In one room on the ground-floor there was a great collection of mechanical toys. Sidi Boubikir explained that the French Commercial Attaché had brought a large number to the Sultan's palace, and that my Lord Abd-el-Aziz had rejected the ones before us. With the curious childish simplicity that is found so often among the Moors of high position, Boubikir insisted upon winding up the clock-work apparatus of nearly all the toys. Then one doll danced, another played a drum, a third went through gymnastic exercises, and the toy orchestra played the Marseillaise, while from every adjacent room veiled figures stole out cautiously, as though this room in a Moorish house were a stage and the shrouded visitors were the chorus entering mysteriously from unexpected places. The old man's merriment was very real and hearty, so genuine, in fact, that he did not notice how his women-folk were intruding until the last note sounded. Then he turned round and the swathed figures disappeared suddenly as ghosts at cockcrow.
Though it was clear that Sidi Boubikir seldom saw half the rooms through which we hurried, the passion for building, that seizes all rich Moors, held him fast. He was adding wing after wing to his vast premises, and would doubtless order more furniture from London to fill the new rooms. No Moor knows when it is time to call a halt and deem his house complete, and so the country is full of palaces begun by men who fell from power or died leaving the work unfinished. The Grand Wazeer Ba Ahmad left a palace nearly as big as the Dar el Makhzan itself, and since he died the storks that build upon the flat roofs have been its only occupants. So it is with the gardens, whose many beauties he did not live to enjoy. I rode past them one morning, noted all manner of fruit trees blossoming, heard birds singing in their branches, and saw young storks fishing in the little pools that the rains of winter had left. But there was not one gardener there to tend the ground once so highly cultivated, and I was assured that the terror of the wazeer's name kept even the hungry beggars from the fruit in harvest time.
The home and its appointments duly exhibited, Sidi Boubikir led the way to a diwan in a well-cushioned room that opened on to the garden. He clapped his hands and a small regiment of women-servants, black and for the most part uncomely, arrived to prepare dinner. One brought a ewer, another a basin, a third a towel, and water was poured out over our hands. Then a large earthenware bowl encased in strong basketwork was brought by a fourth servant, and a tray of flat loaves of fine wheat by a fifth, and we broke bread and said the "Bismillah,"[41] which stands for grace. The bowl was uncovered and revealed a savoury stew of chicken with sweet lemon and olives, a very pleasing sight to all who appreciate Eastern cooking. The use of knives being a crime against the Faith, and the use of forks and spoons unknown, we plunged the fingers of the right hand into the bowl and sought what pleased us best, using the bread from time to time to deal with the sauce of the stew. It was really a delicious dish, and when later in the afternoon I asked my host for the recipe he said he would give it to me if I would fill the bowl with Bank of England notes. I had to explain that, in my ignorance of the full resources of Moorish cooking, I had not come out with sufficient money.