THE LAKE IN THE DESERT 171 



Keid el Adu, 'vexation of the enemy,' " he continued, 

 "because no one could break through it?" "To enter 

 the enclosed land," I interrupted. "Of course, these 

 oases are all linked in a circle by the black hills. Taiserbo 

 alone has no gara — she lies outside." 



From that moment I have always thought of Buseima, 

 Kufara and Ribiana as the mountain oases of Libya. 

 Some day, no doubt, geologists will come and prove our 

 theory false or true, but for me the palm gardens isolated 

 in the middle of red sands, each with its guardian crag, 

 will ever be an island country within the arms of the 

 strange dark mountains. 



The name Hawaish means a great beast ; therefore we 

 questioned Yusuf and Abdullah closely about these 

 mountains. "No one ever goes there," they said. 

 "The jinns live there!" "Does anyone ever go to 

 Gebel Neri?" "No; they are afraid." "What are they 

 afraid of?" "They do not know." "Have they seen 

 anything?" "No. When they go near the mountains 

 they have a feeling." "Are there men there?" "No. 

 There is no water nor food. Men lived there long ago 

 and drank rain water." "They may be there still, 

 then?" "No. There are jinns." "What do they 

 look like?" "Nobody has seen them." "How do you 

 know they are there?" "In the morning one can some- 

 times hear a loud noise as of many birds." "And no 

 one has seen anything?" "They have seen bones." 

 "What kind of bones?" "They do not know. They 

 are afraid." Pressed on this point, Yusuf said the bones 

 were big and drew a picture in the sand which might 

 represent the vertebrte of anji;hing from a man to a 

 camel! I repeat this conversation verbatim in order to 

 show how difficult it is to draw information from a 

 Libyan Arab 1 



