ONE LOSES COUNT OF the days in the desert. It may have been the fourth day, or the fifth, that we encountered the Bedouin wedding.
We had been moving on with our usual extreme deliberation, the only excitement occurring when Missouri was being mounted. It was her custom on those occasions to allow the Head to get one foot into a stirrup and then to leap suddenly into the air, leaving the Head to dangle perilously like Mohammed’s coffin, between Heaven and earth.
Dahabeah was better humored. Beyond snarling at the sight of me and occasional attempts to bite my left foot she was amiable enough.
That rather small and delicate feature, my nose, had become quite insensitive to the touch, and gave every indication of being about to shed itself, as a snake sheds its skin. The Head had broken out in a fine rash. At least he called it a rash, but in his heart he suspected fleas. As he had also taken a heavy cold, he alternated between wiping his nose and scratching, and was extremely busy.
Even Assour’s dark face had taken on a deeper hue, and Abou Taleb would have been invisible outside the circle of candle light in the dining tent, without his long white gown.
In the camps, pitched sometimes high on a dune and sometimes low in a hollow of the sand, there was not much variety. Now and again, when the camels had not come back from their trips for water until after nightfall, Smeda would take the old blunderbuss and fire a signal to direct them on their way. And we had had one sand storm, but not a severe one.
I wakened in the night to feel my bed vibrating as the tent wall was pushed against it by the gale, and to hear the men driving in the tent pegs with, muffled hammers. But except for a fine coating of sand over and inside of everything the next morning, we had no ill results. Later, on the way to Bagdad, I was to have my front hair neatly sheared off by the flying sand. But that was not yet.
In the main, all was well with us. I had mastered the combination of hiss, kick and prod from behind which would send Dahabeah into a neck-breaking trot, and not to allow my tongue between my teeth at such moments. I had also succeeded at least once in turning her by her single rein, and I had leaped a ditch on her! But this last was without intention, and I claim no merit for it.
We had found a small oasis, watered by desert wells, and unfortunately under process of irrigation. Before we knew it we were in a field surrounded by running ditches, and so far as the camels were concerned, there we were going to remain.
Again and again, Abdul Baggi behind and I above, we put Dahabeah to that ditch. And she yelled and scolded, turned and backed, but into it she would not go. Then suddenly her hind legs sank beneath me, and I called for help.
“She’s lying down!”
But she was not. She was preparing to jump. And jump she did, far and wide. I think she probably holds the record for a standing broad jump, and I was on her!
Outside of these small incidents, however, our progress was slow and unexciting. At the camps food came to us in dignified and mysterious fashion. Out of the night, or the early morning, a quaint patriarchal figure would be seen approaching, staff in hand and voluminous cloak wrapped about it. It would seat itself near the cook tent, and perhaps take coffee. After that and only in due course of time, it would produce from some hidden place fresh eggs, or a live pigeon or two, or perhaps a dozen tiny quail.
Game was always brought alive, and the only way to enjoy one’s evening dinner was resolutely to put the morning out of mind. Once the Head came to my tent, with what seemed to be a mother quail calling loudly under his arm. But it was not; it was the trapper’s lure, a bit of stick covered with red calico and fur, and emitting on being squeezed the call of the mother bird. The patriarch who brought it sits in the scrub somewhere, wherever he can find any, and looks as much like a quail as possible. Under his arm is the call, which he can squeeze without moving, and when the baby birds come a-running he throws a net over them.
We paid, I think, two piasters each for them, or ten cents.
When and how the milk came I did not learn, but we were never without it. And as to whether it was cow’s milk or not I did not care to inquire, in a country which uses milk from camels, sheep, goats and water buffalo. Whatever its source, it was clean and fresh always for our breakfast tray, with its ham and eggs, or omelet, or crisp bacon, its coffee and its toast.
We were then doing very well. And it was on the fourth or maybe the sixth day that we encountered our Arab wedding.