As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving
the fruit-market in ruins under a sky as clear and
innocent as an infant’s eye. The Chleuh
boys had vanished with the rest, like marionettes swept
into a drawer by an impatient child, but presently,
toward sunset, we were told that we were to see them
after all, and our hosts led us up to the roof of the
Caid’s house.
The city lay stretched before us like one immense
terrace circumscribed by palms. The sky was pure
blue, verging to turquoise green where the Atlas floated
above mist; and facing the celestial snows stood the
Koutoubya, red in the sunset.
People were beginning to come out on the roofs:
it was the hour of peace, of ablutions, of family
life on the house-tops. Groups of women in pale
tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace
to terrace, through the chatter of children and the
guttural calls of bedizened negresses. And presently,
on the roof adjoining ours, appeared the slim dancing-boys
with white caftans and hennaed feet.
The three swarthy musicians who accompanied them crossed
their lean legs on the tiles and set up their throb-throb
and thrum-thrum, and on a narrow strip of terrace
the youths began their measured steps.
It was a grave static dance, such as David may have
performed before the Ark; untouched by mirth or folly,
as beseemed a dance in that sombre land, and borrowing
its magic from its gravity. Even when the pace
quickened with the stress of the music the gestures
still continued to be restrained and hieratic, only
when, one by one, the performers detached themselves
from the round and knelt before us for the peseta
it is customary to press on their foreheads, did one
see, by the moisture which made the coin adhere, how
quick and violent their movements had been.
The performance, like all things Oriental, like the
life, the patterns, the stories, seemed to have no
beginning and no end: it just went monotonously
and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by
calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went
down into the dust of the streets refreshed by that
vision of white youths dancing on the house-tops against
the gold of a sunset that made them look—in
spite of ankle-bracelets and painted eyes—almost
as guileless and happy as the round of angels on the
roof of Fra Angelico’s Nativity.
THE SAADIAN TOMBS
On one of the last days of our stay in Marrakech we
were told, almost mysteriously, that permission was
to be given us to visit the tombs of the Saadian Sultans.
Though Marrakech has been in the hands of the French
since 1912, the very existence of these tombs was
unknown to the authorities till 1917. Then the
Sultan’s government privately informed the Resident
General that an unsuspected treasure of Moroccan art
was falling into ruin, and after some hesitation it
was agreed that General Lyautey and the Director of
Fine Arts should be admitted to the mosque containing
the tombs, on the express condition that the French
Government undertook to repair them. While we
were at Rabat General Lyautey had described his visit
to us, and it was at his request that the Sultan authorized
us to see the mosque, to which no travellers had as
yet been admitted.
