Reading text
II. Sīdī ʿAbdssalam
In early November, I found myself in Tangier again, this time outfitted with books, manuscripts and equipment for a long stay in Morocco. My intention was to winter in Tétouan and, come spring, head for the Great Atlas Mountains. In Tétouan, I rented a beautiful Moorish house with a garden and a delightful view, and from there I went on expeditions to near-lying mountain ranges inhabited by the so-called Jbāla, independent mountain tribes that are most likely pure Berbers, although today they speak only Arabic.
Thus, I spent my Christmas Eve in the large village of Bné Ḥlu, situated on a hill a few hours from Tétouan. My tent was lit up by a flickering Christmas candle, on the rug therein sat four hungry men and feasted upon kūskus, which stood in for Christmas porridge, and outside the moon cast its silver glimmer over the tall mountains and deep valleys which seemed to be bathed in a yuletide peace, although it was unlikely that they had ever taken part in a Christmas Eve celebration before.
If they had had the gift of the gab they could have told tales of days and nights of a different kind, about fighting and killing and plundering. Here lives the Andjra tribe, a courageous and hardy mountain people who in their daily lives exercise their courage in native feuds, but when a common danger arises, they rally to battle the sultan’s soldiers. And here, outsiders are just as unwelcome as they are rare as guests – not because Andjra’s residents are more fanatic than others of their faith, but because they are so jealous of their freedom that they see an invader in every stranger.
Nor would I ever have come here if I had not had with me such a man as Sīdī ̔Abdsslam. He was born in Bné Ḥlu and still owns an orchard there, inherited from his father’s father Sīdī l-Ḥósni, the great village saint. Even as we approached the village on our horses two men came towards us, not to rob us but to kiss the hem of his cloak. Wherever he went, he was surrounded by an admiring crowd that obeyed his every command. Wherever he sat, the old and young would sit themselves at his feet. And when the plate of kūskus was borne into my tent, no-one was allowed to touch it before Sīdī ̔Abdsslam had called on Allāh to bless the dish. They urged him to stay and settle down in the village and in return promised to give him the prettiest girl in the village as his wife.
Even upon my profane forehead falls a dim reflection of Sīdī ̔Abdsslam’s halo. Hûa râjel mleḥ bezzâf, ”This is a very good man”, he says to one and all, pointing at me; and surprised eyes stare at the unfaithful Nazarene who is viewed so highly by a descendent of Muḥammad himself. ”If he had come here alone,” they say about me, ”we might have taken pity on him for a single night, but now he can stay here as long as he likes.” And they gift me with one chicken after the other without expecting anything in return.
Sīdī ̔Abdsslam belongs to the Baqqāli family, which, like all other shereef families, is believed to be direct descendants of the Prophet and his daughter Fāṭimah. A shereef is always in possession of a certain amount of baraka or holiness, which he has inherited from his great forefather, but this holiness can be stronger or weaker and manifest in different ways. The Baqqâli shereefs have especially earned a reputation for being terrible when they are enraged, for their curses always come true. There have also been several veritable saints in their family. One such saint was Sīdī l-Ḥósni, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam’s father’s father. Once, he entered the sultan’s palace unseen and appeared therein in the shape of a woman. Another time he shook hands with the sultan, whereby the hand all of a sudden turned into the paw of a lion. When he pressed it against a stone, the five fingers left marks in the stone. He could also cure the sick by spitting on their foreheads three times. The house where he lies buried in Tangier is a holy house. Sīdī ̔Abdsslam lives there together with his mother, but I, as an infidel, naturally have never been allowed to set foot through the door. In Bné Ḥlu, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam took me to an olive tree in whose shade his grandfather would sit while he was alive; but the village men shook their heads and wondered what would happen to us. No-one dares break a branch of the tree; once a man gave a few of its leaves to his ox to eat, but the ox died. The house in which the grandfather lived now lies in ruins, but the stones must not be touched. Some robbers from another tribe tried to burn the house, but the sticks would not catch fire. They then broke in and opened a chest, but it was found to be full of bees that flew out and stung the desecrators. A snake now lives in the ruins, several feet long and as thick as an arm, with hair on its head, entirely different from all other snakes; and the people in the village whisper that the snake is the old saint himself. Once when Sīdī ̔Abdsslam was small and his mother was suckling him, she found the snake lying at her breast and sucking the milk she thought she was giving her child.
But Sīdī ̔Abdsslam has inherited the holiness not only from his father’s side but also his mother’s. His mother also belongs to a shereef family and is treated as a relatively holy woman. Her speciality is curing the women of Tangier’s Moorish gentry, largely when they have overindulged on prickly pear. But I also have her to thank for many kind deeds. No-one can make a more delicious kūskus than her, no-one knows more about the customs and superstitions of the women’s world. When the clever old lady comes to me with her white shawl pulled over her face so that her eyes are barely visible, I know that she has things to relate that are worth listening to. And furthermore, I regularly receive her blessings, both when I visit Morocco and in between by post when Sīdī ̔Abdsslam writes to me, that is to say, approximately once a month. He believes that it is largely her blessings that have helped me in my life and protected me from my enemies’ ill will throughout all of these years.
Luckily, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam has other good characteristics in addition to his holiness. When the Syrian interpreter met with authorities for our trip to Fez, he convinced the shereef to join us in order to keep the servants in line and give him support in critical moments. And the shereef met all of his expectations. During the first evening when the tent had already been pitched and we were thirsting for our supper, the cook threatened to go on strike if he did not immediately receive a pay rise. The mutiny spread among the other servants and the situation seemed troubling. That is when we heard bursts of laughter ring out and the rebels began to appear sheepish. Sīdī ̔Abdsslam had told them that they were free to travel with all of their mules as far as the road took them, as his uncle’s village lay not too far away, and from there he could acquire new men and animals for half the price.
In Fez, we discovered that the Syrian tricked us as often as he could. Everything we bought through him became exorbitantly expensive. So one day we took Sīdī ̔Abdsslam with us to do our shopping and noticed that the prices came to something different. We were especially surprised when they fell further when we let him go shopping on his own on our behalf. The sight of a foreigner naturally whets the appetite of a shopkeeper, but what had prevented the shereef from sticking the saved money in his own pocket? They had assured us in Tangier that there was not a single honest native in all of Morocco. Here we obviously had the exception that proved the rule.
I quickly found that Sīdī ̔Abdsslam was a far better helper in my studies than I could have hoped for – intelligent, interested and truthful. In the beginning I tested his preciseness by repeating what had been communicated to me but with a few small inconsistencies sneaked in, but he corrected me sharply. ”Do you mean to write lies?” he said. ”It is easy to make a book out of those.” Once he assaulted his good friend shereef Ahmed in Tangier with blows when Ahmed, out of pure amiability, replied yes to all of my questions: ”Do you not understand that he wishes to know how things work and does not care about your incessant yes and yes and yes!”
Despite his inherited holiness, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam is not a good Muslim. He regularly neglects his prayers – which reminds me of [Georg August] Wallin saying that he ”often found those who were the most eager to pray to be the worst crooks”. Yes, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam does something that is even worse: he secretly breaks the command that requires each Moslem who has come of age to abstain from all food and drink between sunrise and sunset during the month of Ramaḍān – a commandment that is considered to be the most binding of all, significantly more binding than the prohibition against murder and stealing. When I once asked him about his devoutness, he answered with a grimace: ”I believe because I must.” Sometimes he may, however, experience a sudden attack of religiosity: he says that he will attempt a pilgrimage to Mecca, throws himself down to worship and explains that he never wishes to have any dealings with Christians again. But such incidents are soon over and are mainly outbursts of ill temper. He naturally believes (more or less) in saints and jinn, although he does not hesitate from acquiring for me amulets that he has found at a shrine or chasing away a cat that has snuck into my kitchen at night – the height of courage as the cat could in fact be a jinn. And if one of his enemies dies or is thrown in prison, he declares with pride that his curses have now come true, as he is not a Baqqâli shereef for the mere fun of it.
In the spring of 1899, the major event of Sīdī ̔Abdsslam’s life occurred. After we returned to Tangier from Tetuan, I decided suddenly to travel, not to the Great Atlas Mountains, but to England. The shereef explained that he could not let me go alone but that he would come with me; he had the money needed for the journey. The suggestion was not a terrible one, as I could thus continue my studies in Arabic during the months I would be staying in Europe. My manuscripts and other belongings were deposited at the grandfather’s grave as the shereef gave his word that the old saint would carefully watch over them. And so our journey began.
In Gibraltar, the shereef showed me a statue of General Ellis and assured me that it was an English saint. When I objected, saying that it was just the image of an English general, he protested energetically: he had been to Gibraltar before and consequently knew what was there. It was not until we reached London that I understood what he meant. One of my acquaintances showed him the marble statues at the British Museum and the shereef seemed much interested. When we were alone again, he asked whether they had been difficult to dig up.
”What do you mean?” ”The gentleman said that they were Greek gods.” Moroccans believe that saints never die, but merely sleep, and that their bodies therefore do not undergo any kind of transformation in the grave. The shereef apparently thought that the marble statues were some kind of Greek saints. He had never heard of statues as Islam does not allow the depiction of living beings. It amused me now to put his perceptiveness to the test. ”Tomorrow,” I said, ”we shall visit a prison for serious offenders. Their punishment is that they must stand absolutely still without moving a muscle.” I took him to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. First, we hurried through the larger hall where all of Europe’s monarchs are assembled. The shereef was mightily surprised that criminals in England had such grand clothing – but everything here was so different to Morocco. Then we went down the stairs that led into the ”Chamber of Horrors” with its waxworks of murderers dressed in their authentic costumes. The shereef recoiled with fear but plucked up his courage and stood and stared at one of the murderers; it could not be so dangerous as we were in a prison after all and the criminals must hold still. After a while, the shereef said: ”That cannot be a living person as he does not move his eyes.” ”No, even that is not allowed,” I answered. But now it was no longer possible to trick him and I was forced to admit everything. Then came the worst of it: the shereef also convinced himself that the people who were moving about were also made of wax, both the public and policemen, and it was only with the greatest of effort that I could stop him from staring at them or touching them. And when an orchestra began to play, he said: ”Naturally, that is also just pretend.”
On his first railway journey – between Tilbury and London – the shereef was quite shocked. When he saw another train or a depot go by the window, he would rush to the other side of the compartment to stop it hitting him. However, he later learned to enjoy train journeys. In Sweden, he preferred to stand out on the platform, push his hands against the railing and take on an expression of proud superiority as though he had hurtled forward on his Arabian steed faster than everyone else.
His new acquaintances would sometimes ask him how old he was. It was a question that surprised him quite a bit. How on earth could he know such a thing? In Morocco no-one thinks about their age. What use would it be? At the time of his visit to England, the shereef looked to be two and twenty years of age, but even his mother could not provide a precise answer to the question. A European in Tangier told me that he had once asked a full-grown Moroccan his age and had received the innocent reply: ”I am seven years old.”
Another question often put to the shereef, mainly by women, was whether he was married. ”No,” he answered, ”I have not yet begun to marry but I will do so in a couple of years.” If they then wished to know why he had not yet joined the ranks of matrimony, he confessed entirely truthfully that so far it had not pleased his mother to give him a wife. In such matters the mother decides, at least if the father is dead, as was the case with Sīdī ̔Abdsslam’s father. In Fez, I had a servant who mourned the fact that he must repudiate his young wife. His mother had commanded thus, and the poor man could now only see his wife once a week.
At a dinner party in London some of the ladies wished to know why men in Morocco liked to have several wives. ”One cannot always eat fish,” responded the shereef, slightly indignantly. He could not understand why English men stopped at the door to let the women pass through first. And once in Sweden he became very angry when he wished to help himself to the smorgasbord and I asked him to wait until the womenfolk had first taken some food. ”Why?” he exclaimed. ”In Morocco the women eat last and have to settle for any leftovers. Who is better, men or women?” However, he got along well with the European ladies and they with him.
Just like any other person, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam had a very high regard for his own people. He especially thought that he himself, his uncles and cousins together made up a tough and nearly invincible gang. ”I shoot very well,” he once said. When I asked him to stop boasting, he replied that he must tell the truth. Nothing irritated him more than other people’s doubts about his abilities. When we together saw the kafirs’ war games in Earl’s Court in London, he was extremely worried that I would think that they rode better than him. One of my friends took him to the opera to see Faust. When he asked the shereef whether he thought that Mephisto was splendid, he received the reply: ”Oh, I can do the same.” Naturally, he focussed solely on the supple movements, while the music went in one ear and out the other. When someone sat down to play the piano, he might ask them to stop. I believe that he was bothered by the music essentially because he himself could not play, as at the pension where we lived, he would sometimes sit himself down at the piano and begin pounding on it as hard as he could. When I asked him to spare my ears, he would say with ill humour: ”How can I learn to play if I cannot practise?”
If he happened to hear a favourable opinion about himself, for example that he spoke good English, he was happy to pretend to forget it and asked me entirely innocently: ”Tell me, what did so and so say about me?” He immensely enjoyed hearing it repeated over and over again. I can easily understand the Moroccans’ belief that Allah is late in fulfilling their prayers. When there is a heavy drought and all other ways of calling for rain have been in vain, they ask the Jews to pray to God for rain. They claim, namely, that a Jew’s prayers are so hideous and smell so bad that Allah cannot stand them and is thus forced to answer them immediately. But when a Moslem prays, Allah wishes only to listen and listen .... There was one thing that I was afraid to tell Sīdī ̔Abdsslam about. We spent a night in Jönköping on the way to Ulricehamn. In the morning I noticed that the Moroccan flag was fluttering on the roof of one of the public buildings, the courthouse I believe it was. And the newspaper announced that the ”shereef of Morocco” was visiting the area and he was accompanied by an interpreter, a Doctor Westermarck from Finland.
Sīdī ̔Abdsslam has always been entirely unable to hide his feelings. Nothing is more foreign to his nature than obsequiousness and pretence. I am not surprised by the large scar over his left temple, as when his pride is hurt, he can become overcome by a terrible rage. During our stay in Tetuan, I received one evening a message from the Spanish consulate that a resident had complained that the shereef had tricked him – a complaint that was later shown to be entirely false. This made the shereef so enraged that I truly believed that he had gone mad. He broke all the fragile objects he could get his hands on, scraped the walls with his nails, hissed, spat and shrieked and finally rushed to find his dagger in order to, as he said, kill everyone and himself included. My two other servants ran away immediately and left me alone with the enraged shereef. ”Listen to what I say shereef,” I shouted at him. ”I will immediately send a message to the Russian minister in Tangier with a request that he command the entire Russian fleet to bombard the Spanish consulate and the whole of Tetuan to boot.” The effect of these words was positively astounding; I had never seen the like. The enraged man sat himself suddenly on the floor, slapped his knees with his hands and burst out in violent guffaws. But the next morning the shereef was very remorseful about his behaviour. He came and handed me a stump of rope, bent over and asked me to hit him.
Towards those that have not angered him he is the epitome of goodness. A couple of times he asked me to arrange a banquet for Tetuan’s poor who ”never had any meat to eat”. He walked around the streets and marketplaces issuing invitations and both times around thirty poor persons, mostly Berbers from Rīf, arrived, who were treated to meat from a slaughtered sheep and pieces of bread dipped in broth. The party ended with one of the old men standing up, sticking out his hands with the palms up and calling on Allah to bless the Prophet Muḥammad , myself and the shereef, one after the other wherein all of the other guests chimed in with loud amîns, which were repeated after each blessing. In London, where the shereef usually wore European clothing out in public so as not to be molested by the rabble who hate the sight of anything Oriental, he bought himself a felt hat that disappeared a couple of days later; he had met a beggar on the street who asked him for a hat and he had immediately gone home for it. I think a child could have charmed almost anything out him. In Sweden, he loved spending time with the children and when one of the small girls left on a trip, he stood and cried on the platform. He also showed true tenderness towards the elderly. He could sit and observe an old man with pity and afterwards say to me: ”I felt sorry for the old man who will soon die.” The often-heard claim that Orientals do not know what gratitude is does not apply to him at least. Once when I left London for a month, I asked a friend of mine to keep a friendly eye on him. When I returned, he was full of appreciation for the goodness that had been shown him. ”For that man,” he said,” I could kill a hundred men.” And in his letters to me he still often writes: ”Send greetings to each person who asks about me, but to no-one else.”
Sīdī ̔Abdsslam’s greatest passion during the trip to Europe was to learn languages, above all English, but also Swedish. He had a notebook in which he would write new words that he heard, and he asked me daily to increase his vocabulary. But he did not care for short and easy words, instead he wanted long and unusual ones ”that no other Moroccan knew of”. This sometimes stood me in good stead. When he was being obstinate or was in a bad mood, he immediately became reasonable if I addressed him in English and included in the sentence some long words ending in -ation, such as civilisation, perturbation, differentiation. And if he was sleepy and lazy in the morning and complained that he was feeling unwell, all I had to say to him was that his ”complaint was imaginary” for him to immediately jump up and find his notebook.
He was also intensely interested in European politics. He had been for a long time – after all, he lived in the city of diplomats. Already during our first trip, when in the evenings the camp filled with guests attentively listening to the shereef’s word where he lay leisurely stretched out on the ground, he had had plenty to relate about ambassadors and consuls, about France and Turkey and America and Spain. But after his return from Europe, he became something of an oracle. There was not a question that he could not answer. And when he would be asked to play the national marches of different peoples, he would take a brass tray and drum different rhythms on it, depending on whether he meant to reproduce the English or Swedish or Italian march, and one would enjoy it and admire him.
I have now described Sīdī ̔Abdsslam as he was around the time of our shared journey to Europe. Almost twenty years have passed since then. Time after time he has happily come to meet me in Gibraltar or in Tangier’s roadstead and just as many times has he shaken my hand in farewell with a woeful expression. One summer, he came to London alone and then visited Finland together with me. On all of my journeys to Morocco, he has followed me as faithfully as my own shadow. He has been my right hand and my good genius both at my desk and on the caravan trail. He has taken me to parts where I could not have gone without him, introduced me to people whose trust I could never have won otherwise, watched over my safety and looked after my comfort. Through his cheerful disposition he has many times dispelled the tedious monotony, and by recalling shared experiences and mutual friends here at home he has been like a glimpse into my homeland that has accompanied me on my travels. And thanks to him, Morocco has itself become another homeland for me. There, I have had many good and trusted servants or ”friends” as Moroccans call their servant brothers, but none of them have given me the same sense of security in difficult circumstances as has Sīdī ̔Abdsslam. He certainly deserves the lovely accolades that Mari Mihi heaped upon him in his hilarious account of the trip they took together to Fez: ”Never unhappy, never tired, never in a quandary, happy and satisfied, resourceful, plucky and energetic, at one with his horse like a centaur, I believe that one would have to search the ends of the earth for a more suitable caravan leader.”
Now the shereef is sitting in Tangier just waiting for the war to be over. For then I shall return, and the tents shall be pulled out from his grandfather’s grave and loaded onto the pack animals, and we ourselves will climb into the saddle and once again in each other’s company steer towards the unknown in Morocco’s wildlands.