Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Tangiers
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104 DAYS IN THE SUN
same isolated bundles of hair frequently during the fol-
lowing days among members of a Berber tribe, tall
slender marauders wearing sandals of vine-wood and a
gehab of camel’s or goat’s hair, hoods thrown over the
back. In place of turbans, they often had rope strands
or fibers of bast wound about their foreheads, which
made them look very bold as they stood in large groups
about the streets, haggling for carbines which they
carelessly discharged at the white walls, so that plaster
and lead fell in showers. They are said to come from
the hills of Oran, and they believe that when they die
Allah will draw them up into Paradise by the single
strand of hair on their crowns.
After telling this yarn, Hadji sets forth to show
me all the things which he likes to see himself, and this
he does day after day. If the sun is not too high in
the heavens and the sirocco not too hot, I am as zeal-
ous as he is, although my admiration is not always as
undisguised as his. Hadji knows what is worth see-
ing, for he has traveled much. Once he went on a pil-
grimage to Mecca, where he had the attack of small-
pox which cost him an eye and spotted his skin. He
has crossed the straits often to the Rock of Gibraltar,
and once he took the train as far as Granada, where
from the battlements of the Alhambra he gazed over
the Vega, promised land from which his people had
once been driven forth and to which Allah will again
lead back his faithful ones. In the Alhambra, he tells
me, the halls are larger and the vaulting more beauti-
ful—in short all things are lovelier—than even in
Mecca; it is the most fruitful land of the whole world,
for the Heaven of the Faithful is arched over it. . . .
He becomes so interested that he stops short in his
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