Ianthe M. Dunbar

“ A ragged awning was slung from a tumbledown balcony on one side to the roof of a shop on the other. Brilliant handkerchiefs and coloured stuffs hung on either side of the pathway; in the shade of a recess a tailor plied his trade, sitting cross-legged amongst billows of muslin. The sun beat down, slatting the roadway with glowing stripes, a continuous crowd surged up and down, men on their way to the mosque, countrymen staring at the goods proffered for sale, blind beggars tapping their way along and calling “Give, in the name of Allah!” and behind them rose the slender tower of a minaret. ”

“ All these huddled on the ground, their wares spread round them, whilst at the end of the steep stony street one saw the frowning battlements of the Kasba rising sheer against the sky, and looking downhill caught a glimpse of the blue of the sea and the white sails of fishing boats like drowning butterflies in the harbour. Across the bay were the houses of the little fishing village of Monastir. The country just round Sousse is all olive groves, with huge hedges of spiked cactus, and when I was there in January, shrivelled prickly pears still hung along the edges of the leaves. ”

“ Long after the circus has left the country, and the Prodigy has grown up, there will be talk of it in the mud houses along the river bank and in the village market-places. And as the tale spreads from one hearer to another, its marvels will become ever more and more wonderful, and slimmer and more beautiful the heroine, till she and the satin-coated horses and the small boy-acrobat will take their places amongst that gallery of half-mythical figures, almost divine, of whom stories are told round flickering village fires in the dusk. ”

“ It was cold, but a glorious morning when I left by motor for Kairouan. Soon the white houses of Tunis were left behind. The sun was rising as we flung its outskirts behind us, and the car headed for open country. Rocky hills showed themselves on the horizon, and there were abrupt peaks rising out of stretches of carefully cultivated vineyards, orchards of olive trees, and broad fields just tinged with the promise of early wheat. No walls, but occasional cactus hedges. The road climbed a saddle of hill from whence one could look back on the sea. ”

“ The yellow roadway was sharply cleft with clear-marked shadows, and a carpenter in a brown burnous sat on the floor of his shop making axles for cart wheels, a froth of thin shavings heaped round him. Then a brightly painted cart with high wheels came past, cleaving a way for itself in some mysterious manner. Once it and its shouting driver were past, the crowd flowed together again like water that you have divided for a moment with a stick, the beggars picked themselves up from the corners to which they had rolled for safety, and life went on as usual. ”

“ The sun had not yet become the tyrant of summer, when men fly from his rays, and night becomes little less breathless than the day, when palms hang motionless in the sultry glare and people leave their mud dwellings for the shade of the oasis, when the glittering [100] sea breaks on a blinding beach, and the earth lies panting and scorched. These are the days, I suppose, when the mind turns with longing to the grey washes of rain in England, to the cool depths of summer woods and the freshness of clear springs amongst green ferns. ”

“ The narrow covered Souks or arcades, where the merchants sit in their tiny raised shops, their shiny yellow slippers ranged side by side ready to put on again when business is over, the crowd in flowing Eastern robes sauntering up and down languidly shopping, the red and green tomb of a holy man right in the gangway, with a blind beggar squatting beside it proffering an open hand for alms, the strange chrysalis-shaped white bundles with their tight black veils, that are women, the passing funeral with its swathed corpse carried shoulder-high and followed by a chanting crowd. ”

“ No one is in a hurry, the day is long. Why trouble to do to-day what may as well be left till to-morrow? There is none of the feverish activity and restlessness of modern civilisation. “About each man’s neck hath Allah hung his fate,” and therefore it is useless to try to avert it. Interminable discussions are carried on over the coffee cups, and as in village-life all the world over, a neighbour’s affairs are of only secondary importance to one’s own. The fierce light that beats upon a throne is but a taper to the penetrating beam focussed upon every household in a small community. ”

“ A group of palms stood black against the star-freckled sky. The whole picture in its strangeness stirred his imagination. This was Africa, even though the country of Tunis were but the fringe of it. No sea stretched between him where he sat and the hot wide spaces of the Sahara. Were one to ride and ride into the far distance, at last one would escape civilisation altogether, would reach to the primitive [58] roots of humanity. And it was a mere chance that had brought him here.
He loved the sea and hated all liners, so was taking a trip in the Mediterranean on a small steamer. ”

“ Sousse proved to be a picturesque little town on the sea, built about the base of the old Kasba or fort, whose walls stand on a hill above it, looking out over the flat-roofed white houses of the modern town to the waters of the Mediterranean. From the fort itself there was a magnificent view: on one side the curving coastline with its dotted white villages and the gentian sea fading to a pale mist in the distance, on the other, vistas of olive groves and orchards. ”

“ Backed by jagged rocky hills that glow deep rose and dusky purple at sunset, the capital gazes over the placid waters of the lake to the deep blue of the Gulf beyond, to the twin peaks of le Bou-Cornine on the north east and the low hill of Carthage to the West.
The French part of the town has broad streets with shady avenues of trees, modern shops with Paris goods displayed behind plate glass windows. Electric trams pass and re-pass. One could imagine oneself in the South of France. ”

“ Numberless children ran out to meet us in the village, laughing merry little things in tattered burnous and blue gown, incredibly dirty and cheerful, with a constant flash of white teeth. Even the tiniest girls wore thick metal anklets, and tots of five or six carried baby brothers astride their hips. The children’s playtime is a short one; at seven or eight years old they are already at work herding cattle or collecting fodder and fetching heavy jars of water from the wells. I have often seen a small girl almost weighed down with the weight of a jar of water. ”

“ Arab women in the towns go to the baths two or three times a week, so it is pleasant to feel that the people under the black shrouds that one meets in the streets, are at least clean.
On cold days when Hassan sat huddled in his white burnous by my campstool, looking like an elderly and discontented Father Christmas, it was usually not long before one of his invaluable relatives appeared bringing him a cup of coffee. “The waiter at the Snake Charmer’s café is my sister’s son,” remarked Hassan, complacently sipping, whilst I mused on the vista of relationships opened up by a plurality of wives. ”

“ The little oasis town of Gabès is on the coast, quite in the south of Tunisia, the line to it being made by German prisoners during the War. After leaving the broad belt of cultivation that stretches some way out of Sfax, with its olives and corn and fruit trees, the train ran through bare open country with scattered flocks of cattle, sheep or camels grazing on a sparse and wiry grass. Here and there a few Arabs were laboriously tilling the soil with wooden ploughs drawn by lean bullocks or camels. ”

“ The popular fallacy that he can go for days without food is erroneous, but he lays no stress on the punctuality of his meals as a horse does, and this is a valuable trait in a beast that is used for long journeys across the desert where fodder [20] is scarce. His strange figure with its thin, fragile-looking legs that fold up like a pocket ruler when he lies down, and the small cynical head set on the long swaying neck, suits the sandy wastes and the exotic charm of the East. He walks with slippered tread, wrapt in aloofness. One is baffled by his haughty indifference. ”

“ Carthage is not even a heap of ruins now. She is a handful of dust. Her stones were carried away for the construction of Arab houses, one comes across stray pillars wreathed with the acanthus of Rome, in the Souks of Tunis, huge blocks of stone are built even into the mud villages everywhere, marble pillars have been transferred bodily into the interiors of mosques. Carthage herself has become a desolation and a waste. ”

“ The notched stems of date palms were like purple grey pillars on one side of the path, and an old man was coming back from work in the fields, his sand-coloured burnous slung round him in such fashion as to make a sack in which he was carrying a bunch of green vegetables. ”

“ None of the passengers seemed to be much perturbed when they heard afterwards of the Arab having been killed. Indeed the man must have been a confirmed suicide, for the country is so bare that a train can be seen coming two miles off, and its progress is deliberate enough to give the most dreamy of pedestrians time to realise his danger. Perhaps it is like the Trans-Siberian railway, where compensation used to be given to the family of the deceased, till it was discovered that the peasants were driving a lucrative trade in aged relatives. ”

“ The Tunisian café in a small town or village is a pleasant place. The customers sip their coffee in a leisurely way, sitting in the sunshine, and discussing the news of the day. Many play dominoes or chess, and sometimes strolling musicians, snake-charmers or professional story tellers collect a group round them. The teller of tales is a very popular personage, and is always sure of a large audience, and now and again one comes across the impromptu bard who weaves his chant as he goes along, introducing apt stanzas about each giver of a coin, to the delight of the crowd.
Life is leisurely. ”

“ Adjoining the cathedral is the monastery of the Pères Blancs, who have a small museum filled with Punic and Roman remains. There are fragments of statues, broken vases, earthenware lamps, coins, medals, sarcophagi in which one can see frail skeletons preserved in their covering of aromatic gum. These haughty warriors and princesses lie helplessly exposed to the gaze of every idle tourist, the painted lids of their resting places standing sentinel-fashion behind each. I am no antiquarian. ”

“ Slowly the procession melted away into the distance till it merged into the blue haze that hung about the plain, leaving but a little feather of ruffled sand to show which way it had gone.
Though the educated classes, at least the men, are probably not much influenced by superstitions, the lower classes, especially the women, are cumbered about with them from the day of their birth to that of their death. ”