He Has
In His Room A Picture Of Maria Buckra, Before Which He Generally
Burns A Taper, And On Her Account He Will Never Permit Me To Enter
His Apartment.
He once caught me looking at her, and I thought he
would have killed me, and since then he always keeps his chamber
locked, and carries the key in his pocket when he goes out.
He
hates both Jew and Moor, and says that he is now living amongst
them for his sins."
"They do not place tapers before pictures," said I, and strolled
forth to see the wonders of the land.
CHAPTER LVI
The Mahasni - Sin Samani - The Bazaar - Moorish Saints - See the
Ayana! - The Prickly Fig - Jewish Graves - The Place of Carcases - The
Stable Boy - Horses of the Moslem - Dar Dwag.
I was standing in the market-place, a spectator of much the same
scene as I have already described, when a Moor came up to me and
attempted to utter a few words in Spanish. He was a tall elderly
man, with sharp but rather whimsical features, and might have been
called good-looking, had he not been one-eyed, a very common
deformity in this country. His body was swathed in an immense
haik. Finding that I could understand Moorish, he instantly began
talking with immense volubility, and I soon learned that he was a
Mahasni. He expatiated diffusely on the beauties of Tangier, of
which he said he was a native, and at last exclaimed, "Come, my
sultan, come, my lord, and I will show you many things which will
gladden your eyes, and fill your heart with sunshine; it were a
shame in me, who have the advantage of being a son of Tangier, to
permit a stranger who comes from an island in the great sea, as you
tell me you do, for the purpose of seeing this blessed land, to
stand here in the soc with no one to guide him. By Allah, it shall
not be so. Make room for my sultan, make room for my lord," he
continued, pushing his way through a crowd of men and children who
had gathered round us; "it is his highness' pleasure to go with me.
This way, my lord, this way"; and he led the way up the hill,
walking at a tremendous rate and talking still faster. "This
street," said he, "is the Siarrin, and its like is not to be found
in Tangier; observe how broad it is, even half the breadth of the
soc itself; here are the shops of the most considerable merchants,
where are sold precious articles of all kinds. Observe those two
men, they are Algerines and good Moslems; they fled from Zair
(Algiers) when the Nazarenes conquered it, not by force of
fighting, not by valour, as you may well suppose, but by gold; the
Nazarenes only conquer by gold. The Moor is good, the Moor is
strong, who so good and strong? but he fights not with gold, and
therefore he lost Zair.
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