Women WashingI. M. D.
Women Washing
I. M. D.
Further up the river the women collect to do their washing, and make picturesque groups in their blue and red garments. They use both hands and feet to pommel and wring the clothes, and beat them with the stem of a palm leaf. Some have soap, but many use only a kind of earth, and all the washing is done in the cold running water ofthe stream. They chatter like a flock of paroquets, some knee deep in the water, others squatting on the bank, amongst them many negresses with their short hair twisted into innumerable small plaits across their foreheads. I thought them to be Nubians, from their features and dark colour and the style of their hair dressing.
One came up to where I was painting, a tall, good-looking girl, very black, carrying herself with the graceful nonchalance of her race. A flat basket laden with newly washed clothes was on her head, and she stood comely as a statue, backed by the tawny sand and the dark green of the oasis, the firm outline of her shoulders and breast showing through the blue stuff drawn round her. Heavy silver anklets clashed as she moved. When near me she smiled and said something in Arabic. Mansour, translating into French, said she asked where I came from, and if I would take her as a servant with me to England. I had a swift vision of the scandalised horror with which my Devon household would view her arrival in the character of maid. “Tell her,” I said, “that she would not like England. There is not enough sun there. She would be cold and unhappy.” But still she smiled. I gave her a coin, and she went away regretfully, walking like a queen, evidently still yearning for the post of lady’s maid in a land paved with gold and silver. Whilst I went on with my painting, Mansour told me these negresses are great travellers. They will cheerfullyleave their country and fare into the unknown, and they make excellent servants. I think the Arabs have no feeling against the black races.
Meanwhile the Arab women were busy over their washing. “That girl over there,” remarked the guide, “is my cousin. I recognise her by the tattoo marks on her leg.” I had been told that these designs were often peculiar to a family, and Mansour’s remark seemed to bear this out. Most of the women were tattooed on the shin as well as on the lip and forehead, and sometimes on the tip of the nose. They only made a pretence of veiling themselves when he looked their way, and I gather that in the south of Tunisia the harem system is not very rigidly enforced. They seemed very happy, laughing and gossiping amongst themselves, spreading out broad strips of coloured stuff, red or orange or indigo, on the stones to dry, whilst the bright hues were reflected in the clear green water, and small brown children in abbreviated shifts played solemnly close at hand.
“Never do women cease talking together whilst they wash linen at the water’s edge,” said Mansour, “and it is strange how barely one day can pass without something requiring to be cleansed,” he added meditatively.
Behind us were the low mud walls of the village, with the towers of the minaret and the domed mosque rising above them, and a flock of black lop-eared goats came round the corner driven by a ragged youth. On the far side of thestream countless palms were inter-threaded with the branches of fruit trees, and in and out amongst the oasis ran little dusty roads between mud walls topped with thorns or spiked palm leaves, to keep off trespassers. By every path flowed runnels of clear water, pied wagtails stepped daintily about the edges, a film of green showed where the early crops were beginning to come up, and I could picture to myself the joy it must be in another month or two to step from the bare desert into this paradise of blossom and leafy shade.
Riding through the oasis one day we came suddenly upon a small white marabou or holy tomb set at the angle of two pathways. A solitary figure knelt in prayer at the entrance, whilst the mule he had been riding cropped the herbage by the stream, with a trailing rein. It was very silent, except for the far sighing of the palm trees above our heads.
Slowly we went on our way and came to a small village as the afternoon was growing late. The notched stems of date palms were like purple grey pillars on one side of the path, and an old man was coming back from work in the fields, his sand-coloured burnous slung round him in such fashion as to make a sack in which he was carrying a bunch of green vegetables. His sinewy neck and arms looked almost copper colour in the evening light; the faded blue of his coat repeated the note given by a wisp of smoke thatfloated across a low wall. The dust lay thick on the road, muting the footfall of passers-by. Already the shadows were growing long, draped figures were collecting round the well to draw the evening supply of water. In the distance was the cloud of dust that meant the return of the village herd with his flock from their day’s pasturage, whilst outside the low building where coffee was sold and drunk, men swathed in the long folds of their burnous sat and discussed the happenings of the day. And again I felt the simplicity and dignity of the East.
As we came back across the wide stretches beyond the oasis, it turned cold and clear. There was hardly a tinge of colour in the sky till the golden line of the sun had almost disappeared. Then it was as if the dark hawk of night had flown upon the bright day. The whole of the West was littered with tiny golden feathers torn from his breast, whilst the sky was dyed a sudden red with blood. The distant palms stood out black as velvet against the brilliant background, and as it faded, fingers of light stretched far into the pale green-blue of the heavens. Then as quickly as the effect had come, it was gone. The landscape turned a steely grey and the trees a blur of dull green. Only the strip of sea in the distance kept its intensity of colour in a world that seemed all at once sucked empty of life.
From Gabès one can go by car to see Matmata, a villageabout two hours’ run from the former place, where all the inhabitants live under ground. The road led across stretches and stretches of bare sandy country, tufted here and there with low bushes, across rocky nullahs which become raging torrents after rain, till at last it climbed up and up a zigzag road and reached the top of a summit from whence we looked down on nothing but further and further bare hills. Below us lay the village, a crumpled succession of irregularities in the uneven ground. It looked as if some giant child had been playing in the sand with a spade.
On getting nearer we saw entrances here and there in the banks to which were fitted rough wooden doors. We went into one and found ourselves first in a hollowed passage which led through a stable to an open space on to which opened two or three caves in which the inhabitants lived. They are scooped out by tools and are large and roomy, with smooth walls and roof worked with a kind of plaster. Each room contained a large rough wooden bed, a shelf or two along the wall, perhaps a child’s cradle swung on ropes from the ceiling. They were all scrupulously swept and clean. In one a woman sat on the floor nursing a baby, in another one was weaving rough cloth on a loom. We also saw an underground café which was full of men, though from outside there was no sign of life.
Tunnelled passages led from one set of dwellings toanother in some cases, and we went along one to reach a shop stocked with provisions.
The recent storms had wrought havoc with the architecture and the villagers were busy building up walls that had been undermined by the rain. They were of the usual peasant type and seemed hardworking, cultivating olives and the small fields from which they reap a laborious crop. The French head of the gendarmerie told us there were 15,000 of these people, all living underground. The caves are said to be warm in winter and cool in summer, and they certainly compared favourably with many native huts. The cave-dwellers have lived in this fashion from ancient times, and I am told that Pliny refers to them in his account of the Roman settlements in Tunisia. Were one to walk through the neighbourhood one could never guess at the labyrinth of dwelling places below one’s very feet. But knock at one of the doors and a furious barking of dogs warns the hidden inhabitants of the approach of a stranger. We were fortunate in seeing the womenfolk about their work, owing to Mansour having troglodyte relations. As a rule they are hastily concealed on the arrival of visitors, and I fear that fate befell the more beautiful amongst them when we appeared, judging by the singularly unattractive assortment presented for our inspection: a great disappointment, since I had heard much of the good looks of the feminine cave dwellers. Those left for us to see comprisedan aged beldame covered with wrinkles, a sickly-looking half-witted girl, and a by no means merry widow. One can imagine the mixed feeling with which the beauties of the family receive orders to retire into hiding, baffled curiosity warring with a natural complacency at being credited with the possession of dangerous attractions.
On the way back we passed one of the road patrol, wrapped in a thick cloak from which a rifle stuck out, riding a weary horse, and carrying the mails. He rides once a day from the fort at Matmata to Gabès, sign of the law and order established in the remote country districts, and midway on his round he passes the other patrol on the outward way. Were he to be attacked by a gang of robbers he would be hard put to it to defend himself. But the people have an awed respect for the power of the law. When telegraph posts were first set up in the desert to the south, the inhabitants were ignorant of their use, and the arrest of an escaped prisoner from the capital as soon as he reached his native village seemed to them to savour of the miraculous. “It is thus,” explained the sergeant of police, “the wire on those posts stretcheth even unto Tunis, and as a dog, however long his tail, will bite him that pulleth it, so when we touch the wire, no matter at what point, the jaws at the other end will bite.”
As I said before, the position of Arab women in Tunisia is so different from that which they hold in Europe that it is difficult for the two races ever to understand one another. A wife must not speak to her husband in the presence of her parents or of his. In referring to him in conversation she must not mention his name, but use a roundabout method in speaking of him, such as “the master of the house” or “the father of my children.” She may not eat or drink in his presence. Usually he takes his meals with his sons, waited upon by the women folk, who take their food later by themselves.
Amongst poor people the wife’s lot is a harsh one as all the work falls upon her, it being below the dignity of her husband to help her in any way. One often meets a countryman on a small donkey ambling along the road, his feet almost trailing in the dust, whilst his docile wife runs behind laden with the family baby and various belongings. Of course it may be that he knows exercise to be good for her health, but if that is the case, he does not try the recipe himself.
The rôle of wife is evidently a precarious one. At any moment she may be repudiated by her husband and for the most trifling causes. Should he wish to have the repudiation pronounced by the Kaïd, it is easy to find some pretext. Wishing to insult his wife outrageously, he compares her to the back of a person he cannot marry, saying for instance: “You are no more to me than the back of my aunt.” To the European mind this does not seem a very injurious remark, especially if the aunt is a handsome woman; but it is enough to send the wife in tears to the nearest Kaïd. She must wait four months to give her irate husband time to repent and to do the prescribed penance of fasting two months or feeding sixty poor persons. In that case his offence would be washed out. But one quite understands that it is a good deal easier for him to go on with the repudiation. He probably has been on short commons since his unfortunate remark, for an aggrieved wife is not careful over her cooking, and he does not therefore relish the prospect of a two months’ real fast. On the other hand sixty poor persons would probably have voracious appetites. So it comes cheaper to lose his wife. One can imagine many a mild-mannered man being driven into this position.
To do Mohammed justice, he endeavoured to improve the lot of wives, and laid down that the sum paid for one on marriage should be settled upon her. But there is adifference between law and custom, and the old custom still prevails by which the father receives the money.
The head of the family holds a very important position in a Mussulman household, and is treated with great deference by his children. A well brought up son never enters a house in which his father is without asking his permission, nor does he smoke in his presence or speak to him till addressed. Adoption is much practised in Tunisia, and the adopted children are treated in the same way and hold the same rights as the real ones.
A man must never speak to any woman in the street even though she be his own wife or mother. He must even feign not to see these last. It is one of the things that strikes one most on first visiting a Mohammedan country. You never see men and women talking or walking together. The men walk with each other, whilst the few women you see scutter about in twos and threes, closely veiled. If in the company of a husband or father they follow behind.
The Arab is very punctilious as to manners; his courtesy is remarkable, and there are fine gradations of salutation which it takes some time for the stranger to grasp. Should a younger man meet an acquaintance older than himself, he bows with his right hand on his heart. The elder responds in the same way. A child greets his master by taking his hand and kissing it, and then placing it against his own forehead. This same formof obeisance was paid me by women of the poorer classes. An inferior kisses the turban of the superior. Two people of equal rank kiss each other’s shoulders, whilst relatives meeting after a long absence kiss each other on the lips. Women embrace each other repeatedly when meeting.
No business can be conducted quickly; before approaching the real subject the weather must be commented upon, the health of the other enquired into, and that of his wife under the ambiguous title of his “house” or his “family.” Compliments must pass and a thousand and one polite formulas. To plunge into the matter in hand shows ill breeding of the worst description.
I was sketching one morning from the office of a lawyer in an oasis village, so had ample scope for watching professional etiquette. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in flowing robes, his stock of small inkbottles, pens and other awesome implements of his trade ranged carefully on the clean matting round him, whilst he was laboriously writing some document from right to left. A yellow jonquil stuck behind his left ear seemed to me to bring a perilously burlesque note into the legal atmosphere, but I found it taken as a matter of course.
When I asked permission to sit in the doorway of his office, it was given most graciously and he forthwith sent out for a tiny cup of black coffee which he begged me to accept. I felt it would be delightful to become a clientunder these conditions. Why do not the denizens of Lincoln’s Inn offer us scented coffee, and wear flowers behind their ears? It would render the making of a will a pleasant interlude and do much to cheer a drooping bankrupt. If a yellow jonquil proved a little voyant for a London complexion, a white one could be substituted, and how pleasant the flower-bed in the early morning train up to town!
Whilst I was there a young man appeared in company of three or four friends, and after removing their shoes they were shown into the office with great ceremony. There they all squatted down on the far side of the ink bottles, and coffee was at once sent for and handed round. Grave compliments passed backwards and forwards, and the client praised the well-known acumen and mental gifts of the lawyer, who in gracefully denying any special talent, dislodged the jonquil which fell with a flop to the floor. Picking it up he absentmindedly tucked it in again, this time over his right ear, and the conversation was resumed. The state of the crops was discussed, the probability under the blessing of Allah of a good harvest, talk of an extension of the railway, etc. I left half an hour later, wondering whether the young man had called about the renting of a piece of agricultural land, but heard later that he was about to sue a neighbour for debt. Doubtless the real reason of his interview was reached by the afternoon.
Village SceneI. M. D.
Village Scene
I. M. D.
In Tunis itself the women veil themselves in a particularly ugly way. They bind two thick pieces of black stuff across their faces, leaving only a slit for the eyes free. In their voluminous white draperies, and with the white head covering, this gives a most uncanny appearance. They look some dreadful kind of grub. Below the full skirts can be caught a glimpse of stockinged ankles and heelless slippers surmounted by silver bangles.
They may only unveil before their husbands, fathers and very near male relations. The Koran has a deep distrust of feminine charms. “As soon as a man seeth the eyes of a woman he is running into danger. For the glance of a woman is as an arrow without bow or cord.” And again “How often do the looks cast upon women return to do harm to those who sent them.”
In this leisurely land it is considered bad form to hurry, this being one of the signs by which those possessed of devils can be readily detected. Since the opening of tourist agencies, there has been a great influx of these latter into the country.
With that care for hygiene so noticeable in ancient religions, there are countless observances of cleanliness imposed upon the faithful. Hands must be washed after a meal, and the face as well before prayer. If water is not available then fine sand may take its place. Five prayers must be said daily: in the morning, just beforesunrise, at midday, during the afternoon, at sunset, and an hour and a half after the going down of the same. The call to prayer can be heard at these stated times, and it is curiously impressive to wake just as dawn is about to break, and to hear the long drawn-out wail of the muezzin from the minaret in the silence of the night.
Contact with Western civilisation is loosening the hold of their religion upon the people of Tunisia, and the change is probably not for the better. A devout follower of the law of the Prophet is an upright man, but in the slackening of his faith he is apt to acquire only the vices of the European and is in danger of losing his own religion and being left with nothing to take its place.
There are religious schools as well as the Government ones where French is taught, and many boys attend both. In walking through the narrow streets one often hears the drone of small voices, and sees a neat row of little slippers outside a doorway. On going inside, one finds a master intoning the Koran, each phrase of it being repeated interminably by the scholars sitting cross-legged on the matting and rocking themselves backwards and forwards. Each pupil is provided with a board painted white on which the text is written, and when at last all the scholars know it by heart it is washed out, and a fresh one inscribed and taught.
In one tiny village on the edge of the Sahara the schoolwas being held in the courtyard of the minaret, up which I had gone to see the view. The master was intoning the Koran in an inner room, whilst the class of small boys followed it with the correct prostrations outside, facing a sort of recess in the wall which indicated the direction of Mecca. They withstood the intense temptation to stare at a stranger, and went on solemnly with their devotions, whilst I took a snapshot from behind them, quite unperceived.
Service is held in the mosques on Fridays, the prayers being led by a kind of priest called the ‘iman.’ Women are not allowed to take part in public worship. Friday is always a busy and crowded day in the Souks, as it is then that the countrymen come in from the outlying districts to attend service.
Charity is strictly enjoined on the faithful, and apparently no one need ever starve in Tunis. He has but to sit in the gutter and call for alms in the name of Allah, and he will be supported, even if meagrely, for life. Every mosque possesses its clientèle of beggars who reap a livelihood from the worshippers. Fasts are also observed, and the big fast of the year is that of Ramadan, which lasts for a month, during which time not a morsel of food nor a drop of liquid may be taken between sunrise and sunset. When Ramadan falls in the hot weather, the pious undergo real sufferings from thirst.
Wine is forbidden to a Moslem, but this prohibition is now often set aside, especially amongst the younger generation. Probably the drinking of coffee took its place, for the Arab swallows innumerable tiny cups of it during the day.
The Tunisian café in a small town or village is a pleasant place. The customers sip their coffee in a leisurely way, sitting in the sunshine, and discussing the news of the day. Many play dominoes or chess, and sometimes strolling musicians, snake-charmers or professional story tellers collect a group round them. The teller of tales is a very popular personage, and is always sure of a large audience, and now and again one comes across the impromptu bard who weaves his chant as he goes along, introducing apt stanzas about each giver of a coin, to the delight of the crowd.
Life is leisurely. No one is in a hurry, the day is long. Why trouble to do to-day what may as well be left till to-morrow? There is none of the feverish activity and restlessness of modern civilisation. “About each man’s neck hath Allah hung his fate,” and therefore it is useless to try to avert it. Interminable discussions are carried on over the coffee cups, and as in village-life all the world over, a neighbour’s affairs are of only secondary importance to one’s own. The fierce light that beats upon a throne is but a taper to the penetrating beam focussed upon every household in a small community.
They are an attractive race, and the poorer classes seem to have the virtues and faults of children. They require constant supervision at their work and plenty of the syrup of praise when they do well, and like children they are quick to see and take advantage of any weakness in an employer. George Washington would have found himself lonely indeed amongst them, for they cannot speak the truth. They lie as a matter of course and often most inartistically. A servant will deny that he has been smoking, even with the half-consumed cigarette between his fingers. When it is pointed out to him he professes extreme astonishment and declares that Allah must surely have placed it there. It is difficult to receive such an excuse with calm. They are said to be untrustworthy, but I was not in the country long enough to be able to judge of this. Their dignity is admirable, they are gentle, charitable to the poor and treat the aged with reverence. They love flowers, scent, the shade of trees and the sound of running water. Missionaries say the children are very quick and intelligent up to the age of thirteen or fourteen when their minds seem to cease developing. If they make some impression on the girls when young, the influence of fathers and husbands tends quickly to destroy it. Education is looked on far more favourably than it was, however, and even the daughters of a family are now sometimes allowed to attend school, especially in the towns.
There are two opposing opinions as to the people of Tunisia. One side holds that they are a played-out race, of whom no further development can be expected. The other declares that their evolution was arrested by the triumph of Mohammedanism, that in earlier days there were brilliant intellects amongst them and that there is every possibility of an awakening of their slumbering mentality. The French scientist Saint Paul is of this latter belief. He was for years in the country living amongst the people and penetrating to their houses in his character of doctor, and in his bookSouvenirs de Tunisiepublished in 1909 he made an exhaustive study of their psychology and testified warmly to their good qualities and intelligence.
The town of Tunis itself is cosmopolitan. Approached by steamer, it spreads itself out in a white fan along the edge of a lagoon that has the effect of a bay, being only divided from the Gulf of Tunis by the merest strip of land. There seems scarcely a finger’s breadth between the two. In the early morning of a December day the town showed as a white blur in the haze that hung about the lake. The ship glided slowly through the narrow entrance at Goulette which leads into a canal deepened out in the shallow waters of the lagoon, marked on one side by floating buoys and on the other fringed by the narrow embankment on which runs the tramway to Carthage.
At first sight Tunis seems knee-deep in water she stands so low, and indeed a great part of the modern town is built on land reclaimed from the lake itself. But as one nears the shore the picturesque jumble resolves itself into flat-topped white houses, the domes of innumerable mosques, outlines of minarets, lines of dark foliage marking the whereabouts of central boulevards, and behind them all the wooded slopes of the Belvedere pleasure park. From here the eye is led by degrees to further and further hills.It is a picturesque setting. Backed by jagged rocky hills that glow deep rose and dusky purple at sunset, the capital gazes over the placid waters of the lake to the deep blue of the Gulf beyond, to the twin peaks of le Bou-Cornine on the north east and the low hill of Carthage to the West.
The French part of the town has broad streets with shady avenues of trees, modern shops with Paris goods displayed behind plate glass windows. Electric trams pass and re-pass. One could imagine oneself in the South of France. But by way of the archway called La Porte de France, left standing when the ancient walls were demolished, one escapes with a sigh of relief into the native town. Here too, everything is touched with Europeanism, but enough remains to prick the imagination. The narrow covered Souks or arcades, where the merchants sit in their tiny raised shops, their shiny yellow slippers ranged side by side ready to put on again when business is over, the crowd in flowing Eastern robes sauntering up and down languidly shopping, the red and green tomb of a holy man right in the gangway, with a blind beggar squatting beside it proffering an open hand for alms, the strange chrysalis-shaped white bundles with their tight black veils, that are women, the passing funeral with its swathed corpse carried shoulder-high and followed by a chanting crowd. All this breathes the East.
Entrée d’un SoukTunisI. M. D.2.23.
Entrée d’un Souk
Tunis
I. M. D.
2.23.
And yet the flavour of it is spoilt by the touch of unrealityabout it all. Tawdry European goods are presided over by a dignified Mussulman in a fez who will perhaps accost you in excellent English. From under flowing robes appear narrow French shoes. One groans. And then, of a sudden, you may look up an alley way, and it is the real thing again. A strip of blue sky, hot sunshine, the blue-green of a small dome, men in statuesque drapery outside the carved entrance of a mosque. A glimpse within of kneeling silent figures in white, in dove colour, in grey. And your flagging spirit fires again. Tunis is a beautiful Arab woman in European dress, and as such she frequently puts one’s teeth on edge. But push into the country and you will find the native life untouched, the peasant people leading the same lives as generations before them led, no hint of the uneasy modernism that spoils the capital.
One must remember too that the town of Tunis cannot be treated as a homogeneous entity. It is composed of many elements, all keeping to their own customs and habits and mixing not at all. The French took over the Protectorate of the country in 1881, but their race does not predominate here. There is an immense population of Jews who inhabit their own quarter, and an even greater number of Italians and Maltese as well as the natives of the country itself. One hears Italian spoken as often in the street as French, and I suspect a certain jealousy and suspicion on the part of the French.
The country is ruled by a Bey under the protection of the French Government represented by a Resident General. The different provinces are under the management of Kaïds appointed by the Bey and answerable to French ‘Contrôleurs Civils.’ The system seems to work well, and undoubtedly the country has prospered under French protection, even though that protection was originally thrust upon her. Good roads are made, a plentiful supply of water is brought to each town, the country is linked up by railways and telegraphic communication, and schools are opened in even the smallest places. It seemed to me the inhabitants live on happy terms with their ‘protectors,’ and I was struck by the absence of any insolence in the attitude of the latter to the dark-skinned races. Arabs and Europeans travel in the same railway carriages and trams, sit perhaps at adjoining tables in restaurants, take their turn at the booking offices, naturally and without resentment on either side. I had known India well many years ago, and the difference of our attitude to a subject race could not but come into my mind now. The British rule is a beneficent one, and just. But it is the rule of a kindly master over subordinates. The French method appears to me a happier one.
The town of Tunis itself seems to be spreading rapidly, large hotels spring up as suddenly as mushrooms after a night’s rain, and the streets are full of sight-seeing tourists.At times a cargo of as many as five hundred of them may be dumped on shore, earnestly ‘doing’ Tunis in a few hours or a day and a half. The town Arab adapts himself to his environment and becomes one of that race of beings without nationality, familiar to all who have travelled in distant lands, a hybrid creature of most distasteful qualities. Where the carcase is to be found there shall the vultures be gathered together, and as the troops of admiring tourists debouch upon the street one is irresistibly reminded of a shoal of herring in shallow water with its accompanying clamour of predatory gulls. If Allah has caused the harvest to fail, he has at least provided the tourist.
They are of all varieties: from the superior person sheltered from any contact with the vulgar world behind the glass windows of his touring limousine-car, and the crowd that moves from one cosmopolitan hotel to another, carried about almost without volition like goldfish in a bowl, to the traveller who perhaps has saved up enough just to do a Mediterranean trip and to stare with delighted bewilderment at a life so different from that to which he is accustomed.
In the hotel of one small oasis town I observed a tall and gaunt young man of indeterminable nationality, and as I rode back peacefully in the evening from my saunters in search of sketchable points of view I used to see the same youth striding along the road, the dust flying from behindhis heels, whilst a weary guide tottered in his wake. Mansour was much amused. “Truly the foreigner is possessed of a devil,” he remarked, “I know his guide and he tells me that every day his employer sets forth with a map and walks with fury from the rising up of the sun to its going down. He is afflicted with a rage of walking. Mahmoud when first engaged by him rejoiced greatly, for he thought the newcomer to be inexperienced and foresaw fat profit for himself. But though it is but four days since he came, already is my friend so greatly exhausted that he can scarce put one foot before the other. He prays daily that the stranger may soon leave, for he is so young that there is still great strength in him. He is tall and his legs are of such a length that he takes but one step while Mahmoud must take two, and never will he take a car or mount a donkey.”
We were gently ambling home from a sketching expedition. It was getting late in the afternoon and the long shadows of the palms lay across the sandy road. Our steeds were beginning to mend their pace as they came in sight of their stables. I had been painting hard and was in the comfortably tired state induced by two hours satisfactory work. Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps and there shot past us the figure of the thin young man walking as if for a wager. His brow was unheated, his face serene. Close behind him panted the sorry figure ofMahmoud who cast an agonised look upon his friend as he limped past. His figure was certainly not adapted to violent exercise and he seemed at the last stages of exhaustion. And so he was. Next day the energetic pedestrian passed me where I sat sketching down by the river. The dust still spurted from below his feet. But he was alone. “Mahmoud hath taken to his bed,” explained Mansour, “he saith that if he gets up he will be made to walk fifteen miles. And indeed he cannot rise for he is naught but aches and pains from head to foot and is calling curses upon the foreigner. He had hoped to be given much money, for had he not ready two pairs of worn-out shoes to testify for him? But is not life sweeter than money? and he can do no more. The traveller has not been able to get another guide, for every man finds himself of a sudden too busy. Thus he will soon leave. And Mahmoud saith that never will he engage himself from henceforth to any stranger till he has first looked upon him to see whether or no his legs be long!”
In Tunis, forgetting that I myself was a tourist, I studied them with an interested eye. Sitting outside a small restaurant in the central boulevard where the heaped flower stalls made splashes of colour under the heavy foliage of the trees, I watched them pass, sipping my coffee and meditating their infinite variety.
And in the hotel drawing room that evening I wasaccosted by a grey haired and aggrieved spinster. “Can you tell me,” she asked, “where I can find a tea-shop in Tunis?” I explained patiently that tea-shops are not indigenous to the country, that tea can be served at any café or restaurant, but that coffee is the national drink and is beautifully made. “In a town of this size theremustbe a tea-shop,” she remarked firmly, “I mean the kind where there is a band and you can get muffins and scones as well as cakes. I am sure someone told me thereisone here,” she added, casting a suspicious glance upon me. I mentally shrugged my shoulders and moved away. She spent three days in the place and every afternoon was devoted to her pathetic quest. And on the last day as she stood in the hall awaiting the hotel omnibus, her luggage about her feet and a neat waterproof upon her arm, I ventured to inquire as to its success. “I was here too short a time to come across it,” she answered coldly, “but I shall be returning.”
So I gather the search for a tea-shop is to be resumed, and I am very much afraid that in a year or two she may find it.
The history of Tunisia has been the record of a long sequence of civilisations that have possessed her in turn, have risen to fame and glory and one by one have gone down before a fresh power. As far back as the ninth centuryB.C., Carthage was founded by the Phœniciansand rapidly became a rich and powerful city. Her merchants trafficked all along the Mediterranean and even pushed as far as the little island of Great Britain wrapped in Atlantic fogs. Her riches were immense and she dared to enter the lists against Rome itself. This temerity cost her dear. After two long wars she was beaten, her fleet destroyed, and finally in 146B.C.the Romans utterly destroyed the town, and the country became a Roman province. They rebuilt it later and Carthage again became rich and powerful. In 439A.D.she was taken by the Vandals and about a hundred years later passed into the keeping of the Byzantine Empire. At the end of the seventh century the city was again utterly destroyed by Arab conquerors, and since then Carthage has remained a heap of ruins, the town of Tunis gradually growing in importance and wealth. The subsequent fortunes of the country since the Arab conquest down to 1575 were interwoven with the general history of Barbary, but at that date it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, till it threw off the Turkish yoke about the eighteenth century and became virtually independent. Finally, in 1881, France sent an expedition to Tunis with the proclaimed purpose of punishing the raids of Tunisian tribes into Algiers, and eventually the Bey, under compulsion, signed a treaty of suzerainty to the French Republic.
As each of the earlier conquerors in turn tried busily todestroy all vestiges of his predecessor’s reign, little else but fragments are left of the older civilisations. Carthage is not even a heap of ruins now. She is a handful of dust. Her stones were carried away for the construction of Arab houses, one comes across stray pillars wreathed with the acanthus of Rome, in the Souks of Tunis, huge blocks of stone are built even into the mud villages everywhere, marble pillars have been transferred bodily into the interiors of mosques. Carthage herself has become a desolation and a waste.
I went there on a day of hot sunshine and an intense blue sky. It is about ten miles from Tunis. As the train crawled like a caterpillar along the thread of embankment across the lagoon, an Italian steamer was gliding through the canal on my right; and beyond the pencilled edge of the lake was the deep blue rim of sea for which she was bound. On my left was the placid surface of the lake, dotted with waterfowl and with a few wooden stakes here and there, on which crouched the black figures of cormorants looking like dejected priests. On a tiny island were the ruins of a Spanish fort. Reaching Goulette, there were still a few small stations to pass, and then came Carthage.
The sandy soil seemed almost to throb in the warmth, hedges of cactus lined the broad road from the tiny station. Absurd modern villas stood about, flotsam of the new civilisation. But climbing upward I left the villas behindand turning on the slopes looked out to where the blue of the sea faded into a soft haze. To the west the red cliffs of Sidi bou Said caught the eye, and the clustering white houses of its beautiful village. On the summit of the hill of Carthage stands the ugly modern Roman Catholic cathedral, avenging by its presence the deaths of Saint Perpetua and the unfortunately named poor little Saint Felicity, Christian martyrs in the Roman amphitheatre of Carthage.
Adjoining the cathedral is the monastery of the Pères Blancs, who have a small museum filled with Punic and Roman remains. There are fragments of statues, broken vases, earthenware lamps, coins, medals, sarcophagi in which one can see frail skeletons preserved in their covering of aromatic gum. These haughty warriors and princesses lie helplessly exposed to the gaze of every idle tourist, the painted lids of their resting places standing sentinel-fashion behind each. I am no antiquarian. All I carried away was a confused impression of a débris washed up on the shores of Time; of delicate bracelets and gold rings, of tiny charms, of iridescent glass bottles dug up from the sand, of all the odds and ends that human beings gather round them. I think they were not so very different from ourselves, these people of long ago. And now conquerors and conquered mingle their remains in the sterile peace of museum shelves. In the garden outside were rangedpieces of pillars, fragments of vast statues, here a giant hand, there a colossal head.
A white-robed monk paced slowly along the path with his breviary, and a bush of rosemary gave out a faint aromatic scent as my skirts brushed it in passing. A small boy was herding a flock of goats by the shattered ruins of the amphitheatre, and I wandered from one group of stones to another, all that was left of a great and famous city. I was shown fragments of Roman villas with mosaic pavements, private entrances from them to the theatre where only a broken column or two remains to show the glories of what had once been. Nearly all the finds of any value have been taken to the Bardo Museum at Tunis. Here there is almost nothing. A soft wind stirred the grass growing between the blocks of fallen masonry, a tiny lizard ran swiftly across one of the grey stone seats, far off in the gentian blue of the Gulf showed a feather of dark smoke. The silence was so intense that one could almost hear the rustle of the lizard’s feet. One’s mind swung giddily backwards through the past centuries. More than ever one had the sensation of the inexorable tide of Time, carrying into oblivion the painfully acquired civilisations of the world. Each so absorbed, so confident, and of them all what is left? The crumbling fragile bones in the museum, and a tiny chip of blue mosaic in the dust at my feet, seemed the only answer.