Chapter V: Early Prowess in War

“My life was good when, suddenly one evening, about the time of the fourth prayers, a woman came to Zinat. Her clothes were torn and there was blood on her arms. She had walked many hours in the heat and her eyes were a little mad. She said that robbers had killed her husband and son, and taken all that she possessed. The wives of the village would have taken her in and comforted her, for hospitality was their duty, but the woman was from the mountains and she asked only a gun, that she might go back and take her revenge. ‘Is there no man who will go with me?’ she said, and the soles of my feet itched, and I saw my mother looking at me. . . .

“There were many youths in the village, and life was hard, for it was a season of poor crops. We put the woman on a horse, and all that night we went with her through the darkness. She took us to her empty house on the side of Jebel Danet, and from there we followed the robbers step by step. Many had seen them pass, but had been afraid to stop them because of the power of their chief. So they went slowly and we came up with them in a wadi, where they sat and bathed their feet in a stream. It was wild country, overgrown with oleanders that were higher than a man’s head, and great trees that would have hidden us, but the woman seized the gun from a youth’s hand and fired. There was a fight and the noise of the shots was drowned in our shouts, for it was like a hunt and the game could not escape for the rocks. We killed every one, and took back the mules and the furniture which had been stolen from the woman. She cut off the head of the man who had killed her family, and took it away, that his soul might be destroyed and his body be incomplete in paradise.

“By Allah, perhaps the life of el Raisuli was decided by a woman, for, from that day, I was discontented with my books. I had no wish for a roof over my head, and I remembered that it is said of Beni Mesauer and the house of my mother, ‘They are born in the saddle, a gun in their hands.’ I spoke to the young men who knew me, and we formed a band and went out and lived in the hills, where no man could take us. We were famous in the countryside, and many came to us for help, but we were very poor. Our castles were the rocks and the trees our tents. Sometimes we had only goat’s milk as food; but I was very strong. I could live for days without food, and master a stallion with my hands.”

From this period date the fabulous tales of el Raisuli’s cunning and audacity, for he had everything to appeal to the imagination of a lawless and adventurous race. His physique was Herculean and he was so much a fatalist that he had no fear. To this must be added the prestige of his race, his indubitable learning, his eloquence, which throughout his life has been of great service to him, his skill as a rider and a shot, together with a curious gift of intuition which accounts for what he calls the infallibility of his psychology. There were many bands of brigands in Morocco at that time, for the authority of the Sultan’s Maghsen[16] was so attenuated as to be negligible. Brigandage was a paying game, if you had a better gun than your neighbour, but, whereas most of the famous robbers came to an unpleasant end, such as the Sultan’s lions or the knife of a rival, Raisuli’s power increased with the stories of his supernatural power.

“In those days,” said the Sherif, “it began to be told of me that no ordinary bullet could touch me. I have heard that one of my enemies had a bullet of gold specially constructed, but, praise be to Allah, it flew wide, and the man only wasted his money.”

“It is said of my lord,” interposed the slave gently, “that the one on his right and the one on his left shall fall, but he shall be untouched. Those who wish to gain heaven swiftly claim these posts in battle, and it has happened many times. Once, at the great fight at Wadi Ras, it was a Spaniard who stood beside him, and my lord told him to go, but he would not, and whutt! he was shot!”

“Many tales are told of me,” said Raisuli, “and some are true, but always it is due to the ‘baraka’ which is in me, and perhaps a little to these.” He fumbled in his voluminous robes and produced two small grimy objects, which he held carefully and would not allow me to touch. One was the inside of a gazelle’s ear, complete with the long white hair, and the other a square inch of sticky black amber, tied up with some shreds of silk from the robe of a sainted ancestor. “A very potent charm,” said the slave. “Doubtless it saved my lord’s life in the day of the curse.” The Sherif frowned, and his rebuke was venomous enough to arouse my curiosity. This was the second time I had heard of the curse.

“It is long ago that we lived in the hills, without shelter, and imposed our will on the villages, but I still remember the cold of the nights when our jellabas were old and the sharpness of the rocks when our shoes grew thin. But a few months ago, a Faqih travelling from Fez stayed to see me on the way. He had walked so far that but half of his shoes were left, so he asked me for another pair. Then I remembered my youth, and, because of the days when my shoes were tied up with a string and stuffed with leaves, instead of a pair of babouches[17] I gave him two horses, two mules and two slaves.”

“My lord is generous,” muttered the slave, but the Sherif continued, unheeding, “When my friends among the villages came to us for help, we were swift in vengeance. Once some robbers had carried off all the stored corn of a poor family, who were left defenceless against the winter. The man came to me, knowing our password, and showed us which way the robbers had gone, high up over the mountains, where it is very barren and few men travel. We followed them and caught them while they slept, and, for a punishment, we emptied some of the sacks into our jellabas and brought the corn down in this way. Then we tied up the robbers, and put one man into each sack, securely fastened and weighted with stones. After this, we left them on a ledge in the mountains and went away.”

“What happened to them?”

“Allah alone knows.”

There was a long silence. Perhaps the Sherif was thinking of the villagers whom he had alternately protected and oppressed. Generous in the extreme, but, of course, with other people’s money, incredibly daring and astute enough to leave nothing to chance, believing implicitly in his luck, which it was said that only treachery could destroy, he soon dominated the mountain country. His host was increased by volunteers from the tribes of Anjera, Beni Aros, Beni Mesauer and Wadi Ras, while a noted Sheikh gave him a daughter in marriage. In lieu of, or in addition to, a dowry, el Raisuli deposited at the Chief’s gate, all neatly strung on a cord and ready to be used for decorative purposes, the heads of half-a-dozen bandits who had been annoying his prospective father-in-law by stealing his sheep!

“As the numbers of my followers swelled like the flocks in spring-time, we established a sort of customs in the hills. Each caravan had to pay according to its wealth, and, if it refused, well, then, the sight of a traveller sitting impaled on a spike probably made the next one open his purse. It was all business. I never refused a request and never betrayed my word, but the townsfolk were ungenerous and close-fisted. It took a long time to teach them their lessons, and by that time Mulai Hassan, the then Sultan, had heard of my affairs. I had an army in the mountains, and every man obeyed me because of my strength and my knowledge. It is well when there is one head in a country, but when there are many, there is trouble. There are caves in Beni Mesauer where a company may be hidden and hear the feet of their pursuers overhead. The country is rough and cushioned with scrub, and between the bushes run great cracks where a band may hasten, one after another, and no one know they are coming. In this land I lived and fought the forces of the Maghsen. When they said, ‘Where is el Raisuli?’ the tribesmen answered, ‘We do not know,’ for they were frightened to give me up. The soldiers of Mulai Hassan went here and there like dogs which have lost the scent, for one day it was said, ‘El Raisuli is here. Was he not seen this morning at the threshing of so-and-so?’ and a few hours later he was a hundred miles away.

“We had a password, and, one night, some men, riding below our camp, gave it, and added that the troops of the Maghsen were approaching up a gully on the right. Away we went to the left. He goes furthest and fastest who has few possessions! It was a trick, and before we had got into our stride we had fallen into an ambush, but Allah was with us. We had come so much sooner than expected that the soldiers were not ready. They picked me out, saying, ‘We must kill that one! He is the Chief,’ and the bullets went through my jellaba, but did not touch me. Then they thought I was a magician and, being ignorant men, fled.

“We had some silver buried in the place where we had camped; so I went back with two men to fetch it. We came noiselessly through the bushes, and there was the man who had betrayed us, searching for traces of our hoard. He did not look up till we were quite near, and then, when he saw my face, he screamed once—only once. . . . He was a coward, that one! We tore out his tongue.”

El Raisuli told these stories with an immobile face, and his voice was equally monotonous. One of the charms of the Arabs is the touch of childishness in even the gravest and the most learned Sheikh. His smile is a little wistful, and, when he smiles, it is as if he takes you into his heart, confident of approval, and in his boasting there is always something of a child’s ingenuousness. His gestures are graphic and his voice often diffident. El Raisuli rarely moved or gestured, and never smiled, during the recital of his life. His voice was a sort of soft rumble. Yet his words were vivid, and his personality so forceful that he made one see pictures. He spoke of his childhood and of the life of his village without any touch of youth. There was no impulsive interest in his manner, no spontaneity, yet, inside my tent, leaning against a pile of hard cushions and staring at the wall of the compound, I imagined I saw the olives and the fig-trees of Beni Mesauer, and the ragged horde they sheltered.

I understood also the gift of speech which has conquered Arabs and Spaniards alike, but I never knew whether the Sherif believed all that he told. The superstition of his people and their fanaticism have credited el Raisuli with miraculous powers as well as with immunity from all weapons, but I do not know how far the Sherif fostered this belief for his own purposes.

“It is better to tell a lie than to be discourteous,” he said once, and again, “If you separate a man from his beliefs, he has no ground to stand on.” Eloquence is much appreciated by the Arabs, and a battle of words is to them as exciting as more dangerous warfare. There are regular trials of skill among orators, to discover which can argue the best, and I have seen a Bedouin sit rapt and open-mouthed while a demagogue harangued his tribe. At the end of the oration he has said, “I did not understand a word of it, but, by Allah, it was fine Arabic.”

El Raisuli, still telling of his guerilla warfare with the Sultan’s troops, recounted how it was necessary for him to acquire the friendship of a certain chief. “He was not my enemy, but relations between us were—um—so, so . . . I went to him one evening, after the sunset, claiming the law of ‘deafa,’[18] and, as he was obliged, he offered me food. That night we ate and said nothing, but next morning, after the dawn prayers, we sat under a tree by the wall of his house, and I talked to him for seven hours. That was my first speech. At noon he got up to pray, and, afterwards, he would have eaten, but I said, ‘I would have further speech with thee,’ and I talked to him till it was evening, and neither of us noticed that the light was gone. After that he was my friend. We were together and he helped me against the Maghsen.

“It was not difficult, for the troops of Mulai Hassan had no wish to fight. There was always one who would say, ‘We go to such and such a place. Take care that thou art absent.’ They had little money or food, and sometimes they would sell us their ammunition for a few douros, after which, if their commander insisted on a battle, they got their bullets back again in a way which they did not like.

“On one occasion we dressed ourselves in the uniforms of some of the soldiers we had killed and put their fezzes on our heads. Then we went between their companies and burned a large farm in the country of our enemies, and took all that was of value in it, and the people thought, ‘It is the tyranny of the Maghsen. Let us not complain, or worse will happen to us.’

“In those days we took men from the houses near Tangier and held them for ransom. No one was safe who was against me, and, because of their fear and their respect for the Shorfa, the people dared not complain.

“At last the European politicians in Tangier protested to the Sultan, who sent a letter to Abderrahman Abd es Sadiq, the Bey of Tangier, demanding my instant capture. ‘Your head or his,’ wrote Mulai Hassan, and Sidi Abderrahman began to feel the strength of his shoulder-bones! What is written is written. There is no need for a man to worry about his fate. How otherwise could one live? There was an outlaw whom even the Spaniards called ‘The Courageous’. He captured many prisoners and killed and robbed, but in the end he died by the dagger of his brother, who was jealous. A knife is clean, but there was one el Roghbi, who was captured by the mehalla of Mulai Hassan. He was shut in a small cage made of his own gun-barrels and taken to Fez on the back of a camel. After he had been hung on the wall for days, for the people to see, the lions had what was left of him! That was in old Morocco. You have done away with these arrangements. To what purpose?”