# The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 11

SLAVERY—BLACK AND RED
ONE day I paid a visit to the commander of the Fez district, the very able General de Chambrun, formerly military attache to the French Embassy in Washington. Taking me to the large map of the district, he explained with marked frankness and sincerity the situation at the front, where the French forces were from time to time in conflict with the tribes that refused to recognize the authority of the Sultan of Morocco. His very evident candor rather astonished me, as I am familiar with the ordinary attitude of headquarter staffs and their tendency to mysteriousness. When I made some allusion to this, the General responded seriously:
"I could repeat to any one what I have said to you, for France has nothing to hide here. We are acting in accordance with the Treaty of Algeciras and are carrying out our engagements with the sultan in the protectorate of Morocco. We do not want war, but we cannot allow tribes, that are wild and have no comprehension of either the situation or our task, to place obstacles in the way of our civilizing mission. When the fighting is over, we at once go to the unruly tribes with the offerings of peace—we make roads, build hospitals, organize markets and ​help them in their agriculture. You will be able to see all this for yourself, as I shall arrange for you to visit our northern front, which follows along the Spanish Rif and on which some operations are now in progress."
Afterwards the General presented me to some of the members of his staff, who had been working for long periods in Morocco, and later, at a luncheon to which he had invited my wife and myself, to other officers and officials of his command. Thanks to the guiding suggestions and to the assistance of General de Chambrun and his staff, as well as to the courtesy of the French administrative authorities, I succeeded in coming into touch with many of the features of the life of this country which are not revealed to the casual traveler and I am most happy to acknowledge my gratitude to them for this.
After we had returned to our hotel and had rested for a while, I called Hafid and asked him if he had planned to show us the mosque of Mulay Idris, which some of the officers had commended to us as the Mecca of Fez. With a smile our young guide answered:
"I wanted to acquaint you first with the science, politics and art of the capital, afterwards with its faith and every-day life. However, if you so prefer, I shall begin with this last and shall show you our city at its best, that is, in the evening."
Immediately behind Bu Anania and quite up to the gate of Bab Futuh across the river, spreads a labyrinth of innumerable commercial streets. In some of these, which are open to the sky and flooded with the molten sunshine, one can breathe more freely only where the ​shadow of some minaret stands guard and throws its protecting mantle across the way. Others are more or less shaded by squares of ragged cloth, by mats of straw or reeds, by woven willow and laurel twigs or by dense growths of vines that are led across trellises.
Fez el-Bali, owing to its science and art, occupies in the world of Islam a place comparable with that of Constantinople and Bagdad, possessing every element of life within its limits—schools and temples, wise ulema, Godfearing Imams, an aristocracy with a fine artistic sense and with a thorough grounding in politics and, near them, enterprising manufacturers and merchants, distributing their products to the Sudan, Senegal, Egypt and the country of the Bantu Negroes. It is possible that they gained this spirit of commercial enterprise through the infusion of Jewish blood, as masses of Hebrews, not wishing in the time of the Sultan Yakub Abd el-Hakk, to obey the command for all Jews to go and live in the despised quarter, or Mellah, accepted Islam and in time intermarried with Berbers, producing a mixed type with strong Jewish appearance and characteristics. This Fezan bourgeoisie controls the economic and commercial life of the city, managing all the greater undertakings and leaving only the lesser commerce to the Jews of the Mellah.
All the commercial operations of the Moroccan wholesalers are carried through in the kisaria, or market, in the fonduks, or warehouses, or in the innumerable suks with their unending rows of shops. Each branch of commerce or industry groups itself together in a sort of clan, having its common interests and its more or less unified commercial policy, directed by a council of merchants ​forming an exchange. In some of the industrial suks where manual industry predominates, as well as in the manufacture of majolica and porcelain for the mosaics in houses and temples, the best merchants employ workers who hold and guard as heirlooms the formulas, designs and craftsmanship of the old, refined Andalusian art. These workers form a separate corporation, have their own mosque and their own patron saints and live on the farther bank of the river in that part of Fez el-Bali which was originally built and inhabited by Andalusian Moors, who for a long time were hostile to the emigrants from Kairwan. Some painters, weavers, designers and book-binders belong also to this corporation. They produce only repetitions of old historical patterns and, it is said, not one of these artists ever allows himself to create any independent or new design, a circumstance which has led to the preservation in their purity of the most beautiful old Moorish patterns. It is left to artisans and masters not belonging to the corporation to indulge themselves in "decadent" and modern creations. It is interesting to note that in the patterns used on majolica ware one finds Persian, Syrian and Chinese motives, as well as others from the pre-Greek period in Cyprus, an influence that can be explained by the mingling of the Moors with Eastern peoples during pilgrimages to Mecca or expeditions to Persia, India and even to China. Also I was interested to hear from Hafid that this potters' suk boasted its own saint, Sidi Mimun, who was at once a potter and a scholar and, when resting from his wheel, taught his pupils the divine language of the Koran.
​All of these suks lead toward the center of Fez el-Bali, where a barrier encloses the Medina, or the sacred heart of Fez, and where a zaouia, or chapel, as large as an ordinary mosque, stands as a consecrated memorial to the great Sultan of Fez, Mulay Idris, whose ashes repose there in the very midst of the town which he built and raised to the position of power, wealth and splendor. The wooden barrier, or fence, stands as the strong line of separation between the busy suks where the heathen god, Mercury, rules and the sacred precincts of the Moslem shrine. Although only the Faithful could previously enter the consecrated place, we unbelievers are now also allowed to visit it, though we are compelled to bend and pass under this fence that protects it as a guarding screen. Is this, perhaps, not a symbol thought of by Islam to make us show outward respect to Allah and the Prophet?
As we bowed and entered, we found ourselves in quite another world with other men, other thoughts and another atmosphere. Even the hum and bustle of the suks strikes no echo here. Yet the quarter was far from empty, as all its streets were crowded, but with a quiet, flowing, stream of pilgrims coming from near and distant towns and villages to this most revered religious center of all Morocco; with beggars and sick folk, seeking relief; with processions of various religious fraternities, chanting and carrying their banners aloft; with sellers of colored candles, oil and incense and with the conglomerate mixture of religious enthusiasts, Imams and even Marabouts, who were easily identified by the homage paid them by those of the Faithful who kissed their hands and raised the hem of their bournouses to their lips, to ​which marks of respect the saints responded by a touch of the hand on the heads that bent before them.
Though in the streets of Fez the inhabitants seem to have little curiosity in a passing European and even the beggars seldom ask alms of him, here in the Medina it was quite otherwise, for within this sacred enclosure a white man is looked upon with hostility, contempt and hate. It is not at all unusual to be greeted here with inimical words and vicious remarks.
Once well within the barrier we stopped near a temple wall, just beside a large box for the offerings of the Faithful. The crowd observed us in silence and with such expressions in their eyes that it was easy to sense the presence of suppressed feeling. We put some silver coins in the box and took post at a little distance to watch for a moment the passing stream. A few slightly propitiated voices were heard in the crowd, where many discreetly elbowed their neighbors, as they indicated us with their eyes for a moment and then passed on. There was only one who stared at me so persistently that I was finally compelled to turn in his direction and scrutinize him most carefully. At first I took him to be a woman, for he showed a pale, blanched face without a hair on it, fiery eyes, narrow, compressed lips, a slender figure shrouded in a black bournous, small, pampered hands and feet shod in European shoes. After taking in these features at a glance, I again sought the eyes of my close observer.
"A strange face with not one Arab feature," I mused to myself. At the same moment the small man lowered his gaze, pulled the bournous further over his face and ​turned back into the crowd, making some remark as he did so that brought out a half-suppressed laugh.
We turned to watch a strange, colorful picture that was just being unrolled before our eyes. A crowd was pressing under an arcade to kiss a wall covered with a colored stucco decoration in relief and was regarding, with the rapture of ecstasy, the large tracery window supported on two thin columns of pink marble. Three immense oil-lanterns of exquisite workmanship were kept burning night and day before this wall. Behind it in the interior of the temple are the tombs of Mulay Idris and another saint.
As we passed to the front of this chapel, we found at the entrance an immense, carved mahogany screen, which separates the ante-room from the interior, where numerous lamps and candles, in the half-twilight which they themselves created, gave life and brilliance to the gold and enamel that covers the walls and ceiling. The Faithful stopped at the door, kissed the door-posts and, kneeling, prayed to the One God, beside Whom there is none other. The mosque was filled with long rows of Moslems in prayer, kneeling or sitting with crossed legs, raising their hands to heaven, then humbly bowing their heads until their foreheads touched the mosaics of the floor.
"La Illah Illah Allah u Mahommed Rassul Allah Akbar!" rose from everywhere, accompanied by deep sighs, groans, chants and fervent supplications, while the eyes of these burned with the flame of hope that inspired their petitions. At such a time not one among those at prayer will pay any attention or give heed to a passerby, even though he might be a strange foreigner, nor will ​they be disturbed by anything that may happen round them. In such wise does the follower of the Prophet pray in the mosque, near the kubba of a saint or out on the desert at the hours of sunrise and sunset. At such times one feels that the Moslem does not despise the unbeliever, but is only proud, because he, a mortal and sinful man, has received from Allah the right to speak directly with him at these daily hours of prayer, when Allah comes so near to him and has such confidence in the mumen that it stirs his pride and inspires in him the fires of faith.
As we passed out of the Medina, the muezzin, having finished his call to evening prayer, was descending from the minaret of Mulay Idris, and twilight had already begun to soften and blend the heat and brilliance of the day.
Later in the evening, as I was out again with Hafid, he suddenly stopped abruptly in the midst of an explanation, put his finger to his lips, pressed me back into the shadow of a wall and motioned me to watch what was happening down the street we were crossing. I looked and beheld a strange scene. There at the next corner some merchants in white bournouses stood within the circle of light from a large lamp and partially surrounded an unusual group. Three entirely naked natives with Negro features were alternately turning round, and bending over, and lifting a heavy stone and stretching out their arms. Near them and within the circle of the merchants another man held their bournouses, slapped the natives on their necks and shoulders and spoke with evident excitement and persuasion to the group of observers. Then ​the merchants felt the feet, chests and hands of the blacks and spoke in response to the man's representations to them. Hafid bent close to me and whispered:
"We must keep perfectly quiet, in order not to frighten these men. Just there begins the suk El-Ghezel, formerly the slave suk. Christians oppose slavery, while Moslems preserve this ancient institution, as the Koran does not forbid it but only prescribes that the treatment of the slaves shall be good. The traffic is carried on secretly in Fez, but more boldly in the south, where the authority over, and lifting a heavy stone and stretching out their The slaves who are brought here and sold are purchased in the Sudan and in Central Africa. If the abd knows a little of our law, he can ask for a contract, setting forth the period of his slavery and granting him liberty and the status of a citizen at the end of his servitude."
"And women?" I asked.
"These are not brought into the market, owing to the fear of the French authorities; yet women slaves exist and are sold from hand to hand, only with greater secrecy and with much more of an air of mystery than is observed in handling the men."
As we watched, the slaves put their rags of bournouses over themselves and went away in the midst of the group, leaving me there in the shadow with Hafid to ponder over the quite unexpected revelation of the night. Slavery, with good treatment of the purchased human being, a contract and the possibility of gaining liberty and citizenship, with the almost unavoidable attachment that grows up under these conditions in the family for the slave and in the slave for the family of his master—the ​arrangement is only a form and may be better than the conditions existing in many European mines and factories, where men are condemned by the necessities of life to a servitude that often brings them premature death or an old age of illness and misery. Later in some Arabian homes I saw slaves and found that the master of the house treated with equality the honored guest, his brother and the slave who serves the meal or trots before his master's mule to clear a way for him through the crowd.
Following this unexpected contact with the traffic in slaves, while the Moroccan night, with the star-set black mantle of the sky lying close over the earth, hid and blurred the operations, Hafid led me the next day into a very different quarter of the city. Al-Bekri, the Arabian arbiter elegantiarum, poet, traveler and connoisseur of wine, art, horses, and arms as well as confidant of the powerful Omaiyades, who reigned in Seville at the beginning of the eleventh century, visited Fez and has left an account of the two sections into which the capital of Maghreb was then divided by the river and separate encircling walls, Adua el-Kairween and Adua el-Andaluse. In the former dwelt those who had come from Kairwan, fine-looking men, loving art, poetry, science and an easy, gay life. Their houses were set in gardens traversed by artificial canals bringing to them the clean, wholesome water of mountain streams and filled with the finest varieties of lemons, pomegranates, figs and apricots and with grapes of all colors. Art, commerce and the cult of the Prophet were the foundations of the life in this quarter of that Fez which lived a thousand years ago.
​On the opposite shore of the river, which then turned the wheels of a hundred mills, lay the smaller quarter of el-Andaluse, famous for its courageous, strong, industrious men, skilled in agriculture and trade, and for its women of such beauty that they were the dream of the rich masters from Meknes, Marrakesh and Tlemsen and were reputed to have been the reason for numerous expeditions against Fez. Whatever may be the accuracy of this imputation, it is certain that these houris of Spanish extraction were the reason for long-continued combats and strife between the two aduas, as they charmed the men from across the river and witnessed many a fight between the partisans of the two walled towns on one of the neighboring hills, chosen for these tilts.
With time wise rulers of the capital ordered the destruction of the walls facing each other across the river and the building of three bridges to connect these sections of the town, all of which naturally led to the intermingling of the two tribes, so that now nothing remains to distinguish them save the traditional laws and principles of the old Andalusian art.
As we wandered through this Andalusian quarter with Hafid, we came upon a striking picture, which called back to my mind all these tales of the eleventh-century chronicler and built anew for me the romance of those days. Rounding a corner, we came upon a stately old Moor, clad in a bournous dirty with his potter's clay, sitting by his wheel and shaping a graceful jar with the deft, skilled hand of an old craftsman. Near the potter stood a swarthy young girl with naked arms and breast, bearing a pitcher of water on her shoulder. A lamb pressed itself ​against her knee. The face and eyes of the girl were alight with feeling, as she stood gazing tip at an Arab dressed in a thin, white houmous and a turban, tied with a dark-blue cord. He sat a fine, sleek horse, whose golden coat, all flecked with foam, gleamed in the rays of the burning sun. As we watched, the rider bent low and spoke to the girl, frequently touching his hand to his heart, his mouth and his brow. Evidently he was taking leave of both of them and was gazing for a last time into the dark eyes of this Andalusian maid, whose hand he surely was coming one day to claim. The picture, in its setting of old walls, gray-green olive-trees and blue sky, fired the imagination and left us with a lovely bit of sentiment and color by which to remember this romantic quarter.
It was also here, outside the gate, Bab Futuh, that we came upon a scene of quite another character, though filled with interest for me. A large group surrounded three men on horseback, one of whom, clad in a black bournous, had raised himself up in his large Moorish stirrups and was addressing those below him, as he pointed toward the town. On our approach the speaker became silent and drew his bournous closer about him. I was struck with something little short of astonishment to see again the pallid, feminine face, the tight-drawn lips and the unmistakable eyes of the man who had scrutinized me so closely near the shrine of Mulay Idris in the Medina. I had no more than time for a fleeting observation before the rider swung his horse round and led his companions off at full gallop in the direction of Bab Futuh.
​"Who is this man in the black bournous ?" I asked of Hafid.
"I do not recognize him, but, judging by his dress and face, I am sure he is a foreigner, probably from Tunis or, perhaps, a hadj from far away."
We bought some pomegranates and regaled ourselves with this juicy, refreshing fruit as we returned to the town.
There was much that we had yet to see and much that we did see with Hafid which one may not even take the time to mention. There was all the quarter of the Mellah, with the shops of the Jewish merchants, and there was also Fez el-Jdid, or "New" Fez, illustrating in its name how delightfully relative some of the more ancient quarters of the world humorously permit themselves to be; for this parvenu among the sections of the capital dates from the dynasty of the Merinides at the end of the thirteenth century. Then there was the French quarter to add to the Mellah, Fez el-Jdid and Fez el-Bali, making in all four different worlds, which the minaret of Mulay Idris and the Kairween medersa morally and physically dominate with silent and certain power. It is there within Kairween that the most zealous of the Faithful forget, or, more accurately strive not to remember, that unbelievers are here within the circle of these ancient city walls, which have long sheltered those who have received before the very face of Allah the spiritual strength, the pride in Islam and the strong faith in that Fate which is to bring them power and splendor in reward for their fidelity to the Law of the Prophet.
I was musing over all this one day as I walked alone ​from the Meshwar in the direction of El-Douh, when suddenly I felt some one touch my arm and turned to find close to me the young man with the feminine face, holding his black mantle close about him. Without speaking, I waited to see what this mysterious person would say.
"Medersas, dars, fonduks, kisarias, …" he recited in a grave, penetrating voice, separating each word from the other.
"I don't understand," I answered with a shrug of my shoulders.
The stranger lowered his eyes for a second, as if he were troubled, raised them quickly and whispered in Russian:
"When did you come from Russia?"
I hesitated a moment, then answered in the same tongue:
"Not very long ago," at which he smiled and answered:
"The work is everywhere going forward."
I realized that I had before me either a Communist agent or a spy and asked:
"What work?"
He was evidently confused and, wrapping himself in his bournous, soon lost himself in the crowd. Once after this I met this mysterious man near the gate, Bab Gwissa, while Hafid and I were listening to a wandering bard. He was passing through the crowd, and had apparently not seen me, though he must have felt my presence and my constant gaze, for he suddenly turned and walked away. It reminded me of the days in Siberia in 1919, ​when Tartar and Bashkir mullahs and ulema came on missions of propaganda to the Kirghiz camps and to the Moslem soldiers fighting in the army of Admiral Kolchak. My mysterious friend bore the marks of a Tartar from the Volga region and could easily have been a Soviet agent, or even a double representative for both Abd el-Krim and the Soviets, who support every anti-European movement in the hope of fostering trouble and disloyalty among the people of those lands which refuse to recognize and adopt the criminal ideology of Moscow, where the kubba of the false Messiah, Lenine, raises itself beside the walls of the Kremlin as an arrogant mausoleum, defying all that civilization has striven for—faith, morals and the creative thought of the Aryan race—and predicating the wane of power and the demoralization and madness of Europe.
Distracted from the tale of the bard, I found myself wondering over the unexpected conglomeration of individuals that now rub elbows in this holy city of Africa. The great Mulay Idris surely never dreamed that in this Rome, Paris, Lourdes, Oxford and Mecca which he had initiated within one encircling wall the unfaithful Nasara and Ihud (Christians and Jews) would dwell and exercise their power. His Fez of today has been obliged to submit to close contact with Europeans and to some degree of protection from them; yet between this mute acceptance and the goal of confidence and friendship the distance is greater than the long way from the founder's mosque to thrice-blessèd Mecca. The two currents of Moslem and foreigner run side by side in their own separate channels but without mixing in any way. A Berber or an Arab ​may take something from the European life he sees about him, after he has most carefully considered and estimated its value, but he gives nothing in return save a silent appreciation, closely akin to a mild irony and entirely devoid of any thought of assimilation. These desert folk have, for instance, realized the value of European medicine and readily profit by it, even going so far as to ask tire doctors to attend their sick wives; yet, at the same time, they retain their appreciation of the good influence of magic talismans, formulas against djinns and of healing pilgrimages to the tombs of Idris, Harazem and Sidi Bu Ghaleb.