Miranda of the Balcony: A StoryMason, A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley)
General
Miranda of the Balcony: A Story
Mason, A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley)
Fiction
Charnock hired that boy, and under his guidance sauntered through
Tangier where the East and the West rub shoulders, where the camel
snarls in the Sôk with an electric arc-lamp for a night-light, and all
the races and all the centuries jostle together in many colours down
the cobbles of its narrow streets. Charnock was shown the incidentals
of the Tangier variety entertainment: the Basha administering more or
less justice for less or more money at his Palace gate; the wooden
peep-hole of the prison where the prisoners' hands come through and
clutch for alms; a dancing-room where a Moorish woman closely veiled
leaned her back against a Tottenham Court Road chest of drawers under
a portrait of Mrs. Langtry, and beat upon a drum while another stamped
an ungainly dance by the light of a paraffin lamp; and coming out
again into the sunlight, Charnock cried out, "Hamet, take me somewhere
where it's clean, and there's no din, and there are no smells."
Hamet led the way up the hills, and every now and then, as he passed a
man better dressed than his fellows he would say in a voice of awe:
"That's a rich." He invariably added, "He's a Juice."
"Look here, Hamet," said Charnock, at length, "can't you show me a
rich who isn't a Jew?"
"These are the loryers," observed Hamet, after the fashion of the
March Hare when posed with an inconvenient question. He pointed to a
number of venerable gentlemen in black robes who sat in wooden hutches
open to the street. "I will show you," he continued, "a Moor who was
the richest man in all Tangier."
The pair walked up out of the town towards the Mazan, and came to a
lane shadowed by cedars and bordered with prickly pears. Here the
resounding din of the streets below was subdued to a murmurous
confusion of voices, from which occasionally a sharp cry would spirt
up clear into the air like a jet of water. Only one voice was definite
and incessant, and that voice came down to them from the trees higher
up the lane--a voice very thin, but on that hot, still afternoon very
distinct--a voice which perpetually quavered and bleated one
monotonous invocation.
"Hassan Akbar," said Hamet.
The invocation became articulate as they ascended. "Allah Beh!" the
voice cried, and again "Allah Beh!" and again, until the windless air
seemed to vibrate with its recurrence.
They came upon the Moor who uttered this cry at the gate of the
Moorish cemetery. A white, stubbly beard grew upon his chin and lips,
but his strength was not diminished by his years, and with every
movement of his body the muscles beneath the tough skin of his bare
legs worked like live things. He sat cross-legged in the dust with a
filthy sack for his only garment; he was blind, and his eyes stared
from their red sockets covered with a bluish film as though the
colours of the eyeballs had run.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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