Part 9 (1/2)
”Always during Ramadan.”
”Does it rise with a bang too? I hate to be roused up early in the morning!”
”No, there is no gun at sunrise; but there is a very loud one at about three in the morning, or sometimes half-past, or four, or later.”
”Shocking nuisance!” remarked J. ”My bedroom window's just over that abominable battery.”
The early morning gun was a great trial, certainly. I would not have minded being _reveille en sursaut_, as a Frenchman would say, and then turning comfortably over on the other side, and going to sleep again.
But somehow or other I always found myself awake half an hour or an hour before the time, and then I _could not_ get to sleep again, but lay tossing about and fidgettily listening for the well-known din. At length I would hear a sound like the hum of an enormous fiendish nightmarish mosquito, caused by a hideous long tin trumpet, the shrill whistle of a fife or two, and the occasional tom-tomming of a Moorish drum. ”Ha, the soldiers coming along the ramparts; they will soon fire now.”
But the sound of the discordant instruments with which the soldiery solaced themselves in the night for their enforced abstinence from such ”sweet sounds” in the day would continue for a long time before the red flash through my wide-open door would momentarily illumine my little chamber on the white flat roof, and then the horrid bang would rend the air, followed by a dense cloud of foul-smelling smoke; and then would my big dog Csar for several minutes rush frantically to and fro upon the roof in hot indignation, and utter deep-mouthed barks of defiance at the white figures of the ”Maghaseni,” as they flitted ghost-like along the ramparts below, and snort and pant and chafe and refuse to be pacified for a long time.
At the firing of the sunset gun the Moors were allowed to take a slight refection, which generally consisted of a kind of gruel. I have seen a Moorish soldier squatting in the street with a bra.s.s porringer in his lap, eagerly awaiting the boom of the cannon to dip his well-washed fingers in the mess.
At about 9 P.M. another slight meal was allowed to the true believers, and they might eat again at morning gun-fire, after which their mouths were closed against all ”fixings, solid and liquid,” even against the smallest draught of water or the lightest puff at the darling little pipe of dream-inducing _kief_.
On the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan we were informed that twenty-seven guns would be fired that night, and that we had better leave all our windows open, or they would certainly be broken by the violence of the discharge. This was pleasant; still more delightful was the glorious uncertainty which prevailed in the minds of our informants as to the time at which we might expect the infliction.
Some said that the twenty-seven guns would be fired before midnight; Hamed opined that the cannonade would not take place till 3 or 4 A.M. Many of the guns on the battery in close proximity to our abode were in a fearfully rusty and honeycombed condition, so that apprehensions as to some of them bursting were not unnatural, and I thought it extremely probable that a few stray fragments might ”drop in” on me.
That night I burned the ”midnight oil,” and lay reading till nearly two, when sweet sleep took possession of me, from which I was awakened about four in the morning by a terrific bang that fairly shook the house.
A minute more, and there came a red flash and another bang, presently another. Thought I, ”I will go out and see the show;” so I went on to the flat white roof in my airy nocturnal costume, and leaning over the parapet looked down on to the platform of the battery below. A group of dim white figures, a flickering lantern, a glowing match, a touch at the breech of a rusty old gun, a swift skurry of the white figures round a corner, a squib-like fountain of sparks from the touch-hole, a red flash from the mouth, momentarily illumining the dark violet sea, a bang, and a cloud of smoke.
Then the white figures and the lantern appeared again; another squib, another flash, another bang, Csar galloping up and down over the roof, snorting his indignation, but not barking, probably because he felt ”unable to do justice to the subject;” and at length, after the eleventh gun had belched forth crimson flames and foul smoke, all was peace, save a distant discord of tin trumpets, _gouals_ and _gimbris_, and I returned to my mosquito-haunted couch with a sigh of relief.
Pa.s.s we now to the eve of ”Christmas for Moros,” and let ethnologist and hagiologist derive some satisfaction from the evidences I collected in this far-away Moorish town that the gladness of the Mahometan festival does, similarly to the purer joy of the Christian, though in a less degree perhaps, incline towards ”peace and good-will to men,” charity and kindliness.
As we sat chatting that evening round the tea-table, to us entered Hamed, bearing, with honest pride illumining his brown features, a great tray of richly engraved bra.s.s, heaped up with curious but tempting-looking cakes.
Gracefully presenting them to ”the senora,” he intimated that this was his humble offering or Christmas token of good-will towards the family, and that his mother (whom the good fellow maintains out of his modest wages) had made them with her own hands.
The cakes were made of long thin strips of the finest paste, plentifully sweetened with delicious honey, twisted into quaint shapes, and fried in the purest of oil. I need hardly say that the children were delighted, and immediately commenced to court indigestion by a vigorous onslaught on the new and tempting sweets. Nay, why should I blush to confess that I myself have a very sweet tooth in my head, and such a liking for all things saccharine that my friends say jokingly that I must be getting into my second childhood?--an imputation which, as I am only a little on the wrong side of thirty, I can bear with equanimity. However, I firmly decline to inform an inquisitive public how many of those delightful Moorish cakes I ate: truth to tell, I do not remember; but I enjoyed them heartily, nor found my digestion impaired thereby.
We had a little chat with Hamed--whose face was lighted up with the broadest of grins as we praised his mother's pastry and showed our appreciation of it in the most satisfactory manner--on certain matters of the Mahometan religion and the position of women in the future life. Some of the sterner Muslims believe that women have no souls; others opine that while good men go to ”_Eljannah_,” or heaven, and bad ones to ”_Eljehannam_,” or h.e.l.l, women and mediocre characters are deported to a vague kind of limbo which they designate as ”_Bab Maroksh_,” or the Morocco Gate.
But the gentle, liberal, and gallant Hamed informed us, in reply to an individual query with regard to our Moorish housemaid, that ”if Lanniya plenty good, no _tiefem_ (steal), no drink.u.m _sharab_ (wine), and go for _scula_ (”school,” or religious instruction in the mosque, or in a schoolhouse adjoining it), by and by she go for ”_Eljannah_.”
I am hardly correct, by the way, in speaking of Lanniya as ”house-_maid_,”
for Moorish maidens and wives never go in the service of European families, being prohibited by their religion from showing their faces; it is only widows and divorced women who may go about unveiled, and mingle with Christians.
The next morning, soon after the last gun of Ramadan had sounded its joyous boom in my ear, I was up and stirring, donning my shooting apparel and preparing for an early country walk with my faithful four-footed comrade. I had no fear of exciting the fanaticism of the Muslim population by going out shooting on their holy day, for there is not much bigotry in Mogador,--Moors, Christians, and Jews observing their several religions peacefully side by side, so that three Sundays come in every week, the Mahometan on Friday, the Jewish on Sat.u.r.day, and then ours.
The sun, just rising from behind the eastern sand-hills, was gilding all the house-tops and minarets, till our white town looked like a rich a.s.semblage of fairy palaces of gold and ivory; the smiling sea, serene and azure, came rippling peacefully up to the base of the rugged brown rocks, enlivened to-day by no statuesque figures of Moorish fishermen; nor did a single boat dot the broad blue expanse of the unusually smooth South Atlantic, of which the fish and the sea-fowl were for once left in undisturbed possession.
As I gazed from the flat roof away over the great town, I heard from many quarters loud sounds of music and merriment. As I pa.s.sed presently through the narrow streets, with their dead white walls and cool dark arches, scarcely a camel was to be seen at the accustomed corners by the stores of the merchants, where usually whole fleets of the ”s.h.i.+ps of the desert” lay moored, unloading almonds, and rich gums, and hides, and all the varied produce of the distant interior.
Outside the town-gates the very hordes of semi-wild scavenger dogs seemed to know that the day was one of peace, for they lay in the suns.h.i.+ne, nor barked and snapped at the infidel intruder as he walked over the golden sands, along the edge of the marshy pool, past the pleasant-looking Moorish cemetery with its graceful verdant palm-trees, a calm oasis in the sandy plain, and out across the shallow lagoon formed by overflows of high tides, by which a few late trains of homeward-bound camels went softly stepping, looking wonderfully picturesque as they marched through shallow waters so beautifully gilded by the morning sun, their drivers doubtless eager to reach their own home or the shelter of some friendly village to partic.i.p.ate in the modest revelries of the joyous season. How I wandered along the sh.o.r.e of the ”many-sounding sea,” enjoying a little rough sport, and the blithe companions.h.i.+p of the big doggie; how I saw never a Moor upon the rocks, but many Jews with long bamboo rods, busily engaged in fis.h.i.+ng for bream and ba.s.s and rock-fish, it boots not to describe with a minuteness which might be wearisome to my readers, for I am not now writing ”of sport, for sportsmen.”
So let us turn homewards, as the sun is getting high in the heavens, and note the scenes by the way.