I Will Take The Gin-Bitters, O Joanna, Because They
Are Stronger Than The Makhiah, Which Always Appears To Me Like
Water; And I Like Not Water, Though I Carry It.
Many thanks to
you, Joanna, here is health to you, Joanna, and to this good
company."
She had handed him a large tumbler filled to the brim; he put it to
his nostrils, snuffled in the flavour, and then applying it to his
mouth, removed it not whilst one drop of the fluid remained. His
features gradually relaxed from their former angry expression, and
looking particularly amiable at Joanna, he at last said:
"I hope that within a little time, O Joanna, you will be persuaded
that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and that I am sprung from
the blood of the Moors of Garnata, as then you will no longer
refuse to take me for a husband, you and your maid Johar, and to
become Moors. What a glory to you, after having been married to a
Genoui, and given birth to Genouillos, to receive for a husband a
Moor like me, and to bear him children of the blood of Garnata.
What a glory too for Johar, how much better than to marry a vile
Jew, even like Hayim Ben Atar, or your cook Sabia, both of whom I
could strangle with two fingers, for am I not Hammin Widdir Moro de
Garnata, el hombre mas valido be Tanger?" He then shouldered his
barrel and departed.
"Is that Mulatto really what he pretends to be?" said I to Joanna;
"is he a descendant of the Moors of Granada?"
"He always talks about the Moors of Granada when he is mad with
majoon or aguardiente," interrupted, in bad French, the old man
whom I have before described, and in the same croaking voice which
I had heard chanting in the morning. "Nevertheless it may be true,
and if he had not heard something of the kind from his parents, he
would never have imagined such a thing, for he is too stupid. As I
said before, it is by no means impossible: many of the families of
Granada settled down here when their town was taken by the
Christians, but the greater part went to Tunis. When I was there,
I lodged in the house of a Moor who called himself Zegri, and was
always talking of Granada and the things which his forefathers had
done there. He would moreover sit for hours singing romances of
which I understood not one word, praised be the mother of God, but
which he said all related to his family; there were hundreds of
that name in Tunis, therefore why should not this Hammin, this
drunken water-carrier, be a Moor of Granada also? He is ugly
enough to be emperor of all the Moors. O the accursed canaille, I
have lived amongst them for my sins these eight years, at Oran and
here. Monsieur, do you not consider it to be a hard case for an
old man like myself, who am a Christian, to live amongst a race who
know not God, nor Christ, nor anything holy?"
"What do you mean," said I, "by asserting that the Moors know not
God?
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