My scabby-headed patient turned up towards evening, and sat expectant in the door of the tent. After some thought, I told him to rise exactly one hour before the Feyzer, and get water from a stream (not from a well on any account), then put it in a vessel and pray exactly as the Muezzin called to prayer, then to walk backwards round an olive tree three times; every third day for twice nine days, to avoid all food cooked with Argan oil; finally, to wash his head well every day with soap, then to rub in butter mixed with sulphur, and then, if God so willed it, he would be well. A Seidlitz powder which he drank at once, and said there was “a spirit in the water,” { 189} and nine Beecham’s Pills to be taken alternately upon the third, the seventh, and the ninth day till they were finished, sent him away rejoicing, and laid my fame for ever as a first-class “tabib.”
We now began to think how far our messenger had got, and were discussing how great the astonishment of the few Europeans in Morocco city would be on hearing of our fate, when the tent door was lifted and our messenger walked in, and silently laid the packet and the two dollars at my feet. Had a volcano opened upon the neighbouring hill I could not have been more surprised, and for a moment no one spoke, so much had we counted on the letters being well upon their way.
Swani first broke the silence with a string of imprecations on the unlucky messenger’s female relations whom he defiled, gave up to Kaffirs, compared to hens, cows, goats, and finished up by telling the poor man he evidently was born of a family the women of which were shameless, veilless, and as hideous in their persons as their characters were vile. The poor man sat quite patiently, and then replied it was no use to curse him, his heart had failed, and that he feared if he were found out the Kaid would kill him, burn his house, and throw his children into prison to rot and die. Though I was much annoyed, I was sorry for him, as one is always sorry for all those whose hearts fail at the wrong minute, and I was touched that he had brought me the two dollars back. Most likely in his life he had never seen himself at the head of so much capital, and it would have been easy for him to throw away the packet and not return. Therefore I handed him a dollar, and remarked, those who have families should not engage in enterprises such as these; God loves stout-hearted men, but perhaps loves quite as much fathers who love their children, but, children or no children, we are all in his hand. This, though they had heard it a million times, seemed to console all present, and the messenger slunk from the tent ashamed, but happy, having been paid on a scale he thought was lavish for a mere twenty-two hours’ walk. { 190} Certainly when he went we were cast down, for it appeared impossible to get a letter safely conveyed, so we agreed next morning to saddle up our animals and see if the Kaid would allow us to return, thinking, perhaps, his injunctions only lay upon the road towards the Sus. This settled, Lutaif and I walked long backwards and forwards on the Maidan, in the clear moonlight, and heard the long-drawn, quavering notes of a wild song like a Malagueña rise in the still night air, wayward and strange in interval, sung in a high falsetto voice, and yet enthralling and penetrating to the marrow of the bones; once heard, haunting one’s memory for ever afterwards, and still almost impossible to catch; but it recalls Kintafi to me as I write, just as the scent of fresh-cut oranges brings me back to Paraguay, so that perhaps perfumes and sounds are after all the most stable of the illusions amongst which we live.