WE HAD RIDDEN FOR several hours, when topping a rise in the sand we saw the black tents and the camels of a Bedouin encampment, and observed a general air of excitement and movement about it.
Assour looked and pronounced judgment.
“They make wedding down there,” he said. “You like to go, madams?”
“You’re sure it’s a wedding and not a riot?” I asked nervously, remembering Bedraschein. But Assour smiled and reassured me. So a half hour later we rode into the camp, and so successfully absorbed its interest that the ceremonial entrance of the bride received but scant attention.
Imagine then, a group of low black camels’-or goats’-hair tents, open to the front and all facing in one direction, away from the wind. Imagine no women at all, as they have gone on foot to meet the bridal procession and escort the bride into camp. Imagine, too, all the men newly shaved and in white, with white camels’-hair blankets draped about them, and snowy close-wrapped turbans.
And then imagine a procession approaching. First, a man on a fiery horse, the man in brilliant dress, wearing an old inlaid sword and flourishing a rifle, and the horse in a purple velvet and gold saddle cloth, and heavy silver-inlaid bridle and saddle. The horse, spurred to fury, curvets, rears, dashes madly ahead and back again, while its rider recklessly fires the gun.
Second: a camel, richly decorated, carrying three black-clad and veiled women, one behind the other, the women relatives of the bride.
Third: A white camel, equally gayly caparisoned, driven by a young boy who sits well forward, and behind him a small and certainly suffocating figure, completely covered head and all by a white blanket, which is the bride.
Fourth: A long procession of women on foot, all in black and with covered faces, singing or lamenting: I haven’t an idea which. The entire parade encircles the camp three times—all, that is, but the rider on the Arab horse. He is bargaining with Assour in Arabic for the photograph the Head wants to take, Assour saying five piasters and the ornamental gentleman ten.
“You are no Bedouin,” says Assour, contemptuously. “Why are you here? You are only a fellah. Five piasters.”
“You are the son of a camel,” says the ornamental gentleman, recklessly waving his gun. “Ten piasters and be damned to you,” or its Oriental equivalent.
The dispute has drawn all the men. We are the center of attention; the bride and her procession move on, unseen. Her camel kneels. She is taken into the bridegroom’s tent, where later on they will feast on a camel he has killed. But no one observes her. We pay five piasters, and owing to excitement and the fact that the horse is trying to stampede, succeed in getting the animal’s head only, in a blurred outline.
Then we ride away, and leave the bride to enjoy what is left of her great day.
It was only on the way to camp that I suddenly remembered something, and inquired of Assour.
“Which of those men was the bridegroom?”
“He not there,” Assour replied promptly. “He shamed; he sit in desert all today.”
“Good gracious! When does he come back?”
It appeared that he would return after nightfall, and entering his tent, where his bride sat surrounded by the women of the encampment, would there see her for the first time. Then perhaps to recover from the shock, he would retire to the outside and seat himself in the sand, where the other men would come and greet him. After that there would be the wedding feast.
For the rest of the day I surveyed the desert for some lonely, “shamed” and waiting figure, but none appeared.