We alighted at the tent of the shaykh, or chieftain. The tent appeared to be about forty feet long, divided by a partition which gave two thirds to the women and one third to the men. It was made of a coarse black stuff, which the women weave from, I believe, goat’s hair, and which resembles in its texture horsehair sacking. The tent consisted of a double pent roof, supported by four, six, eight, or more stakes, extended by means of ropes pegged in the ground. To the windward side a curtain is tacked on, that generally lets in the wind, the rain, or the snow, through the interstices. A curtain of the same stuff formed the division between the men and the women. The front was entirely open. This description may serve for all the Arab tents, with this difference, that the Bedouins, for the most part, have theirs full of rents and holes, and that they are otherwise wanting in something to make them weather-tight; so that to live under them is nearly the same as living in the open air. The furniture of a tent consists of three or four flowered carpets, about as large as bed-carpets, which they spread to sit and sleep on. For cushions they make use of the pack-saddles of the camels. The richer sort have occasionally a flowered cotton or satin coverlet, generally faded and ragged; for it never happened to me to see more than one new one. The women likewise have sometimes cane screens, prettily worked in colours, which they set up, in order not to be seen from without, in front of the tent; but they care so little for these petty luxuries, that, in the season of lambing, they will oftener pen their lambs with them than use them for themselves, although the sheep generally drop their lambs in the depth of winter.
The few utensils they have are a small copper boiler, a coffee-pot, and two or three coffee-cups of different sizes, a wooden pestle and mortar to pound coffee, and an iron ladle to roast it in: this is the apparatus for coffee-drinking, the most important business of Bedouin housekeeping. For cooking they are provided with a large flat saucepan without handles, a porridge-pot, and an iron dish something of the shape of a pewter plate. There is a flat iron dish for baking the bread, and a portable corn-mill for grinding wheat when they have any. Spoons, knives and forks, skimmers, and all the etcetera of European kitchens, they despise, and would not use if they had them.
We alighted from our horses, which Hassan tethered for us, and entered the tent. Everybody rose to receive us, and the upper place was immediately vacated for us. The shaykh’s son, untying the corner of his shirt-sleeve, produced from it half a handful of raw coffee, and, taking the ladle, proceeded himself to roast it, turning it over occasionally with an iron spoon, which was chained to the ladle that it might not be lost or stolen. The coffee, when roasted, was turned into the mortar; and, with a deliberate and solemn air, the son commenced pounding it. This he did in measured time, between every beat jingling the pestle against the sides of the mortar; a sort of music never omitted by the coffee-pounder, who gets more or less credit, according as he beats and jingles more or less in time. The sound of the mortar is the signal for all the idlers on every side to flock in, in order to get a cup of coffee, and in a few minutes we were in the midst of a dozen self-invited Bedouins. The coffee-maker then, taking out the cups from a small basket, which the better sort have to keep them in, wiped them with an old rag; for water is much too precious an article to be used on such occasions. He gave his left hand a graceful turn, poured out the coffee, drank a little himself, and then handed it to us and to Hassan. We took it without ceremony, but Hassan insisted that he could not drink before the master of the tent: much compliment ensued, and Hassan was persuaded. This beverage was poured out scalding hot from the fire; and, besides the certainty of burning the tongue, hot coffee without sugar or milk to any one but an oriental, has but a bitter and unsavoury taste.[27] The same cup (and sometimes they have but one) was often filled for another person. We were then politely asked what news there was, and who we were; for it is a rule of hospitality never to require a guest to tell his business until he has rested himself and drunk his coffee.
The sun being set, we were witnesses to the return of the herds of camels and goats and of the flocks of sheep from pasture. This, in a desert, is the most cheerful sight that can be imagined. The musical call of the herdsmen, joined with the bleating and lowing of such vast numbers of animals, covering, as they approached the tents, a circle of a league, formed a pastoral scene that can nowhere be witnessed but with the Arabs. The women milked the ewes and the goats, and folded the lambs and kids; whilst the flocks and herds, assembled within the circle of the tents, were guarded by the dogs, who patrole round the outside, and render the approach of wolves and hyenas with which the Desert is infested almost impossible. The shepherds themselves, wrapped in their pelisses of sheepskin, sleep in the midst of them.
The women now prepared the supper. Opening a sack of flour, they kneaded a certain quantity with water; and, without the aid of rolling-pins, by a rotatory motion of the left arm, they flattened the paste into a thin circular shape, about one foot and a half in diameter. They then laid it on an iron plate, placed over a fire made in a hole in the ground, and in three minutes it was baked. Lastly, they threw it on the ashes to keep it warm, until a sufficient number of these cakes were prepared: and, this done, supper was served up. It consisted, on the present occasion, of a dish of scraps of mutton chopped up with onions, and fried with butter, and a dish of boiled rice with melted butter poured over it. A circular rush mat, about three feet in diameter, was thrown on the bare ground; and, round it, before each guest, were likewise thrown (as the Arabs did not seem to make a practice of stooping) two or three of the above mentioned bread-cakes; for it is considered as the highest dereliction of hospitality among them not to put bread more than enough. As many persons as could find room round the table placed themselves at it. They doubled the left leg under them, and, sitting with their haunches on their left heel, their right leg crooked with the knee towards the chin, they rested their right arm, bared up to the elbow, upon it. Without spoons, with nothing else but their fingers, each thrust his right hand into the dish; and, grasping a handful, tossed it up as a brickmaker does his clay, until he had cooled it and squeezed out the superfluous butter, which, falling again into the dish, was taken up in the next handful, to be again served in the same way. This extraordinary mode of eating is the effect of necessity. Every thing is served up in the same saucepan in which it is cooked, and, as haste in eating (for they cannot be said to be voracious) is a marked feature among them, were any one to wait until the dish cooled to his liking, he would probably find nothing left. As, therefore, he grasps a handful too hot to hold, he jerks it up and down, until, by exposing it to the air, it is somewhat cooler. He then passes his thumb, from below upwards, across the palm of his hand, and thus conveys the huge pellet into his mouth. As soon as any one has finished, he rises, and is succeeded by another, this one by a third, and so on in succession, until either the guests are all satisfied, or, which more frequently happens, until the dish is cleared.
Instead of washing their hands after eating (as is universally practised in towns throughout the East) they drew them through the dust on the ground to remove the grease, and then wiped them on their cloaks. This excess of filth no doubt has its origin in the constant want of water: yet it has been observed that, when encamped near a stream, they will do the same thing. Coffee was again served with the same formalities as before, and a conversation of about two hours concluded the evening.
Gathering our little effects together, for fear of losing them during the night, and tethering our horses within a few feet of the tent from the like apprehension, we placed our wallets under our heads for pillows, and, covering ourselves with our pelisses, took turns to watch and sleep during the night; the ground our bed and the heavens our covering. But, although the season of the year was winter, the weather was mild, and we flattered ourselves that it would continue so.
On the third of January, before sunrise, we untied our horses, and, without inquiring for our host or he for us, departed. The hospitality of the Orientals has been much praised by many authors; but it seems to be a duty which they perform ceremoniously and coldly, unless they foresee some advantage from it.
We proceeded in an easterly direction. The plain now showed no signs of ruined habitations, as on the preceding day. We passed several mounds, generally called in Arabic Tel, like that observed near the field of battle of the Anizy and Faydân tribes. It cannot be doubted that these mounds are artificial, and served as the sites of watch-towers or of fortresses to protect villages built at the foot of them. This is probable from the similarity of shape in all of them, it being conical: and also because they are observed only through the champaign part of the Desert, where a small elevation could command the neighbouring country, and give an extent of prospect necessary for military observation. What further confirms this opinion is that, beyond the ruins of Salamyah, there are four mounds in a strait line, an exactitude not often observable in the works of nature.[28]
Immense flights of birds, known by the name of partridges of the Desert, were seen in every direction: occasionally also some eagles and cranes. It is curious to mark how the size of objects is increased when seen on the edge of the horizon in these wastes. The eagles appeared like men: and there now seemed to me to be nothing ludicrous in the misconception of General Dessaix, who, when in Egypt, took a flock of ostriches for a troop of horse, and arranged his men in order of battle for their reception.