DEAD MEN AND DOGS
Though at times unpleasant, it is always interesting to come upon the
scene of a recent battle. Casablanca had been a battlefield of unusual
order. The fight that had taken place was not large or momentous, but
it had peculiarities of its own, and it left some curious wreckage.
Windowless Moorish houses with low arched doors now lay open, the
corners knocked off or vast holes rent in the side, and any man might
enter. Several ‘Saint Houses’ were also shattered, and a mosque near
the Water Port had been deserted to the ‘infidels.’ The French guns
had done great damage, but how could they have missed their mark at a
range of less than a mile! A section of the town had taken fire and
burned. One cluster of dry brush kraals had gone up like so much paper
and was now a heap of fine ash rising like desert sand to every breeze.
Another quarter of a considerable area was untouched by fire, though
not by the hand of the Arab; and what he had left of pots and pans
and other poor utensils the Spaniard and Jew had gathered after his
departure. At the time that we came poking through the quarter only a
tom-tom, and that of inferior clay with a broken drum, was to be found.
Hut after hut we entered through mazes of twisting alleys, the gates
down everywhere or wide ajar; and we found in every case a heap of rags
picked over half-a-dozen times, a heap of earthenware broken to bits by
the Moors in order that no one else might profit. So silent was this
quarter, once the living place of half the Moorish population, that the
shimmering of the sun upon the roofs seemed almost audible. Twice we
came upon Algerians of the French army, in one case two men, in the
other a single stalwart ‘Tirailleur.’ We came to a street of wooden
huts a little higher than the kraals, the _sok_ or market-place of the
neighbourhood. Invariably the doors had been barricaded, and invariably
holes hacked with axes had been made to let in the arm, or, if the
shop was more than four feet square, the body of the looter. In front
of the holes were little heaps of things discarded and smashed. What
fiends these Moors and Arabs are, in all their mad haste to have taken
the time to destroy what they did not want or what they could not carry
off! They had hurried about the streets robbing each others’ bodies and
dressing themselves, hot as the season was, in all the clothes they
could crowd on, shedding ragged garments when they came to newer ones,
always taking the trouble to destroy the old. And I have heard that in
collecting women they acted much in the same way, leaving one woman for
another, ‘going partners,’ one man guarding while the other gathered,
driving the women off at last like cattle, for women among Mohammedans
have a definite market value.
Though the bodies were now removed from the streets it was evident
from the stench that some still lay amongst the wreckage. Flies, great
blue things, buzzed everywhere, rising in swarms as we passed, to
settle again on the wasted sugar or the filthy rubbish and the clots of
blood. Emaciated cats and swollen dogs roused from sleep and slunk away
noiselessly at our approach. One dog, as we entered a house through
a hole torn by a shell, rose and gave one loud bark, but, seeming to
frighten himself, he then backed before us, viciously showing his
teeth, though growling almost inaudibly. Evidently he belonged to the
house. At the fall of night these dogs--I often watched them--would
pass in packs, silently like jackals, out to the fields beyond the
French and Spanish camps, where the bigger battles had taken place and
where a dead Moor or a French artillery horse dried by the sun lay here
and there unburied.
The return of the Moors to the wrecks of their homes began about
the time of our arrival. At first there came in only two or three
wretched-looking creatures, bare-footed and bare-headed, clad usually
in a single shirt which dragged about their dirty legs, robbed of
everything, in some cases even their wives gone. As the Arabs of the
country sought in every way, even to the extent of shooting them, to
prevent their surrender, they were compelled to run the gauntlet at
night; and often at night the flashes of the Arabs’ guns could be seen
from the camp of the French. The miserable Moors who got away lay most
of the night in little groups outside the wire entanglements till their
white flag, generally the tail of a shirt, was seen by the soldiers
at daybreak. The Moors who thus surrendered, after being searched for
weapons, were taken for examination to the office of the general’s
staff, a square brush hut in the centre of the French camp, where,
under a row of fig trees, they awaited their turns. Some Jews among
them, refugees from the troubled villages round about, were careful
in even this their day to keep a distance from the elect of Mohammed,
remaining out in the blinding sun till a soldier of ‘the Legion’ told
them also to get into the shade. The Jews were given bread by their
sympathisers, and they went in first to be questioned because their
examination was not so rigorous as that through which the Moors were
put--humble pie this for the Moors!
When a Moor entered the commander’s office he prostrated himself, as
he would do usually only to his Sultan or some holy man of his creed;
however, he was ordered to rise and go squat in a corner. An officer
who spoke Arabic--and sometimes carried a riding-crop--drew up a chair,
sat over him and put him through an inquisition; and if he showed the
slightest insolence a blow or two across the head soon quelled his
spirit. When the examination was over, however, and the Moor had been
sufficiently humiliated, the French were lenient enough. The man’s
name was recorded and he was then permitted to return to his home and
to resume his trade in peace. He received sometimes a pass, and, if
he could do so in the teeth of his watchful countrymen outside the
barriers, he went back into the interior to fetch such of his women
folk as were safe. But every idle Moor was taken from the streets and
made to work as it is not in his belief that he should--though he was
fed and paid a pittance for his labour. Medical attention was to be
had, though the Mohammedan would not ordinarily avail himself of the
Nazarene remedies.
I should say the French were just, even kindly, to the Moors who
surrendered without arms but to those taken in battle they showed no
mercy. The French army returning from an engagement never brought in
prisoners, and neither men nor officers kept the fact a secret that
those they took they slaughtered.
The French spread terror in the districts round about, and after they
began to penetrate the country and leave in their wake a trail of death
and desolation, the leaders of several tribes near to Casablanca came
in to sue for peace. These were picturesque men with bushed black hair
sticking out sometimes six inches in front of their ears. The older of
them and those less poorly off came on mules, the youth on horses. They
saw General Drude and the French consul, and went away again to discuss
with the other tribesmen the terms that could be had: no arms within
ten miles of Casablanca and protection of caravans bound hither. But
soon it came to be known that the sorties of the French were limited to
a zone apparently of fifteen kilomètres, and the spirit of the Arabs
rose and they became again defiant.