THE "CITIES" OF KUFARA 219 



old zawia established by the ekhwan of Sidi Ben Ali. It 

 is an insignificant building, very low, with a dark, bare 

 mosque, large and very well kept, and in a further room 

 a qubba of the daughters of Sidi el Mahdi. This tomb 

 is enclosed in a green wooden frame and hung with 

 quantities of ostrich eggs. It is much venerated and in 

 one of the courts we saw some pilgrims from Wadai, 

 fierce-looking blacks with rosaries and long palm staves. 

 The whole life of an Arab town goes on within the 

 high, impenetrable walls. Otherwise they are cities of 

 the dead. I doubt if we saw a dozen figures in the streets 

 of Jof till we came to the Tebu settlement, yet it has a 

 population of some seven hundred. The women literally 

 never set foot outside their houses. The whole time I 

 was in Taj I never saw a woman except one or two 

 elderly black slaves. It must be an extraordinary life 

 within a few square feet bounded by blind walls. The 

 ladies of the Sayeds' families can visit each other perhaps, 

 as in Taj the houses of the Senussi family are adjoining. 

 But I have never been in any Eastern town where life 

 was so reserved and aloof. Presumably the men gossip, 

 but if so, they do it in each other's houses, for one never 

 sees a group in the streets. Very occasionally one notices 

 a grave figure with brass ewer or humble teapot, per- 

 forming the necessary ablution at sunset before saying 

 the obligatory praj^ers, or perhaps a reflective grey- 

 bearded individual standing at an open door. The great 

 difference between the Senussi towns and any other desert 

 city is the entire absence in the former of the cafes, which 

 usually form the centre of life and movem.ent. They 

 vary in size and splendour, but, from Omdurman to 

 Tuggourt, one finds in every village at least a mud-walled 

 room with rough benches and little tables, or, in the 

 more primitive places, merely a raised ledge running 

 round the walls, where all the menfolk gossip over long- 



