MARKET AT UM BURU
Bukara is one of the most traveled Bedouins that I have come across. He is only thirty-three, and yet he has traveled to Wadai, Borku, Bornu, and Darfur. He has seen days of good fortune in the past, but to-day he owns but one camel. He has thrown in his lot with my caravan, arranging with Bu Helega that he is to have a share of the money received for the latter’s camels when they are sold at the end of the journey.
He speaks most of the dialects of the black tribes and knows a great deal about them. He is also a wonderful mimic. One evening he put on the green cloth that formed a partition in my tent as a burnoos and, with Sad and Hamid bleating like sheep behind him, came to the camp pretending to be a Bedouin sheikh, bringing the two sheep as diafa. We were kept in roars of laughter, and suddenly Bukara flung away the green cloth and, snatching a spear from one of the Tebus, broke into a Tebu war-dance. A Tebu assisted him by beating a rhythm on one of the small empty fantasses. This droll exhibition was followed by a concert of Bedouin songs from Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and Tripoli.
I have seen Bukara refuse to mount a camel to ride when all the Bedouins have yielded to the temptation.
“Why don’t you ride, Bukara?” I asked. “There are several unloaded camels.”
“What would my washoon [wife] say if she heard that her Bukara had ridden between Arkenu and Ouenat?” he replied with scorn in his voice for the thought.
He told me that on one occasion he had been intrusted with some fifty camels to take to Ouenat for grazing. He was alone and ran short of food.
“For twelve days I ate no meal, except the pips of colocynth, which upset my digestion,” he replied simply. “Then I reached Kufra. The men at Kufra who had sent me for the camels had forgotten to send me food. They had expected me at Kufra earlier.”
“But why didn’t you slaughter a camel?” I inquired.