighbouring shopkeepers with his importance.
They imagined him, doubtless, a sort of seneschal or majordomo of some
kingdom in little.
Habib bore his honours lightly and gaily. There was not much fault to be
found with him, simply from the fact that he had so little to do that he
would be a numskull indeed if he could not, or would not, perform it
well. He did perform his duties well, ordinarily, but the first time a
good round day's work fell to his share, such as cleaning down the walls
and mopping up the whole area of marbled floor, he rendered an account
for the services of "_quatre juifs, quarante sous_." Forty cents for the
services of four house-cleaners for a day is not dear, and Habib was not
even of the same faith as his workmen, so the _châtelain_ paid it
gracefully in the next week's account which Habib rendered.
[Illustration: _Habib's Visiting Card_]
Habib's bookkeeping was as original as himself. His accounts for the
house-cleaning week read as follows:
Quatre juifs 2 fcs.
Lait en boite
(pour le matou) 1
Gâteau de miel
(pour la gazelle) 60 centimes
Divers
(tortue, etc.) 1 20
-------------------
Totaux à payer de suite 4 fcs. 80 centimes
How he made both ends meet with the sum total of his modest budget was
ever a problem with our friend.
The city-bred Arab has the reputation of being unreliable in money
matters, but certainly the hidden graft lying dormant in four francs
eighty centimes can not be very great after paying two francs for four
Jews, a franc for condensed milk for the cat, sixty centimes for
honey-cakes for the gazelle, and a franc twenty centimes for sundry and
diverse odds and ends like soap, metal-polish, barley for the turtle,
etc. Habib was certainly a good thing!
Habib's chief pride in the house and its belongings was for the cat, the
gazelle, and the turtle, each of them gifts from the same amiable youth.
Perhaps he had no place to keep them himself, and in this he saw an
opportunity of getting them housed and fed free. Habib may have been
wiser than he looked, but at any rate here the menagerie came to be
installed as proper and picturesque occupants of this marble palace of
other days.
The cat is a useful and even necessary animal in any home, and its
virtues have often been praised. A gazelle is purely decorative, but as
agreeable and affectionate a little beast as ever lived. The turtle
catches flies and lives in a pool of the fountain, and is also useful in
keeping down microbes which might otherwise be disseminated. This array
of live stock ought to be an adjunct of every house with a fountain
courtyard, and if it can be had on the terms as supplied by the faithful
Habib, not forgetting the small cost of the animals' keep, why so much
the better.
The particular quarter where our friend's house was situated was indeed
the most quaintly variegated one in all Tunis. At Bab-Souika one turned
sharply and entered a veritable labyrinth of narrow, twisting streets,
never arriving at the great gate of the house by the same itinerary.
Sometimes you arrived directly, and sometimes you circled and tacked
like a ship at sea.
From the Place Bab-Souika itself, whence radiated a burning fever of the
Arab life of all the ten tribes, it was but the proverbial stone's
throw, by a bird's-eye view from the roof-top terrace, though by the
twisting lanes and alleys it was perhaps a kilometre. There was an
occultism and Orientalism here that was to be seen nowhere else in North
Africa, and for "mystery" it beat that of the desert, over which poets
and novelists rave, all to pieces. No one but an Arab and a Mussulman
could ever be a part of that wonderful kaleidoscopic chapter of life. We
poor dogs of infidels can only stand by and wonder.
All night long the Place Bab-Souika was as animated as in the day. It
was fringed with many Moorish cafés, interspersed with the _échoppes_ of
the Tunisian Jews, who push in everywhere, and make a living off of
pickings that others think too trivial for their talents. A few
boulevard-like trees flank a group of transformed and remodelled Arab
houses and give a suspicion of modernity, but the general aspect
throughout is Oriental and mediæval. A regular ant-hill of hiving
humanity: Moors, Arabs, Turks, Jews, Soudanese, and Touaregs, all with
costumes as varied as their origins. Here a creamy-white burnous jostles
with a baggy blue _pantalon_, and the cowled nodding head of a Bedouin
rests on the shoulder of an equally somnolent red-fezzed soldier of the
Bey. The more wide-awake members of the hangers-on of the cafés enliven
the scene with singing and even dancing, perhaps with some Tunisian
dancing-girl as a partner. All is gay and scintillating as if it were
the most gorgeous café of the Boulevard des Italiens. One and all of the
merrymakers are richly costumed, with broidered vests and flowing robes
of silk, and clattering silver ornaments and bouquets of flowers,--or a
single flower stuck behind the ear, like the Spaniard's cigarette. All
blends into a wonderful fanfare of colour, and it was through this
stage-setting our friend had to pass every night as he made his way from
the European town below to his Arab house on the height.
The Oriental, when he is making merry at a café, is wholly indifferent
to the affairs of the workaday world, if he ever did occupy himself
therewith. His point of view is peculiarly his own; we outsiders will
never appreciate it, study the question as we may.
Besides the Moorish cafés, the fruit and sweetmeat sellers seem also to
do as large a midnight traffic as that of the day. The after-theatre
supper of the Arab, if he were given to that sort of thing, would not be
difficult of consummation here.
The Arab old-clo' dealer is another habitué of the neighbourhood.
"_T'meniach! ra sourdis! T'meniach 'ra T'meniach!_" This is the Arab's
old clothes cry. And for a hundred sous, paid over on the Place
Bab-Souika, you can be transformed into a Bedouin from head to
heel,--with a ragged burnous full of holes and a pair of
very-much-down-at-the-heel _babouches_ which have already trod off
untold kilometres on the Tunisian highway and are good for many more.
There is another class of ambulant merchant who is a frequenter of this
most animated of Tunis' native quarter. He deals in a better line of
goods, in that his wares are new and not second-hand, though tawdry
enough, many of them. If you wish you may buy--after appropriate and not
to be avoided bargaining, at which you will probably come off second
best--a collaret of false sequins, an Arab blanket, or a Turkish
ink-pot, which may not be old in spite of its looks. All these things
are made to order to-day, after the ancient models and styles, like the
cotton goods of India with palm-leaf designs, which are mostly made in
Manchester.
"_Veux-tu un foulard, Sidi, un beau foulard de Tounis? Vois achète-moi
ce poignard Kabyle! Tiens, veux-tu ce bracelet pour madame?_" You want
none of these things, but you make out as if you did and accordingly you
buy "something" before you are through, guiltily thinking you have taken
advantage of the poor fellow in that you beat him down from fifteen
francs to five for a foulard which cost him, probably, not more than
thirty sous of some Israelite "_fournisseur_" in the _souks_.
One day Habib the Algerian would work no more. He had succumbed to a bad
case of the wandering foot, though what brought it about, save the ennui
of his position,--not enough work to do--our friend René never knew. It
was doubtful if Habib knew himself. It was as if the termination of
Habib's name had set him to thinking. Habib the Algerian! Why should he
not travel a bit, as did these dogs of Christians who were overrunning
his beloved land, to Algeria even, he who bore the name of the Algerian,
though he had lived since his infancy beneath the shadow of Tunis'
mosques.
"_Où vas-tu?_" asked his employer, as Habib's bag and baggage were on
the door-sill, a parcel of worldly goods now grown to some proportions,
including a nickel alarm-clock, a phonograph, and an oil-stove. American
products all of them.
"_Moi? En Algérie!_" answered Habib in jerky, limpid French.
"_Et pourquoi?_"
"_Pourquoi? Pour rien. Pour aller. Chimin-di-fi andar plus vite que
chevil. Hou! Hou! Hou!_" he continued, attempting to imitate the wheezy
locomotives of the Bôna-Guelma line, which link Tunisia with Algeria,
his eyes meanwhile expressing the joy of an infant.
The travel fever was on with Habib; it had struck in, even as it had
before now with some of the rest of us.
That was the last that was seen or heard of Habib the Algerian, except
that we caught a glimpse of him at the railway station as he was pushing
insistently into a third-class carriage already full to overflowing with
other wandering, huddling Arabs, who, too, thought with Habib that the
"_chimin-di-fi andar plus vite que li chivil. Hou! Hou! Hou!_"
This was probably but the beginning of another chapter of Habib's
history; but now that he was gone he had passed from mind. But he had
left the gazelle, the cat, the goldfish and the turtle behind. It was as
if a part of the old house itself had been wrenched away. Habib had
become a part and parcel of the whole machine, and in spite of his
shortcomings he fitted in with things in a marvellously competent
manner. No other soft-footed Arab could quite take his place, and many
were tried. The cat ate the goldfish, the turtle mysteriously
disappeared up or down a spout, and the gazelle died of a broken heart,
or because of the irregularity of the supply of honey-cakes.
With such sad memories our friend René had to desert his "_maison
arabe_," where he had lived so comfortably, and go and live in a flat in
the new town below, where the view from the windows was comprised
principally of a _kiosque_ of the Paris boulevard variety, a row of
taximètre cabs, and the seven-story façade of another apartment house on
the other side of the street.
There is a fine old Arab house at Tunis, midway between the "Residency"
and the Kasba, still for rent, if any there be who think they would care
to undertake the struggle of keeping it running in proper order. It has
many things in its favour, and some which are manifestly against it, the
chief of these last being the difficulty of solving the servant
question. It is the same question which ruffles householders the world
over, in Tunis as in Toledo, in Kairouan as in Kalamazoo.