Throughout Marrakesh one notes a spirit of industry.  If a man has work, he seems to be happy and well content.  Most traders are very courteous and gentle in their dealings, and many have a sense of humour that cannot fail to please.  While in the city I ordered one or two lamps from a workman who had a little shop in the Madinah.  He asked for three days, and on the evening of the third day I went to fetch them, in company with Salam.  The workman, who had made them himself, drew the lamps one by one from a dark corner, and Salam, who has a hawk’s eye, noticed that the glass of one was slightly cracked.

“Have a care, O Father of Lamps,” he said; “the Englishman will not take a cracked glass.”

“What is this,” cried the Lamps’ Father in great anger, “who sells cracked lamps?  If there is a flaw in one of mine, ask me for two dollars.”

Salam held the lamp with cracked glass up against the light.  “Two dollars,” he said briefly.  The tradesman’s face fell.  He put his tongue out and smote it with his open hand.

“Ah,” he said mournfully, when he had admonished the unruly member, “who can set a curb upon the tongue?"[26]

FOOTNOTES: 

[24] Mulai Rashed II.

[25] The royal umbrella.

[26] Cf.  James iii. 8.  But for a mere matter of dates, one would imagine that Luther detected the taint of Islam in James when he rejected his Epistle.

THE SLAVE MARKET AT MARRAKESH

[Illustration:  A MOSQUE, MARRAKESH]

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE MARKET AT MARRAKESH

As to your slaves, see that ye feed them with such food as ye eat yourselves, and clothe them with the stuff ye wear.  And if they commit a fault which ye are not willing to forgive, then sell them, for they are the servants of Allah, and are not to be tormented.

    —­Mohammed’s last Address.

In the bazaars of the brass-workers and dealers in cotton goods, in the bazaars of the saddlers and of the leather-sellers,—­in short, throughout the Kaisariyah, where the most important trade of Marrakesh is carried on,—­the auctions of the afternoon are drawing to a close.  The dilals have carried goods to and fro in a narrow path between two lines of True Believers, obtaining the best prices possible on behalf of the dignified merchants, who sit gravely in their boxlike shops beyond the reach of toil.  No merchant seeks custom:  he leaves the auctioneers to sell for him on commission, while he sits at ease, a stranger to elation or disappointment, in the knowledge that the success or failure of the day’s market is decreed.  Many articles have changed hands, but there is now a greater attraction for men with money outside the limited area of the Kaisariyah, and I think the traffic here passes before its time.