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the feet of one of the jincon. There were some of the ulema who, after an examination, maintained that the wounds had been given by an afrit, not a jinn. The old gentleman was so worried over the affair that he went to the Grand Mosque and divorced all his wives, vowing a year of celibacy.

But aside from such untoward accidents, the pandemonium reaches its height in the third hour after sunrise prayers on Thursday. By noon things are sold out. For an hour or more the people of the Sok figure up their accounts. They use a mystic system of arithmetic, the outward signs of which are little piles of stone, twigs set up on the ground, and resounding slaps on the knee. There is a proverb about being as sore as the knee of a lucky merchant. Business finished, the Sok looks about for entertainment. It is the harvest-time for mountebanks and story-tellers. The acrobats one sees in Tangier are not good; the cream of the profession is skimmed off for the musichalls of Europe. But the story-tellers, protected by their impenetrable language, shine in their pristine glory.

Verbal literature is the only art held in high esteem by the Moors, and the storytellers are conscious of their high calling. They are stamped with the stigmata of Bohemia. You could no more mistake them—once your eye has begun to catch the nuances of Moorish dress-than you could mistake the velveteen jacket, the flowing tie, and the unkempt hair of a Latin Quarter artist. Here, in Tangier, they tell their stories as they did in the Court of the Caliphs of Bagdad; as they did in the Great Palace of Soulimon bin Daoud at Jerusalem; as they have done among all peoples since the invention of rudimentary speech.

The staccato thumping of a tom-tom attracts attention. The story-teller stands on the outskirts of the Sok. He looks profoundly up into the profundity of the sky. Beside him a slave boy squats on his heels and does the vulgar advertising work on the tom-tom, and also collects the coins which the story entices.

The market folk sit about in a great circle. Striking faces these countrymen have. There is not a flabby cheek, nor a heavy chin, nor a bleared eye among

them. They gather in cliques-Riff tribesmen, the aristocrats of North Africa, their turbans made out of blue rifle-cases, for they would have you remember that they are warriors; Fasci, in flowing djellabs, broad strips of black and cream; Berbers from beyond the Great Atlas, their mantles of the soft fabric woven from the belly wool of mountain goats; ulema and divinity students in spotless white; here and there city men in gorgeous colors-burnt orange, olive green and blue--they have more fat on their faces, and begin to look as ill conditioned as Europeans.

Hardly a Thursday goes by that does not find me squatted in the circle, my riding-breeches marking me out as an infidel a thing of shame. Abd Allah"the Slave of God"-sits beside and translates the wonder stories of the Orient. It would be more correct to say he perverts them, for his conversation has all the elusive charm of a Chinese puzzle. He talks in a lingua franca which is onethird English, one-fourth French, the rest just words-a ragout of Spanish, Senegambian, Italian, and Arabic. But I can get enough to note down the framework of the stories.

All this explained to me the scheme of the " Arabian Nights" tales. For the competition among the story-tellers of the Sok is keen. Often half a dozen are going at once. In order to keep up the interest, to prevent the audience going over to a rival, the first story before it is finished leads into an endless chain of others. If you wish to know the fate of the first hero, you must sit patient a long time, only to find your curiosity entangled with half a dozen new ones.

We of the West have forgotten how to tell stories. We have learned to write them down. The printing-press has taught us how to can them. The charm of facial expression is lost-all the rich possibilities of tone and gesture. If our heroine is sad, we must write it down badly," She was sad." The longest, most intricate novel of Henry James could be told by a skilled teller in half an hour.

The art of Oriental literature, whether prose or poetry, and the two are seldom entirely divorced, is not the simple concoction of a plot nor the invention of a

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dainty conceit. It is more than all else the technique of presentation. The words are the least part of their artistry.

So one who does not know their language can find pleasure in the performance as pure pantomime. For Abd Allah's translations would be meaningless, utterly without charm, if it were not for the story-tellers' ability to portray by tone and gesture the spirit of their tales.

One day Abd Allah told me-painfully, e-painfully, having to repeat it a dozen times before I could sort out his meaning from the jumble of words-that Hadje Akmet bin Nassir el Mokri el Agadir, the most renowned story-teller of Morocco, had returned from his twelfth pilgrimage to Mecca, and would perform the next market day in the Sok. The name was already familiar to me; so often as I had shown enthusiasm for a local story-teller, Abd Allah had shrugged his shoulders and said, “La! la! Signor! He is but camel-dung under the feet of the blessed Hadje Akmet."

I was early in the Sok that memorable afternoon. Although the great man had not come, his orchestra-eight coal-black Nubian boys in pure white djellabs-had already collected an immense circle. The regular story-tellers, knowing that competition was hopeless, had gathered about. the orchestra. The Slave of God told me that Hadje Akmet would divide among them all the money thrown into the circle. "Is he not rich in the blessings of Allah, the Beneficent? He takes only jewels from the great Sultans."

At last a cavalcade came through the Fasci Gate. The nobility of Tangier had turned out in full feather. It was a brilliant company, to which Hadje Akmet, riding at the head, presented a striking contrast. His djellab was as faded and frayed as that of the poorest story-teller of the Sok.

"It is," said Abd Allah, "the same djellab to his all twelve pilgrimages he has worn. Even so, when the story is told, I will it kiss-yes-the fringe."

Of course Hadje Akmet's simplicity of manner, his bored disregard of those who would do him honor, may have been an elaborate affectation. But why should a man whose name is known in the remotest village of Mussuldom, whose art has been honored in the four great courts

of Islam, who, within the shadow of the Holy Kasbah, beside the revered tomb at Medina, had held spellbound men of a hundred nations, from the four corners of the earth, be moved by the homage of Tangier, the least of Mohammed's cities?

He was a wiry little man, his long beard streaked with gray, his face parched by the sun of the Sahara, the sand-storms of Arabia, the cruel blizzards of Samarkand. His gray eyes were restless with having seen too many men, too many places. He jumped from his mule, scorning the hundred hands which proffered help, and entered the circle. He spread out his arms and bowed low towards Mecca. Then, picking idly at a two-stringed lute, looking out at something far beyond the horizon, he prayed, with rhyme and rhythm, under his breath, his words scarce audible.

"He say beautiful thanks at God for safe come home," Abd Allah whispered.

This finished, he sat down, his eyes closed. The negro boys beat wildly on their tom-toms, tore savagely at the strings of their viols. Some camels snorted and quarreled in the distance. A brass bell tinkled sharply as a Sudanese water-carrier hastened up the slope to join the circle. But I have never seen men so silent.

When Hadje Akmet stood up, an audible sigh came from the tense audience. He twanged twice on his lute, and, standing immobile, expressionless, began to set the stage for his drama. He finished his prologue and paused. In an instant he made his face, his hand, his whole body--even the folds of his worn djellab— speak Fear. His orchestra was stilled. In a harsh, raucous voice, shudderingly, he besought help. As suddenly he was silent again, twanging his lute. Then he took up the part of Cunning. Jealousy, Hilarious Mirth, Love, Murder, he visualized before us. Once, I am sure, he spoke of the full moon, the reflection of a group of date-palms on the pool of an oasis. Once he was riding a fleet Arabian stallion on a hot errand of love. Again he was sore athirst in the barren stretches of the Great Desert. Then the din of war pervaded the Sok-the clash of gleaming cimeters, the hum of arrows, the wail of death.

Twice I tried to make the Slave of God translate, poking him vigorously in

the ribs. I might have whittled off his ears. Big-eyed, open-mouthed, as taut as a forestay in a gale, he scarcely breathed, so light the spell held him.

But a deaf-mute could have seen the story, so plainly it was written on the circle of intense faces. They were plastic under the magic of the spoken words. One did not have to hear, to feel, the horror that froze those faces at Hadje Akmet's wish, the berserker fury he painted there, the pity he called up for the widows of the slain.

As each mood he conjured up was more tense, more hypnotic, it seemed that the spell must break, that the climax had come at last. But the wizard had himself as well as his audience in hand. In the short intervals when he let them breathe as he twanged two, three, four chords on his lute-his face was emotionless and overwise, as though his art held for him no new thing to learn, no new triumph to hope for. Then in a flash the old face showed you a young maiden dancing for the first time before him whom she lovedshowed you a leader of the Faithful lifting a thousand-footed charge over the ramparts of Unbelief.

It was wonderful-past any words of mine. The climax, when it came at last, left the circle torn and breathless. Hadje Akmet sat down, the tired, worn old man again, and from the forlorn tatters of his djellab drew out a slender keef pipe, and lit it with a European match.

Then he was lost in a surge of fanaticism struggling wildly to kiss his twelvefold holy robe. Somewhere in that turmoil was the Slave of God. He had forgotten me utterly. I caught one fleeting glimpse of him in the adoring throng which accompanied Hadje Akmet back to the city.

My anger at his deflection was in pro

portion to the mighty spell of the storytelling. I was sore bitten by curiosity to know what it had all been about. I was only sure that it was infinitely superior to the ordinary run of Sok stories. Late that night I discovered the deserter, drunk with keef smoking, in the café of his tribe. tribe. He sat sullenly in the corner and refused to come out.

On the morrow he came to my room as if nothing had happened.

"Sidi," he said, "this morning finer than to-morrow for too long ride up Djibel Kebir."

"Too" in Abd Allah's lingo means "very." If the eggs he buys are not rotten, he calls them "a too fine eat."

"No," I said; "this morning you tell me the story of Hadje Akmet, that I may write it down in my book." "We go

"La!" he seemed decisive.

up Djibel Kebir. A too fine day."

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"La!" he grunted.

I became violent in my urging.

"It is not a story," he said, "which can be told to an infidel."

I have beaten the Slave of God with my riding-crop. I have spit in the direction of the tomb of his grandmother. I have discharged him from my service. I have tempted him with a Winchester rifle. The Maxim Silencer on the end of it is indisputably an invention of the jinoon, a work of the Lower, Middle, and High Magic. It would make him a considerable man in his village; more to be envied than the ulema, even on a par with the caid. But he insists that the story of Hadje Akmet cannot be told to an infidel. I am sure it was the best story I ever heard.

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