CHAPTER XXII

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.

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

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.

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.