Zoraida: A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara. Le Queux William
They say her beauty is marvellous, and her power supernatural. While I was in command of the advanced post at Tihodayen, near the salt mines of Sebkha d’Amadghor, three Spahis ventured into the Ikerremoïn Oasis in search of forage, and they declare that they came across her. She was surrounded by a number of slaves, and was lying unveiled under a canopy of white and gold. According to their account, she possesses the beauté du diable, her women make obeisance to her, and the men who approach fall upon their knees before her, kiss the ground, and ask her blessing. It is said, too, that Mulai Hassan, Sultan of Morocco, saw her on one occasion when he crossed the frontier, and offered Hadj Absalam an enormous sum for her, but the superstitious Ennitra threatened a revolt if she were sold. Whether that’s true I don’t know,” he added, shrugging his shoulders and sipping his cognac. “She is evidently Queen of the Desert, and I merely tell you what’s rumoured.”
“But is she Moorish, Arab, or a Negress?” I asked. “What is her name?”
“She is from the mountains, they say, and the Ennitra know her as Daughter of the Sun.”
“Daughter of the Sun?” I cried, starting. I remembered that Zoraida had, in reply to my questions, told me that that was her name. Could this strange woman of incomparable beauty, who was believed by her people to be possessed of supernatural power, be none other than my mysterious Zoraida, the woman whose veiled face was in my waking hours and in my dreams constantly before my eyes?
“Is her name familiar?” asked the Captain, noticing my ill-concealed surprise.
“No – not at all!” I stammered. “Surely that designation is common enough among the Arabs! It seems an extraordinary fact, nevertheless, that a young and beautiful woman should direct the movements of a band of outlaws.”
“True,” replied Carmier, thoughtfully twisting his waxed moustache. “And there is, moreover, considerable mystery with regard to her which nobody has up to the present been able to solve. One thing, however, appears certain, that this veiled prophetess is an inmate of Hadj Absalam’s harem.”
His words stung me. Could it be possible that this woman who held the murderous nomads under her sway was the same to whom I owed my life? Nay, was it not most probable that she, the graceful incarnation of Eastern beauty whom I adored, was one of the four wives allowed to Hadj Absalam by the Prophet? The mystery was bewildering. The very thought drove me to despair, for I confess I loved her to the verge of madness.
My companion smoked on in lazy contemplative silence. Above, the stars were bright in a steely sky; the ancient court, with its horse-shoe arches, wide arcades, and trailing vines, looked ghostly in the dim light. The quiet was only broken by the running water of the fountain as it fell with pleasant music into its time-worn blue-tiled basin, and the measured tramp of the sentry in the outer court beyond. Upward the cigarette smoke dissolved into the cool night air, carrying with it bitter thoughts of the past, and strange, dreamy visions of an unknown future.
Chapter Eleven.
The City of the Sun
I was awaiting Zoraida, my enchantress.
After a few days in Tuggurt, and a lengthened stay in the date-groves of Biskra with my genial friend the General of Division, I found myself once again in old El Djezaïr, that quaint Franco-Arab city known to Europeans as Algiers. Here Western civilisation and Oriental fanaticism mingle, but never blend. It is a city of glare and darkness, of mosques and marabouts, of Parisian politeness and Berber barbarity, of wide, modern-built boulevards and narrow, crooked streets, as yet untouched by the hand of the colonising vandal.
Till a comparatively recent date it was a nest of fierce pirates who were a terror to Europe, and even now one cannot look upon the gigantic mole and other works prior to the French occupation without remembering that they were constructed by Christian slaves, who were beaten, tortured, and made to toil under the blazing sun until their gyves wore into their flesh, and death relieved them of their miseries. The great white Kasbah on the hill-top, once the gorgeous Palace of the Deys, now echoes to the tramp of Zouaves and artillery. If those gigantic walls could speak, what tales of outrage, torture, and butchery they, alas! could tell! In the great harem, where hundreds of English and French women captured by the Corsairs have pined and died, smart officers on colonial service now lounge, smoke, and discuss the topics of their beloved Paris as revealed by the Petit Journal and the Figaro; while down in the Rue de la Lyre British tourists in suits of astounding check stare in abject astonishment at Fathma or Khadidja, who, veiled and shrouded in her white haick, has descended the ladder-like streets of the native quarter to make purchases in the Rue de Constantine or the Marché de la Lyre.
This City of the Sun is one of violent contrasts. Seen from the sea, it fully bears out its Arab comparison of being a “diamond set in emeralds,” for in terraces of intensely white, flat-roofed houses, each with little square windows like pips upon a dice, it rises high upon the bright green Sahel hills. In the centre the Arab town with its cupolas and minarets is crowned by the great fortress, while right and left are the pleasant suburbs of St. Eugène and Mustapha, their white houses and handsome villas gleaming forth from dark luxuriant foliage.
In the French quarter, the Boulevard de la République, running along nearly the whole front of the town facing the sea, the wide Place du Gouvernement, with its oasis of palms, and the Rue d’Isly, with its avenue of trees, are all hot and full of busy, bustling French; but turn away up any of the side streets from the Rue de la Lyre, cross the Quartier Juif, and in a few moments one is in a bewildering labyrinth of steep, shady, and tortuous streets, so narrow in places that two asses cannot pass with their panniers.
Herein lies the charm of Algiers. Those narrow passages, where the Arabs sit on rush mats outside the kahoua, drinking tiny cups of coffee, smoking cigarettes, and killing time by playing damma, are the same at this moment as they were in the days of Yousuf Zeri; and although the religious prejudices of the Arab, the Moor, the Jew, and the Biskri have perhaps become somewhat modified by contact with the civilising Roumis, yet their mode of life is still the same, and at heart they hate the Christians as fiercely as ever. Indolent and content, they love to lean upon the long parapet of the Boulevard de la République, gazing with deep-set, thoughtful eyes away over the bright blue sea, to lounge in groups at street corners gossiping, to sit at the garish French cafés driving bargains with European merchants, or hand-in-hand to stroll leisurely across to the mosque to their daily prayers. Side by side with dainty ladies in Paris-made gowns and the high-heeled boots of fashion, Arab women, with foreheads heavily laden with tinkling sequins, their dark, flashing eyes peeping over their veils, and all looking exactly the same in their spotlessly white but hideous out-door dress, shuffle along with waddling gait, and turn to glance surreptitiously at the stranger after he or she has passed.
This wonderful old city of sunlight and shadow, of dazzling brightness and sombre gloom, of strange incongruities of dress, of language, and of religion, was by no means fresh to me. On taking up my quarters at the Hôtel de la Régence, in the Place du Gouvernement, I was welcomed as an old friend, for on several previous occasions, while idling in El Djezaïr, I had made it my headquarters in preference to the suburban hotels on the hill at Mustapha. Before the house a cluster of fine date palms throw a welcome shade, and beyond lies the bay, with the great, misty mountains of Kabylia in the distance. Forming one side of the Place stands the Djamäa el-Djedid, with its plain windowless walls, dazzlingly white dome, and square minaret, whereon at sunset the mueddin appears and calls the Faithful to prayer. Here, again, extremes meet. The monotonous voice of the priest mingles with the jingle and chatter of the French café opposite, and Europeans, sipping their bock or mazagran, watch the devout Moslems trooping into the courtyard to wash before entering the house of Allah.
Here, in this the most charmingly cosmopolitan city in the world, where subjects for the artist are presented in perfect panorama at every turn, I wandered and idled at cafés, killing time impatiently, and eagerly awaiting the day on which my mysterious desert acquaintance would go upon her pilgrimage. At last that long-wished-for Friday dawned, and leaving the city early by the gate Bab-el-Oued, I strolled through the charming Jardin Marengo, under the intensely white walls of the handsome mosque built over the shrine of Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, and then out on the road which wound up through the dark, wild ravine of the Bou-Zarea.
In