"Salaam Aleikum," we had been received with as the Shaykh stood up to welcome us on our arrival, unexpected and uninvited, in the midst of his tribe. We had been guided to his tent by the long spear which stood upright at the door, and when he had offered us that token of Arab goodwill—the cup of coffee—we knew that we were amongst friends. He waved us to our seats, and then, seating himself, pulled the child towards him; he patted his own chest, and then pointed to the lad with pride.
"His youngest child," interpreted Ali, who accompanied us, and who understood a few words of Arabic.
We nodded back our looks of appreciation, and, these preliminary acts of courtesy having established the requisite good feeling, all need for further converse seemed at an end, and a comfortable silence fell upon us all.
The whole village had followed us into their chief's tent as a matter of course, and those for whom there was no room inside herded together at the door. The Eastern standard of ideas, which allows respectful equality with one's superiors, was responsible for the total absence of ill-mannered jostling which would have characterised a civilised crowd under similar circumstances on the reception of strange foreigners.
The coffee-maker reached out his hand without turning, and one amongst the crowd at his back handed him a massive iron spoon on to which was chained a copper ladle. The Shaykh's little son, obeying a nod from his father, pulled a bag out of a dark recess behind him; another bundle of brushwood was thrown upon the fire and by the light of its sudden, almost startling blaze, the lad untied the bag and carefully counted out the allotted number of coffee-berries. The coffee-maker dropped them into the spoon, for which he had raked out a hole in the ashes. The slight stir caused by these proceedings subsided, the blaze died away, and the attention of all was again riveted on us, save that only of the coffee-maker, who, sitting close up to the embers, now scraped the white ashes round the pot, now turned the roasting berries over with the ladle chained to the spoon. The Shaykh's hand stole on to the little boy's head, and the boy, looking up, stroked the old man's beard. On we sat in the dark silence, learning from these true masters of Time how neither to waste it nor to let it drag, but going step by step with it, to lay ourselves open to receive all that it had to give.
The silence was so prolonged and so intense that, silently as time flies, we could almost hear its moments ticking away. It has been said that we take no note of time except when we count its loss. It might be said of all Easterns that they are unconscious of the time they lose, because they take no note of it; they live unconsciously up to the fact that, the past being beyond recall and the future unfathomable, the present only is in our power. And the Eastern is master of Time because he spends it absorbing the present.
Meanwhile the berries had blackened, and the man emptied them into a copper mortar. As he pounded them he caused the pestle to ring in tune against the sides of the bowl. The child laughed gleefully and pointed at him; the stern old man smiled and shot a proud glance over at us.
"Fiddle away, old Time," rang out the tones of the metal pestle. It seemed to give voice to our joyful derision of Time; here was Time trying to weary us with himself, and we only laughed at him.
"Fiddle away, old Time—
Fiddle away, old Fellow!