A search for the masked Tawareks

Front matter

LIBRARY

SAN DIEGO

"N

Chapter I

Fae away to the south of Algeria, in the trackless wastes of the Sahara, there lives a race of marauding nomads, who, on account of their impious character, have been named by the Arabs ' Tawarek,' or ' Godforsaken.'

It is a significant fact that in the whole Tawarek language there is no word for 'law.' The Arabs claim descent from Ishmael, the ' wild man ' whose 'hand was against every man,' and against whom every man's hand was turned, and they do their best to live up to the reputation of their illustrious ancestor. But the Tawareks are more Ishmaelitish than even these Ishmaels themselves. It is not often that they are seen, for they seldom come near the oases ; but their presence is felt and dreaded throughout the Sahara.

A mystery seems to brood over these wild and dreaded raiders. It is extraordinary how very little

B is known about them. The Tawareks are, without doubt, one of the most interesting races in Africa ; but, though they inhabit a territory of about the same size as Kussia, and but very Httle further removed from our shores, it is probably well within the mark to state that not one Englishman in a thousand has ever even heard their name. Occasionally a brief notice appears in the papers to the effect that a party of these brigands have come up out of the desert and have captured a French military convoy, crippled an exploring party, or made a successful foray upon some Arab camp or caravan, and then have disappeared again in the same sudden and mysterious manner as they came away into the Great Unknown, and left no trace of their visit behind them beyond a few mangled corpses — and that is all we, in England at all events, hear about them.

All over the Sahara they have stamped their footprints into the ground in the shape of little isolated graves or cemeteries marking the scenes of their terrible raids.

The Tawareks are a Berber race, whose real domain is in the heart of the great desert, far removed from civilisation. A visit to this country would require a small army as escort and a journey of considerably over a thousand miles of desert travelling. But occasionally, driven northward by scarcity of water, lack of forage for their herds or the desire to purchase something in one of the desert towns, they encamp nearer to the northern edge of the Sahara, and these camps, though difiticult to find, can be visited by a journey of only some five or six hundred miles. It was in search of one of these that I set out. My object in going was partly to see some members of this race, of whom, if I had heard little that was good, I had heard nothing that was not interesting, and chiefly to attempt to obtain some photographs of their faces, which were badly wanted by scientists and which might do something to clear up the much disputed problem of the origin of the Berber tribes.

The difficulty in obtaining these photographs lay not only in finding the Tawareks, who are but thinly scattered over an enormous area, but in the fact that the men of this race, in accordance with a curious custom, keep their faces rigorously concealed by a mask from the gaze of even the members of their own family circle.

For a guide I had secured the services of a pleasant, but melancholy and hot-tempered, little Arab named Aissa, whom I had previously employed. As soon as I had settled with him our route and the equipment which would be necessary for our journey, I set out with him into the market to buy provisions and other necessaries for our expedition.

The Biskra market is a large arcaded square v^here the caravans coming laden with grain from the North meet those coming from the oases in the South, and exchange their charges for dates and other necessaries before returning to their homes. Here the Shawia tribesmen from the neighbouring Aures mountains sell their mats of plaited halfa grass, and the inhabitants of the Ziban oases bring sacks of

B 2

4 A SEAKCH FOE THE 3IASKED TAWAREKS

boiled locusts for sale. Fortune-tellers, draughtplayers, snake-charmers, haboh cookers, vendors of sour milk, and oil merchants cumber the ground in all directions.

Under the arcades which surround the market are a row of little den-like shops kept mostly by the Mozabite traders.

These Mozabites are a curious race, who claim to be descended from the Moabites of Canaan. Their home is in the five oases of the Mzab confederation lying in the south of Algeria. They never settle definitely in any other towns, but come up into the Algerian cities to make their pile, and, having made it, retire with their savings to spend their old age in their desert homes. In ahnost every town throughout Algeria a colony of these merchants has established itself. Wherever they have settled they are slowly driving, by their capacity for business, not only the Arabs and other natives of Algeria, but the very European colonists themselves, from the field of commerce.

Into one of their shops Aissa took me. It was a little den some twelve feet square, surrounded on three sides by tiers of shelves crammed with burnouses, bales of calico, and boxes containing odds and ends. From the ceiling hung a profusion of minor articles. Sacks of sugar, couscous, and soap stood on the floor, while piles of Arab sandals and slippers were heaped up in the corners. Not an inch of space was wasted.

The proprietor, a shrewd, pleasant-looking old Mozabite, standing behind the zinc-covered counter, asked us our business, and supplied our needs with quite a fatherly air.

I left the bargaining to A'issa, for I knew from experience that he was a past-master in the art. He squabbled over the price of everything. He haggled over every sou, and spent as much time in buying two balls of twine as would have sufficed a European to buy a whole week's provisions.

By the time that we had finished our marketing the pile which represented our purchases had assumed most alarming proportions. There was a little tin saucepan for making coffee, a large iron one for making soup, a frying-pan, and two outlandish-looking earthenware pots, which Aissa assured me were absolutely necessary for cooking a kind of semolina known as co2iscous, which forms the bulk of every Arab meal. These, with two plaited grass baskets for carrying eatables, some plates, cups, spoons and knives, a tin lantern, a pound or two of candles, and two or three small tin boxes containing salt, sugar, and pungent Arab pepper, were all heaped up on the counter. Finally, the last straw which looked as though it would break our camel's back — came a huge sack containing four francs' worth of couscous.

Leaving the things which we had bought in charge of the shopkeeper to be called for with the camel on the morning of our departure, we set out to buy some coffee, which the Mozabite was forbidden to sell by the laws of the peculiar religious sect to which he belonged.

Aissa took me off into a back slum, lying between the market and the quarter of the Welad Nayl dancing girls, to the shop of an old nigger, whom he assured me was the best coffee-roaster in Biskra, adding as a further recommendation that not only he himself, but that the whole of his family besides, never patronised any other establishment. This, of course, was an unanswerable argument in its favour.

Though the coffee turned out to be good, the place in which it was prepared was by no means prepossessing. It was a dark, windowless hovel, overrun with pigeons and fowls. Several huge stone mortars, furnished with iron pestles which must have weighed nearly twenty pounds apiece, were let into a sort of settle which ran all round the sides of the room. These were all more or less filled with the coffee already pounded.

Having bought the amount which we required and left it with the remainder of our belongings in the shop of the Mozabite, our preparations were for the time complete, and I packed Aissa off down into the desert to fetch his camel, which was grazing under the care of an Arab herdsman, some distance away to the south.

The first intimation that I received of his return was on the third morning after his departure, when I awoke at the unearthly hour of half-past five to find him and a very sleepy, unshaved, and dishevelled-looking waiter standing by my bedside. I was told that the camel was waiting below, and that it was time for me to get up.

Aissa cast an experienced eye over my various belongings scattered picturesquely over the floor, lifted each of them in turn to try the weight, and then he and the waiter between them carried them downstairs.

Through the open window I could hear the camel snarling and growling in the road below as my guide and a little crowd of loafers loaded him up. Then came the final grunt of contentment as the great beast rose to his feet and was driven off to Aissa's house, where I had arranged to meet it.

My guide lived close at hand, and on reaching his house I found the camel, a dyspeptic goutylooking beast, with his load on his back, kneeling down in the road contentedly snarling and chewing the cud, with a stalwart young cousin of Aissa's, whom I afterwards found to be named El Haj, standing over him, and keeping off, with curses and blows from a thick stick, a crowd of 'street Arabs,' who surrounded him and were anxious to inspect, and if possible to appropriate, some of my belongings.

I had not engaged and, in fact, had heard no mention of El Haj until then, and as he was evidently intended to form one of our party I thought it as well to inquire into the reason of his coming. Aissa explained that he had brought him on his own account to keep him company and to help him in his work. His reason for bringing him was not a very complimentary one, but as his cousin was a great strapping fellow who looked as though he might be useful in a row, I raised no objections to the arrangement.

El Haj was a very different type from A'lssa, The latter was an Arab who had been born and brought up in the oases, and as he had lived for two or three years as a servant in different hotels and private families, had become to a certain extent Europeanised. El Haj, on the other hand, had spent the whole of his life in the desert, living with his father and tending his herds of camels and goats. He was about twenty years of age, tall and straight as a lance. He had never spoken to or had any dealings with a European until Aissa brought him out with me. He was, in fact, about as wild and mitamed a young blackguard as it would be possible to find.

I and my actions and belongings were at first a continual source of interest and mystery to him. During the first week of our journey he hardly took his eyes off me, and when we stayed in a caravanserai seized every opportunity to come into my room. He would pick up the different articles of my clothing when he thought I was not looking, and examine them minutely, with a mixture of awe, amusement, and curiosity which it was very ludicrous to see.

He could not understand me at all. Why a man should eat with a knife and fork instead of with his fingers, why he should comb his hair instead of shaving it off, why he should be so particular about having his boots and clothes brushed, and why in the name of Allah, Mohammed, and all the saints in the Moslem calendar he should want to go to the trouble of ivasliing, unless he were going to say his prayers, he could not in the least understand.

His name — El Haj — signifies * the pilgrim,' and is, it is perhaps hardly necessary to explain, the appellation which is affixed as a sort of title to the name of any Mohammedan who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. As El Haj was only twenty years of age, and certainly not overburdened with this world's goods, I was at a loss to understand how he had come by the right to use this distinction until Ai'ssa explained to me that he was so called after his grandfather, who had been a real pilgrim.

El Haj spoke with that musical high-pitched voice occasionally to be found among the desert inhabitants. Arabic is not a pretty language. As a rule when an Arab speaks he gargles the words in his throat, swears like a cat on the ' 'ain,' coughs the ' H's,' clears his throat on the ' G's,' and spits on the ' D's ' and ' T's.' But somehow when these desert Arabs speak, with their soft melodious voices and sing-song intonation, Arabic loses all its harshness and sounds quite a pretty and musical language.

El Haj's duties were primarily to take charge of the camel, to drive him out to feed in the evening on the desert scrub, to walk behind him during the daytime and whack him, swear at him, and twist his tail to make him go ; and all these duties he performed to admiration.

But in his other work he was not so successful. He was also supposed to assist Aissa in his cooking and scullery work. At this he was a dismal failure, for he could never be made to understand the proper management of spoons, forks, and crockery. When set to wash a plate he generally commenced operations by breaking it. If he failed in this he wiped it in the most perfunctory manner possible, and, unless either Aissa or I stood over him to see he did it properly, he would content himself by scrubbing it with a handful of sand from the yard of the caravanserai, or rubbing it over with the corner of one of the camel bags, the end of his haik, or any other piece of rag which came to hand.

He contracted, too, a nasty habit of wiping the spoons and forks upon the rag which I used to clean my gun with, and this, when I had caught him the third time in the act and found that it was hopeless to attempt to break him of it, compelled me to remove him entirely from the kitchen department and to relegate him exclusively to the stable. At ' house-work ' he was a failure.

Aissa' s family had assembled at his house to see us off. His womenkind were peeping at us through the crack of his half-opened door, and his son and heir, a little brat of about three years old, artistically attired in an extremely skimpy shirt and a metal talisman, hung by a cord round his neck for keeping off the evil eye, was standing by El Haj with a little switch in his hand assisting him in his duties of driving back the crowd and guarding my belongings.

Aissa, with a barefaced effrontery which deserved to succeed, reminded me that on starting on a long journey the Arabs consider it lucky to give someone

THE FORTUNE-TELLER.

A SEAKCH FOE THE MASKED TAWAEEKS 11

a present, and suggested his young hopeful as a suitable recipient.

I gave him a few sous, which he promptly placed for safe keeping in his mouth, whence Ai'ssa, in order, as he said, to prevent him from choking himself, at once removed them and appropriated them to his own use.

He folded his now howling son in an affectionate embrace, El Haj kicked up the camel, and, surrounded by a small crowd of loafing Arabs, we started for the Mozabite's shop to pick up the rest of our stores.

Our crowd of followers increased so fast and became so x^ressing in their attentions during our progress through the town, that, in order to get rid of them, I took Ai'ssa with me into the market to buy some fresh vegetables and meat, and left El Haj to take on the camel alone.

In the market we found a man who read fortunes in sand. I requested him to do a little prophesying on our account, to read Aissa's fortune, and tell us what was likely to happen to us on our journey.

He seated himself by the roadside, unknotted a large handkerchief which he was carrying filled with the fine white sand from the dunes of the Souf, laid it open on the ground and carefully smoothed over the surface of the sand with an air of great importance and mystery.

He next commenced to question Aissa as to his age, birthplace, name, and occupation. Ai'ssa replied that his age was thirty, his birthplace Biskra, and his name A'issa ben Jedu. His occupation was not

SO easy to define. Sometimes, he said, he worked as servant in the hotels or as guide to the tourists ; sometimes he made trading journeys with his camels ; sometimes he worked in his palm-grove ; once he had kept a small cafe ; sometimes he sewed burnouses ; but usually he just lived with his family and did nothing. The prophet hesitated for some time, but finally classified Aissa, much to his disgust, as a camel driver.

At each reply which he received he consulted the tables which his book contained, and took from them dot- and dash-like markings which he copied in lines on the sand.

Having finished his catechism, he gave Aissa a handful of dust and told him to scatter it over the writing. He then took hold of the handkerchief by its two nearest corners and gave it a sharp jerk towards him, thus still further obliterating the markings and causing them to form fresh combinations. He inquired how many of us were going, where we were going to, and when we intended to start, and on being told, consulted his book again and gave his verdict.

Between Biskra and Tougourt we should lose something of importance. Between Tougourt and El Wad we should get into a bad sandstorm and would for a time lose our way. If from Tougourt we went on to the south to Wargla instead of proceeding east to El Wad we should be attacked by highwaymen during the daytime, we should suffer much from thirst and sandstorms, and we should have a very bad time generally. He did not think that we should find any Tawareks at Tougourt, El "Wad, or Wargla, or anywhere in the neighbourhood of these towns, but if we did they would be friendly and they would give us something which we greatly desired. We should in the end return safely.

To what extent these prophecies were fulfilled this account of our Journey itself must show.

Having completed our marketing we set out in pursuit of El Haj, whom we caught up in the road between the palm-groves of old Biskra and the modern French town. Here the camel was made to kneel down. El Haj caught hold of the beast by the long hair of his neck and cleared his throat at him in as loud and revolting a manner as possible, and at the same time dragged his neck downwards and hit him violently on the shins with his stick. This brutal proceeding was merely the ordinary signal for him to kneeL The camel dropped down on his knees with a grunt, and Aissa proceeded to charge the beast with the result of our recent marketing.

The Arab method of loading a camel is very simple. A pad — formed of a long bolster-like sack with the two ends fastened together — is placed along the beast's back in such a manner that the hump and spine lie between the two arms of the pad.

This is secured in its place by a sort of saddle of cross pieces of wood lashed together with raw hide, placed on the top of the pad just in front of the hump, and to this saddle the girth — a strong rope of plaited hair and wool — is affixed, which, passing under the belly of the camel, keeps the whole arrangement firmly fixed in its place.

14 A SEAKOH FOR THE MASKED TAWAEEKS

A huge sack about four feet long by two feet ill width, called a kerrata, hangs on either side of the camel. Into these as much as possible of the load is crammed. The wooden boxes containing our store of provisions and the heaviest baggage went in first, on the top of these were placed the lighter articles — my camp-bed and the hold-all containing my blankets, rug, and pillow ; the little dried goatskins full of couscous or dates, the baskets in which were placed the provisions and the cooking utensils which would be required during the day's journey, and any articles of a crushable or breakable nature.

In loading a camel the sacks are leant up against him on either side. To each corner of the top end of the herratas is fixed a small loop of rope. The sacks are lifted slightly until the loops of the sack on the one side can be passed through the corresponding loops in the sack on the other, and secured in their places by passing through them a short piece of stick. Other articles, such as the skin water-bag, which cannot be placed in the herratas, are tied by cords to the saddle and allowed to hang down below the sacks, or else secured on the top of the pad.

The water-bag used in the Sahara is usually formed from the skin of a goat well cured with pitch to make it waterproof. They call the thing a gurbah, and as soon as you have drunk out of one you will know that it is most appropriately named ' gurr-bah-ughr ! '

While we were reloading the camel all the beggars and loafers in Biskra assembled round us from all directions, and by the time that the operation was finished all the halt, the maimed, and the blind which the oasis contained — and a halter, a maimer, and a more cross-eyed crew it would be difficult to find — seemed to have collected together to see us off. Gradually, largely owing to El Haj and his stick, we got rid of our followers, and by the time that we had got among the mud houses and the palm-trees of the villages of old Biskra we had completely shaken them off. We followed the road for some two or three miles through the palms, and then emerged from the oasis into the desert beyond.

Chapter II

There is perhaps no part of the world which so little conforms to our preconceived ideas as the Sahara. One's first sight of this great desert is always somewhat of a revelation. The drearj', limitless waste of barren sand which it is usually represented to be by no means corresponds with the reality. In many parts the Sahara is extremely pretty. In the sandhill districts, where the dunes rise sometimes to quite a thousand feet in height, it is, it is true, almost entirely devoid of vegetation, but upon the level plains, which probably constitute the greater portion of its surface, the ground is usually more or less covered with tufts of rank grass and little stunted bushes.

From Biskra the desert stretches away to the south for hundreds of miles in an almost perfectly level plain. Soon after leaving the oasis, we got into a tract of country thickly covered with bushes about four feet in height. We continued through this until about eleven o'clock, when, coming upon an open place in the scrub, we halted for our midday meal.

The camel was made to lie down, and the kerratas were taken off him. He was then turned loose to graze upon the surrounding bushes.

Aissa manufactured his kitchen range by scooping out a little hollow in the side of one of the innumerable mamelons of sand which surrounded us. The sticks were lighted in the bottom of the hollow, and the two earthen cooking-pots, fitting one on to the top of the other, for cooking the couscous (semolina), were wedged firmly between the two sides of the hollow at the top.

After the meal we rested for awhile to allow time for a contemplative cigarette and for the camel to finish his gTaze.

It was a perfect day : just suflacient breeze was stirring to temper the heat of the sun, which blazed down upon us from an absolutely cloudless sky.

Looking back towards Biskra the view was extremely fine. All around for several miles in each direction stretched the patch of brushwood, consisting of tufts of coarse yellow grass interspersed with feathery bushes and olive-green shrubs covered with little pink flowers. Biskra itself, a long, low belt of palms, lay some twelve miles away to the north. Behind that belt, stretching away into the blue hazy distance towards the right, lay, bathed in a mellow sunlit glow, the mountains of the Aures, with the oases of Sidi Okba, Drouh, Seriana, and several others nestling at their feet. The big oasis of Oumash could be seen to the left dancing in the heat haze which rose from the sun-baked soil, while behind us to the south stretched, with an unbroken horizon as straight as the sea, the great Sahara desert into which we were about to plunge.

But time when on a journey in the desert is too precious to allow of much of it being spent in admiring the view, however beautiful' it may be ; so when our cigarettes were finished the camel was fetched and loaded up, and we took the road again towards south.

I soon became initiated into some of the vagaries of the desert Arabs. Shortly after we had started Aissa noticed a man approaching us from the south, driving a couple of camels, on to one of which were hung head downwards some half-dozen fowls all tied together by their legs in a bunch. Aissa suggested that a fowl, if it could be bought cheaply, would be a very welcome addition to our larder, and, on my assenting, he commenced at once, though the man was still a good two hundred yards away, to enter into negotiations.

' Where are you from ? ' bawled Aissa.

' Shegga,' came the faint reply.

' How much for the fowls ? '

' Two francs and a half each.'

* Ah ! wah ! ' in great disgust ; ' I will give you a franc and a half.'

And so the bargaining went on at full bawl without intermission. These leather-lunged Arabs on a still day can make their voices carry an extraordinary distance. I have myself seen in the Aures mountains two men carrying on an animated argument from the top of the hills on either side of a valley which appeared to me to be considerably over half a mile across. And yet these ' two blest sirens ' (I am quoting, I believe, from Milton) seemed to experience no difficulty whatever in making themselves understood.

By the time that we and the owner of the fowls had met a price had been agreed upon, and Aissa was at liberty to make his choice from the clucking bundle.

He selected one, paid for it, and was proceeding to hang it up head downwards and squawking from our camel, when I interfered and insisted that it should first be killed.

The wretched bird was handed over to El Haj, who, drawing his long sheath knife such as every Arab carries, proceeded to perform the hallal — that is, to cut the fowl's throat — muttering ' in the name of Allah ' as he did so, so as to make him lawful eating for a Moslem.

Shortly after this we crossed a little stream, which in dry weather represents the Wad Jidi. This little brook, however, when much rain has fallen in the mountains where it takes its rise, becomes a huge and utterly impassable morass several miles in width, which completely cuts off Biskra from the desert to the south, and, as it remains in this condition for sometimes considerably over a week, occasions the greatest inconvenience to travellers.

After crossing the Wad Jidi we passed, on a small mound a short distance beyond, the horj or caravanserai of Saada, the first on the road from Biskra to Tougourt.

These caravanserais, which are placed at the distance of a short day's journey apart from each other along the caravan routes, are built for the

c 2 convenience of travellers using the roads, and for the purpose of affording rallying-points for the troops in the not improbable event of a v^ar or insurrection.

The usual pattern on which they are constructed is that of a square courtyard surrounded by rooms and stabling, the v^hole building forming a small loopholed fort, furnished in the largest borjes with a flanking tower at each corner.

From one borj to the next is the ordinary day's journey of a caravan. We, however, had decided to march by double stages— that is to say, sleeping in every alternate caravanserai ; so instead of halting for the night at Saada we pushed on to the following borj at Bir Jeffair.