After struggling for a while longer with a conversation
which the watchful brother-in-law continued to direct
as he pleased, I felt my own lips stiffening into
the resigned smile of the harem, and it was a relief
when at last their guardian drove the pale flock away,
and the handsome old gentleman who owned them reappeared
on the scene, bringing back my friends, and followed
by slaves and tea.
IN FEZ
What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go
on under the narrow veiled brows of the little creatures
destined to the high honour of marriage or concubinage
in Moroccan palaces?
Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests,
from the free life of the tents where the nomad women
go unveiled. Others come from harems in the turreted
cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves beat
all night against the stars and date-caravans journey
across the desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born
and bred in an airy palace among pomegranate gardens
and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
fortresses near the snows, where for half the year
the great chiefs of the south live in their clan,
among fighting men and falconers and packs of sloughis.
And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens
of the great, and, seen one day at sunset by a fat
vizier or his pale young master, are acquired for
a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre
of the harem.
Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from
tents and cedar forests, or from some sea-blown garden
above Rabat, into one of the houses of Old Fez.
They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
Elbali; the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits
of strange women. On the rare occasions when
they are received, a member of the family (one of
the sons, or a brother-in-law who has “studied
in Algeria”) usually acts as interpreter; and
perhaps it is as well that no one from the outer world
should come to remind these listless creatures that
somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind
murmurs through olive-yards and clatters the metallic
fronds of palm-groves.
We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of
one of the chief dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez,
and these thoughts came to me as I sat among the pale
women in their mouldering prison. The descent
through the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense
of being lowered into the shaft of a mine. At
each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into
which we plunged. The noises of the Bazaar had
died out, and only the sound of fountains behind garden
walls and the clatter of our mules’ hoofs on
the stones went with us. Then fountains and gardens
ceased also, the towering masonry closed in, and we
entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which sun
and air never reach. At length our mules turned
