"Follow Me," Said The Mahasni, "And I Will Show You
Something Which You Will Like To See." So He Turned
To the left,
leading the way by a narrow path up the steep bank, till we reached
the summit of
A hillock, separated by a deep ditch from the wall of
Tangier. The ground was thickly covered with the trees already
described, which spread their strange arms along the surface, and
whose thick leaves crushed beneath our feet as we walked along.
Amongst them I observed a large number of stone slabs lying
horizontally; they were rudely scrawled over with odd characters,
which I stooped down to inspect. "Are you Talib enough to read
those signs?" exclaimed the old Moor. "They are letters of the
accursed Jews; this is their mearrah, as they call it, and here
they inter their dead. Fools, they trust in Muza, when they might
believe in Mohammed, and therefore their dead shall burn
everlastingly in Jehinnim. See, my sultan, how fat is the soil of
this mearrah of the Jews; see what kermous grow here. When I was a
boy I often came to the mearrah of the Jews to eat kermous in the
season of their ripeness. The Moslem boys of Tangier love the
kermous of the mearrah of the Jews; but the Jews will not gather
them. They say that the waters of the springs which nourish the
roots of these trees, pass among the bodies of their dead, and for
that reason it is an abomination to taste of these fruits. Be this
true, or be it not, one thing is certain, in whatever manner
nourished, good are the kermous which grow in the mearrah of the
Jews."
We returned to the lane by the same path by which we had come: as
we were descending it he said, "Know, my sultan, that the name of
the place where we now are, and which you say you like much, is Dar
Sinah (the house of the trades). You will ask me why it bears that
name, as you see neither house nor man, neither Moslem, Nazarene,
nor Jew, only our two selves; I will tell you, my sultan, for who
can tell you better than myself? Learn, I pray you, that Tangier
was not always what it is now, nor did it occupy always the place
which it does now. It stood yonder (pointing to the east) on those
hills above the shore, and ruins of houses are still to be seen
there, and the spot is called Old Tangier. So in the old time, as
I have heard say, this Dar Sinah was a street, whether without or
within the wall matters not, and there resided men of all trades;
smiths of gold and silver, and iron, and tin, and artificers of all
kinds: you had only to go to the Dar Sinah if you wished for
anything wrought, and there instantly you would find a master of
the particular craft.
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