Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond Part 8

"Hast thou not a copper for the sake of the Lord?"

"No, O my brother."

After a few minutes another female comes on the scene, exhibiting enough of her face to show that it is a ma.s.s of sores.

"Only a trifle, in the name of my lord Idrees," she cries, and turns away on being told, "G.o.d bring it!"

Then comes a policeman, a makhazni, who seats himself amid a shower of salutations--

"Hast thou any more of those selhams" (hooded cloaks)?

"Come on the morrow, and thou shalt see."

The explanation of this answer given by the "merchant" is that he sees such folk only mean to bother him for nothing.

And this appears to be the daily routine of "business," though a good bargain must surely be made some time to have enabled our friend to acquire all the property he has, but so far as an outsider can judge, it must be a slow process. Anyhow, it has heartily tired the writer, who has whiled away the morning penning this account on a cus.h.i.+on on one side of the shop described. Yet it is a fair specimen of what has been observed by him on many a morning in this sleepy land.

XIV

SHOPPING[7]

[7: Contributed by my wife.--B. M.]

"Debt destroys religion."

_Moorish Proverb._

If any should imagine that time is money in Morocco, let them undertake a shopping expedition in Tangier, the town on which, if anywhere in Morocco, occidental energy has set its seal. Not that one such excursion will suffice, unless, indeed, the purchaser be of the cla.s.s who have more money than wit, or who are absolutely at the mercy of the guide and interpreter who pockets a commission upon every bargain he brings about. For the ordinary mortal, who wants to spread his dollars as far as it is possible for dollars to go, a tour of inspection, if not two or three, will be necessary before such a feat can be accomplished. To be sure, there is always the risk that between one visit and another some coveted article may find its way into the hands of a more reckless, or at least less thrifty, purchaser, but that risk may be safely taken.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Albert, Photo., Tunis._

A TUNISIAN SHOPKEEPER.]

There is something very attractive in the small cupboard-like shops of the main street. Their owners sit cross-legged ready for a chat, looking wonderfully picturesque in cream-coloured jellab, or in semi-transparent white farrajiyah, or tunic, allowing at the throat a glimpse of saffron, cerise, or green from the garment beneath. The white turban, beneath which shows a line of red Fez cap, serves as a foil to the clear olive complexion and the dark eyes and brows, while the faces are in general goodly to look upon, except where the lines have grown coa.r.s.e and sensuous.

So strong is the impression of elegant leisure, that it is difficult to imagine that these men expect to make a living from their trade, but they are more than willing to display their goods, and will doubtless invite you to a seat upon the shop ledge--where your feet dangle gracefully above a rough cobble-stone pavement--and sometimes even to a cup of tea. One after another, in quick succession, carpets of different dimensions (but all oblong, for Moorish rooms are narrow in comparison with their length) are spread out in the street, and the shop-owners' satellite, by reiterated cries of "Balak! Balak!" (Mind out! Mind out!) accompanied by persuasive pushes, keeps off the pa.s.sing donkeys. A miniature crowd of interested spectators will doubtless gather round you, making remarks upon you and your purchases. Charmed by the artistic colourings, rich but never garish, you ask the price, and if you are wise you will immediately offer just half of that named. It is quite probable that the carpets will be folded up and returned to their places upon the shelf at the back of the shop, but it is equally probable that by slow and tactful yielding upon either side, interspersed with curses upon your ancestors and upon yourself, the bargain will be struck about halfway between the two extremes.

The same method must be adopted with every article bought, and if you purpose making many purchases in the same shop, you will be wise to obtain and write down the price quoted in each case as "the _very_ lowest," and make your bid for the whole at once, lest, made cunning by one experience of your tactics, the shopman should put on a wider marginal profit in every other instance to circ.u.mvent you. It is also well for the purchaser to express ardent admiration in tones of calm indifference, for the Moor has quick perceptions, and though he may not understand English, when enthusiasm is apparent, he has the key to the situation, and refuses to lower his prices.

Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult to avoid a warm expression of admiration at the handsome bra.s.s trays, the Morocco leather bags into which such charming designs of contrasting colours are skilfully introduced, or the graceful utensils of copper and bra.s.s with which a closer acquaintance was made when you were the guest at a Moorish dinner. Many and interesting are the curious trifles which may be purchased, but they will be found in the greatest profusion in the bazaars established for the convenience of Nazarene tourists, where prices will frequently be named in English money, for an English "yellow-boy" is nowhere better appreciated than in Tangier.

In the shops in the sok, or market-place, prices are sometimes more moderate, and there you may discover some of the more distinctively Moorish articles, which are brought in from the country; nor can there be purchased a more interesting memento than a flint-lock, a pistol, or a carved dagger, all more or less elaborately decorated, such as are carried by town or country Moor, the former satisfied with a dagger in its chased sheath, except at the time of "powder-play," when flint-locks are in evidence everywhere.

But in the market-place there are exposed for sale the more perishable things of Moorish living. Some of the small cupboards are grocers'

shops, where semolina for the preparation of kesk'soo, the national dish, may be purchased, as well as candles for burning at the saints'

shrines, and a mult.i.tude of small necessaries for the Moorish housewives. In the centre of the market sit the bread-sellers, for the most part women whose faces are supposed to be religiously kept veiled from the gaze of man, but who are apt to let their haks fall back quite carelessly when only Europeans are near. An occasional glimpse may sometimes be thus obtained of a really pretty face of some la.s.s on the verge of womanhood.

Look at that girl in front of us, stooping over the stall of a vendor of what some one has dubbed "sticky nastinesses," her hak lightly thrown back; her bent form and the tiny hand protruding at her side show that she is not alone, her little baby brother proving almost as much as she can carry. Her teeth are pearly white; her hair and eyebrows are jet black; her nut-brown cheeks bear a pleasant smile, and as she stretches out one hand to give the "confectioner" a few coppers, with the other clutching at her escaping garment, and moves on amongst the crowd, we come to the conclusion that if not fair, she is at least comely.

The country women seated on the ground with their wares form a nucleus for a dense crowd. They have carried in upon their backs heavy loads of gra.s.s for provender, or firewood and charcoal which they sell in wholesale quant.i.ties to the smaller shopkeepers, who purchase from other countryfolk donkey loads of ripe melons and luscious black figs.

There is a glorious inconsequence in the arrangement of the wares.

Here you may see a pile of women's garments exposed for sale, and not far away are sweet-sellers with honey-cakes and other unattractive but toothsome delicacies. If you can catch a glimpse of the native bra.s.s-workers busily beating out artistic designs upon trays of different sizes and shapes, do not fail to seize the opportunity of watching them. You may form one in the ring gathered round the snake-charmer, or join the circle which listens open-mouthed and with breathless attention to that story-teller, who breaks off at a most critical juncture in his narrative to shake his tambourine, declaring that so close-fisted an audience does not deserve to hear another word, much less the conclusion of his fascinating tale.

But before you join either party, indeed before you mingle at all freely in the crowd upon a Moorish market-place, it is well to remember that the flea is a common domestic insect, impartial in the distribution of his favours to Moor, Jew and Nazarene, and is in fact not averse to "fresh fields and pastures new."

If you are clad in perishable garments, beware of the water-carrier with his goat-skin, his tinkling bell, his bra.s.s cup, and his strange cry. Beware, too, of the strings of donkeys with heavily laden packs, and do not scruple to give them a forcible push out of your way.

If you are mounted upon a donkey yourself, so much the better; by watching the methods of your donkey-boy to ensure a clear pa.s.sage for his beast, you will realize that dwellers in Barbary are not strangers to the spirit of the saying, "Each man for himself, and the de'il take the hindmost."

Yet they are a pleasant crowd to be amongst, in spite of insect-life, water-carriers, and bulky pack-saddles, and there is an exhaustless store of interest, not alone in the wares they have for sale, and in the trades they ply, but more than all in the faces, so often keen and alert, and still more often bright and smiling.

One typical example of Moorish methods of shopping, and I have done.

Among those who make their money by trade, you may find a man who spends his time in bringing the would-be purchaser into intimate relations with the article he desires to obtain. He has no shop of his own, but may often be recognized as an interested spectator of some uncompleted bargain. Having discovered your dwelling-place, he proceeds to "bring the mountain to Mohammed," and you will doubtless be confronted in the court-yard of your hotel by the very article for which you have been seeking in vain. Of course he expects a good price which shall ensure him a profit of at least fifty per cent. upon his expenditure, but he too is open to a bargain, and a little skilful pointing out of flaws in the article which he has brought for purchase, in a tone of calm and supreme indifference, is apt to ensure a very satisfactory reduction of price in favour of the shopper in Barbary.

XV

A SUNDAY MARKET

"A climb with a friend is a descent."

_Moorish Proverb._

One of the sights of Tangier is its market. Sundays and Thursdays, when the weather is fine, see the disused portion of the Mohammedan graveyard outside _Bab el Fahs_ (called by the English Port St.

Catherine, and now known commonly as the Sok Gate) crowded with buyers and sellers of most quaint appearance to the foreign eye, not to mention camels, horses, mules, and donkeys, or the goods they have brought. Hither come the sellers from long distances, trudging all the way on foot, laden or not, according to means, all eager to exchange their goods for European manufacturers, or to carry home a few more dollars to be buried with their store.

Sunday is no Sabbath for the sons of Israel, so the money-changers are doing a brisk trade from baskets of filthy native bronze coin, the smallest of which go five hundred to the s.h.i.+lling, and the largest three hundred and thirty-three! Hard by a venerable rabbi is leisurely cutting the throats of fowls brought to him for the purpose by the servants or children of Jews, after the careful inspection enjoined by the Mosaic law. The old gentleman has the coolest way of doing it imaginable; he might be only peeling an orange for the little girl who stands waiting. After apparently all but turning the victim inside out, he twists back its head under its wings, folding these across its breast as a handle, and with his free hand removing his razor-like knife from his mouth, nearly severs its neck and hands it to the child, who can scarcely restrain its struggles except by putting her foot on it, while he mechanically wipes his blade and prepares to despatch another.

Eggs and milk are being sold a few yards off by country women squatted on the ground, the former in baskets or heaps on the stones, the latter in uninviting red jars, with a round of p.r.i.c.kly-pear leaf for a stopper, and a bit of palmetto rope for a handle.

By this time we are in the midst of a perfect Babel--a human maelstrom. In a European crowd one is but crushed by human beings; here all sorts of heavily laden quadrupeds, with packs often four feet across, come jostling past, sometimes with the most unsavoury loads.

We have just time to observe that more country women are selling walnuts, vegetables, and fruits, on our left, at the door of what used to be the tobacco and hemp fandak, and that native sweets, German knick-knacks and Spanish fruit are being sold on our right, as amid the din of forges on either side we find ourselves in the midst of the crush to get through the narrow gate.

Here an exciting scene ensues. Continuous streams of people and beasts of burden are pus.h.i.+ng both ways; a drove of donkeys laden with rough bundles of cork-wood for the ovens approaches, the projecting ends prodding the pa.s.sers-by; another drove laden with stones tries to pa.s.s them, while half a dozen mules and horses vainly endeavour to pa.s.s out. A European horseman trots up and makes the people fly, but not so the beasts, till he gets wedged in the midst, and must bide his time after all. Meanwhile one is almost deafened by the noise of shouting, most of it good-humoured. "Zeed! Arrah!" vociferates the donkey-driver. "Balak!" shouts the horseman. "Balak! Guarda!"

(p.r.o.nounced warda) in a louder key comes from a man who is trying to pilot a Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary through the gate, with Her Excellency on his arm.

At last we seize a favourable opportunity and are through. Now we can breathe. In front of us, underneath an arch said to have been built to shelter the English guard two hundred years ago (which is very unlikely, since the English destroyed the fortifications of this gate), we see the native shoeing-smiths hacking at the hoofs of horses, mules, and donkeys, in a manner most extraordinary to us, and nailing on triangular plates with holes in the centre--though most keep a stock of English imported shoes and nails for the fastidious Nazarenes. Spanish and Jewish butchers are driving a roaring trade at movable stalls made of old boxes, and the din is here worse than ever.

Now we turn aside into the vegetable market, as it is called, though as we enter we are almost sickened by the sight of more butchers'

stalls, and further on by putrid fish. This market is typical. Low thatched booths of branches and canes are the only shops but those of the butchers, the arcade which surrounds the interior of the building being chiefly used for stores. Here and there a filthy rag is stretched across the crowded way to keep the sun off, and anon we have to stop to avoid some drooping branch. Fruit and vegetables of all descriptions in season are sold amid the most good-humoured haggling.

Emerging from this interesting scene by a gate leading to the outer sok, we come to one quite different in character. A large open s.p.a.ce is packed with country people, their beasts and their goods, and towns-people come out to purchase. Women seem to far outnumber the men, doubtless on account of their size and their conspicuous head-dress. They are almost entirely enveloped in white haks, over the majority of which are thrown huge native sun-hats made of palmetto, with four coloured cords by way of rigging to keep the brim extended. When the sun goes down these are to be seen slung across the shoulders instead. Very many of the women have children slung on their backs, or squatting on their hips if big enough. This causes them to stoop, especially if some other burden is carried on their shoulders as well.