V
IN FEZ
What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go on under the narrow
veiled brows of the little creatures destined to the high honour of
marriage or concubinage in Moroccan palaces?
Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests, from the free
life of the tents where the nomad women go unveiled. Others come from
harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves
beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the
desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born and bred in an airy palace among
pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
of _sloughis_. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
the harem.
Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the
houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
Elbali; the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women.
On the rare occasions when they are received, a member of the family
(one of the sons, or a brother-in-law who has "studied in Algeria")
usually acts as interpreter; and perhaps it is as well that no one from
the outer world should come to remind these listless creatures that
somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind murmurs through
olive-yards and clatters the metallic fronds of palm-groves.
We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of one of the chief
dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez, and these thoughts came to me as I
sat among the pale women in their mouldering prison. The descent through
the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the
shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged.
The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains
behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones
went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering
masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which
sun and air never reach. At length our mules turned into a _cul-de-sac_
blocked by a high building. On the right was another building, one of
those blind mysterious house-fronts of Fez that seem like a fragment of
its ancient fortifications. Clients and servants lounged on the stone
benches built into the wall; it was evidently the house of an important
person. A charming youth with intelligent eyes waited on the threshold
to receive us; he was one of the sons of the house, the one who had
"studied in Algeria" and knew how to talk to visitors. We followed him
into a small arcaded _patio_ hemmed in by the high walls of the house.
On the right was the usual long room with archways giving on the court.
Our host, a patriarchal personage, draped in fat as in a toga, came
toward us, a mountain of majestic muslins, his eyes sparkling in a
swarthy silver-bearded face. He seated us on divans and lowered his
voluminous person to a heap of cushions on the step leading into the
court, and the son who had studied in Algeria instructed a negress to
prepare the tea.
Across the _patio_ was another arcade closely hung with unbleached
cotton. From behind it came the sound of chatter, and now and then a
bare brown child in a scant shirt would escape, and be hurriedly pulled
back with soft explosions of laughter, while a black woman came out to
readjust the curtains.
There were three of these negresses, splendid bronze creatures, wearing
white djellabahs over bright-coloured caftans, striped scarves knotted
about their large hips, and gauze turbans on their crinkled hair. Their
wrists clinked with heavy silver bracelets, and big circular earrings
danced in their purple ear-lobes. A languor lay on all the other inmates
of the household, on the servants and hangers-on squatting in the shade
under the arcade, on our monumental host and his smiling son; but the
three negresses, vibrating with activity, rushed continually from the
curtained chamber to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the master's
reception-room, bearing on their pinky-blue palms trays of Britannia
metal with tall glasses and fresh bunches of mint, shouting orders to
dozing menials, and calling to each other from opposite ends of the
court; and finally the stoutest of the three, disappearing from view,
reappeared suddenly on a pale green balcony overhead, where, profiled
against a square of blue sky, she leaned over in a Veronese attitude and
screamed down to the others like an excited parrot.
In spite of their febrile activity and tropical bird-shrieks, we waited
in vain for tea; and after a while our host suggested to his son that I
might like to visit the ladies of the household. As I had expected, the
young man led me across the _patio_, lifted the cotton hanging and
introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left.
Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white
walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a
number of pale children scrambled.
The eldest of the group, and evidently the mistress of the house,
was an Algerian lady, probably of about fifty, with a sad and
delicately-modelled face; the others were daughters, daughters-in-law
and concubines. The latter word evokes to occidental ears images of
sensual seduction which the Moroccan harem seldom realizes. All the
ladies of this dignified official household wore the same look of
somewhat melancholy respectability. In their stuffy curtained apartment
they were like cellar-grown flowers, pale, heavy, fuller but frailer
than the garden sort. Their dresses, rich but sober, the veils and
diadems put on in honour of my visit, had a dignified dowdiness in odd
contrast to the frivolity of the Imperial harem. But what chiefly
struck me was the apathy of the younger women. I asked them if they had
a garden, and they shook their heads wistfully, saying that there were
no gardens in Old Fez. The roof was therefore their only escape: a roof
overlooking acres and acres of other roofs, and closed in by the naked
fortified mountains which stand about Fez like prison-walls.
After a brief exchange of compliments silence fell. Conversing through
interpreters is a benumbing process, and there are few points of contact
between the open-air occidental mind and beings imprisoned in a
conception of sexual and domestic life based on slave-service and
incessant espionage. These languid women on their muslin cushions toil
not, neither do they spin. The Moroccan lady knows little of cooking,
needlework or any household arts. When her child is ill she can only
hang it with amulets and wail over it, the great lady of the Fazi palace
is as ignorant of hygiene as the peasant-woman of the _bled_. And all
these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat
tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost
as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims
on them ever since he ran about the same _patio_ as a little
short-smocked boy.
The redeeming point in this stagnant domesticity is the tenderness of
the parents for their children, and western writers have laid so much
stress on this that one would suppose children could be loved only by
inert and ignorant parents. It is in fact charming to see the heavy eyes
of the Moroccan father light up when a brown grass-hopper baby jumps on
his knee, and the unfeigned tenderness with which the childless women of
the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the
sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to
consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance,
unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes.
Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran,
and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible to
western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make perfectly
comprehensible to Moroccan infancy. At eight or nine the little girls
are married, at twelve the son of the house is "given his first
negress"; and thereafter, in the rich and leisured class, both sexes
live till old age in an atmosphere of sensuality without seduction.
[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
Women watching a procession from a roof]
The young son of the house led me back across the court, where the
negresses were still shrieking and scurrying, and passing to and fro
like a stage-procession with the vain paraphernalia of a tea that never
came. Our host still smiled from his cushions, resigned to Oriental
delays. To distract the impatient westerners, a servant unhooked from
the wall the cage of a gently-cooing dove. It was brought to us, still
cooing, and looked at me with the same resigned and vacant eyes as the
ladies I had just left. As it was being restored to its hook the slaves
lolling about the entrance scattered respectfully at the approach of a
handsome man of about thirty, with delicate features and a black beard.
Crossing the court, he stooped to kiss the shoulder of our host, who
introduced him as his eldest son, the husband of one or two of the
little pale wives with whom I had been exchanging platitudes.
From the increasing agitation of the negresses it became evident that
the ceremony of tea-making had been postponed till his arrival. A metal
tray bearing a Britannia samovar and tea-pot was placed on the tiles of
the court, and squatting beside it the newcomer gravely proceeded to
infuse the mint. Suddenly the cotton hangings fluttered again, and a
tiny child in the scantest of smocks rushed out and scampered across the
court. Our venerable host, stretching out rapturous arms, caught the
fugitive to his bosom, where the little boy lay like a squirrel,
watching us with great sidelong eyes. He was the last-born of the
patriarch, and the youngest brother of the majestic bearded gentleman
engaged in tea-making. While he was still in his father's arms two more
sons appeared: charming almond-eyed schoolboys returning from their
Koran-class, escorted by their slaves. All the sons greeted each other
affectionately, and caressed with almost feminine tenderness the dancing
baby so lately added to their ranks; and finally, to crown this scene of
domestic intimacy, the three negresses, their gigantic effort at last
accomplished, passed about glasses of steaming mint and trays of
gazelles' horns and white sugar-cakes.
