Within a mile or two of Kairouan were various small orchards and gardens, and Ali Hassan told me importantly that he was the owner of one of these, consisting of olive trees, fruit trees and vines, for which he had given 600 francs, and that with taxes and extra payments the whole had cost him no less than a thousand. I was suitably impressed. But during a drive in that direction some of his pride collapsed. He had shown me his property with its mud hut in one corner which he referred to magnificently as “ma maison.” He intended to have it moved down to the roadside end of the field, “for a highway brings much money.” There he will have a little shop and sell coffee and beans, grapes and fruit. The garden itself looked like a child’s game in the road, just bare twigs sticking up in small heaps of dust; but that was December and Hassan saw it in his mind’s eye by March, pink with almond blossom and starred with the bloom of apricots. Further along the road a gloom fell upon him, and at last he turned from the box seat beside the driver. “Do you see that truly magnificent garden on the other side, and the beautiful house with three rooms? That was once mine.” There was a dramatic pause. I enquired delicately how he had been forced to part with it. “Because the owner of it died, and it was sold for more francs than would stretch from here to the city.” It was indeed a beautiful property. Many olives and apricot trees were in it and there was a good well, and at his house he had a little business where he sold cakes and coffee and such like. And as many travellers and Bedouins pass up and down the way to Kairouan, he had made money. “Mais oui, it is the road that brings money,” and he sank into a brooding silence. However, he recovered his cheerfulness when he took me to see his town house. He was anxious I should make a picture of his wife and family, but when we arrived it was to find the former had gone to the baths, taking the smaller children with her. I had seen her before, but now I was introduced to the eldest daughter, a pretty girl of thirteen whom we found at her loom weaving carpets. Her father explained she was busy making money towards her wedding, which would probably take place in a year or two. He would select the bridegroom, and she would not even have seen him beforehand. The little bride-to-be smiled up shyly at me. Her hair was curling and very black, and On coming in from the door in a quiet street, we had bent down to get through the opening into the room on the left. The walls were whitewashed, roughly decorated with crude coloured drawings of the lucky hand of Fatma. Through this living-room one stepped into a small courtyard, with a collection of green plants in pots in one corner, and a clothes line stretched across it on which flapped a few coloured garments. Two more rooms and a tiny cooking-place opened off it. I was shown the bedroom There was another woman in the living room, Hassan’s sister, who with her husband occupied the other bedroom, a discontented-looking handsome girl, about twenty-two, more gaudily dressed than the little carpet-weaver. She squatted on the floor cracking almonds with her white teeth and putting the kernels into a small earthenware bowl. A smouldering good-looking piece, thoroughly bored with life and probably meditating a speedy change of husbands. I met some English missionaries who had been in the country for thirty years, and they told me that divorce is very common amongst the inhabitants. It is even rather the rule than the exception, and it is almost as often resorted to on the part of the wife as on that of the husband. It can be procured for the most trifling causes, and the It is quite likely that whilst we are pitying the women of the harem for their secluded, miserable lives, they are also wasting compassion on us, as poor creatures whom their husbands value so little that they let them wander anywhere unveiled! But I think compassion is hardly the sentiment with which we inspire them. Horror and disgust are their more probable feelings. At every turn we run counter to their idea of what is seemly and in good taste; and this question alone, of the different conception of women’s standing in the East and in the West, makes mutual understanding difficult between the two races. Though the Koran allows four wives, it is not often a man avails himself of the permission. It is too expensive, and he prefers to take his supply consecutively. He can get as much change as he likes, by the easy way of divorce. I went to an Arab wedding of the poorer classes at Kairouan, and found it deeply interesting. It was a cold clear night with a bright moon, the open space outside the walls of the city silvered in its light. It seemed strangely quiet and empty after the stir and bustle of the day; the little booths were shut, and a slinking white dog nosed amongst the shadows. From a distant cafÉ came the sound of a stringed instrument and the singing of a reedy voice. Otherwise silence. But when we had passed through the city gates, we heard a loud hum of voices. Muffled figures were hurrying along and soon we found ourselves in a crowd waiting for the marriage procession. Knots of musicians appeared and struck up their queer wavering tunes on pipes and drums and barbaric looking stringed instruments, whilst some hand held aloft a lamp which made a small radius of ruddy flame, lighting up the group below it and making the hooded figures look more mysterious than ever. From a side street came the shrill call of women shouting to keep evil spirits from the dwelling of the newly married pair, whilst nearer and nearer came the sound of the approaching procession. In a few moments it moved past, the bridegroom in the And so we came to the house itself. Mysterious veiled figures stood motionless on the roof, like sentinels of Fate. In the gloom my hand was seized by a native woman’s, small and dry, and I was led into the house followed by my English companion. We were taken across one room, and brought to the doorway of another from whence came a hum of voices and laughter. Peering into this smaller room we saw it packed with gaily-dressed women squatting on the ground, whilst in the corner sat the bride like a waxen image. She was swathed in a robe of heavily tinselled stuff and over her head was thrown a drapery that quite hid her face. Not a soul spoke French, but we were hospitably beckoned in. It proved a matter of some difficulty to avoid stepping on the human mosaic which covered the floor but we managed it somehow and sat down in very cramped positions in places of honour close All this time the bride sat rigid and unbending as befits a modest Arab maiden. She made no sign of life, even when the woman next her raised the heavy veil for us to see her. She was a rather heavy-featured girl, her face artificially whitened, with a brilliant dab of rouge on either cheek, her forehead painted with an ornamental design in black and her eyebrows made to meet in a straight line. Her fingers had been dipped in some dark scented ointment, whilst the backs were decorated in an intricate pattern with henna and the palms dabbed here and there. Her hair was in two heavy plaits on either shoulder and she wore a coloured silk handkerchief bound over it and above that a tinselled head-dress with a long tail to it that hung down her back. The heat in the small room was stifling. The women were all unveiled and many of them were heavily powdered and rouged, their fingers loaded with rings and wearing necklaces and earrings. Some were dressed in queer dÉcolletÉ Amongst them I made out the mother of the bride, dressed in shabby black. She had a fine worn face, with features that showed more mind than the rest of the crowd, and dark eyes tear-stained in their hollowed sockets. The cheekbones were high, the nose short and straight, and the sad mouth drooped at the corners. It was the face of a woman who could think and suffer, and stood out amongst the comely crowd in the same way that her black draperies ‘told’ against their gay clothes. She reminded me of the Virgin in the PietÀ of Francia in the National Gallery. At times she wept softly with eyes that seemed already burnt out with sorrow, drying her tears with a fold of her veil. I longed to know Arabic, that I might speak to her. Amongst foreigners whose language one does not know and having no mutual tongue for comprehension, one is as At last the bridegroom was approaching. The women began to leave for the larger room where we thankfully followed. But there we were not much better off, as in a moment a feminine crowd closed in upon us in a frenzy of friendly curiosity. It was like stepping into a cageful of monkeys. They seized our arms, ran their hands over us, exclaiming and gesticulating, fingered our blouses, our ornaments, and trying to pull off our hats. It was only the arrival of the bridegroom that averted their attention. He was brought by another way into the room, still veiled, and then the bride was brought to him and amidst much laughter and shouting his head covering was removed. After this they were conducted to the door of another bedroom, stepping over the sill of which each tried to step on the other’s foot, the one who succeeds being supposed to have the predominance in their future married life. The door was shut on them, “et voilÀ tout” as a small Arab boy remarked to me, glad to air his slender French. I was told later that when the bridegroom finds himself alone with his bride he lifts her veil and sees her face for As soon as the bridal pair had disappeared the crowd turned its friendly attention to us, and I thought we should never fight our way through the mob of women. I caught a glimpse of the young Englishwoman in a perfect maelstrom of females, her hat off, her blouse almost torn from her shoulders. I waded to her with difficulty as one might through heavy surf, and laughing and breathless we at last got clear and out into the open air. The Englishmen and Hassan had had to stay outside, only women being allowed in. “And was the bride very beautiful?” Hassan asked with romantic interest. He told us the feast that would take place next day would be a great one: half a sheep roasted, cakes and sweetmeats of every kind. “Indeed marriage is always a very expensive affair,” he sighed. “A man is lucky if he is not 500 francs the poorer by the time it is all over. For his bride he must give 300 to 400 francs, perhaps even more. Then he must provide the furniture for the house, and the bed, and one I asked what the bride’s contribution to the household was; she must bring the mattress and the bedding, also the cooking pots, and her own clothes. “Yes, it is not many who can afford to have more than one wife,” he went on. “And if a man be wishful to have two, never do they get on together, and thereupon he must perhaps have two houses or be for ever deafened with their quarrels.” He fell into a reverie, whilst we made our way through the outskirts of the town, past the deserted market-place that slept in the moonlight, under the shadowy pepper trees that made a grateful shade in the heat of the day for the vendors of oranges and sweetmeats, and so through the city gate back to the quiet little square and the open door of the hotel. The scene in the Kairouan Souks was one of great animation in the afternoon, when auctions were held by the shopkeepers. The buildings consisted of long narrow passage-ways whose arched roofs were pierced here and there with openings to let in light. The shops were on a raised level on either side as in all Eastern bazaars, and were just recesses Where the seller squatted amongst his wares, whilst the customers and spectators sat along the broad stone edge covered with matting that ran along the front I. M. D. Business is conducted slowly and with dignity in the East, there is much talk and bargaining, coffee is brought and sipped during the process and then finally, perhaps, a purchase is made. The shopman in his flowing soft-coloured robes, probably wearing a flower over one ear, slowly measures the desired carpet or rug by hand, from the elbow to the tips of his fingers. There is more discussion, and at last the purchaser brings out a worked leather purse and counts out the requisite payment. But during an auction, the scene was much more animated. Shop assistants rushed up and down carrying goods and bawling at the top of their voices “What offers? what offers?” Customers bid against each other and the noise and bustle were tremendous. Every other moment a panting native rushed back to the owner of the shop to ask if the latest offer were to be accepted. Up the side-passages opening into the central Souk, more auctions might be going on simultaneously, and the crowd was so great that sketching had to be of the snapshot variety. I. M. D. Nearly all the men were in white or sand-coloured burnous, with the hood partly pushed back, showing the small twisted turban and close red fez worn underneath. The Tunisian countrymen are in general fine looking men, tall and aquiline featured, with good foreheads and clearly I like the Arabs’ fine dignity. Probably their flowing style of dress helps to give this effect, and the hooded cloak makes a becoming setting to their dark faces. Even the tiny boys wear the burnous and go about looking like small elves in their pointed hoods. Outside the western walls of the city, the graveyards stretched right away as far as the Mosque du Barbier, which lay about half a mile from the town. The tombs were not marked by any inscriptions, and often were only covered by a small rounded slab or just roughly enclosed by an edging of bricks. On these poorer graves a cluster of bricks set sideways in the earth told the sex of the dead: if set close together they mark the resting place of a man, if scattered, that of a woman. There is something inexpressibly forlorn about these Moslem cemeteries, the graves so huddled together, no green, no flowers. The tiny spectacled owl perches on the low headstones or makes his silent flight from one to the other, and beyond the graveyard itself the whole sky flames to brilliant red at the going down of the sun. The sunsets in Kairouan were magnificent. The whole of the west seemed to burst into fire and the desert glowed with a deep reflected rose. I call it ‘desert’ but it was Coming home through the cemetery one evening, Ali Hassan was anxious to know if I had read the Koran, and begged me to carry one about with me; “it would protect you greatly.” I asked him if the Fast of Ramadan was kept very strictly in Kairouan. He said yes, “except that there are always some who do not follow their religion seriously. They do not pray regularly, neither do they fast carefully for a month at Ramadan. But they will find the difference when they reach the other world. For every Ramadan they have broken here, they will have to fast a year hereafter. Ils auront joliment faim,” he ended with satisfaction. I gather he himself is a scrupulous observer of his religion. When I left Kairouan, Hassan came to see me off, wishing me happiness and prosperity, and hoping I should return some day. He presented me with one of his most treasured possessions, a picture postcard of himself and his family at the Marseilles Exhibition. There they all were posing under a tent, and labelled ‘Fabrication de Tapis de Kairouan (Tunisie) Maison Ali Hassan.’ Even under these trying conditions I was glad to see Hassan had still As my train steamed slowly away from Kairouan, I saw him still on the platform, his portly figure wrapped in the voluminous folds of a white burnous, watching till the distance had swallowed me up. |