One sees portly men of the city
wearing the blue cloth selhams that bespeak wealth, country Moors who
boast less costly garments, but ride mules of easy pace and heavy price,
and one or two high officials of the Dar el Makhzan. All classes of the
wealthy are arriving rapidly, for the sale will open in a quarter of an
hour.
The portals passed, unchallenged, the market stands revealed--an open
space of bare, dry ground, hemmed round with tapia walls, dust-coloured,
crumbling, ruinous. Something like an arcade stretches across the centre
of the ground from one side to the other of the market. Roofless now and
broken down, as is the outer wall itself, and the sheds, like cattle pens,
that are built all round, it was doubtless an imposing structure in days
of old. Behind the outer walls the town rises on every side. I see mules
and donkeys feeding, apparently on the ramparts, but really in a fandak
overlooking the market. The minaret of a mosque rises nobly beside the
mules' feeding-ground, and beyond there is the white tomb of a saint, with
swaying palm trees round it. Doubtless this zowia gives the Sok el Abeed a
sanctity that no procedure within its walls can besmirch; and, to be sure,
the laws of the saint's religion are not so much outraged here as in the
daily life of many places more sanctified by popular opinion.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152