Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more
important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth
of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air,
and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were
built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old
men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of
rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim
court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From
behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of
burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through a
subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways,
or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm
roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented
twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.
By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious
labyrinth of the vast Zaouia, the corridors and courts became less
ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors
were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen
by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like
passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one
which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.
Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything
glimmered white in moonlight.
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