Zoraida: A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara

Humours from the Desert

Twelve weary days after leaving the Meskam, journeying due north over the hot loose sands of the Great Erg, the hill crowned by the imposing white cupolas and towers of the desert town of Tuggurt came into view.

The scene was charming. It was an hour before sundown, and as we ascended the long caravan route from Ngoussa, a foot deep in dust, the place presented a purely Oriental aspect. Against a background of cool-looking palms, the white flat-roofed houses, the grim walls of the Kasbah, and the domes of the many mosques stood out in bold relief. Riding on, we entered a beautiful grove of tall date palms, the trees which the Arabs say stand with their feet in the water and their heads in the fire of heaven. Under their welcome shade a rivulet flowed with rippling music over the pebbles, and fruit trees and corn were growing luxuriantly, for the oasis is most fertile, although, strangely enough, the abundance of water throughout the Oued Gheir causes a malignant fever which proves fatal to Europeans. The beautiful palm-groves and wealth of vegetation was unutterably refreshing after the heat and glare of the waterless regions of the south; and as we approached the gate, a strange motley crowd of gaily-dressed Arabs of the Beni Mansour, Jews, Biskris, and Negroes came forth to meet us and inquire what news we brought.

Our statement that Hadj Absalam’s men had been repulsed and defeated caused the wildest rejoicings, and we made a triumphant entry into the place, followed by a gesticulating throng who apparently regarded us as heroes.

Tuggurt is a curious old town. European civilisation has not yet reached it, for, with the exception of one or two French officers, there are no Christian residents. Built almost entirely of bricks baked in the sun, its low houses join one another, and present an unbroken line save for the two town gates. Secure from attack, its moat is now filled up, and in front of the stone-built Kasbah stands the principal of the twenty mosques, with its high dome and tall slender minarets. Around its ancient market-place, where for hundreds of years slaves were bought and sold, are cool arcades with crumbling horse-shoe arches, while beside it there rises the dilapidated dome of a disused house of prayer, bearing some curious plaster arabesques. Within the enceinte of the Kasbah – the scene of a horrible massacre during the revolt of the Cherif Bou Choucha in 1871 – stands the barracks, the commandant’s house, and the hospital, and it was within those walls, in an inner court beside a plashing fountain, that in the twilight I sat explaining to Captain Carmier, the commandant, how the attack was frustrated.

A French dinner was an appreciable change after the eternal kousskouss, dates, and kola nuts that form one’s sustenance on the plains, and as the Captain, a lieutenant, and myself sat over our cognac and cigarettes, I told them of my adventures with Ali Ben Hafiz, and the surprise by the Spahis in the far-off Meskam.

The cool peacefulness of that ancient Kasbah garden, where the veiled houris of Bou Choucha once lounged and plucked the roses, was delightful, and, sitting with the foliage rustling above, there was an air of repose such as I had not experienced for months.

“So the homards have gone south to overtake the Chasseurs,” Captain Carmier said, as he struck a match on his heel and lit his cigarette after I had told him how valiantly my companions had fought. “How aggravating it is that Hadj Absalam always escapes us!”

“Extraordinary!” remarked the lieutenant, a thorough Parisian, who had just been grumbling at his lot, he having been sent to the desert for three years, instead of to Tonquin, where he might earn distinction and the yellow and green ribbon, as he had expected. “Nothing would please me better than to command an expedition in search of him.”

“Search? What’s the use?” asked the commandant. “The rapidity with which the old scoundrel travels is simply miraculous. To-day he’s here, to-morrow he disappears, and on the third day he is reported completely out of our reach. As on previous occasions, he has, I suppose, retreated beyond Mount El Aghil, and there, idling in his harem, is snapping his fingers and defying us. It is always the same – always.”

“Are his headquarters on Mount Aghil, then?” I asked, for amid all the conflicting reports I had never been able to learn the outlaw’s actual place of abode.

“It is said that his stronghold is perched on an almost inaccessible rock not far from Tiouordeouïn, and that his household consists of nearly a thousand persons.”

“Of whom about half are inmates of his harem,” added the lieutenant, smiling. “According to report current among the neighbouring tribe, the Tédjéhé N’ou Sidi, the ladies of his household include a number of Europeans who have from time to time fallen into his merciless clutches. The favourites are surrounded by every luxury, the proceeds of his raids, while those who fall into disfavour, or whose personal charms deteriorate by age, are disposed of in the very simple method of being thrown over the cliff and dashed to pieces upon the rocks beneath.”

“Horrible!” I exclaimed. “But why does not the Government send a sufficient force to follow him into his fastness and capture him?”

“For several reasons,” answered the commandant. “Firstly, because that portion of the Ahaggar where he has his abode has never been explored; secondly, because, by reason of the zealously-guarded mountain pass by which it is approached, access is impossible except by a strong column, who would meet with a most desperate resistance, and would have to take it by storm. The third, and perhaps most important, reason is, because the region of the Ennitra is declared by all the neighbouring nomad tribes to be a sacred place, where several miracle-working marabouts are buried, and any attempt at desecration by Europeans would certainly cause a holy war all through the Sahara. Therefore the War Department, although the General has urged them times without number to send a column in pursuit of Hadj Absalam, prefer to wait and capture him when in the act of plunder.”

“That will never be, it seems,” I remarked.

“No. Il sait le fin des fins,” laughed Carmier. “It is said that he attributes his extraordinary success in evading us to a woman who is gifted with second sight.”

“A woman?” I exclaimed, surprised. “She’s believed to be a witch, I suppose?”

“Yes, and a young and very pretty one, too. They say her beauty is marvellous, and her power supernatural. While I was in command of the advanced post at Tihodayen, near the salt mines of Sebkha d’Amadghor, three Spahis ventured into the Ikerremoïn Oasis in search of forage, and they declare that they came across her. She was surrounded by a number of slaves, and was lying unveiled under a canopy of white and gold. According to their account, she possesses the beauté du diable, her women make obeisance to her, and the men who approach fall upon their knees before her, kiss the ground, and ask her blessing. It is said, too, that Mulai Hassan, Sultan of Morocco, saw her on one occasion when he crossed the frontier, and offered Hadj Absalam an enormous sum for her, but the superstitious Ennitra threatened a revolt if she were sold. Whether that’s true I don’t know,” he added, shrugging his shoulders and sipping his cognac. “She is evidently Queen of the Desert, and I merely tell you what’s rumoured.”

“But is she Moorish, Arab, or a Negress?” I asked. “What is her name?”

“She is from the mountains, they say, and the Ennitra know her as Daughter of the Sun.”

“Daughter of the Sun?” I cried, starting. I remembered that Zoraida had, in reply to my questions, told me that that was her name. Could this strange woman of incomparable beauty, who was believed by her people to be possessed of supernatural power, be none other than my mysterious Zoraida, the woman whose veiled face was in my waking hours and in my dreams constantly before my eyes?

“Is her name familiar?” asked the Captain, noticing my ill-concealed surprise.

“No – not at all!” I stammered. “Surely that designation is common enough among the Arabs! It seems an extraordinary fact, nevertheless, that a young and beautiful woman should direct the movements of a band of outlaws.”

“True,” replied Carmier, thoughtfully twisting his waxed moustache. “And there is, moreover, considerable mystery with regard to her which nobody has up to the present been able to solve. One thing, however, appears certain, that this veiled prophetess is an inmate of Hadj Absalam’s harem.”

His words stung me. Could it be possible that this woman who held the murderous nomads under her sway was the same to whom I owed my life? Nay, was it not most probable that she, the graceful incarnation of Eastern beauty whom I adored, was one of the four wives allowed to Hadj Absalam by the Prophet? The mystery was bewildering. The very thought drove me to despair, for I confess I loved her to the verge of madness.

My companion smoked on in lazy contemplative silence. Above, the stars were bright in a steely sky; the ancient court, with its horse-shoe arches, wide arcades, and trailing vines, looked ghostly in the dim light. The quiet was only broken by the running water of the fountain as it fell with pleasant music into its time-worn blue-tiled basin, and the measured tramp of the sentry in the outer court beyond. Upward the cigarette smoke dissolved into the cool night air, carrying with it bitter thoughts of the past, and strange, dreamy visions of an unknown future.

Chapter Eleven.

The City of the Sun

I was awaiting Zoraida, my enchantress.

After a few days in Tuggurt, and a lengthened stay in the date-groves of Biskra with my genial friend the General of Division, I found myself once again in old El Djezaïr, that quaint Franco-Arab city known to Europeans as Algiers. Here Western civilisation and Oriental fanaticism mingle, but never blend. It is a city of glare and darkness, of mosques and marabouts, of Parisian politeness and Berber barbarity, of wide, modern-built boulevards and narrow, crooked streets, as yet untouched by the hand of the colonising vandal.

Till a comparatively recent date it was a nest of fierce pirates who were a terror to Europe, and even now one cannot look upon the gigantic mole and other works prior to the French occupation without remembering that they were constructed by Christian slaves, who were beaten, tortured, and made to toil under the blazing sun until their gyves wore into their flesh, and death relieved them of their miseries. The great white Kasbah on the hill-top, once the gorgeous Palace of the Deys, now echoes to the tramp of Zouaves and artillery. If those gigantic walls could speak, what tales of outrage, torture, and butchery they, alas! could tell! In the great harem, where hundreds of English and French women captured by the Corsairs have pined and died, smart officers on colonial service now lounge, smoke, and discuss the topics of their beloved Paris as revealed by the Petit Journal and the Figaro; while down in the Rue de la Lyre British tourists in suits of astounding check stare in abject astonishment at Fathma or Khadidja, who, veiled and shrouded in her white haick, has descended the ladder-like streets of the native quarter to make purchases in the Rue de Constantine or the Marché de la Lyre.

This City of the Sun is one of violent contrasts. Seen from the sea, it fully bears out its Arab comparison of being a “diamond set in emeralds,” for in terraces of intensely white, flat-roofed houses, each with little square windows like pips upon a dice, it rises high upon the bright green Sahel hills. In the centre the Arab town with its cupolas and minarets is crowned by the great fortress, while right and left are the pleasant suburbs of St. Eugène and Mustapha, their white houses and handsome villas gleaming forth from dark luxuriant foliage.

In the French quarter, the Boulevard de la République, running along nearly the whole front of the town facing the sea, the wide Place du Gouvernement, with its oasis of palms, and the Rue d’Isly, with its avenue of trees, are all hot and full of busy, bustling French; but turn away up any of the side streets from the Rue de la Lyre, cross the Quartier Juif, and in a few moments one is in a bewildering labyrinth of steep, shady, and tortuous streets, so narrow in places that two asses cannot pass with their panniers.

Herein lies the charm of Algiers. Those narrow passages, where the Arabs sit on rush mats outside the kahoua, drinking tiny cups of coffee, smoking cigarettes, and killing time by playing damma, are the same at this moment as they were in the days of Yousuf Zeri; and although the religious prejudices of the Arab, the Moor, the Jew, and the Biskri have perhaps become somewhat modified by contact with the civilising Roumis, yet their mode of life is still the same, and at heart they hate the Christians as fiercely as ever. Indolent and content, they love to lean upon the long parapet of the Boulevard de la République, gazing with deep-set, thoughtful eyes away over the bright blue sea, to lounge in groups at street corners gossiping, to sit at the garish French cafés driving bargains with European merchants, or hand-in-hand to stroll leisurely across to the mosque to their daily prayers. Side by side with dainty ladies in Paris-made gowns and the high-heeled boots of fashion, Arab women, with foreheads heavily laden with tinkling sequins, their dark, flashing eyes peeping over their veils, and all looking exactly the same in their spotlessly white but hideous out-door dress, shuffle along with waddling gait, and turn to glance surreptitiously at the stranger after he or she has passed.

This wonderful old city of sunlight and shadow, of dazzling brightness and sombre gloom, of strange incongruities of dress, of language, and of religion, was by no means fresh to me. On taking up my quarters at the Hôtel de la Régence, in the Place du Gouvernement, I was welcomed as an old friend, for on several previous occasions, while idling in El Djezaïr, I had made it my headquarters in preference to the suburban hotels on the hill at Mustapha. Before the house a cluster of fine date palms throw a welcome shade, and beyond lies the bay, with the great, misty mountains of Kabylia in the distance. Forming one side of the Place stands the Djamäa el-Djedid, with its plain windowless walls, dazzlingly white dome, and square minaret, whereon at sunset the mueddin appears and calls the Faithful to prayer. Here, again, extremes meet. The monotonous voice of the priest mingles with the jingle and chatter of the French café opposite, and Europeans, sipping their bock or mazagran, watch the devout Moslems trooping into the courtyard to wash before entering the house of Allah.

Here, in this the most charmingly cosmopolitan city in the world, where subjects for the artist are presented in perfect panorama at every turn, I wandered and idled at cafés, killing time impatiently, and eagerly awaiting the day on which my mysterious desert acquaintance would go upon her pilgrimage. At last that long-wished-for Friday dawned, and leaving the city early by the gate Bab-el-Oued, I strolled through the charming Jardin Marengo, under the intensely white walls of the handsome mosque built over the shrine of Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, and then out on the road which wound up through the dark, wild ravine of the Bou-Zarea.

In the fresh, cool morning air the walk up that well-shaded road to the Frais-Vallon was delightful, even though the aloes and prickly pears were white with dust and the sun had scorched the foliage of the almond and orange trees. At the top of the glen, where the road narrowed into a footpath, I found a little Arab café, and upon a stone bench before it I seated myself to watch for the woman who held me under her spell.

This smiling, fertile country beside the sea, where grapes, olives, and sweet flowers grew in such wild abundance, was charming after the great wastes of arid sand; and while the birds sang gladly above in the cloudless vault of blue, I sat alone, smoking and sipping a tiny cup of coffee, watching the veiled women in their white baggy trousers and haicks, in pairs and singly, slowly toiling past up the steep road on their way to adore the koubba of Sidi-Djebbar.

That Zoraida should repair to this shrine was puzzling. It added considerably to the mystery which enveloped her. Sidi-Djebbar is the patron saint of divorced Arab women, and, according to a local tradition, whenever a divorced lady makes three pilgrimages to his tomb and drinks of the waters of Aioun Srakna, she will marry again before the next fast of Ramadân. Was Zoraida the divorced wife of some man who had bought her from her parents and had soon grown tired of her? Was she an outcast from the harem?

Thoughts such as these filled my mind as I watched the veiled houris pass in silent, pious procession. To distinguish one from another was impossible. The only way in which I could tell a lady from a woman of the people was by her feet and by the texture of her haick. The feet of the lower classes were bare and thrust into heavy, roughly-made slippers, while on the neat ankles of wealthier women gold bangles jingled, their feet were encased in stockings of silk, they wore tiny Paris-made patent-leather shoes, and as they brushed past, they left upon the air a scent of attar of rose. The women of Al-Islâm are seldom allowed to visit the mosques, so on Friday, their day of prayer, they go on foot to venerate the koubbas of their saints instead.

A weary journey extending over a month, had brought me at last to this spot, yet how among all these shrouded figures could I distinguish the woman I adored? Suddenly it occurred to me that, although I had taken up a position of vantage, Zoraida would not approach me, an Infidel, at any spot where she might be observed; therefore I rose and strolled leisurely on up the steep shaded track that led in serpentine wanderings among the fig trees, oranges, and vines.

Half convinced that her promise would never be kept, and that she was still in the far Sahara, I walked on very slowly for some distance. Suddenly, at a bend in the hill-path, where the wide branches of the cork oaks, the ilex, and the chêne-zeen met overhead, and the giant aloes grew abundantly, a voice amongst the leafy scrub startled me, and a short, stout figure appeared from among the foliage. Glancing round to reassure herself she was unobserved, she ran towards me. Only her eyes were visible, but they disappointed me, for I could see that they were not those of the woman for whom I was searching. She was old; her forehead was brown, wizened, and tattooed.

“Art thou the Angleezi whom Allah delivered into the hands of our master Hadj Absalam? Art thou named the Amîn?” she asked, almost breathlessly, in Arabic.

“Yes,” I replied. “Who art thou?”

“Know, O Roumi, that I have been sent by my mistress, Zoraida Fathma,” she said, drawing her haick closer with her brown, bony hand. “My lady of exalted dignity said unto me, ‘Go, seek the foreigner Cecil Holcombe, wákol loh inni moshtâk ilich.’” (“Tell him that I am desiring to see him.”)

“To see her? I expected she would be here!” I said.

“Alas! no. The koubba of Sidi-Djebbar cannot be graced by my lady’s presence this moon.”

“Is she here, in El Djezaïr?” I asked quickly.

“Yes. Although thou hast not known it, her lustrous eyes, the Lights of the Harem, hath already gazed upon thee since thy sojourn here. She desireth to have speech with thee.”