CHAPTER III DEAD MEN AND DOGS

Though at times unpleasant, it is always interesting to come upon the scene of a recent battle. Casablanca had been a battlefield of unusual order. The fight that had taken place was not large or momentous, but it had peculiarities of its own, and it left some curious wreckage. Windowless Moorish houses with low arched doors now lay open, the corners knocked off or vast holes rent in the side, and any man might enter. Several ‘Saint Houses’ were also shattered, and a mosque near the Water Port had been deserted to the ‘infidels.’ The French guns had done great damage, but how could they have missed their mark at a range of less than a mile! A section of the town had taken fire and burned. One cluster of dry brush kraals had gone up like so much paper and was now a heap of fine ash rising like desert sand to every breeze. Another quarter of a considerable area was untouched by fire, though not by the hand of the Arab; and what he had left of pots and pans and other poor utensils the Spaniard and Jew had gathered after his departure. At the time that we came poking through the quarter only a tom-tom, and that of inferior clay with a broken drum, was to be found. Hut after hut we entered through mazes of twisting alleys, the gates down everywhere or wide ajar; and we found in every case a heap of rags picked over half-a-dozen times, a heap of earthenware broken to bits by the Moors in order that no one else might profit. So silent was this quarter, once the living place of half the Moorish population, that the shimmering of the sun upon the roofs seemed almost audible. Twice we came upon Algerians of the French army, in one case two men, in the other a single stalwart ‘Tirailleur.’ We came to a street of wooden huts a little higher than the kraals, the sok or market-place of the neighbourhood. Invariably the doors had been barricaded, and invariably holes hacked with axes had been made to let in the arm, or, if the shop was more than four feet square, the body of the looter. In front of the holes were little heaps of things discarded and smashed. What fiends these Moors and Arabs are, in all their mad haste to have taken the time to destroy what they did not want or what they could not carry off! They had hurried about the streets robbing each others’ bodies and dressing themselves, hot as the season was, in all the clothes they could crowd on, shedding ragged garments when they came to newer ones, always taking the trouble to destroy the old. And I have heard that in collecting women they acted much in the same way, leaving one woman for another, ‘going partners,’ one man guarding while the other gathered, driving the women off at last like cattle, for women among Mohammedans have a definite market value.

Though the bodies were now removed from the streets it was evident from the stench that some still lay amongst the wreckage. Flies, great blue things, buzzed everywhere, rising in swarms as we passed, to settle again on the wasted sugar or the filthy rubbish and the clots of blood. Emaciated cats and swollen dogs roused from sleep and slunk away noiselessly at our approach. One dog, as we entered a house through a hole torn by a shell, rose and gave one loud bark, but, seeming to frighten himself, he then backed before us, viciously showing his teeth, though growling almost inaudibly. Evidently he belonged to the house. At the fall of night these dogs—I often watched them—would pass in packs, silently like jackals, out to the fields beyond the French and Spanish camps, where the bigger battles had taken place and where a dead Moor or a French artillery horse dried by the sun lay here and there unburied.

The return of the Moors to the wrecks of their homes began about the time of our arrival. At first there came in only two or three wretched-looking creatures, bare-footed and bare-headed, clad usually in a single shirt which dragged about their dirty legs, robbed of everything, in some cases even their wives gone. As the Arabs of the country sought in every way, even to the extent of shooting them, to prevent their surrender, they were compelled to run the gauntlet at night; and often at night the flashes of the Arabs’ guns could be seen from the camp of the French. The miserable Moors who got away lay most of the night in little groups outside the wire entanglements till their white flag, generally the tail of a shirt, was seen by the soldiers at daybreak. The Moors who thus surrendered, after being searched for weapons, were taken for examination to the office of the general’s staff, a square brush hut in the centre of the French camp, where, under a row of fig trees, they awaited their turns. Some Jews among them, refugees from the troubled villages round about, were careful in even this their day to keep a distance from the elect of Mohammed, remaining out in the blinding sun till a soldier of ‘the Legion’ told them also to get into the shade. The Jews were given bread by their sympathisers, and they went in first to be questioned because their examination was not so rigorous as that through which the Moors were put—humble pie this for the Moors!

When a Moor entered the commander’s office he prostrated himself, as he would do usually only to his Sultan or some holy man of his creed; however, he was ordered to rise and go squat in a corner. An officer who spoke Arabic—and sometimes carried a riding-crop—drew up a chair, sat over him and put him through an inquisition; and if he showed the slightest insolence a blow or two across the head soon quelled his spirit. When the examination was over, however, and the Moor had been sufficiently humiliated, the French were lenient enough. The man’s name was recorded and he was then permitted to return to his home and to resume his trade in peace. He received sometimes a pass, and, if he could do so in the teeth of his watchful countrymen outside the barriers, he went back into the interior to fetch such of his women folk as were safe. But every idle Moor was taken from the streets and made to work as it is not in his belief that he should—though he was fed and paid a pittance for his labour. Medical attention was to be had, though the Mohammedan would not ordinarily avail himself of the Nazarene remedies.

I should say the French were just, even kindly, to the Moors who surrendered without arms but to those taken in battle they showed no mercy. The French army returning from an engagement never brought in prisoners, and neither men nor officers kept the fact a secret that those they took they slaughtered.

The French spread terror in the districts round about, and after they began to penetrate the country and leave in their wake a trail of death and desolation, the leaders of several tribes near to Casablanca came in to sue for peace. These were picturesque men with bushed black hair sticking out sometimes six inches in front of their ears. The older of them and those less poorly off came on mules, the youth on horses. They saw General Drude and the French consul, and went away again to discuss with the other tribesmen the terms that could be had: no arms within ten miles of Casablanca and protection of caravans bound hither. But soon it came to be known that the sorties of the French were limited to a zone apparently of fifteen kilomètres, and the spirit of the Arabs rose and they became again defiant.