CHAPTER VIII

MORE POWER; GOVERNOR OF TANGIER

“When I became Governor of Tangier, there was much trouble in the neighbourhood because of the rebellion of Bou Hamara, an ignorant man who pretended that he was the elder brother of the Sultan, one Mulai Mohamed, son of Mulai Hassan, who was dead. He had been a secretary in the houses of the great at Meknes, and there he had seen letters from the Sultan, and the great seal which was attached to State documents. By some means he had a copy made of this seal, that he might use it to provide himself with money. He was a good Moslem and had some skill at writing, and there are always foolish people who will believe the first thing that is told them without proof. So, in the country to the East, between Fez and Taza, he declared himself Sultan, and the tribes joined him, because the government of Mulai Abdul Aziz was bad. The Sultan sent a force against him, but it was defeated, and so I thought it wise to make peace with him.

“Many letters passed between us, and, had it been necessary, I would have upheld his claim, for he had agreed that I should be Governor of all the Northern tribes, and independent in my zone. For many years he ruled like a Sultan, but at last (not until 1912) he was captured and brought in a cage to the court of Mulai Hafid, who had succeeded his brother. They hung him on a wall in the sun, and the Sultan and his ministers shot at him, seeing how near they could place the bullets without hitting him, but by mistake he was wounded many times. At night, when he was tired of the game, Mulai Hafid ordered his prisoner to be put in the lion’s cage, but the lions were well-fed and would not touch him! In the morning, men came to the Sultan and said, ‘My lord the King, Bou Hamara is still alive. At this moment he is saying his prayers.’ The Sultan ordered that the lions should be given no food all the day, and, because of this, they devoured one of the man’s arms; but, to make an end of him, he was shot by the soldiers of the guard.

“However, when I came to Tangier, Bou Hamara’s influence was still great, and no caravan was safe. Men travelled in armed parties for protection, and made no fire in their camps at night. A lighted window was a good mark for a bullet, and thieves robbed in the by-ways of Tangier. I put an end to all this, and under my protection no caravan was robbed. He who was with the Sherif could go through the hills and the plains without a gun and with a bag of money in his hand. The great men of the jebala joined me, and my money flowed in the villages. It is easy to make money if you are a Governor. You do not understand our justice, because you do not realize the minds of the Arabs. You think you give them a great thing with your civilization. You see a man toiling slowly along the road, his jellaba crooked on a stick to make a little shade above his head, and you go to him and say, ‘Do not walk in the dust in this way. It will take you days to reach Fez. Here is a train which will take you there in a few hours.’ ‘The blessing of Allah on you,’ he will say, ‘but I have my donkey.’ ‘No, leave your donkey,’ you urge. ‘Here is a motor that will carry you more quickly than the train, or an aeroplane which will do the journey in forty minutes!’ ‘Allah make you strong,’ he will answer, ‘but I am not in a hurry.’

“It is the same with our justice. A man comes to you and asks you the name of the Pasha of the town, for he has a complaint to make. You tell him to go to one of your officials. ‘No,’ he will reply, ‘that man is not a Pasha. He does not kill nor take bribes, nor do his slaves stand in the court to give lashes. Of what use is he?’ How can a man approve what he does not understand? When robbers were brought to me, and their crime was proved, there was a slave ready with the axe. With one stroke he severed a man’s arm, and the stump was plunged in pitch. If the black bungled his stroke, he got a beating and learned to steady his aim. Now, you depend on the evidence of men who can be bought, instead of on the law and your own knowledge.”

While Raisuli expounded his philosophy in this way, we had been standing just outside the door of the visitors’ house, to make the most of the cool evening wind. Suddenly the Sherif led the way inside. The white veranda was shadowed by the short twilight. Raisuli shuffled forward, and his heelless yellow slippers made no mark on the spotless pavement. Our riding-boots, on the contrary, left dark patches wherever we trod. The Sherif paused on the further threshold and pointed to the floor we had crossed. “That is like Morocco,” he said. “You cannot see the tracks of Islam, for it is of the country and suited to its needs, but you, wherever you go, leave a mark, for your ways are not ours.”

I protested in favour of civilisation, pointing out its obvious benefits. “You give a man safety,” countered Raisuli, “but you take away hope. In the old days, everything was possible. There was no limit to what a man might become. The slave might be a minister or a general, the scribe a sultan. Now a man’s life is safe, but for ever he is chained to his labour and his poverty.” “What of the doctors?” I asked, after a silence prolonged by my reflections. “That is how Spain will conquer the country,” said Raisuli. “Already our doctors go into the harems when the women bear children: and there is a Sherif, a friend of mine, whose sight has been restored by an operation after six years of blindness.[30] Truly it is a greater miracle to give light than darkness.”

The Sherif lowered himself ponderously on to the piled mattresses. “I myself have had a tooth pulled out by one of your doctors. He would have thrown it away, but my servants sprang forward and took it from him. It was a very old tooth, so they were able to divide it among them and each wear a little bit, to bring them the ‘baraka.’”

El Raisuli is surrounded by a group of the most devoted men, who are more like disciples than servants. They hang upon his words and follow him about like dogs, looking at him with the same half-puzzled, half- hopeful expression, as a dog, when it does not understand what its master is doing. Three of them taste every dish before el Raisuli eats of it, and others sleep across the door of his chamber. They regard him with a veneration that is most heterodox in Islam, since the worship of saints is forbidden. No food that the Sherif has touched is thrown away, for it is supposed to have acquired curative powers, and the neighbouring villagers pay heavily for the privilege of eating a few dry crusts or sucking the bones from which el Raisuli has taken the meat.

“For a long time I ruled in the district of Tangier,” said the Sherif, gazing fixedly before him, “but the Europeans complained of my reign. I had brought security and peace to the country, but they feared a little blood spilt in the market-place or a few heads stuck on a wall. So the politicians of Tangier wrote to the Sultan. Mulai Abdul Aziz, wishing to please them, for he did not know which way to look for money, sent an army against me, under Khad Ba Hamed Khergui.

“I was at my house in Beni Mesauer at that time, and Ba Hamed sent messengers to me, saying, ‘We have arrived at such-and-such a place, and I would have speech with you.’ I told him, ‘If you come here alone I will receive you, and, on my head and my eyes, you shall be safe.’ So he came in the evening, when it was neither light nor dark. ‘Greeting, O my brother,’ he said, and I knew he had come to make terms.

“We ate the flesh of a sheep roasted, and then he said to me, ‘It would be a pity if there were a battle between us, for we should both lose many men.’ I agreed with him, and he continued, ‘How many of my men, think you, you could kill in the mountains?’ And I answered, ‘Many hundreds, for you would be as the blind fighting against those who can see.’ He said, ‘And how many do you think, oh, my master, that we should kill of yours?—for certainly few of your men would die.’ I told him, ‘Perhaps fifty, perhaps sixty, if there is much fighting.’ At last he asked, ‘And how much is a man’s life worth to you, Sidi?’ Then I saw what he intended, and the matter was arranged. I paid him the blood- money, so much for each man, and he agreed not to advance beyond a certain place. In this way there was peace.”

The period of which el Raisuli was speaking was one of the most troubled in Moroccan history. It was the eve of European intervention, and the Sultan, ruined and held a prisoner by his ministers, was powerless. The tribes imagined that he had betrayed Islam and sold himself to the foreigners. On every side the Maghsen showed itself incapable of protecting the Europeans within its borders. A Frenchman, Monsieur Charbonier, was murdered in Anjera, and two young Spaniards imprisoned in Beni Uriagel. The crew of a Spanish boat (the _Joven Remedias_) was seized by the tribesmen, off Cap Jubi. In Casablanca Christians were assaulted and robbed. Finally, Azeila was sacked by the mountaineers.

El Raisuli wished to add Sahel to his governorate of Tangier, and Mohamed Torres (Minister for Foreign Affairs) held out hopes that he would obtain the outpost, if he would go to Azeila to put down the insurrection there.

Mohamed Ben Abdul Khalak had been Governor of the town, but he had many enemies on account of his extortions, so the Beni Aros who had property near Azeila plotted to destroy him. “There were no rifles in the city,” said the Sherif, “for Abdul Khalak was a wise man and knew the danger of a careless shot; but two men of the Beni Aros, Berrian and Uidan, arrived at the gates one morning, with donkeys laden with bundles of straw. The guard let them pass, thinking they were farmers from the neighbouring villages, but inside the straw were rifles. These were hidden in the house of a friend, and, afterwards, the tribesmen entered without arms, as if for the market. One by one, they went secretly to the place of meeting, and, at night, when the signal was given, they rushed to the house of Abdul Khalak and took him prisoner. Then the townsmen joined them, with rejoicing, and the Kaid was kept in a dungeon, while the Beni Aros ruled the town.

“Remembering this trick, I said to myself, ‘A bird once snared will be so busy avoiding the same trap that it may well fall into another’; so I sent many rifles to Azeila by boat. They were hidden under fishing-nets and smuggled into the town by means of a rope let down over the wall. Then my followers went in with empty hands, not all at once but by twos and threes. The rifles were hidden in a mosque whose Imam was my friends, and, after some of my men had established themselves in this mosque, and others had taken possession of a house overlooking the gate, they sent me word that they were ready. During the night they cut all communications in the town and, in the morning, they opened the doors to my troops. So was Azeila taken for a second time, and my promise to Mohamed Torres fulfilled, for I had said to him, ‘my mehallas shall capture the town and restore the rule of Abdul Khalak.’”

Simultaneously, however, the Corps Diplomatique sent a strong note to the Sultan, protesting against the frightful corporal punishments inflicted by el Raisuli, the excessive taxation he imposed, and his insistence on administering his own form of justice to Europeans within his jurisdiction. It is notable that the German Minister was, from the first, opposed to this step. On every possible occasion he upheld the authority of el Raisuli and assured him that his government considered the Sherif justified in all his actions. However, the insistence of the French Minister won the day. By the Pact of Algeciras it had been arranged that French police should patrol the International Zone outside Tangier, but Raisuli would not allow them in El Fahs. This was perhaps the beginning of the friction which has always existed between France and el Raisuli.

Mohamed Torres was obliged to cancel the proffered bribe of Sahel, and, on December 11th, 1906, he announced that two mehallas were on their way from Fez to re-establish the authority of the Pasha of Tangier and to banish el Raisuli. The Sherif took refuge in Zinat. From there he defied the European Powers, whose war-ships lay in the harbour waiting to enforce the Pact of Algeciras, and the Sultan, whose troops arrived early in January, prepared to act with more decision and vigour than usual.

“I had a great house at Zinat,” said el Raisuli. “It was a fortress built against the rocks, with many little windows from which men could shoot. On the flat roof snipers could lie hidden behind the parapet and, from the towers, a watchman might see the whole plain. The army of the Maghsen had camped below us, but out of range, men dressed as soldiers, yet not knowing how to handle a rifle. The artillery was on the left and the cavalry guarded the flanks. It was a fine sight in the early morning, when the bugle sounded the advance. You could pick out the cloaks of the officers and the flags of the generals, Sidi Mohamed Guebbas, the Minister of War, and Sidi Mulai Abselam el Amarani. It was like a toy army as, without discipline, it moved forward, the companies so close one to another that they could have been mown down by a maxim like corn before the scythe. No answering bugle came from Zinat, but, from every hill-top behind us, to the far-away ridges of Beni Mesauer, a column of smoke arose from the fires of the tribesmen.

“When the army was quite near, so that the faces of the men were apparent, I said to my followers, ‘Now pick out each of you a man, and see that he dies.’ The rifles spoke from every loophole and each rock hid a sniper, but nothing was visible from below, for we used powder which has no smoke. The army replied with a crash of musketry, but there was nothing to aim at. They fired at the rocks and the trees, but most of the bullets went skyward. Then the artillery began. Zut!”

The Sherif banged one hand into the other with a rare gesture. “A shell whirred over our heads, to kill a few birds—and another—and another—

“Only one hit the house all day, but we took toll of those below. There were too many cowards in that army, who ran about shouting and firing, making much noise lest their lack of courage be discovered. The horsemen galloped wildly, as when we make entertainment for a guest. Plomb! Plomb! The shells made holes all round, but never near us. There was much movement, but nobody advanced. At first the women had implored me to leave. ‘Fly and save yourself, for your life is important,’ they prayed, and kissed my knees; but I told them, ‘Be assured that nothing can hurt me, for I have the ‘baraka.’ It is true that I have never fled from any place before the bullets of an enemy. Where I have been at the moment, there I have stayed, whether before the shells of a cannon or the bombs of an aeroplane.

“At the end of that day no harm had been done us, save that a village had been burned round the flank of the mountain. The soldiers were so busy looting that they had no time to advance, and, at last, a slave- woman ran out and cursed them. ‘Aie! are you maidens preparing for marriage, that you carry away mattresses and furniture? Certainly you are not warriors, and no woman will be desolate because of your triggers!’ She stood on a rock, with her haik thrown back, but no one dared fire on her, for they thought her a witch. She called on my men to follow her, and, though I had said to them, ‘Let no man show himself, and hold your fire till you have chosen your enemy,’ they leaped from the wall and rushed down the rocks, as many as I can count on my fingers of both hands. At this moment the army retired, for the General had been hit, and a mule carried him out of the battle, so that these few men followed, shooting at the backs of hundreds!”