The wedding party is now over, and the guests are departing. Each one on leaving says, "by your pleasure, good evening!" The host answers, "go in peace, you have honored us." The guests reply, "we have been honored, Allah give the newly married ones an arees," (a bridegroom). They would not dare wish that Shaheen and Handûmeh might some day have a little baby girl. That would be thought an insult.
We will walk up the hill to our mountain home, passing the fountain and the great walnut trees. Here comes a horseman. It is Ali, who has been spending a month among the Bedawin Arabs. He will come up and stay with us, and tell us of his adventures. He says that the Sit Harba, the wife of the great Arab Sheikh ed Dukhy, taught him a number of the Bedawin Nursery Songs, and although he is weary with his journey, he will repeat some of them in Arabic.
They are all about camels and spears and fighting and similar subjects, and no wonder, as they see nothing else, and think of nothing else.
To-morrow is the feast day,
We've no "henna" on our hands;
Our camels went to bring it,
From far off distant lands;
We'll rise by night and listen,
The camel bells will ring;
And say a thousand welcomes
To those who "henna" bring.
And here is a song which shows that the Bedawin have the same habit of cursing their enemies, which we noticed in the Druze lullabys:
On the rose and sweetest myrtle,
May you sleep, my eyes, my boy;
But may sharpest thorns and briars,
All your enemies destroy!
Ali says that one of the most mournful songs he heard in the desert was the following:
I am like a wounded camel,
I grind my teeth in pain;
My load is great and heavy,
I am tottering again.
My back is torn and bleeding,
My wound is past relief,
And what is harder still to bear,
None other knows my grief!
The next is a song which the people sung in the villages on the borders of the desert. By "the sea" they mean the Sea of Galilee: