CHAPTER III

RAISULI HIMSELF

It is a long way from London to Tazrut and, during the whole journey, thoughts of el Raisuli had filled my mind. His name met me on the coast of Morocco and, wherever I went afterwards, I heard legends which magnified or distorted his personality. Small wonder that, sitting in his chair, a guest of his house, the moonlight sending fantastic shadows across the rough garden, my excitement to see this strange man grew until I forgot my hunger, forgot the tedium of the long ride. I only remembered that in a few moments I should see el Raisuli.

It was very still, except for the crickets. Even the breeze had stopped. The chanting in the mosque died suddenly, and Sidi Badr ed Din rose. “The Sherif comes,” he said. With racing pulses, I turned to meet a presence which blocked the way beneath the bushes. An enormous man stood before me. At first glimpse he seemed almost as broad as he was tall, but it was the breadth of solid flesh and muscle, not of fat. His round, massive face was surrounded by a thicket of beard, dyed red, and a lock of long terra-cotta hair escaped from under his turban. The quantity of woollen garments he wore, one over another, added to his bulk, and when, seating himself in a chair which seemed incapable of supporting his weight, he rolled up his sleeves, baring arms of incredible girth, I found myself looking at them fascinated and repelled, while he gave me the usual courteous greetings. “All the mountain is yours. You are free to go where you will. My people are your servants, and they have nothing to do but to please you. I am honoured because of your visit, for I have great friendship with your country.” His voice was guttural and rich, but it appeared to roll over his thick lips from a distance which made it husky. His manners were gracious and his dignity worthy of his ancient race. After a few minutes’ talk I had forgotten the unwieldy strength of his body and was watching his eyes, the only expressive feature in Raisuli’s face. They were watchful eyes, dominant and fierce, in the midst of flesh, which it seemed to me they used as a veil. Sometimes, when he spoke of small things, they softened till they were almost wistful, but generally they watched and judged and revealed nothing.

I presented the gold-sheathed sword I had brought, with the Arab saying, “There is but one gift for the brave—a weapon.” The Sherif smiled. “You ought to have been a man,” he said, “for you have speech as well as courage.” Then I offered him some rolls of vivid-coloured brocades, purple, orange, rose-red and emerald-green, with heavy patterns in gold and silver.

“I heard, even in England, that you had been recently married, and I hoped, perhaps, that you would give these to the Sherifa with my greetings.”

Raisuli accepted the gifts with the simplicity of every Arab who considers that generosity is as common as sight or hearing, and it is rather the donor than the recipient who is blessed. Then a row of slaves appeared, with brass trays on which was every form of meat, with chickens, eggs, watermelons and grapes. These were placed on a leather mat on the floor of my tent, and the Sherif, with a soft “Bismillah,” bade me enter. “Tomorrow I will eat with you, but today I fasted all the day; so I ate an hour ago, after the aysha prayers,” he said, and sat down on the thickest mattress, to make conversation while we fed. Occasionally he picked up a quart-jug of water and drank it in two or three draughts. Mulai Sadiq crouched beside him, looking like an old hawk, as he peered at one dish after another, picking out the tenderest portions with bony, but unerring, fingers.

It was hot inside the tent, and the Sherif moved restlessly in the middle of a discourse which revealed an intimate knowledge of European politics. I offered him one of those little mechanical fans which are worked by pressing a button, and I think he preferred it to any of my expensive gifts. “Allah, it is good! In this way one has the wind always with one.” But his thumb was so thick that it was very difficult for him to hold and work the slight machine.

We talked far into the night, till my head was whirling and my eyelids fell with automatic regularity. For us the day had begun before the dawn, and there came a moment when, my answers having become so vague as to be incomprehensible, the Sherif noticed my exhaustion. “In the pleasure of your conversation, I forgot that, after all, you are a woman,” he said. “Sleep with peace.” Without any loss of dignity, he heaved himself up, and his face was unexpectedly kind as he made his formal farewell. “Tomorrow we will talk of many things,” he promised, “and you shall begin your work, but Mulai Sadiq is my biographer. He knows my life better than I do, and as for these two men,” (he indicated Badr ed Din and the Kaid) “one has been my political adviser for fifteen years, and I have been in no battle without the other for twenty-five.”

. . . . . . . . . .

During the time that I stayed with el Raisuli, I was hardly ever alone, and counted myself lucky if I had four hours uninterrupted sleep at night. By 6 A.M. the place was astir, and I used to hear the Haj Embarik, a man from Marrakesh, who had travelled a good deal and understood my Eastern Arabic, murmuring outside the tent. I knew that he was wandering about with a ewer of hot water, kicking the tent-ropes to attract my attention; so I had to throw off my tasselled blankets of red and white camel’s hair and prepare for a strenuous day.

Breakfast consisted of a bowl of thick vegetable soup with bits of fat floating in it—the “harira” that is given to children during the great fast of Ramadan. After that there was a painful gap so far as food was concerned till 3 or 4 P.M., when an immense meal of many meat courses made its appearance, borne shoulder-high by a line of slaves. Sometimes, when Mulai Sadiq announced that he was tired, we were provided at odd hours with green tea and very sticky pastry, sweet and heavy.

El Raisuli is always out by 6 A.M., and any one of his friends or his household may approach him in the garden, where he holds an informal council, seated on a broken wall or the steps inside one of the doors. Before noon he retires into the Zawia, where none may go to him unless he specially sends for them, except his eldest son and the ten little slaves, all under twelve years old, who attend on the harem. These small boys are rather like monkeys, but sometimes, when they are feeling important, they wear huge cartridge-belts over their inadequate shirts, and oil their top-knots till they look like coils of silk. Besides these minute servitors, there are fifteen slaves, coal-black men from the Sudan and Somaliland, under the orders of old Ba Salim. They are not allowed into the house, but two of them, Mabarak and Ghabah, are the personal attendants of the Sherif. When he rides on his roan stallion, they walk one at each stirrup. In battle they range their horses on either side of him and each carries a spare rifle, for el Raisuli never fights with less than three. During my stay at Tazrut, they were assigned to my service, which was one of the highest honours the Sherif could pay to a guest.

[Illustration: General view of Raisuli’s compound. Author’s tent in foreground]

[Illustration: Arrival of my dinner at Tazrut]

About 4 or 5 in the afternoon, el Raisuli makes a second appearance, and, from then till midnight, or a much later hour, he transacts work and receives messengers, with the numerous reports and petitions that come to him from all over the country. The interviews I had with him were nearly always in my tent, or in the garden, or in one of the guest- rooms where a slave would hurriedly spread mattresses and rugs. The Sherif is a facile raconteur, and his memory is astounding. He never hesitates for a date or a name, but his eloquence consists more in the wealth of his similes than the richness of his language. His vocabulary is small, and he uses the same words continually. He recounts conversations word by word, with an annoying repetition of “qultu” (I said to him) and “qali” (he said to me). Obviously he is used to telling the story of his life, but this is natural, for very little Arab biography is written, in any case, till long after the death of the subject. Facts and anecdotes are handed down verbally, and it is part of the work of disciples to know by heart the life of their master, of schoolboys to learn the history of their ancestors.

The Sherif did not tell me a consecutive story, for often he would think of incidents that he had omitted, and indulge in much repetition in order to bring in a certain anecdote, but at different times he reviewed most of his life with a wealth of detail. Of course the episodes that most interested him and upon which he dwelt at length were often not those which would appeal to a European biographer. On the contrary, he showed no interest in events which to me were of historical value, and it needed a great deal of tact and patience to induce him to talk of them at all. At times his point of view was so biassed that it was palpably incorrect, but his story, even though it often either exaggerates or lacks detail, is a record of an amazing life—a web of philosophy and atrocities, of war and psychology, of politics, ambition, and Pan-Islamism.

When he became interested in his narrative, the Sherif lost all sense of time. Once he talked from about 7 in the morning till nearly 3 P.M. and often he would arrive before dinner and, hardly troubling to eat, talk without a pause till 2 or 3 A.M. Mulai Sadiq and Sidi Badr ed Din acted as a sort of Greek chorus, reinforced on certain occasions by the two favourite slaves, who emphasised the story with murmured confirmation. When the Sherif was in the Zawia, his cousin permanently kept us company, while others dropped in for an hour or two’s “short talk.” My notes were always scribbled in the wildest confusion as I grasped the meaning of the Moorish dialect, or as the interpreter rendered it in French, but I got quite used to writing them up while a violent argument was going on between the Spaniard and three or four Arabs as to whether a soldier found wounded in the mountains had been fired upon by a tribesman, or had accidentally shot himself. The Moorish voices rose to a pitch that would indicate incipient murder in any other country, as they revelled in the game at which they excelled—prevarication!—and I admired the persistence of the interpreter in outscreaming them. The fate of that soldier haunted my stay at Tazrut, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I managed to exclude him from my book!