CHAPTER II

THE WILD LAND OF RAISULI

Always there was the echo of the personality which had so impressed itself on Morocco that the soil of the mountains and the texture of men’s minds were equally impregnated with its forces. Here Raisuli saw a drunken Sherif, and, turning to the scornful onlookers, said, “The man is blessed of Allah. Your eyes see wrongly. He is in the throes of prophecy. Bring him to my camp.” The Sherif was never seen again, and legend says he was corporeally translated to Paradise!

Here Raisuli took shelter from the advancing Spaniards and, from the walls of Berber Castle, made the prophecy that is repeated from one end of the country to the other: “This is my country and you are my people. Nothing will be taken from _me_, but after my death it will all go.”

From Xauen it is possible to ride across the steep ridges of Jebel Hashim direct to Tazrut, but, because I wanted to see more of the country in which Raisuli had fought, we retraced our steps. Picking up the old Sherif, Mulai Sadiq, we continued by way of Wadi Ras and the Fondak of Ain Yerida, which was the Sherif’s headquarters for many months of war, to Azib el Abbas. There we left the main road and swung down through a desolate region, grey with boulders, to Beni Mesauer, the constant refuge of el Raisuli when hard-pressed. The house of el Ayashi Zellal, his sworn ally and father-in-law, is hidden somewhere among the crags, but we left the highlands for Wadi Harisha, where the olive trees are like round tents by a stream lost in vegetation, and whole flocks shelter under their branches. For the first time I saw barley amidst the great stretches of millet. “These are the lands of the Sherif,” said the Mulai Sadiq, who had pulled forward the hood of his jellaba[6] till only a long nose and a pair of immense orange glasses were visible.

[Illustration: Escort sent by Raisuli to meet Rosita Forbes at Suq el Kemis. The white horse was for the author]

[Illustration: Powder play by Arabs]

“Everything that you can see from now on belongs to him,” explained Mr. Cerdeira, the official interpreter between the Spanish Government and el Raisuli, who most kindly accompanied me to Tazrut, which he was the first European to visit, I believe. He added that, when Spain temporarily confiscated the properties of the Sherif during the recent war, they were valued at six million pesetas. Certainly these rolling downs, where villages were frequent, appeared to be excellent land for cultivation, though there were still as many acres of great, heavy- headed thistles as of grain. The post of Suq el Talata appeared on a hill-top in a haze of heat, and, after that, we clung panting to the sides of the car while we negotiated a track that, as the Sherif expressed it, after he had hit the hood several times, “jolted our backbones through our heads.” Sidi el Haddi, a valley where the stream made great pools between trees gnarled with lichen and thickets of the ubiquitous oleanders, gave us a little rest, and then up again by Sidi Buqir, a little white Morabit, where is buried one of the seven holy men of Beni Aros.

At last, when our throats were parched and our lips cracked, we had our first good view of Jebel Alan, on whose great peak was buried Sidi Abd es Salaam, the most famous of el Raisuli’s ancestors, and its twin mountain Jebel Hashim, the guardian of Tazrut. Below them, and most blessedly near, appeared the last big Spanish post, Suq el Khemis, and the little police camp of Sidi Ali. With a series of mighty jerks the car leaped up and over the intervening track and deposited us, much exhausted, in the centre of a crowd which represented both the old Morocco and the new. On one side were the officers of the police post, cheerily apologetic because of a combination of pyjama jackets and puttees, speaking Arabic like natives, and saying that it was so long (two years) since they had seen a woman that they had forgotten what one looked like! On the other were the envoys of el Raisuli, with a guard of his mountaineers. Prominent among them, because of his bulk, appeared Sherif Badr Din el Bakali, and behind him, his jellaba turned back over a purple waistcoat and girt with a huge silver belt, the Kaid el Meshwar ed Menebbhe. These brought me greetings from the Sherif and expressed many ceremonious regrets that his eldest son, Mohamed el Khalid, had not been able to accompany them. I learned afterwards that the said youth, aged eighteen, having consistently neglected his studies during the festivities consequent upon his father’s recent wedding, had been put in irons by the Sherif, so that he might not be able to escape from his books!

It was then 108° Fahr. in the shade, and, personally, even in Arabia I have never felt anything hotter than the dry, burning wind, which appeared to issue from an oven among the hills. It was decided that while the Moslems prayed at the tomb of Sidi Mared, another of the sainted seven, fortunately conveniently near, the Christians should eat. We lunched with the hospitable officers, whose names I never knew, and a wonderful meal it was, not only on account of the inventive genius of the cook, but because no two people spoke the same language. Between us we mustered several different forms of Arabic and various European tongues, but the Tower of Babel would have been shaken by the efforts of the guests to communicate with their hosts! We gave it up in the end and sat outside, in the largest patch of shade, looking over the plain where the great weekly market is held.

[Illustration: Snake eater at Suq el Khemis, one of the Hedowi gypsies]

Hearing that strangers were in the camp, some gipsies came and stared at us over the edge of the sand-bags. One man held a snake in his hand to which he was crooning gently. Without much encouragement they began their unpleasant performance. A wild-looking youth with hair standing on end seized a glass and began crunching it up in his teeth. The man with the snake held it at arm’s-length and adjured it in the names of dead saints. Then, opening his mouth, from which foam dripped at the corners, he put out his tongue and let the reptile fix its fangs in it. Blood stained the foam and, with veins congested and eyes turned inwards, the gipsy began eating the living snake, first swallowing the head affixed to his tongue, and then chewing the body, which writhed up and struck him on the cheeks. All the time, the others kept up a curiously hypnotic chant which appeared to stimulate the hysteria or fervour of the performers, for, with a sudden shout, the eater of glass seized an iron mace which one of his companions was carrying. With this he struck his head so forcibly that the blood ran down under his matted hair. It was a disgusting spectacle, but evidently it delighted the remaining gipsies, who uttered bestial howls and flung themselves into a dance in which the maximum of contortion was achieved.

It was with great relief that I saw the approach of el Raisuli’s dignified envoys. “If we would arrive tonight, we must start,” said the Kaid, and, in another moment, there was the bustle of loading mules and mounting horses. The Kaid, evidently impressed by my boots, offered me his mount, a wild, grey stallion. “He is an Afrit[7]; so treat him with respect.” I did not need the warning. The look in the Afrit’s eye was quite enough, but, fortunately, it is almost impossible to fall off an Arab saddle. Immensely wide and padded, with a high pommel back and front, it is girthed over half-a-dozen different-coloured saddle-cloths and has silver stirrups rather like coal-shovels.

The procession that moved away from Sidi Ali was imposing, for half-a- dozen officers, on their way to an outpost at Bugelia, rode with us, accompanied by their troopers; but, after we had clambered up and down a series of precipitous ridges, they left us, and we were in the hands of Raisuli.

The country became even wilder, the wadis a tangle of vine and blackberry, with high-growing shrubs nameless to me as to the Arabs, who called them “firewood.” First went the soldiers of the Sherif, stalwart mountaineers in short brown jellaba, with the rifles across their backs. They were followed by a couple of baggage-mules, behind whom rode a servant of the Kaid, a sporting Martini-Henry rifle ready for partridge or hare. His master was mounted on a gaily-caparisoned mule whose trappings went well with the gay colours of his turban and waistcoat. The Afrit and I danced uncomfortably behind him, generally sideways or in a series of bounds. Then came old Mulai Sadiq astride the plumpest of saddle-mules, his spectacles still balanced on the tip of his nose and a white umbrella over his head. Sidi Badr ed Din, his beard dyed with henna glittering in the sunshine, his horse almost hidden by his ample proportions, brought up the rear with the interpreter and some servants, who took off their outer garments one by one, to pile them on their heads against the fierceness of the sun.

For a couple of hours we rode across the mountains of Beni Aros, passing mud-built villages huddled under the shade of a cliff, their thatched roofs covered with wild vine, and wadis where the trees met above our heads, and grey foxes slipped away into the bushes. After this there was only a goat track, which ran on the edge of a gully thick with blackberries, or across open pastures where the shepherds went armed, beside their flocks. The sun slipped low behind us as we clambered up the last rocks, blackened by recent fires, to the Qubba of Sidi Musa. There, at a well under wide-spreading trees, we stopped to rest. The Arabs said their afternoon prayers, bowing themselves till the earth grimed their foreheads, but I noticed that they drank out of the same cup as their Christian guest, without washing it. If the fanatics of Libia or Asir did such a thing by mistake, they would consider themselves defiled.

In the sunset we approached Tazrut, a cluster of white houses and green roofs, with the tower of the Mosque rising beside a thicket of oak. Seen across a stretch of scrub and rock, it looked an ideal hermitage for a saint and an admirable post of vantage for a warrior.

Tazrut is the strategical centre of Raisuli’s country. It lies midway between all his great positions and is within a day’s journey of most of them, yet it is in the heart of the mountains, commanding a wide expanse of country in front, where the hills of Beni Aros are piled, fold upon fold. Behind is the great barrier range, to whose summits the Spaniards are pushing their advance posts, but which a few years ago was only inhabited by wild pigs and monkeys. We pushed our tired horses across the last mullah[8] and found ourselves suddenly among ruins. On all sides were traces of the Spanish aeroplanes, which had bombed Tazrut for two days in 1922. Here were rough pits under the rocks, where the inhabitants had taken shelter, and great holes torn by bombs and shells. Not a house was undamaged. Roofless, with gaping walls and doors made of new sheets of galvanised iron or the wood of packing-cases, they stood among cactus and thorn and curiously shaped boulders. I looked again, for there was something very odd about these rocks, and then I saw that, on the top of each, crouched an immobile figure in an earth-brown jellaba, with a rifle in his hands.

We passed various camps where mountain-men sat at the doors of their tents, profiting by the coolness, and then, among piled stones and broken walls, where the earth was gashed open below a mass of plaster, there appeared a splash of colour. “It is the sons of the Sherifs,” murmured someone, and I saw two vivid petunia jellabas, from the depth of whose hoods peered elfin faces with wild, tousled hair. In another moment we came to the paved road that runs between the mosque, miraculously untouched by war, the one complete building left in desolate Tazrut, and the dwelling of Raisuli. Slaves ran to hold out stirrups before the great arch which still kept some traces of its ancient carving. To the left was the domed tomb of Sidi Mohamed Ben Ali, a seventeenth-century ancestor of the Sherif; in front of us the passage leading into a space, half-yard, half-court. The compound was perhaps two hundred yards in length and, within its high walls, were various buildings. At one end was the Zawia, wherein were the rooms of el Raisuli, communicating with the old house which contained the family tomb and the women’s apartments. This was sacred ground, and no Christian might enter, but, during the Spanish occupation, photographs were taken of the interior court, one of which is reproduced in this book. Opposite was a large structure, temporarily roofed with corrugated iron. This contained, on the ground-floor, a series of storerooms and, above, a couple of reception chambers, where the Sherif ate with his friends and followers. At the other end of the yard was an old thatched building, once a residence of the Sherif, now his son’s school, with rooms for visitors above. Near this was pitched a great black-and-white tent, with a fig-tree shading its porch, and various smaller tents behind.

[Illustration: Court of Raisuli’s palace at Azeila]

“This is your home,” said Sherif Badr ed Din, beckoning me to enter, “and we are your servants.” The pavilion was lined with gay damask and carpeted with rugs piled one upon another. It was about twenty feet in diameter and round the walls were mattresses covered with white linen, and rows of very hard cushions. There was also a table with two huge brass candlesticks and several long-stemmed silver flasks containing orange-water and home-made scent of roses, but presumably this was an ornament, for we always had our meals on the floor. As a peculiar honour, the Sherif had lent the chair made specially in Spain to suit his colossal proportions, and, sitting in one corner of its great expanse, I drank my first cup of green tea at Tazrut.

The moon had risen and, outside the tent door, the breeze stole whispering across beds of mint and poppies. The figures of Mulai Sadiq and Badr ed Din looked like ghostly monks, sunk under the hoods of their voluminous drapery. From far away came the sound of chanting. “It is in the mosque,” said the Kaid. “Sidi Mohamed Ben Ali is buried there. It was he who won the battle of Jebel Alan (in 1542), where three kings were killed. The power of the Shorfa Raisuli began after that day, for Sidi Mahamed arrived with the tribes of the Jebala, when the Moslems were hard-pressed. ‘Have courage in the name of Allah,’ he cried, ‘for I tell you a Christian head will not be worth more than fifteen uqueia today.’” The three kings referred to by el Menebbhe were Don Sebastian of Portugal, the Sultan of Morocco, and the Moorish Pretender.

After the prayers in the mosque were over, Sidi Mohamed el Khalid, released from his irons in order that he might perform his religious duties, came to see us. Fair-skinned as a girl, with an indefinite nose and hair clipped two inches back from his forehead and then dyed with henna and allowed to grow long, the boy greeted us shyly. His manners were clumsy for an Arab of great race, and he whispered instead of speaking out loud. When the Sherif Badr ed Din rebuked him, he said, “All we Moslems are savages, and I am the worst of them. My father wants to make me into an alim[9], for the ulema[10] of Beni Aros are famous throughout Islam, but I do not like books.” “What do you like?” “Only one thing, war. It is a pity that we have finished fighting!” “What do you do to amuse yourself now?” “I shoot. Will you come into the mountains and hunt monkeys? It is great fun! We go at night, when there is a moon, but it is very rough country; so we must leave our horses and walk. The monkeys come out one after another, screaming, and we shoot them.” “I have no rifle with me.” “That does not matter. You can have a choice of all kinds here, German, Spanish, French, or revolvers, if you like; but hunting is not so exciting as war.”

After this there was silence, and Mulai Sadiq left us, to pray in the Zawia. Soon his voice was heard leading the aysha prayers. In spite of his age, his words rang across the compound, and it seemed to me that I was listening to the voice of old Morocco protesting against the Christians who trod her borders and penetrated even to the threshold of her sanctuaries.