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TANGIERS 103
hands. I understood nothing. But began to feel quite
nervous. I thought of everything: the street fight I
had seen in the afternoon—no doubt they would arrest
me—and I had not filed my papers yet—they would
probably kick me out of the place—one of them sud-
denly called out to me in English: “Mind your
pockets!” It suddenly dawned on me that the guard
was merely giving me a general warning to beware of
thieves. I answered him again in English, hoping to
find out what he meant, but the sentence he had spoken
must have contained all the English words he knew,
and he kept on calling, “Mind your pockets, mind your
pockets!’ I took hold of the doors of my balcony to
close them, at which the guards laughed loudly and
clapped their hands with joy at being understood.
Next day I told Hadji what had happened. He con-
soled me by saying there was nothing to be afraid of,
still Ihad better lock my balcony doors and look under
my bed at night.
I slept until long past the hour I had set for my next
excursion. When I woke up Hadji abd Islam was
sitting on a chair at the end of the room, legs crossed
under him, his head at an angle, staring at me with his
single eye, like an inquisitive hen. When I rose from
bed, he remoyed—contrary to the custom of all good
Moroccans—the red fez from his head, revealing a
cranium that was entirely smooth-shaven, excepting a
little patch at the crown, no bigger than a penny piece,
from which grew a clump of long hairs. His skull,
shining like polished bone, was covered with a criss-
cross of old scars extending all the way from hair
patch to forehead. ‘‘Souvenirs of old brawls,” I
thought, but later I found the explanation. I saw the
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