“Only just in time,” exclaimed Aïssa. “Look.”
I did so, and I saw, to my amazement, a kind of swirling mass of water sweeping down the river, and before I could count two theouedhad become a raging,overflowing torrent. A few minutes sooner and car and all would have been swept away.
“Luckily that is the lastoued,” said Ali.
We all got in and started off again. The chauffeur put on speed, and we bumped furiously over the holes in the road. Then the other tire went. We stopped and all got out and then all got in again.
“Ma kanch chambre à air,”said the chauffeur. (“No more inner tubes.”)
In a few minutes the original tire went again, and we all got out again and all got back. We crawled along on the rims. Suddenly I became aware that my feet were getting very cold and wet. I could not understand. I asked Madani, but he had reached a state when he no longer seemed to care. He was telling his beads.
I moved my legs about and suddenly, to my astonishment, discovered that my feet were hanging in space. I peered down and perceived water and mud splashing all round me, and realized that the bottom of the car had fallen out. Visions of the pantomime gentleman whose carriage loses its floor and who is obliged to run between the wheels, sprang before me. And I saw myself and Madani being precipitated on to the road and having to run wildly back to Chellala, unable to make the chauffeur hear our cries of distress.
However, this catastrophe did not take place, for the simple reason that the car suddenly stopped of its own accord. We all got out again. No one seemed to dare to ask what the matter was.
“Ma kanch petrol,”said the chauffeur calmly.
“No more petrol!” exclaimed thebash aghanervously. It was the first time during the whole of the proceedings that he had shown any emotion.
“Ma kanch,”repeated the driver.
No one spoke. I heard Madani murmuring“Mektoub,”but otherwise there was silence as we stood there in the driving rain watching the car. Then suddenly thebash aghasaid, as if to the skies, “I pray Allah that it is raining like this in the Tell; my brother’s crops have sore need of rain.”
“Inch Allah,”they all said.
It filled me with amazement. I had before me the complete abstraction of immediate discomfort, the unaccountable Oriental mind, praying to Allah, miles from anywhere, soaked to the skin, and with no means of getting home. I thought of my English friends and their attitude and thoughts on such an occasion. However, it was no good standing in contemplation.
“Well, what do you propose doing?” I ventured at last. “I am getting cold.”
“I don’t know,” replied the old man, brushing drops of rain off his beard. “What do you think, my friend?”
“To my mind the only possible thing to do is to walk back before it gets too dark,” I said.
“But the rain,” said thekadi, “and the mud, and the wind!”
“A little rain and wind more or less never did me any harm,” I replied; “though perhaps I am more used to it than you.”
“Of course, he is right,” said Madani. “We will leave the chauffeur with the car and we’ll be in Chellala before six.”
“Come on,” said the Caïd Ali. “I know a short cut across the hills which will reduce our journey by at least a third.”
Thekadistarted murmuring again, but seeing that thebash aghaagreed to this proposal, he felt that he could not let an old man of seventy do what he feared to do, so he reluctantly followed us. In single file we started across the waste of water and tufts of alfa.
Madani led, then came Ali, after him Aïssa, then thebash agha, then myself, and behind me thekadi, with Marhoun bringing up the rear. The wind blew fiercely across our path, bringing great sheets of soaking rain, but our camel’s hair burnouses kept the wet out wonderfully. Only thekadi, who had a kind of black woven burnous, complained that he was getting soaked. I distinctly heard Marhoun laughing in the driving rain.
Gradually we approached the hills, all wrapped in mist, and descending into a habitually dry river-bed, splashed up the muddy bank.
Suddenly thekadigave a yell.
“I’ve lost my shoes,” he screamed.
“Where?” I exclaimed.
“In the mud! They got stuck and came off!”
The procession stopped. Aïssa started laughing. I became perfectly helpless as I watched the wretched judge making futile dives for his slippers in the muddy torrent.
At last Marhoun got the better of his mirth and managed to secure the lost property, but, as can be imagined, the elegant slippers looked like bits of old leather ready for the dust-heap. Thekadibegan wailing again, and said he would go back, but Marhoun pushed him up the bank and he plodded on.
We soon came to a goat-track and gradually began climbing the steep slopes of the hill. As we rose, the mist closed down upon us and wrapped us in its damp embrace. I could no longer see Madani, and thebash aghawas only a dim form before me. ThekadiI didn’t need to see as his wail of malediction on motor-cars and excursions, and idiots who could live out in the desert, never ceased.
After an hour or so we reached the summit and gathered together in a ghostly group.
“Not very far now,” said Ali gaily. “Reminds me of winter in the trenches. Eh, Aïssa?”
“Yes, the Vosges,” he replied. “Not too tired,bash agha?”
The old man shook his head and he brushed the drops from his burnous.
“Well, let’s proceed,” said Madani. “We don’t want to be caught by the night.”
“My shoes are full of stones,” moaned thekadi. “Well, take them out,” exclaimed Marhoun.
Without further ado we started along the crest and soon began descending another path. The wind was less fierce on this side of the mountain, but the mist swirled like a great shroud about us. None of us spoke as we plodded on in our dripping burnouses. My mind became a sort of damp blank as I mechanically followed in the procession.
Suddenly thebash aghasaid to me over his shoulder, “What has become of Miss G., who was in Laghouat for two months this spring?”
“Eh?” I said.
He repeated his question.
“Oh, she has gone back to Scotland,” I replied.
“Why did she go?” again asked the old man.
“Oh, I suppose she wanted to see her family and get back to this sort of weather,” I answered vaguely.
“She was a very nice girl,” said thebash agha. “She was full of gaiety. I liked her.”
He lapsed into silence again. I followed on, wondering how the brain of Jelloul ben Lahkdar,bash aghaof all the Larbas, reasoned, that he should suddenly ask me the whereabouts of an English friend of mine while descending the slopes of the mountains of Chellala in a Scotch mist. The working of an Oriental mind has always been and always will be a mystery to me.
However, the mist was beginning to clear and the rain was abating when suddenly, from nowhere, the sun, brilliant in its setting, burst through the clouds, and we looked out on to the smiling village of Chellala nestling among its green trees, and out on to the great plains of the Sersou, right away to the blue mountains of the Atlas in the distance. That wonderful Algerian climate, where there is never a day without a little sun to keep one’s spirits alive to the glories of nature!
Every one seemed to cheer up.
I turned round and looked at thekadiand I mercifully restrained my laughter, as the picture of wretchedness he presented was too genuine to admit of more jests.
“You’ll be in dry clothes soon,kadi,” I exclaimed.
“I shall take great care never to leave my home again,Inch Allah,” he groaned.
At the moment Marhoun started singing one of those strange, melodious songs of the great South with the deep, long note drawn out at the end. Aïssa picked it up and sent back the verse, trembling, high and melancholy. Marhoun returned with the refrain, so soft, so gentle, that I approached thebash aghaand asked him the meaning of the words.
He smiled and said, “I can not give it exactly translated because it is too beautiful in Arabic, but it runs thus: ‘My love is as great as the fire, and it consumes my heart.’”
And I repeated it to myself, wondering on the strange nature of the Arabs, as the sun, all orange and gold, dipped behind the hills, wrapping the land in golden radiance.
We have heard a great deal in this book about religion; let us turn our attention for a brief moment toits great adjunct, especially in the Moslem faith— cleanliness.
To the average Englishman the words “Turkish bath” suggest tiled chambers, whiteness, great heat, much water and complete exhaustion. This is what he has seen in Jermyn Street. In his imagination he may have conjured up a vision of thehammamof the East with its marble halls and multi-colored tiles, its splashing fountains and exhilarating hashish, while ebony-bodied negroes flit noiselessly about. Now, though this average Englishman will never be bathed in thisArabian Nightsatmosphere in Algeria, let it be known that his imagination has not altogether run into the realms of fable.
In certain private houses of great chiefs this atmosphere, to a lesser degree, exists, and the owner of the bath insists on all the most luxurious rites being carried out. However, as this remains private property it can not be entered into, and it will suffice to describe the common Turkish bath known in Algeria asle bain maure, which resident or tourist, pedler orcaïd, respectable maiden orfemme du Quartier, must use if cleanliness is to be observed.
In this haunt of steam and strange odors there will be found neither the tiled chambers of Jermyn Street nor the splashing fountains of Haroun al-Raschid. The entrance to the bath is usually imposing; this is presumably to attract the passer-by. The entrance-hall is also roomy, and with a purpose, as it is here that many of the Faithful come to say their prayers after their ablutions. After this there is a series of primary disillusions. I purposely use the word “primary.”
To undress, one is ushered into a small chamber, where probably a number of other persons of all ranks and ages are already undressing. One hastily confidesone’s purse to the owner or manager of the bath, who puts it in his pocket. This looks risky at first sight, but it is in reality quite safe. Having disrobed, an emaciated bandit appears and, placing a towel about one’s body and one about one’s head, proffers a pair of wooden clogs, which are flat pieces of wood the shape of the sole of a shoe with a strap to go across the foot. They appear to be harmless affairs at first sight; I emphasize “sight,” for the moment one suggests that they should be modes of locomotion one is disillusioned. For some unknown reason these clogs have a distaste to progress in a forward direction and seem bent on going either to the right or to the left, or in both directions at the same time—anyway, at right angles to the proposed progress of the wearer, which rationally should be toward the bath.
At first it needs the strength and will power of a great and persevering man to advance with the aid of the wall out of the lofty court to the heated chamber. The passage is usually narrow and full of stagnant water, the light is conspicuous by its absence, and as one gropes for the entrance one’s mind rushes back to memories of the dungeons beneath the Ducal Palace in Venice. When at last the massive door has been pulled back, one’s terror, if anything, increases. A cloud of damp, suffocating steam fills the chamber, the body becomes suddenly moist, and one instinctively turns to the exit. However, it is too late; the emaciated bandit is behind, and pushes one forward through pools of water to a large square slab.
The eyes are gradually getting used to the dim light thrown by a single sputtering candle, and one distinguishes little by little the forms of other people washing in various corners of the room. The heat is intense, the steam swirls about the ceiling, the grunts and murmurs of the bathers make one think of Doré’sillustrations of Dante’sInferno. However, little time is allowed for reflection in this place of torment, as suddenly the skeleton which has done the undressing and the guiding pushes one on to the floor, where, lying on a kind of blue duster, one awaits the rack!
Photograph by Mr. Julian SampsonThe Oasis of Guerrera, from the Maison Arabe
Photograph by Mr. Julian SampsonThe Oasis of Guerrera, from the Maison Arabe
Photograph by Mr. Julian Sampson
The Oasis of Guerrera, from the Maison Arabe
Roman Sarcophagus at Tipaza
Roman Sarcophagus at Tipaza
Roman Sarcophagus at Tipaza
Pictures Done by Roman Children on Damp Bricks Drying in the Sun
Pictures Done by Roman Children on Damp Bricks Drying in the Sun
Pictures Done by Roman Children on Damp Bricks Drying in the Sun
And here the beauty, the glorious compensation for all the rest, begins. Of all the masseurs in the world, be they British, Latin, or Scandinavian, there are none I have met who can equal the Arab of the Algerian south. No training, no knowledge of anatomy—these men, by some curious instinct, understand the wants of the body, and as one lies in this steaming atmosphere one feels all the pains and poisons of the human frame being magically pressed out of one. It is a complete relaxation, a complete cure to all ills, and when the coarse glove is put on and the rolls of fat come out of the opened pores of the skin, it is done as gently as a mother powdering her baby. Soap follows, warm water after that, until the cold douche, poured out of a wooden bucket, brings one to one’s feet and, transformed and light-hearted, one returns fearless along the dark passage to be massaged with towels till dry.
The result is magical; magical the swiftness with which it is all accomplished, magical when one realizes that the total fee for the bath is five francs.
The white-tiled chamber and the exhilarating hashish may add to the delight of the thing, but to feel a sensation of real fitness give me the common Arab masseur in the common Arab bath in the far south.
I am told that the negresses who look after the women who attend the bath on specific days of the week have also great merits. Of this I am ignorant, but of all things I miss most, when away in Europe, my emaciated bandit who “masses” out of my body all weariness—mental and physical—disease andcares, who sends me out into the street capable of sitting down to write a chapter ofAlgeria from Within.
Before closing these sketches of Arab life a word must be said on a vice which is luckily not very prevalent, but which nevertheless exists in many centers.
I speak of keef-smoking.
Keef is the dried flower of the hemp-plant chopped up and smoked like tobacco, rolled in a cigarette, or in the bowl of a small pipe. In a different form it is the basis of the hashish sweets, rarely seen in Algeria, but very common in the Near East.
The effect of keef on the smoker is to make him practically independent of food and sleep as long as he is under its influence, and a habitual keef-taker is easy to detect. His eyes are very bright, his face is pale and drawn, his arms and hands are terribly thin, his movements are restless. At the same time he is not at all dazed like one under the influence of a drug, and though after a few days’ smoking he will drift off into a kind of feverish sleep, during the early periods he is extraordinarily lucid. In fact, it is said that the first effects of keef are to make the brain work at three times its normal pace.
European tourists in the south occasionally get hold of some keef to smoke, and complain that it has had no effect at all beyond giving them a sore throat. This is quite normal, as the fact of smoking a little hemp in a pipe or cigarette will hurt no one if not continued. To feel the effect of keef one must smoke for at least one night through, and three days are necessary to get really poisoned. The danger of an experiment of this kind is that the desire to go on may seize one, and once keef has taken hold of a man it israre to see it give him up. However, it is quite amusing to go to a keef-smoking den, all the more so as it has to be done in secret and with the connivance of a smoker, as no outsiders know where these little nocturnalréunionstake place.
As a matter of fact I doubt whether there is much danger of the police interfering as, though it is against the law to smoke keef, the French are not going to try to stop something which must always go on, and unless the offense is deliberately open they will not peer into the dark streets to catch a few poor Arabs.
The town where keef-smoking is the most prevalent, I believe, is Ghardaïa—not of course among the puritan Mzabites, but in the Arab quarter. This is partly due to the fact that these Arabs are far away from their own people, and club together in small groups to do what they would not dare do before their relatives in their own oases.
I remember going to one of these places in the Mzab with some English friends who wanted to see the den for themselves. We were a curious party—an English girl, a short-story writer and another man connected with letters—none of whom knew the country well, while our Arab guide was thekhodjaof the Bureau Arabe, a man unbelievably fat, who rather sailed along the street than walked. We passed through interminable little streets, pitch black, fell up and down steps until we came to a tumble-down house, all dark save for a yellow light which flickered in an upper chamber. The tinkle of a mandolin floated out, a warm breeze sent little whirls of dust up the narrow way, the stars stood out bright in the sky.
Our immense companion tapped mysteriously at the door, the sound of the mandolin ceased, and we heard some one coming cautiously down-stairs. A few whispered words were exchanged, followed by thenoise of heavy bolts being drawn, the door swung back, and we found ourselves in front of a rickety wooden staircase at the foot of which stood an Arab in tattered clothes, who held aloft a hissing acetylene lamp. He scrutinized us closely, and then, bidding us enter, drew aside as we filed slowly past and followed our fat friend up the stairs. The janitor waited till we were all inside, and then with a clash shot back the bolts, and we felt ourselves prisoners in this illicit haunt.
At the top of the stairs we came to a room dimly lighted, and the first thing which struck our attention was an enormous skin full of water. When I say that it struck our attention it is not quite exact, as in reality it was struck by the head of my friend S. A., who had not noticed it until a stream of icy water poured down his back. When we had recovered from this pleasing little incident we looked about us.
On the floor all round the little room squatted men of all ages and grades—some in rags, some in prosperous-lookinggandourahs, some in very modern red fezzes—but all with the same hungry look on their drawn faces. At the far end the Arab who had opened the door attended to the little fireplace ornamented with colored tiles and on which he prepared coffee and mint tea; in the middle of the group sat the mandolinist playing with a far-away look in his shining eyes.
The air was heavy with a sweet, rather sickly smell, an odor not unlike new-mown hay, only stronger. A bench was mysteriously produced for us and for our stout companion, who explained that if he sat on the ground he would never be able to get up again. Tea was placed before us, and then rather diffidently one of the corpses on the floor rose and offered Miss G. a small pipe. Seeing she was prepared to smoke, he drew a wallet from the folds of hisgandourahandfilled the bowl with the strange grayish-green, tobacco-looking matter, and handed it back to her.
In the meanwhile we had also been supplied with similar pipes, and in a few moments we had lighted up. The taste was not pleasant to the regular pipe-smoker like myself, and at the same time it was not as nasty as my first attempts at smoking when in the depths of a wood my brother and I, aged nine and ten, filled a cast-off pipe of my father’s with brown paper in the belief that we were smoking!
Keef is better than brown paper. The taste and smell were rather like that of hay.
When the company saw that we were quite human and ready to join in the fun there was a general relaxation. All the pipes were lighted, the mandolinist tuned up, and soon the whole crowd was as merry as children at a birthday party. In fact, so great was the effect of the atmosphere that S. A. insisted on singing himself, and would have danced had not M. J., who has his interests at heart, held him forcibly on the bench.
I don’t know how long this would have gone on had not a discreet signal from the street warned us that the police were making their rounds. In a second the light was dimmed, the music ceased, and we sat as still as mice until we heard the measured tramp of the Arab constables disappearing up the street. We felt it more discreet to depart ourselves, so we took leave of our fevered-eyed hosts and returned to our inn.
Though I spent a rather restless night, I don’t know if it was the effect of the reef or not, and we all certainly felt quite fit the next day.
Still, I can never think of that night without smiling; it was all so mysterious, so much part of another world, and I often wonder if M. J., as he sits editorially in London, or S. A., scooping in royalties, or Miss G.,in her English surroundings, realize how they peeped into the past for a few seconds and lived again the life which, if it had not been Algerian, would have probably been celebrated by another De Quincey.
Thepreface of a book should always be written at the end; this insures it being read. In this particular work the first chapter rather takes the place of the preface, but at the same time there are certain things which rather need explaining.
In the first place, the necessity to compress the matter into a limited number of pages. On practically every subject mentioned, there is material in my mind to write a book, and it is difficult to realize where to stop. It is equally difficult to know where to begin as, to some, the information set out in these pages will not be new, and they may be looking for something deeper. Of these people I ask patience, for if the result of the book is encouraging, another one will follow, and perhaps another, dealing at length with the subjects only touched on now.
This work has been prepared more as something which any traveler can read during his journey to Algiers, and which will allow him to see the country through other eyes than those of the guides, be they books, chauffeurs, or the luxuriously uniformed gentlemen of the Transatlantic Company.
Let it, moreover, be understood that the history, the geography, the remarks on French administration are, more than anything else, a prelude to the rest of the book, “The Arabs.”
The Arabs, whether they be those in the scarletburnouses of thecaïd-ship or in the rags of the beggar, are all the same: a people who have destroyed without creating, who have been divided when their unity would have made them great, who have lived on theory.
We have before us the relics of the Carthaginians, of the Numidians, of the stupendous work of the Roman Empire, and then centuries of nothing. War, devastation, intrigue, mark the period covered by the Arab domination.
Even those buildings which we see in Algiers, at Constantine and in the other ancient towns, are the work of Turkish or European architects. And yet, in spite of this apparent futility of existence, in spite of this atmosphere of strife, there is something very noble in the nature of the Arabs, something very engaging, something utterly aloof from all that is European; for in spite of dissension among themselves they are all held under the sway of Islam, that all-powerful principle which separates them entirely from all other persuasions.
Moreover, the longer one lives among the Arabs the more one realizes the insurmountable barrier which separates us from them. It is not a question of race, though this does count; it is a question of religion. One can establish the deepest intimacy in all matters of daily life and then suddenly come face to face with this blank wall.
Some Europeans contend that it is possible really to become as the Arabs—even to mate with them. The few who have tried this last experiment have met with utter disaster. I know acaïdwho has been all over Europe, who occasionally wears European clothes, who has had affairs with women of all nationalities, but without ever legally marrying one. He told me that twice he had been on the point of doing so, but that reason had always prevailed.
“How could it be?” he exclaimed. “How could the gulf which separates us from you ever be spanned? How could a European woman admit being shut up, or, if she emancipated herself, being considered by us on the same level as a woman of the Quarter? How could she admit to her children being brought up in the principles of the Koran, with our habits and customs? Why, we don’t even sleep in beds or sit on chairs; we eat with our hands; we have no learning; we never read books. We don’t consider any belief but our own; and, even if such a mating began successfully, how could you expect one of your people to admit the husband taking other wives to live legally under the same roof if he felt so inclined?”
This is so obvious that it seems almost superfluous to speak of it, and yet there are Europeans who will not see the impossibility of such a step; there are some who have actually taken it; I know a few of them. I have never mentioned the subject to them; the look in their eyes has told me more than any words, and has made me shrink from further laying bare the wound.
I was talking to an educated Arab not so long ago about religions, and he expressed the opinion that only Mohammedans would go to heaven. I suggested that the question of after-life was not so much judged by religion as by the actions of men, and I quoted the example of a very worthy Christian we know, respected by all Arabs, and a hopeless, immoral, drinkingmarabout.
“Which of the two will be recompensed, the honest and sober unbeliever, or that scoundrel who calls himself a holy man of yours?”
“I can not say,” he replied, after a moment’s thought; “but probably neither of them will go to paradise.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “You mean to suggest thatworthy Mr. X., who has spent the whole of his life doing good, will find himself in company with your drunkenmarabout?”
“I can not say,” repeated the Arab; “but if our friend believes that Jesus is the Son of God, he can not go to heaven. God is above all, and no one is like him.”
“That is all very well,” I said; “but our religion says that if you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus you will also not go to paradise; that is why I am contending that people can not be judged by their respective faiths, but by their actions.”
“But your religion is wrong,” he said finally.
I was on the point of continuing the argument, but the look in his eyes made me desist. This belief, to him, was conclusive evidence.
And that is Islam, that is the Arab; his faith is absolute, and his opinion of other religions is quite simple—they don’t exist.
“Why,” they say, “we believe in Moses and Aaron and Jacob and Elijah and Jesus; they are all great prophets who preceded ours; what more do you want?”
A wall—a blank wall which no one can pierce without becoming a Mohammedan.Et encore. . . .
The more one lives with these people the more apparent this becomes, and if in this book the impressions given differ from those which have struck others, perhaps it is because only one side of the character has been seen, the characterallowed to be seenby the Roumi.
I know the Arabs well, I know them intimately, but I have not the remotest idea what they think of me, and I never shall have.
There may be future developments of this book, with possible reversal of certain opinions, but as faras the working of the Arab brain is concerned, I know that I have penetrated as far as I ever shall. Let the reader, therefore, close this volume realizing the task which has been before the author—who, after spending over five years constantly studying these people, has arrived at this somewhat negative conclusion.
THE END