THE GREAT ADVENTURE 3 



splashed with the vivid blue of their gala sashes and the 

 ghnt of their gay-ribboned medals. Foremost came 

 the Governor, Senator de Martino, in the gi*een and gold 

 uniform of a Knight of Malta, and General Di Vita, 

 with his splendid rows of decorations. Between them 

 walked a figure which dominated the group and yet gave 

 one the impression of being utterly remote from it. 

 Robed all in white, in silken kaftan and trailing burnus, 

 the rich kufiya flowing beneath a golden agal, with no 

 jewel or embroidery to mark his state, Sidi Idris came 

 slowly forward leaning on a silver-handled stick. An 

 Italian officer murmured in my ear, "Give him a longer 

 beard and he would be the pictured Christ!" He was 

 right. The ascetic leader of one of the greatest religious 

 confraternities in the world had the strange, visionary 

 eyes of the prophets of old. His long face had hollows 

 under the cheek-bones. The lips were pale and the olive 

 skin almost waxen. He looked out, under a broad brow, 

 dreamily, far beyond the pageant prepared in his honour, 

 to realms even more remote than his own untrodden 

 deserts. Thus might the Nazarene have walked among 

 the legionaries of Rome 1 



The following day I met the Emir at a dinner which 

 Omar Pasha gave in his honour. Before the other guests 

 arrived we conversed, I in faltering Egyptian Arabic, 

 he in the classical language of the Hejaz. In the same 

 flowing white robes he sat in a great chair at the head 

 of the room and in a long line beside him sat the 

 ekhwan who were to accompany him to Italy. They 

 were a picturesque sight in their multi-coloured robes of 

 ceremony. Prominent among them was the General 

 AH Basha el Abdya, a delightful bearded personage with 

 a complete set of gold teeth, which touch of modernity 

 contrasted oddly with his crimson kaftan and splendid 

 dark burnus bordered with silver. Beside him sat the 



