Men in the Riff who have blood-feuds will not go out of their houses in the early mornings without first sending the women and children to look if the coast is clear: neither will they walk up a hedgerow nor in a wood, but across the fields, keeping well in the open, since murder is always committed out of sight, decently, and in good order.
A man living in Tetuan now, has a blood-feud with an enemy, who has been in consequence obliged to move to Tangier. Sometimes he comes over, secretly, by night, to see his mother, and lies hidden in her house till the sok is full of market people in the middle of the day, when he can go out into the crowd without running great risk,--though in the sok a quarrel sometimes arises; in a flash, guns are up at men's shoulders--bang--bang--and bullets ping into the soft walls, if not into some one or other. Only lately a boy was shot twice in the thigh, happening to be in the way in a scuffle.
S`lam and Tahara were often amusing, if not interesting: never commonplace or "well-meaning." One corner of the roof of Jinan Dolero had been left unwhitewashed, the whitewashers' ladder was still there, and one morning S`lam came to say in his best French, "Deux mesdames. Pour arranger en haut."
The two madams were the whitewashers--two black madams, clad in a couple of striped towels each, Ali Slowee's slaves, bought for, say, £7 each. A very ragged countrywoman who came and weeded the garden, and seemed almost devoid of intelligence, was also a madam.
S`lam was deft with a needle; he borrowed one of ours and a thimble, sat himself down in the kitchen, and stitched away at a large white garment "pour Maman," he said--sat up half the night, finished it, and took it to her next day.
He did not make a bad man-servant; but he was fond of tempting Fate by carrying trays, laden with china and glass, balanced on one hand; then he would stoop down and pick up a kettle in the other, there would be an ominous clatter, if not crash, in the tray amongst our crockery, and S`lam would murmur reproachfully under his breath, "O tray! tray!"
He bought a new jellab for wearing on visits to the sok; and after it had been proudly shown us, it was found, neatly folded up, placed on a hat-box in our bedroom. When we asked why it was there, he was taken aback. "Mightn't he keep it there? It was new: it was very clean."