Here acrobats and
snake-charmers and story-tellers ply their trade, and never fail to find
an audience. The acrobats come from Tarudant and another large city of the
Sus that is not marked in the British War Office Map of Morocco dated
1889! Occasionally one of these clever tumblers finds his way to London,
and is seen at the music halls there.
I remember calling on one Hadj Abdullah when I was in the North, and to my
surprise he told me he spoke English, French, German, Spanish, Turkish,
Moghrebbin Arabic, and Shilha. "I know London well," he said; "I have an
engagement to bring my troupe of acrobats to the _Canterbury_ and the
_Oxford_. I am a member of a Masonic Lodge in Camberwell." Commonplace
enough all this, but when you have ridden out of town to a little Moorish
house on the hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, and are drinking
green tea flavoured with mint, on a diwan that must be used with crossed
legs, you hardly expect the discussion to be turned to London music-halls.
Snake-charmers make a strong appeal to the untutored Moorish crowd. Black
cobras and spotted leffa snakes from the Sus are used for the performance.
When the charmer allows the snakes to dart at him or even to bite, the
onlookers put their hands to their foreheads and praise Sidi ben Aissa, a
saint who lived in Mequinez when Mulai Ismail ruled, a pious magician
whose power stands even to-day between snake-charmers and sudden death.
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