AN IMPORTANT CEREMONY 



old man, who ate wdth his hands. I replied 

 that I felt no change; that we had apparently 

 always been brothers, whereupon he began to 

 crv. 



Who knew, he asked, but that we had been 

 through a similar ceremony that God himself 

 had performed cen- 

 turies ago on some 

 other planet. 



Shortly after, we 

 started for Sheikh 

 All's tribe, the 

 Abogonese, a 

 branch of the Ane- 

 zeh, who seldom 



rfr\ -fo-n c/^nf"h ivi 4-V.ri Sheikh All Rashid of the Abo-Gomese, 

 go lar SOUin m tne ^ sub-tribe of the Anezeh. 



desert. 



Sheikh All greeted us warmly and accom- 

 panied us on a ten-hour night ride to a Cir- 

 cassian village near the Euphrates, to see a 

 gray colt, a Kehilan Jilfan Stam el Bulada, a 

 young horse whose dam was a distinguished 

 war mare. This ride on a hot night was very 

 trying, but the Bedouins beguiled the time 

 with the melancholy song so common among 

 them and with many curious questions about 

 America. 



[129] 



*W¥..„ 



