# The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 9

AN OPAL IN AN EMERALD SETTING
"WHEN the great Sultan Mulay Idris II el-Azhar ordered his vanguard to halt on the summit of the Zalagh range, they saw there before them a deep valley, filled with a lush and beautiful vegetation and watered by two life-giving rivers." Thus a Moorish bard, surrounded by a crowd of the Faithful returning from the cemetery of Bab Futuh, began his tale, which my guide, a young Arab of Fez, translated for me, as we stood in the circle before him and listened to his recital of earlier days.
"'I do not know,' spake the sultan, 'what has drawn me to this place about which I have never heard but which I have distinctly seen with the eyes of my soul. Now, as this valley spreads itself before me, I seem to feel that there has fallen here from the finger of my great father the ring with the milky, iridescent opal set about with dark-green emeralds, which a mysterious Hendi (Hindoo) gave him with a powerful incantation. The place is beautiful and worthy of a descendant of the holy Ali, who had as his wife the daughter of our great Prophet, through whom the blood of the holy one came to the veins of the Idrises.'
​"As he spoke, the face of the sultan shone with inspiration, and his eyes were full of joy and enthusiasm. The chiefs surrounding the sherif were astonished; astonished also were the knights, Irams, ulema and the revered Walls, inasmuch as nothing was to be seen on the rivercut plain save the green of the vegetation and the blue of the streams. Understanding the astonishment of all, the sultan exclaimed:
"'You are as blind as moles, and your souls are as slaves enchained, for I say unto you that I see before me an immense city with thousands and thousands of homes, splendid palaces, rich mosques, striving skyward with their minarets; crowds of people, among them angels, messengers of Allah! O great Allah, Khalek (Creator), Khaled (Pre-eternal), make it to be so, that this city become the home of science, wisdom and faith; ordain that here Thy laws be honored and that the inhabitants remain faithful to the Koran and faithful in prayer as long as this city shall exist, this city which I now begin to build.'
"Saying this, Idris began to draw in the sand before him a plan of the walls and of the principal buildings of the town. As he drew, the master was approached by an unknown man in rags, girt about with a rope. The stranger had long, matted hair and beard, carried a curved pilgrim's staff in his hand and bore beneath his arm a human skull and a cross, the symbol of Aïssa.
"'I am a Nasrani and live the life of an eremite. I have dwelt here in these mountains for many years. I have had a vision that a great army would come here under the command of a powerful leader, and the One ​God bade me say that there below, where the two rivers meet and flow away through the thicket of shrubs and trees, there existed eighteen centuries ago the great, rich city of an unknown people, which has left naught but its tombs. This city was called Sef and is to be rebuilt by a man bearing the name of Idris and sprung from the family of the Eastern Prophet.
"'Glory to the name of Allah!' cried the enraptured sultan. 'I am from the family of Mahomet, the Prophet, and my name is Idris. I have come here to build a city where all of the ninety-nine names of the Lord Creator shall be repeated and the law of his Prophet shall run through all the land.'"
This coming of the second ruler of the house of Idris took place on February third, 808 A.D., when the quarters of Adua el-Andaluse and Adua el-Kairween were begun and soon encircled with walls to defend them against the attacks of the terrible Negro, Khabal, who then ravaged the country. The courageous Sais, one of the generals of Idris, fought and vanquished the Negro and brought under the sultan's domination all the tribes located in the valleys of the Fez and Sbu rivers.
Then Sultan Mulay Idris gave orders that the beautiful gate, Bab Ifrikiya, or the African Gate, should be open from sunrise to sunset to all travelers—both to the Faithful and to foreigners. The author of the work entitled Rawd el-Kirtas, written in Fez in 1326 when this town was really the center of Moslem wisdom and science, the focal point of all Maghreb and even appealing to the imagination of peoples in foreign lands, records this legend of the creation of Fez and of the events ​which then took place quite in the same manner as do the bards of the people who today chant their folk-tales in the market-places. The Arab historians also state that Fez was founded in the ninth century. What was here before this epoch? Did the mythical Sef really exist? What nation was it that left rows and rows of tombs that can be seen today outside the walls erected by the Idrisides and added to by the Almoravides, these emigrants from the Sahara who sprang from the Berber tribe of the Almohades, who were in turn those mountaineers from the higher Atlas regions that afterwards ruled in Seville? It is only natural to surmise that here in this valley at the junction of these two rivers that brought to the fertile earth a lovely carpet of green, rich verdure, where a defence against invaders was easily established, there should have been from earliest centuries a dwelling-place for man.
Some indication of all this we had in the strange and abiding impressions which came to us, as we approached and drew up under the walls of this ancient capital, where our car seemed to be held up by the djinns or other spirits of the place as a wanton, unthinkable intruder. In any case, it was either these tutelary spirits or the effects of the reckless speed at which the chauffeur hurried us on over stony roads or even the open desert that brought the monster to a halt and forced us to make our more humble entry into the city of Idris II on foot in search of our hotel Before we had reached the gate we stopped as though transfixed, held by a biblical picture of the Holy Land that arose before us. Near a well sat an Arab with long nair falling over his shoulders and with ​a beard that spread Itself upon his white bournotis. One hand grasped a shepherd's staff, while the other pointed to the sky. His low, penetrating voice and his impressive appearance brought most poignantly to my mind the Sermon on the Mount, and I had the feeling that I could distinctly hear the words:
"Blessèd are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessèd are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."
The likeness was all the more striking, in view of the fact that around the speaker sat twelve listening Arabs, with their eyes fixed intently upon the holy man. I counted twice and was not mistaken—they were twelve. The Impression was strangely touching and not to be forgotten, deep and simple as one from the days of childhood, when mother showed to us the pictures in the Bible.
"This is a hadj," explained a young man, who approached and addressed us in the hope of opening the way to being engaged as a guide. "He is a reshid, pious and strong in faith, who has just returned from a difficult pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca and who is telling of his journey with the hope of persuading others to undertake it, promising to them the sure help and favor of Allah and the Prophet. Those around him are common mumeni, who often vainly dream through their whole lives of this pilgrimage which is so agreeable to Allah but which they are more often than not unable to make."
We entered through the gate, Bab el-Maroukh, and, after a ten-minute walk under the escort of a group of dirty, noisy street-urchins, reached our objective, the ​Hotel Transatlantique, where we took up our abode under the protecting care of Madame Ossun, the energetic and hospitable directress. Being in Maghreb, with its fatalism and superstition, we began at once to live its life and interpreted as a good omen the fact that the name of the presiding genius of our caravanserai was practically identical with the first half of our own. This seemed to be borne out, when we were conducted to a large, airy room, redolent with the aroma of cedar from the doors and ceiling and opening into a little patio, or court, paved with bright majolica tiles and made gardenlike by a tinkling fountain and two small banana trees. But we did not remain long in the hotel, as we were anxious to see at once more of the attractive hues of this "opal in an emerald setting." Before starting out we selected from among a number of young natives a guide by the name of Hafid, who was a thaleb, or student in a medersa, and whose cleverness and excellent knowledge of French revealed to me many features of the native life that might easily not have been spread before the casual traveler.
As we set out with Hafid in spite of the terrific heat for our first tour of the town, the sun poured down cascades of molten gold from the fiery sky, which seemed to flow along and down the walls of the houses and the ruined ramparts of the town until its hot stream reached the earth and there pushed more lazily and slowly into every corner, every crevice of a wall and along and over the thresholds of carved doors. Everywhere this molten gold fought with the darkness of the shadow that hid beneath the branches of a solitary tree, under the ​protruding eaves of houses, behind a slender column or at the corners of narrow lanes, extending sometimes long feelers from a deeper shade or tracing the contour of a more daring branch on some plane or fig-tree. The deepest shade reigned only in the mosques, in houses and in the inner recesses of shops, where men barricaded themselves against the searching stream.
Though at this hour no Europeans were visible on the streets, the fiery heat seemed to be no deterrent to the native Berbers and Negroes, among whom there were, however, frequent evidences of their appreciation of it in the numerous water-carriers, who, for the most part Negroes or Berbers with an admixture of Negro blood, went about half-naked, carrying their big gleaming water-skins, from which the precious liquid leaked at every seam. Ringing their bells, they cried to their greedy patrons:
"Tessaout! Berrctd ma! (Are you thirsty? Here is cold water!)"
It is said that water is best kept cool in these goat-skin bags, better even than in the conventional porous clay jars of hot countries, inasmuch as the moist, hair-covered exterior offers a very large superficial area for the cooling process of evaporation. Besides the cool waters which were centuries ago leashed and made to run through the canals and pipes and brought their freshness to the dars, or palaces, of such families as those of the noble tribe of the Beni Merin, who were at one time the protectors of the dynasty of the Merinides, the town is also blessed by the stream of a quick-running river that sings the underlying accompaniment for the lighter airs ​of the fountains that grace a thousand courts and squares. Happy city, set there among the naked mountains and stone-strewn deserts, about which the poets of Cordova, Cairo, Mecca and even Bagdad have sung their lays.
But with time this opal of the desert attracted too many inhabitants and with the multitude acquired that pollution of river and canal which brought in its train disease and death. Already in the thirteenth century the Arab doctors realized that the epidemics had their source in contaminated water and ordered that the people should drink only the life-giving fluid taken from distant mountain springs and streams. This necessity has led to the building up of a distinct caste of honest water-carriers, who bring their supplies from great distances, even at times from a renowned spring nearly ten miles away from the city. Besides being honest the seller of water is also somewhat of a sorcerer, for, when he fills his skin, he murmurs a magic formula, makes traditional passes and wets the outer surface of his bag in a prescribed manner, and he possesses likewise a talisman against epidemics and carries a bell to frighten the djinns of illness.
Even though the people are thus protected by the honesty of their water-purveyors, one has not to remain long in this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants to realize that the French engineers have before them a very difficult and delicate task in transforming the canals that have come down from the times of the Almohades and Merinides into a modern sanitary system, for this will require not only the abandonment of many of these sacred canals but also a change in the river-bed and the ​destruction of many sekkaias, or beloved and popular fountains, most of which are sacred to some legend or story concerning a revered wall or powerful emir of earlier days. To find a spring, to dig a well or to make an aqueduct for the service of man carries with it great merit before Allah; but to destroy this, to deprive the population of water, were it only for a minute, is, according to Moslem reshids, a crime of which only the rumi, or white man, is capable. One has only to phrase this to make it easy to understand what a subtle and difficult task the European faces in what would ordinarily be a simple problem of engineering.
Hafid led the way across the city, until we came to the basket suk, where the artisans were making baskets and sacks from laurel twigs and palm-leaves. We had no more than arrived when in through the gate came a kafla, or caravan, of twenty camels, carrying great loads of the dried branches of the palm brought to these basketweavers from the far-away oases in the south. As we stepped aside into the shadow of the door and surrendered the street to the towering animals, I read in their eyes fright, pain and despair in contrast to the placid and supercilious expression of their two-hump Asiatic brothers, who have not the appearance of slaves under the absolute domination of man. In fact the Bactrian camel occasionally turns on and attacks his driver, whereas the Arabs and Berbers never expect a protest from their beasts. What accounts for the difference in the psychology of the two species? Perhaps the African camel was captured and enslaved long before the Asiatic one, which still preserves within its nature the atavistic love ​of freedom that is kept alive by its contact with the Gobi desert and the great stretches of northern Tibet and Eastern Turkestan.
When the caravan had passed, Hafid led us outside the city gate, turned and said:
"This is Bab el-Maroukh, about which a whole literature exists among both the Arabs and Berbers, and even the tribes of the distant Sahara and of Senegal have legends concerning it. Last year a traveler, who was here, told me that there are poems about the gate in European books. Is this true?"
When I answered Hafid that the portal had been immortalized by poets in several languages, he spoke with disappointment in his voice:
"Then you know Bab el-Maroukh, and I wanted to tell you all that one says in our city about it."
As I was anxious to hear whatever local legends might exist about this ancient portal, I urged Hafid to tell me all that he knew of it and invited him to a nearby cafe, where we should be undisturbed and I could write.
"Thank you, sir," he responded with very evident pleasure; "but, before we go, observe well the gate and remember all its details."
The port pierced a powerful square tower, constructed of brick and stone and carrying the "color of centuries," this shade which in time covers all of man's works independent of their location and of the degree of civilization of those who build them, whether it be a pagoda in an Indian jungle, a pyramid on the sands of Egypt or some bastion or drawbridge of an old castle in Europe. ​As we turned back through the tunnel-like entrance that pierced the thick wall and entered a cafe just off the suk Tala, Hafid began his tale.
"Old Fez—for we are now in the quarter of Fez el-Bali—has had a long and eventful history. Following the sultans of the Idris family came the Almoravide dynasty, and after them the Almohades, Merinides and others. As the city was ever a stronghold of the Faith, of wisdom, literature and art, it towered in its glory above other cities, occasionally declining somewhat only to rise again to greater heights than before. In one of these periods of recession the Sultan Abd el-Mumen deflected the river from its regular bed and captured and destroyed the city. However, his grandson, Yakub el-Mansur, rebuilt what his grandfather had ruined, though little of even his reconstruction work remains to us today save the gate of Bab el-Maroukh.
"And have you heard how this portal of Mansur, which has stood here since 1204, came to have the name of 'the Gate of the Burned"? It arose from the fact that when the sultan was strengthening the walls of Fez el-Bali, the Berber tribes living in the Ghomara mountains rose in rebellion against him under the leadership of Mahdi el-Obeid, a relative of the last of the Almoravides. After a long struggle the Mahdi was vanquished and made prisoner, following which Sultan Yakub el-Mansur ordered a great fire lighted under the arch of the massive gate and in it tortured the captured chief throughout several days until finally his body was consumed. Then the suk of the basket-weavers was established here within the gate, as Mansur ordered the ashes of the Mahdi and ​his fellow-prisoners, who were burned with him, collected together in baskets and sent to the mountaineers of the Ghomara to apprize them of the fate of those who opposed the sultan's will.
"It was here also that the books and messenger of the false prophet, Ben Sliman, were afterwards burned. Once a year the sultan came to Bab el-Maroukh and judged criminals, who had spent all the months since their capture weighted in irons, looking forward to this annual court of the ruler. When the criminals sentenced to death mounted to the number of one hundred, the ninety-ninth had, according to established custom, the right to ask for the hand of the sultan's daughter. But it was necessary, if he would hope to succeed in his suit, that he should possess some special merit beyond the mere caprice of Chance. He must be either very rich, very strong, fleet of foot, clever at arms or well versed in the songs and stories of a bard. If such a condemned one, on being presented to the ruler's daughter, were accepted, he was saved; but if, in spite of his unusual qualities, he were refused, the sultan pronounced upon him the fatal sentence: 'You are blessed with neither good fortune nor happiness but with only the vermin of a criminal and you shall perish.'
"Through this gate the Andalusian Moors, who formed a large portion of the inhabitants of Fez, brought back their Christian slaves, or Nasara, as they were called. Some were dragged this long distance only to be beheaded for the glory of the sultan, while others became khadem, or slaves sold at auction. The women among these, once they had been bought by a Moor or an Arab ​who threw over them the ltam, or shielding veil, became citizens of the town and enjoyed the protection of the laws of the Koran."
"Did the earth here drink many tears of blood, Hafid?" asked Zofiette.
In answer the boy only gave an exclamation and covered his face with his hands, thus telling us more plainly than words that the merciless severity of the ancient sultans was written deep in letters of blood in the memory of the present population of Maghreb, where this separate and stormy empire of the sherifs has for centuries dominated these desert folk.
Coming out of the café we once more stood before Bab el-Maroukh, garbed in its ancient mantle of brown, indifferent as a centenarian who is burdened and haunted by memories of the past. This Gate of the Burned attracted us and established such sway over us that we often returned to it during excursions we made through the city without Hafid. We saw it at the hour when the disappearing sun threw upon it from the horizon its last effulgent rays and gave the impression that all the blood shed beneath it had risen through invisible channels and covered it, until it was all clothed in a scarlet of kingly glory, indifferent to the sufferings of man. We stood before Bab el-Maroukh at night, when the massive portal rose in the darkness like a black, powerful apparition, indistinct in form and contour but immense and threatening. At another time, when the moon threw upon it a sheaf of pale rays, the cornices were distinctly traced in outline upon the mass, while in the recesses the shadows moved and pressed together, and murmurs, half sighs and ​half groans, were heard. Perhaps these were accounted for by bats, geckos or small owls that were hovering there; but, who knows? Perhaps the souls of the chieftains of those courageous mountain tribes once murdered here were come to curse and threaten the merciless rulers of Maghreb; or perhaps the shades of murdered Christian martyrs, brought by the Moors from the southern shores of Iberia, Italy, the Balearic Islands and Sardinia, had returned to the Bab el-Maroukh of their suffering and despair.
Our Hafid was in love with the old city, or Fez el-Bali, where he was born and raised, and spoke with contempt of the newer town, or Fez el-Jdid. Under his guidance we studied carefully the old quarter. Passing once more out through Bab el-Maroukh we strolled through the great Sherarda, kasba, an immense rectangular wall enclosing the barracks and homes of the Sherarda and Udaya tribes, who were drawn upon to form the kernel of the sultan's army. In the old markets, set in contrasting juxtaposition to the very modern French barracks and hospital, we found one element that never ceased to hold our attention—the meskins, or beggars, of the town. Practically every African meskin is a member of a powerful organization that covers all the Moroccan and Algerian towns and is really a special clan, possessing its own traditions and laws and even its own schools. It boasts some of the wittiest and apparently the most lighthearted individuals in all Maghreb and is really a caste that lays special stress upon the laws of heredity which carry down special privileges in certain families.
Every beggar, man or woman, is in the first place a ​skilled ethnologist, psychologist and adept in the fikh, which is the law of the Koran regulating the outward acts of the Faithful, as well as in the akaid, which governs the inner belief and its expression in religious practices. These two great divisions combine to form the law of the Koran, or the shariat, such as is taught in the medersas. Many meskins, with their clever learning, could well fill the posts of professors in these institutions, while some of them, plying their profession near the great mosques among the learned and rich, can even speak colloquially al-lugha, or the sacred language of the Koran, just as some of our ancestors used Latin. Others in the cult know by rote the litanies sacred to the holy walis, revered ulema, sages and prophets, and can distinguish also the different tribes that most highly respect each one of them. Such a trained meskin with one look identifies the clan of a passer-by and begins at once to beg in the name of its patron saints.
"In the name of Ali ben Mohammed! In the name of Sidi el-hadj Abu Hafs, to you, good sire, noble mumen, Ibrahim ben Nail, a poor man dying of hunger and thirst, offers his plea. The saints of your tribe, who have given to it riches and glory, will reward you liberally, if you carry out the will of Allah and grant alms to the beggar."
"In the name of Sidi Kasem," begins the chant of another, who stops suddenly and, turning his "blind" eyes on his neighbor, observes with a low laugh: "By Allah! I never recognized that merchant, who yesterday gave me alms in the name of Omar ben Sliman and of Drilali, for he is a heretic; and today I have gone and spoiled the game! It is a pity, as he is rich and generous." The ​blind man sat thinking for a moment; then, jumping up from his mat, he ran along in front of the tall, majestic Berber whose creed he had muddled and opened on the passers-by with:
"Blind moles, ungrateful ones! You remember not the name of the great Omar ben Sliman, the wise and merciful one. I beg for alms in the name of wali ben Sliman!" A silver coin shot its gleam through the air and fell in the basket of the blind meskin.
I watched these beggars in several cities and towns of Africa, but found Fez to be of paramount interest. I even went out before sunrise to see groups of them coming from their miserable lodgings and being hailed by their chiefs, or mokkhadems, as "ashab, ashab! (companions, companions!)" and assigned their places for the day in such a manner that none of the caste should suffer an injustice. With all the places taken by the hour of the morning prayer, the Faithful give the daily alms in the form of food or money, for which they receive the thanks and benedictions of the meskins in the traditional phrases of:
"A happy day be unto you! … Allah help you! … Allah, the Protector, will repay you! … The protection of Allah be upon you!"
To which the God-fearing Moslems answer:
"Peace be unto you"
These beggars are also often employed as porters or as messengers, carrying through sometimes most delicate matters in the capacity of spies or agitators. A Jew from the Mellah told me that on April 17th, 1912, when the treaty establishing the protectorate of France over ​Morocco was signed, numbers of beggars hurried through the streets of the city, entered certain houses with letters and came out bearing heavy packages, which they bore off to the poorer quarters, to the suks, the fonduks and the caravanserais. Other meskins hurried to the barracks of the sultan's troops, to the mosques, to the medersas and to the houses of the Fez notables, who were displeased with the supineness of the sultan before the unbelievers. Here and there they stopped to whisper something to a passer-by, and one caught the words:
"Holy War … Warriors for the Faith!"
Then suddenly a shot was fired that carried the signal throughout all of Fez el-Bali, expectant and excited. Other shots responded like a reverberating echo, and these were followed by a volley in the barracks, where the Berber troops revolted against the sultan and attacked the French. For three days the fight raged in the labyrinth of narrow streets of old Fez, during which white-clad figures stormed the houses of the Europeans and murdered their inmates without mercy.
On the morning of the fourth day the beggars sat in their accustomed places, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and the suks and bazaars were crowded as usual, the only difference being the numerous French soldiers that were posted on guard and the artillery mounted on the surrounding hills. It was but in undertones that the word went round that sixty-eight unbelievers had been sent to their death and that three hundred faithful mumeni had gone to Paradise, where in return for their fidelity to the Koran and the Faith, the Prophet Mahomet himself, the protector and defender of Islam, had met and welcomed them.