Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/181

Rh when Tartar and Bashkir mullahs and ulema came on missions of propaganda to the Kirghiz camps and to the Moslem soldiers fighting in the army of Admiral Kolchak. My mysterious friend bore the marks of a Tartar from the Volga region and could easily have been a Soviet agent, or even a double representative for both Abd el-Krim and the Soviets, who support every anti-European movement in the hope of fostering trouble and disloyalty among the people of those lands which refuse to recognize and adopt the criminal ideology of Moscow, where the kubba of the false Messiah, Lenine, raises itself beside the walls of the Kremlin as an arrogant mausoleum, defying all that civilization has striven for—faith, morals and the creative thought of the Aryan race—and predicating the wane of power and the demoralization and madness of Europe.

Distracted from the tale of the bard, I found myself wondering over the unexpected conglomeration of individuals that now rub elbows in this holy city of Africa. The great Mulay Idris surely never dreamed that in this Rome, Paris, Lourdes, Oxford and Mecca which he had initiated within one encircling wall the unfaithful Nasara and Ihud (Christians and Jews) would dwell and exercise their power. His Fez of today has been obliged to submit to close contact with Europeans and to some degree of protection from them; yet between this mute acceptance and the goal of confidence and friendship the distance is greater than the long way from the founder's mosque to thrice-blessèd Mecca. The two currents of Moslem and foreigner run side by side in their own separate channels but without mixing in any way. A Berber or an Arab