i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 523 



into a uniform mass. This is f Areeka[?], the favourite 

 travellers food, and by no means a bad mess when skil 

 fully prepared. The company sit round the basin, each 

 man with his right hand supported on the right knee, 

 while the left hand is kept aside. A small morsel is seized 

 with the points of the fingers, rolled into a ball and con 

 veyed to the mouth. According to a law of politeness, 

 which is prescribed in the traditions of the Prophet along 

 with the duty of saying Bismillah and passing with the 

 right hand, every one must stick to his own corner of 

 the dish. But when one has a dainty morsel it is a polite 

 attention to hand it over to a neighbour. In the towns 

 it is a graceful act to put the morsel in your friend s 

 mouth ; but Marzook, as a true Bedouin, regards this 

 as a &quot; shame,&quot; and will not accept what is so offered. Am 

 I a girl, the Bedouin argues, that I require you to feed me ? 



Nothing amuses one more in the desert than the extra 

 ordinary ramifications of the notion expressed by the 

 word &quot;shame&quot; (eyb). We have just had two instances 

 of a purely conventional kind. The same expression of 

 condemnation is applied to the gravest moral offence, or, 

 on the other hand, to an error in prosody. The usage 

 corresponds to a peculiar development of the moral 

 judgment, characteristic of a state of society in which 

 almost unlimited personal freedom is restrained only by 

 the force of a public opinion based on traditional forms 

 and conventional prescription. The Arab knows no law 

 but the public opinion and usage of his people, and every 

 conflict with this opinion is classified as an eyb. But 

 while I have detained you with this long digression our 

 Arabs, who eat well but very fast, have emptied the dish 

 of Areeka. Coffee goes round once more. Al Mas has 

 another pipe, and the others smoke a cigarette. The 

 camels are reloaded, and we move off again for Wady 

 Fatima. 



At Wady Fatima the Torrent Path is crossed by the 

 highway from Mecca to Medina which passes behind 



