Part 12

One scene stands out from the memories of that day. It was just before the hunting with the falcon began. It was a great and solemn scene, fit for a painter’s eye, but no earthly canvas could hold it. The landscape lines were all low and long, immense in extension, the rigid lines of the desert firm and broad. The scheme of composition was one of horizontal planes. In the eastern sky the pink range of naked rock, the Aurès, cut the liquid blue with its almost rosy edges, a bank of color reaching far away into the distance; in the foreground, perhaps half a mile off, a second line of red-toned sand-hills notched the range low down; beneath them, and below the horizon line of the earth, stretched a long row of white-robed Arabs massed standing in a continuous line, and grouped together as in a bas-relief. Every figure was distinct in the brilliant light poured from the descending sun on the vast distances round about. I had never seen humanity and nature posed in just that way. It was a processional bas-relief, immovable and majestic, sculptured on the sand-hills and the rock; it was monumental, architectural, Egyptian. The sight defined for me one quality of desert landscape which I had vaguely felt; it is the bas-relief of nature. The lowness of the visual plane, the clarity of the human figures, the framing of the scene against which everything is relieved, suggest to me the effects of bas-relief; the repose of the Arab, too, the fall of the folds of his garment, the simple actions, have more of the sculptural as a living-thing than I have elsewhere observed. This scene was a supreme example of my meaning and of the artistic intuitions involved; it simplified my perceptions and also universalized them. I saw in it the arts of Egypt on which the immensity of nature still rested, as truly a desert art as the Moorish arabesques at Tlemcen. It was under this splendid and glowing entablature that the black falcon was loosed in air.

The gazelle—delicate and fragile creature—ran a short way ahead; the horsemen followed behind; the bird circled above, sighted his prey, darted swiftly on, and swooped down, striking the animal’s head. The gazelle staggered and ran on as the bird rose, and from his height the falcon swooped again and struck; the animal fell, but sprang up and ran here and there terrified. Again—and again the little creature collapsed and bounded, ran on, but it was dazed and circled feebly; and again the black shadow shot down from the blue, and it was over. The horsemen ran in, and took the falcon from the convulsive body, killed the gazelle, and flung a piece of the flesh to the victor. It was brief and brutal; but it was the reality of life, not human life, but Life itself on earth—the spirit of life as it might be in the desert without a human eye. I drove back through the sunset cloud of dust among the solid press, and came out on long lines of white-robed figures in procession ahead by the countryside, vividly green with the warm spring. I had seen two visions: one, that seemed almost of the eternal; the other, of life’s moment—the living bas-relief on the mountain wall, the gazelle’s death agony in the sand. I think that the earth never seemed to me more like a great amphitheatre than then—a spectacle, solemn, inscrutable, fated.

IV

The processional is an inherent trait in the desert landscape, owing to the fewness of the human figures and their concentration in the vastness of the horizons. Everything seems strung out—herds of goats, wandering camels, even the scattered palms; and in the caravans or troops of horse or military trains the feature is emphasized. It is the trait of a migratory land. The _mise en scène_ for a procession, in the true sense, is superb. The eye centres the scene on the great space and views it whole and entire at a glance; one could see the migration of a tribe or the march of an armed host so.

These reflections came to me the next day when I returned to the race-ground. The general scene was the same. A procession was already forming at the upper end of the field. The white-robed Mzabite group, with brown girdings round their loins and crossing their backs and lacing their turbans, whom I had seen the previous day with their guns, squatting about the splendid banner, were the leaders of the formation, which was on foot. This was peculiarly the Arabs’ day. On the rising ground the procession gradually took shape and stretched out against the sky and the low palms, a long, white line of moving figures, with the high standard borne proudly advanced, Arab music, guns gleaming and sometimes held in the air. It moved, not with a martial look in the European sense, but with an aspect of oriental war. They were marching to be reviewed by their chief near the centre of the course, and to perform before him their _fantasia_, an Arab war game, in which one rank advances rapidly upon another, fires, and whirls swiftly back. They came down the track in gallant show, and as they passed the old chief the mêlée began. Those in front turned to face the rank behind; the second line rushed frantically forward in confusion, every man for himself, fired their guns almost amid the feet of those before them, whirled back waving their weapons, and came on again, repeating the manœuvre. There was a great noise of powder, plenty of smoke and commotion; their bodies were all in violent action, their faces distorted with excitement, their garments fluttering. They came squad after squad, as the groups slowly worked by, and the din began farther up the line. It was a great game, vivid, spectacular, with the smell of powder biting the nostrils, the rouse of fighting blood, the drifting clouds of smoke—a waking dream of personal combat; and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Then came the turn of the _goum_, the cavalry. The caïds, splendid figures in their brilliant red burnooses, came first. Each, single and alone, charged down the course on the gallop with headlong speed, holding in the right hand a gun in air and in the left a sabre; and as they passed the old chief they saluted with the sabre and discharged the gun, and swept on till the thunder of their hoofs died away down the track. The _goum_ followed, a fine body of horsemen, with similar tactics. The Arabs are expert in horsemanship as an art of riding, but it is said they are deficient in that part of the art which lies in care for the mount; they kill their horses. On that day the spectacular charging, the discharge of firearms in motion, the jockey-like cling and rhythm of bodies under the streaming folds of the riders, the _élan_ of the troop, were fascinating, as all skilled physical motion and its accoutrement is to my eyes; but whether my battle sensations were exhausted, or for some other reason, the sight did not interest me so much as the earlier mimic combat on foot. It was not the proper setting for the _fantasia_ of the _goum_. One should see it in the desert when the charging troop comes over the sands to salute some chief or Marabout with his grouped attendants, riding as if to overwhelm, discharging its guns at close quarters, wheeling just in time to avoid the shock of the horses. Here on the race-course it was a show; there in the sands it is a native custom, vivid and gallant with the spirit of a race—a flower of desert chivalry.

What had drawn me to the fête was the desire to see the Arab temperament in some of its violent manifestations. One habitual trait of Arab life to the eye is the repose of its figures, seated or in motion; the grave courtesy, the immobile posture, the public dignity—the decorum. But, speaking of the race, this is the repose of a tropic animal; it wakes to an instant intensity of action, to a tiger violence. It was something of this side of Arab nature that I sought; and I found some suggestion of it in the mimicry of personal combat, the excitement, the confusion, the distorted faces and bodily vehemence of the play; and also in the _goum_ some intimation of the look of their leaders, the old feudality of the desert. It all helped me to reconstruct the warrior, marauding, internecine, old desert world; but it was only fragments of vision. What a vivid race in its splendid and gallant spirit—as full of fascination there as it is dingy in its sodden poverty, earth-bound and earth-soiled, pitiable in its _misère_.

V

It was the music of the Aïssaouas in the night. The din was terrific, barbaric, ear-piercing, instruments and voices, as I entered the little, roughly boarded hall, sufficiently but none too well lighted, in which hung a slight haze of smoky vapor. There were upward of a score of the order with their chief standing, and a few men were seated on one side, who made a place for me among them. The group in front, close by, filled a small, oblong space, in the midst of which over a fire was a fuming pot; near by it two or three musicians were beating the native drum, others struck cymbals, and a line of men, standing and swaying, lifted a keening rhythm of human voices in a continuous cry. A monotonous unison governed the whole music, which came in cadences, falling to a lower note and slower motion, then rising with swift acceleration to a sort of paroxysm, shrill and rapidly vibrating, and again dropping down till a fresh impetus sent the hard, strong, climbing pulse of the rhythm on its high crescendo. There was never any pause; again and again it culminated and fell away; but it could no more stop than blood. Cymbals, drums, voices—continuous din at first, and then a felt rhythm; it was a whip on the senses. Three or four of the figures were more excited; occasionally one bent his head into the fumes of the pot and took long breaths; these would dance, utter wild cries, creep about with muscular contortions, but no one seemed to pay much attention except the chief. He was a tall, large man, of uncommon physical vitality evidently, heavily wrapped in a white burnoose, turbaned; and it was plain that nothing in the room escaped his eye for a moment, as he stood to one side overlooking, and from time to time giving an order of care or restraint for the more excited participants. Once accustomed to the noise and the lights, my eyes found much detail. A man just at my right, with the stare and spasmodic gesture of a halfwitted person, was devouring pieces of the great leaves of the thorn cactus as if it were lettuce. Another went about chewing pieces of broken glass, which he begged for pitifully, to all appearance, and was as pleased when he got it as a child with candy; he ate it with avidity, like a ravenous animal. There seemed to be no arrangement about anything, nothing designated beforehand, but every one did as he pleased, while the shrill music rose and fell, the feet beat time, and the few who were given over to the intoxication, turbanless and half-garmented, swung among their brothers in a kind of exaltation and partial collapse that were dervish-like.

Suddenly a young man who was standing near me undid his turban, threw off the blouse he wore, and, entering the central group among the musicians, bent down his head over the fire and inhaled the fumes with long gasps. He joined in the cry of the voices, danced, and grew quickly excited; he drew his shirt over his head, and thus, half naked, went again to the fire. At a sign from the chief two other men attended him, one on each side, and supported him; and shortly after—he may have been ten minutes under the influences, in all—the chief joined them, and the group came slowly toward me, making the circuit of the others. The youth knelt directly between my knees. He was, perhaps, eighteen, with a handsome face somewhat ascetically lined, but that may have been due merely to his poverty. He was well formed and muscled, bare to the waist. He seemed entirely dazed, and dependent for direction on those about him; his body was bathed in sweat and trembled violently all over; every particle of his flesh quivered; his eyes rolled, showing the whites in vivid contrast to his black hair, and he panted, as if he craved something intensely and blindly. He threw his head far back, exposing his throat, and one of the men, who held a long, straight sword over him, sank the point just at the base of the throat. It was not a deep cut, but the blood flowed freely, trickling down his breast. The whole took place so near me that I could easily have touched the youth without reaching; my knees were almost against his arms. The others helped him to rise, still apparently unconscious, and led him off to one side. Then the surprising thing occurred. The chief held the boy in his arms tenderly, stroked him, caressed his cheeks, kissed him; the boy’s head lay on his breast. Suddenly, as if with a snap, he came to, and instantly seemed perfectly normal, with no trembling, no convulsion, no sign of his previous state. He was let alone, and in the most unconcerned manner put on his shirt and blouse, arranged his turban, and after standing about a few minutes went away.

I stayed on, and my attention was attracted by a little fellow of eight or ten years, a bright street boy, who was wandering about among the others. He got some sort of permission from the chief, and they passed a knife through his right cheek—clear through. He was very proud of the feat, and walked up and down, shaking his head to make the knife waggle on its outer hilted side; but he was not at all excited. I remained perhaps an hour, and then shook hands with the chief, who was gravely courteous, and I went out under the stars; and the din died away in the distance.

The Aïssaouas are an order of magicians and are widely spread from Morocco, where they have their centre at Meknèz, through Algeria and Tunis. Their founder was Sidi Mohammed-ben-Aïssa, of whom many marvellous miracles are related, but all are of the nature of prestidigitation; the association is, indeed, in some ways, a guild of that art. Its repute, however, among the Moslems, has its roots in the old magic of Africa, and rests on the habits of superstition which are the common ground of the veneration of the miracle-working Marabouts. The Aïssaouas claim immunity from many mortal ills. Nothing that they may eat—scorpions, stones, glass—can harm them; poisons are innocuous; wounds close at once and disappear. They are naturally the physicians for such ills in others, and are snake-charmers and wonder-workers. They are very nomadic in their habits, and go widely through the land. Many wild reports are current of their rites at their fêtes, of their sacrificing animals and tearing the flesh in pieces and devouring it raw; but these and other like things are traits of the orgiastic state in the lower stages of civilization everywhere.

It was a faint shadow of the primeval that I had seen. That human cry, mixed with the sharp cymbals and the drums, frantically wavering and receding, was an echo from the central forests far inland; and that fire with the pot was the ghost of fetichistic rite, perhaps the oldest altar of mankind. The scene, the swaying figures, the intoxication of the body, the atmosphere, belonged to the earliest psychic experiences of the race. It suggested the invisible superstition that lays over and fills the present minds of the populace and the desert dwellers. I found the little boy on the street the next day, and he recognized me. I examined his mouth closely, and there was only a white roughness, like a scar, on the inside of his cheek and a scratch on the outside. He became very friendly; and my pleasantest memory of the Aïssaouas is of his street-boy figure standing on the desert, a quarter of a mile or more down the railway track, where he had gone to get near to my train and give me his last good-by with waving hands.

VI

The fascination of the desert, that which makes a desert lover, is not in its incidents, voyages, sights; it is in its life. It is the life of nature. I do not mean the picturesqueness of its human traits, the passage of men and animals over a scene with which they are so sympathetically colored as to seem only a part of its flora and fauna, its transitory efflorescence; nor the landscape with its breadths, infinities, hallucinations, hierarchies of color, _élans_ of the soul and poems of the eye, with which they are in conscious contact. It is a more intimate tie, and something that passes within—purifies, refreshes, and releases. The brain ceases to act; the nerves are put to sleep; the fever is over. The Old World has receded far away; years, decades have passed, dropping their burden of oblivion on all that was, and especially on what was acrid and fiery in the past. It is a return to nature in which she seems to have cast out devils. The senses bring their messages, but they have lost their material utilities. The soul rests in its sensations as a bird floats in the air. It is a foretaste of Nirvana. Thought has ceased; duty is silent; labor has vanished; and the life that is deeper than these and of which they were but mortal fragments, “unconcerning things,” resurges, vibrates, flowers. What a relief! what a transmigration! and what a new sense of vitality—almost of a new sort of vitality! It is the repose, the silence, the concentration of being within—the peace. In the Western world one may attain this at times; the desert imposes it as the habit of the soul that yields itself to its influences. But it is more than this. The cerebral weight is lifted and the physical life resumes its natural lethargies. It is not really lethargic. It is a new kind of existence—the life, unburdened by thought, that has moulded the fine physical nature of this race abounding in energies. What a sense of freedom, of nonchalance and timelessness! What a vigor as I draw in this pure air! The world without a thought has a life of its own, a strange vivacity; it is rich with fresh and unexpected pulses of being; and this renewal and invigoration does not come whip-like, as in the north, with a bracing winter stroke on the blood and nerves; but like a caress, with a softness and a secrecy, a tenderness of the solitude, something almost voluptuous.

These are the words of a desert lover and make no claim on the credence of others; but no words can express the peace, the liberty, the vitality I felt in my desert voyages. The symbol and image of the mood and life I describe is to me the palm-tree. No other tree has ever so influenced my spirit except the cypress in a very different way. I would go out to the oued in the morning, for I could not spare to the day the initial sense of largeness, the tranquil desolation, the sea suggestion of the river bed, with its lonely koubba; and, as the sun warmed, I wandered into the palm gardens of the oasis, and sat on the rough soil, and, as it were, adored the palms. I would lie there for hours, and the sun shone above them. Occasionally Arab workmen would pass near, or a boy or a guardian would come and sit beside me. Otherwise there was only the solitude, the unbroken silence, the repose. The gardens are rude and unkempt, with earth ditches and humps of ground, and an arid look, except where the vivid green of some cereal here and there beneath the palms, or the softer form and foliage of low fruit trees amid their towering stems, give a brighter and more delicate touch to the general scene. There is no luxury of turf or anything garden-like in these precincts of earth and running waters and trees. There is no effeminacy in the palm. Severity is the artistic trait of everything in the desert. The long lines of the landscape here are rigid, solemn, sombre; the naked rock of the mountain ranges is stern, worn to the bone by wind and rain and sand; except for the diaphanous and veiling effects of atmosphere and heat, and the cloud and mist conditions that I have mentioned earlier, an austere sublimity governs the horizons and vistas all around. Even in the sands of the south about Tougourt, where every line the eye rests on is a curve and softens on the eye and lulls it like a diapason of great rhythms, this austerity is not lost from the desert scene. It is the nude in landscape—not mere nakedness of earth, but landscape sculptured and modelled in grand harmonies of line and color; and however it may become fiery with light and heat and darken with the violence of heaven, it always retains its look of bare and solitary power. There is no softness in the race either. Their bodies are cast in hard lines, but often with great physical beauty. There faces are, indeed, seldom of the nobler type; but their fine brown hands, their clear torsos and throats, the curve of strength and elasticity in their firm backs and limbs, with the weathered and sun-toned skin, their _fierté_, their perfection of repose, are objects of delight to an eye that values bodily beauty. To me this splendid vigor and careless abundance of the human beauty of life is one of the elements of the land. They have muscles of steel and lines of living bronze. It is daily art—art brought down from the vague of fancy and out of the museum to live with. The palm is like the land and the people; there is no softness in it; it is the most virile of vegetable growths. Its trunk, its leaves, its sway—but I will not trust myself to describe it. I am never lonely with a palm to look at. I lie on the ground for hours and gaze up at their massed green tops in the blue and the sun and the warmth—“their feet in the water, their heads in the fire.” I am never tired of looking. I do not notice the absence of thought. I am quiet, content, and doing nothing am very much alive if vaguely aware of my life. It is a new mode of living, this vital dreaming—a _volupté_ without weakness, consciousness without meditation, vision without thought. That is the human aspect of this life of nature; and, in the world without, the palm over there symbolizes it for me.

The soldier-poet, Lieutenant Charles Lagarde, whose “Promenade dans le Sahara” I have already mentioned as at once the most realistic and best-portrayed book of the Sahara with which I am acquainted, well describes the palm:

“A monumental tree, puissant, royal; it shares in perfection form, majesty, elegance. Its isolated trunk fills a frame of five leagues and peoples a solitude. Its lift toward heaven has a magnificent simplicity, and it raises also the levels that surround it; it enlarges by contrast the vast sheets of sand on which it elongates at sunset its slender and unmeasured shadow. In groups it has attitudes full of grace; among the tufted shoots rise the unequal and diverging trunks which in turn depress and proudly hold up their plumes. The wind in the palms has strange modulations. Its oscillations have I know not what of the voluptuous; it is the sultana that sways, an attentive slave. The tempest tests it without shaking it; it bends like a bow and springs back with the strength of a sword-blade. All in it breathes primordial energies, and chants the canticle of the Orient.”

VII