224 THE SECRET OF SAHARA: KUFARA 



el Abed and the next day, as a reminder that the 

 hospitahty of the East is unbounded and must be 

 accepted with the simpHcity with which it is offered, 

 the number of dishes was doubled and there were no 

 fewer than twenty loaves ranged round the tray, while 

 the centre plat was no longer a bowl, it was literally 

 a bath of mellow, golden rice in which lay the buttery 

 fragments of a whole sheep. Two hours each morning 

 were spent in that quiet room going through the various 

 ceremonies dependent on "breakfasting." When the 

 highly spiced and peppered coiFee was finished, there 

 were always the three glasses of green tea, hot and 

 strong, with dignified slow conversation, punctuated by 

 many pauses, while the brazier smoke made little 

 hypnotic spirals, and through the open door a splash of 

 sunlight crept over the castellated wall and hngered on 

 the purple and rose of the carpets between the great 

 arches of the loggia. 



About eleven o'clock, scented and very replete, we 

 took ceremonious leave of our host and departed slowly, 

 but the instant the doors of Sidi Idris's house closed 

 on the last "Aleikum salaam" of the departing slave, 

 we dropped the ponderous and reflective gait suited to 

 our exalted position and ran across the great court to 

 shut ourselves up in the "harem," the only really 

 private bit of the house, with pencils and paper. How 

 we regretted, as we struggled with angles and degrees, 

 the perverse distrust with which the Zouias regard even 

 a compass. We used to have the most frantic argu- 

 ments about our primitive maps, but Hassanein was 

 nearly always right as to direction and I as to distance, 

 fruit of so many long journeys in the desert, where all 

 landmarks appear three times as near as they really are. 

 We worked solidly till four or five, though there were 

 nearly always interruptions — Mohammed, to say that we 



