Part 17

It was at the end wall of a small, shut-up Arab house near by, against which it was trained. It was shoulder-high, and grew in stout, hardy stocks. The blithe old man told me it must be more than two hundred years old. I said it was very small for its age; but he added that its growth was very slow, almost imperceptible. It was just showing signs of leaving out; a naked, rough, shrub-like tree, with neither leaf, nor flower, nor fruit; but it was alive, and I still have hopes that in the case of a tree so long-lived I shall some time find it in its season, and eat of it, and perhaps drink its sleepy soul. I went back to the garden and said good-by to my kind and gentle host, and I was really almost as glad to have had this tranquil hospitality and Crusoe memory as if I had met with better luck in my search. I walked back over the rough fields content; and as we drove slowly through the sand in the wide prospect of scattered palm and olive, with the little white domes, quiet in the universal sun, I thought the lotus land was very good as it was.

V

The marvellous boy was waiting at the pier; the sail was set; the steamer, a distant film of gray smoke on the horizon, was sighted; and we cast off. It was a pleasant sail but without the romance of the landing. The boy, almost in my arms, sat steering the boat, and conversed with me with glances of his brown eyes; the sad-faced father amidships gazed vacantly over the sea. We laid a straight course, and it was too soon finished. The embarkation was easy. The old man gave me his benediction with humble eagerness and dignity, and the boy followed me aboard with my things. In the saloon he put his little hand in mine, then to his lips with head bowed, and touched his heart, looked up, smiled, and ran off. I went on deck in time to catch the last wave of his brown hand, and, leaning on the rail, watched them sailing homeward to the palm-set strip of pale orange sky on the long horizon rim.

TRIPOLI

* * * * *

VIII

TRIPOLI

I

Absalom England, a tall grizzled Arab and sea-pilot, saluted me on the deck. The combination of names, race, and occupation might have seemed peculiar to me once, but I was proof against any African vagary. He was a land-pilot now, and took charge of me and mine. I did not lose my liberty, but I had unknowingly parted with all responsibility for myself; thereafter, except in consular guard or barred in my hotel, I was under his incessant watch and ward. I even began to have some value in my own eyes, seeing at what a price I was rated, and could easily have fancied myself a disguised soldan with an inseparable follower. He treated me as something between a son and a sheik. But at the moment, to my unforeseeing eyes, he was only a dark, respectful Arab, with a weather-worn and open-air look, black with many summers, a strong type of a fine race, and with a terrible cough that shook him.

We passed the Turkish officials and sank like a bubble in the variety and vivacity of the land, always so noticeable when one comes from the sea. It was pleasant to be in a city once more; there was noise and movement and things to look at; and almost at once the gray mass of a magnificent ruined arch, half buried in the street, lifted its dark and heavy stones, bossed with obliterated faces and grimy sculpture, among the paltry buildings; a grocery shop with its bright fruits and lettered boxes seemed to have nested like a swallow in its lower stories. It looked like a worn, old ocean rock in that incongruous tide of people and trade—once the proud arch of Marcus Aurelius. A few moments brought us to what elsewhere would have been an obscure hotel but was here the chief hostelry—a house with an interior court as usual, a few chambers opening on dilapidated galleries in a double tier, and rude stairs leading up. Seyd, a Fezzan negro boy, showed me to a tumbled room. It was an unpromising outlook even for a brief sojourn. I went at once to the French consul. The other powers have consuls, except that America at that time had none; but owing to the old position of France as the protector of all Catholics, her representative is pre-eminent in the eyes of the Mohammedans—he is “the consul.” The Consulate was a very fine old Arab house; a magnificent dragoman with negro guards received me in the great silent court and led me up the broad stone stairway to the large and beautiful rooms where I was to feel myself so pleasantly at home. Then Absalom and I fared forth.

I found myself in a true African street with a new trait. It is astonishing what originality crops out in the bare and simple things of this land; one thinks he has seen all, and by some slight shift of the lights something new emerges and is magically touched—the real and common made mysterious, the daily and usual made visionary, the familiar unfamiliar once more. It was a narrow street, vaulted from side to side, and its fresh atmosphere was bathed in that cool obscurity which in this land of fierce and burning rays is like balm to the eyes; and, besides, this street was painted blue, which was to add a caress to the softness of the light. This was the slight and magical touch. A stream of passers went down and up the centre of the blueness; the little shops on either side strung along their bright and curious merchandise of the museum and the fair; and the shadowy, azure-toned perspectives framed each figure as it came near, with flowing robe or dark haik and burdens borne on head and shoulder. The place had an atmosphere all its own, that stays in the memory like perfume. I loved to loiter there afterward, but then we had a goal; and we came at last by flights of steps to the market on the great space near the sea. I had seen the people by the beach from the steamer and wondered at their number; and that was why I had come.

It was by far the greatest market I ever saw. It was truly metropolitan. I went among the plotted squares of merchandise and rows of goods spread out in great heaps and little piles, and along by the small tents islanding their foreign treasures. To tell and name it all would be to inventory a civilization: cloths and finery and trinkets; grains in sacks, amid which I wandered nibbling hard kernels of strange savors, trying unknown nuts and dried fruits; utensils, strange-cornered knives with curves of murder, straight, broad blades; slippers and caps; what seemed to me droves of cows—it was so long since I had seen cows—camels and donkeys; vegetables—bulbs, pods, and heads; things to eat, bobbing in pots and kettles; leathers, hides, straws. It was an improvised exposition—everything that the desert hand produces or manufactures of the pastoral kind or that the desert heart has learned to desire of migratory commerce brought from far away. The grass market especially attracted me with its heaped-up bales of alfa, where camels were unloading the unwieldy and enormous burdens balanced across their backs; and so did the Soudanese corner, with odd straw-work, deep-colored gourds, and skin bottles.

But the stage was the least part of the scene; in this play the crowd was the thing. There were familiar traits, but in its wholeness it was a new crowd. I scanned them as an explorer looks at an unknown tribe from the hills. There was nothing here of Tunisian softness, mild affability and elegance, not the simple and peaceful countenances seen in the Zibans, nor the amiable cheer and brusque energy of the Kabyles, nor the blond beauty of the Chaouias, nor even the forbidding face of the Moor; here was a different temper—the spirit of the horde, the _fierté_ of the desert, the rudeness of nature, borne with an independence of mien, a freedom of gait, unblenching eyes; true desert dwellers. I think I never felt the full meaning and flavor of the word, autochthonous, before. They were the soil made man. There was also, beyond the tough fibre and wild grace of the free life, another impression, which owed perhaps as much to the feeling of the stranger there as to anything explicit in the crowd—a sense of something fierce and hard, an instinct of hostility, of disdain, the egotism of an alien faith master on its own fanatic soil.

This crowd, which fascinated me by its vitality and temper of life, was clad in every variety of burnoose and haik and head-gear; here and there was a crude outbreak of color, as if some one had spilt, and soiled, aniline dyes at random, but the general effect was sober—brown earth colors, mixed blacks and grays, dingy whites, a work-a-day world. There were many negroes. I had already added much to my knowledge of negro types, but here I annexed, as it were, new kingdoms of physiognomy. These men were strange as the tropics: some amazingly long-waisted, some Herculean in measure or extraordinarily lean and bulbous in the shoulders—new species of human heads. Arabs and Berbers, mingled with the mixed blood of half a continent, made the bulk; and here and there stood some richer personages, heavily robed, superbly turbaned, merchants from Ghadamès and from further off, where the desert routes spread fanwise from the Soudan to Timbuctoo, opening on the whole breadth of equatorial Africa, Lake Tchad, and the Niger. For Tripoli has been for long centuries a sea-metropolis—it is now the last sea-metropolis—of the native desert world; hither still comes the raw wealth of Africa, with all the old train and concomitants of caravan, traders, and robber instincts; and here are most variously and numerously gathered the representatives of the untamed tribes. It is the last Mediterranean home of the predatory, migratory, old free desert life. This market, I knew, was the direct descendant of one of the world’s oldest trading-posts, for the early Phoenician merchants established a commercial station here, as they coasted along exploring the unknown world; it was on this beach they landed, no doubt; that was long ago. This market was the child of that old trading-post. It was a wonderful scene there, under the crumbling walls in the blazing sun by the quiet sea.

Late in the afternoon I drove out into the oasis, which is a suburb on the southeast of the city. We were soon in the midst of it and passing along by the familiar scene of palm groves, with fruit trees and vegetables and silent roads. It was a more open country than usual, and there was an abundance of gardens with houses in them; it had more the character of suburban villa life, a place of retirement from the city, than any oasis I had seen. The soil had much red in it, and this gave a strong ground-color over which the greens rose darkly on the blue. The tall wells—the _guerbas_—were a common feature in the gardens, for the oasis is watered in the old way by means of a pulley arrangement between two high standards over which runs a rope worked by a mule or camel or other beast of all work, which tramped to and fro beneath as the goatskin bucket rose and fell. I visited some of these gardens, picked oranges, and wandered about and talked with the laborers. We came out on the desert sharp as the line of a sea beach, cut by the palms; there was a fort or two on the edge, and the hard, barren waste swept away with the finality of an ocean toward the far distant mountain range southward. Two Turkish officers rode up from the route; they were fine figures, splendidly horsed, and looked very real. On the way back we saw many Turkish soldiers, sturdy, capable men, badly clothed but military in every way. I was more interested in the groups and solitary figures returning from the market to their homes, the Bedouins with sticks in their hands or over their shoulders. How they walked! What an erectness in their heads! What an _élan_ in their stride forward! Strangely enough, they reminded me of the virgins of the Erechtheum, the caryatides. I have never elsewhere seen such a pose. How like in color to earth, too, with their browns and grays on the strong tones of the roads they walked along! It was the clearness before twilight, and all the lines of the landscape were lowered and strong in the level rays; the palmy roads, the soldiers, the Bedouins made a picture fuller of life than one usually sees in an oasis. One felt the neighborhood of the city.

When I went out at night the streets were dark; lamps here and there gave a feeble light, stores were open, there were groups about. The cafés I dropped into were not full, unless small, and were all very quiet. There were long bubble pipes to be had, and silent Arabs smoking them; but I contented myself with coffee. It was not interesting, and I went to the Italian-Greek theatre. This was a small hall, but of considerable size, and full of Sicilians and Greeks. They were a hardy looking company, not to say rough. On the stage a girl was being tied to a tree by some Turks; it was a pantomime, and the plot went on and the daring rescue was effected to the satisfaction of the audience. While the stage was being prepared anew, there was the sound of a row at the door. Instantly on either side of me there was a movement and thrust of those hard faces and strong shoulders, like the lift of a dark wave at sea; it reminded me of a mass-play at football, in the old game, only it was bigger, darker, tense; it was fighting blood, always keyed for sudden alarm and instantly ready _en masse_. The little crowd, serried head over head, paused a moment, as an Arab came forward and made a short speech, explaining the trouble. The men fell back to their seats. The play was going on now—it was a variety performance—with two girls singing songs, and the rescued maiden of the pantomime came down to collect pennies. It was curious to see the changing expression on the faces of those men and boys. They had been hard faces, with Sicilian sombreness in repose, rugged with life, with something dark and gloomy in them; now they broke into smiles, their eyes shone and laughed, as she passed among them, they were glad to have her speak to them—it was sunshine breaking out over a rough and stormy sea. There was a dance now; and so the scenes went on till I came away and Absalom piloted me through the dark and deserted ways to the hotel. It was closed of course, but I was not prepared for what followed. There was a great undoing of bars and turning of locks, and I stepped in over the body of a sleeping negro and waited till his companion did up the fastenings. They seemed to me sufficient for a fortress; and, not content with that, these two negroes slept all night on the floor next the door. It was like a mediæval guard room.

II

We were finishing our late nooning at the café which pleased me best near the little park with the old Roman statues by the sea, where the handful of resident Europeans liked to take the air at evening. I was engaged in my favorite occupation of regarding the street. The little room was crowded with natives seated close, quietly gaming or doing nothing; Turkish officers rolled by in carriages; there was continuous passing; a half-dozen _gamins_ played in the street, the most eager-faced, the most lithe-motioned of boys, the most snapping-eyed Jewish bootblacks, quite beyond the nimble Biskris of Algiers reputed to be the kings of the profession in the Mediterranean; on the other side of the street a flower seller was, as always, binding up violets interminably in his lean hands. It was a pleasant scene; but I lazily consented when Absalom suggested that we drive out to the Jewish village. We crossed the street to the cab-stand. I am not good at bargaining, and I am impatient at the farce or tragedy, as the case may be, of a guide beating down a cabman; but my feelings toward Absalom were different. I frankly admired him as he stood in his plain dignity, perfectly motionless, with a long-stemmed rose at his lips, a beautiful half-blown dark bloom with the curves of a shell in its frail, firm petals; and when the figure had dropped deftly and almost noiselessly from fifteen francs to six, “it is just,” said Absalom, and seated me in the carriage with the double harness.

We passed into the pleasant vistas of the oasis, rolling over the red roads with the tumbled earth walls and by the deep-retired houses and the orange gardens, and the air was full of the fresh balm of spring. It was a smiling, green, and blossoming world, and it was good to be alive. I knew it was just such a world that such villages are in, and this one was native to the oasis and partook of its qualities; but it seemed to take only the rudest and roughest of them and to carry them down. It was a disheartening sight. I had never seen so wretched a Jewish village. The houses, the people were of the poorest; and not in an ordinary way. The village was a fantasy of poverty, a _diablerie_. The faces and forms, attitudes, occupations of the people, their mere aggregation, depressed me in a sinister way. Some of them were sharpening sickles on old bones; and others, women with earrings, were working at some primitive industry with their toes, using them as if they were fingers. The little place was thronged and busy as an ant-hill; but the signs of wretched life were everywhere, and most in the bodies of these poor creatures. I was glad to be again in the garden and grove of the roadside, and amid the wholesomeness of nature, as we drove off to the centre of the oasis.

There we found a great house, that seemed to be of some public nature, built on the top of a high, bare hill. It belonged to a pashaw, and its roof commanded the whole view of the oasis and its surroundings. It was somewhat like a rambling summer hotel in aspect. We were admitted as if there were nothing uncommon in our visit, and I mounted to the roof and saw the wide prospect—the white city and blue sea behind, the ring of the palmerai about, the gray desert beyond—and on coming down was taken to a large and rather empty room with a balcony. There Absalom told me that the pashaw, who seemed to be the city governor, would be pleased if I would lend him my carriage, as he had an unexpected call to go to town. Shortly after the pashaw came in. It was evident that Absalom regarded him as a very great man. He shook hands with me, and was gravely courteous; but he understood very little French, and real conversation was out of the question. He ordered coffee, gave me cigarettes, and took me out on the balcony, pointing out the desert mountain range, Djebel-Ghariane, of which there was a fine view, and other features. We drank our coffee, and after perhaps twenty minutes of polite entertainment he took my card, shook hands in a friendly spirit, and bade me good-by with an _au revoir_. I sat alone looking out from the balcony toward those distant mountains over the great desert, smoking the cigarettes he had left me, and thinking of that vast hinterland of fanatic Islam before my eyes, so jealously guarded from exploration, where the fires of hatred against the Christian nations are systematically fed, while a victorious proselytism is sweeping through the central negro tribes, reclaiming them from fetich worship to “the only God.” The carriage was not gone long. We drove back at once, and I found the flower seller by the cab-stand still twining those endless bunches of violets, and jonquils and narcissi, in the sinking sun.

That evening we spent at the Turkish theatre. It was better furnished than the Sicilian. Palms decorated one side of the stage, and large flags draped the back. The centre was occupied by a group of three women of whom the one in the middle was plainly the _prima donna_. She was a striking figure, tall, and, in her dress, attitude, and expression, of the music-hall Cleopatra type. A high, gilt crown rested on her abundant black hair; her eyebrows were straight, the eyes liquid, roving, and full of fire, the mouth and other features large, the throat beautiful and firm; a white veil descended from the crown on either side, ornaments were on her arms and feet, she wore a flashing girdle, but the effect of her person was not dissipated in jewels or color; her figure remained statuesque, linear, and so much so that there seemed to me something almost hieratic in her pose, as she stood there, with the crown and the veil, motionless, the whole semi-barbaric form finely relieved on the broad stripe of the beautiful flag behind. This was when she was in repose; when she sang or danced the effect was quite different. I was not her only admirer. There were a hundred or more men in the hall—no Europeans. They were smoking, talking, moving about in their seats freely, with an indolent café manner, and the performance went on with long waits. The lady of the stage was a favorite; men threw cigarettes to her and engaged her in conversation from the floor, and she would fling back a sentence to them. There was one admirer beyond all the rest. He sat in the centre near the stage, a splendidly appointed youth from Alexandria, garbed in the richest red, with a princely elegance and mien, a gallant; cigarettes were not for him—he stood up and threw kisses with both hands vociferously and numerously; he left no doubt as to his sentiments. Once or twice he attempted to rush the stage, but was restrained. He would go out, and come back loaded with flowers for ammunition. He had a negro rival off to the left, also finely apparelled, but no match in that regard for the Alexandrian red, though he held his own in the attention of both the audience and the queen of the stage. Meanwhile the numbers of the performance lazily succeeded one another; there was music on the zithern and mandolin, the tambour was heard—songs, dances, other girls. It was all perfectly blameless; and, indeed, in my judgment, the Arabs have a stronger sense of public decorum than the northern barbarians at their play. I saw the entertainment out and went to my castle.

III

A drive in the oasis was always worth having; the sky was the purest blue, it was brisk desert air in the nostrils, and notwithstanding my misadventure with the Jewish village I yielded to Absalom’s programme and went to see how the negroes fared at their own rendezvous. It was a lesson to me not to prejudge even a trifling adventure in a new land. The sight was piquant. The village was a little collection of conical roofed huts with brush fences round each one; a few palms feathered the sky over it, and groves of them made the horizon lines, except where the sparkling sea stretched off beneath the bluff. The place was alive with women and children in striped burnooses and nondescript folds, whose rough edges and nutty colors seemed to belong to the complexions and stiff hair, of all varieties of turn, that one saw on every side. They were very poor people, of course, but their miserable state did not make so harsh an impression as in the case of the Jewish village; there was a happy light in their faces and a fitness in the environment of hut and brush under the palms in the sun which made the scene a part of nature. It was a bit of equatorial Africa transplanted and set down here—a Soudanese village in its native aspect, even to that touch of grimace, as of human nature laughing at itself, which negroes have in their wild state. I had a flash of such an experience at Gabès; in the oasis, just below the beautiful sweep of the cascades, there suddenly sprang up before me in the bush a young negress, as wonderfully clad as unclad. It was as if a picture in my geography had come to life. I might have been in a jungle on the banks of the Niger. It was the same here; the degrees of latitude seemed to have got mixed; the scene belonged much further south under a tropic sky, and I lingered about it with interest and curiosity.