V
ON THE ROOFS
"Should you like to see the Chleuh boys dance?" some one asked.
"There they are," another of our companions added, pointing to a dense
ring of spectators on one side of the immense dusty square at the
entrance of the _souks_--the "Square of the Dead" as it is called, in
memory of the executions that used to take place under one of its grim
red gates.
It is the square of the living now, the centre of all the life,
amusement and gossip of Marrakech, and the spectators are so thickly
packed about the story-tellers, snake-charmers and dancers who frequent
it that one can guess what is going on within each circle only by the
wailing monologue or the persistent drum-beat that proceeds from it.
Ah, yes--we should indeed like to see the Chleuh boys dance, we who,
since we had been in Morocco, had seen no dancing, heard no singing,
caught no single glimpse of merry-making! But how were we to get within
sight of them?
On one side of the "Square of the Dead" stands a large house, of
European build, but modelled on Oriental lines: the office of the French
municipal administration. The French Government no longer allows its
offices to be built within the walls of Moroccan towns, and this house
goes back to the epic days of the Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, to whom it was
presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caïd was his favourite
companion as well as his military adviser.
At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and
looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight
this side of the Atlas and the Sahara. The square is surrounded by low
mud-houses, fondaks, cafés, and the like. In one corner, near the
archway leading into the _souks_, is the fruit-market, where the
red-gold branches of unripe dates[A] for animal fodder are piled up in
great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their panniers
laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the ground in
gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers, bright orange
pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson
pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Salé, all mingled with
fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood.
[Footnote A: Dates do not ripen in Morocco.]
[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
Marrakech--a fondak]
In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.
Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted
snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations,
and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the
shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys. Under an
archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a
handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face
and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.
Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene,
a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed:
"Ah--a dust-storm!"
In that very moment it was upon us: a red cloud rushing across the
square out of nowhere, whirling the date-branches over the heads of the
squatting throngs, tumbling down the stacks of fruits and vegetables,
rooting up the canvas awnings over the lemonade-sellers' stalls and
before the café doors, huddling the blinded donkeys under the walls of
the fondak, and stripping to the hips the black slave-girls scudding
home from the _souks_.
Such a blast would instantly have scattered any western crowd, but "the
patient East" remained undisturbed, rounding its shoulders before the
storm and continuing to follow attentively the motions of the dancers
and the turns of the story-tellers. By and bye, however, the gale grew
too furious, and the spectators were so involved in collapsing tents,
eddying date-branches and stampeding mules that the square began to
clear, save for the listeners about the most popular story-teller, who
continued to sit on unmoved. And then, at the height of the storm, they
too were abruptly scattered by the rush of a cavalcade across the
square. First came a handsomely dressed man, carrying before him on his
peaked saddle a tiny boy in a gold-embroidered orange caftan, in front
of whom he held an open book, and behind them a train of white-draped
men on showily harnessed mules, followed by musicians in bright dresses.
It was only a Circumcision procession on its way to the mosque; but the
dust-enveloped rider in his rich dress, clutching the bewildered child
to his breast, looked like some Oriental prince trying to escape with
his son from the fiery embraces of desert Erl-maidens.
As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving the fruit-market in
ruins under a sky as clear and innocent as an infant's eye. The Chleuh
boys had vanished with the rest, like marionettes swept into a drawer by
an impatient child, but presently, toward sunset, we were told that we
were to see them after all, and our hosts led us up to the roof of the
Caïd's house.
The city lay stretched before us like one immense terrace circumscribed
by palms. The sky was pure blue, verging to turquoise green where the
Atlas floated above mist; and facing the celestial snows stood the
Koutoubya, red in the sunset.
People were beginning to come out on the roofs: it was the hour of
peace, of ablutions, of family life on the house-tops. Groups of women
in pale tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace to
terrace, through the chatter of children and the guttural calls of
bedizened negresses. And presently, on the roof adjoining ours,
appeared the slim dancing-boys with white caftans and hennaed feet.
The three swarthy musicians who accompanied them crossed their lean legs
on the tiles and set up their throb-throb and thrum-thrum, and on a
narrow strip of terrace the youths began their measured steps.
It was a grave static dance, such as David may have performed before the
Ark; untouched by mirth or folly, as beseemed a dance in that sombre
land, and borrowing its magic from its gravity. Even when the pace
quickened with the stress of the music the gestures still continued to
be restrained and hieratic, only when, one by one, the performers
detached themselves from the round and knelt before us for the _peseta_
it is customary to press on their foreheads, did one see, by the
moisture which made the coin adhere, how quick and violent their
movements had been.
The performance, like all things Oriental, like the life, the patterns,
the stories, seemed to have no beginning and no end: it just went
monotonously and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by
calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went down into the dust of
the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the
house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look--in spite of
ankle-bracelets and painted eyes--almost as guileless and happy as the
round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity.
