During the morning the Arab will go about his business either in the town or out on the plain. If he is at home he will eat a light lunch at eleven-thirty, but this is not an important meal, and out on the Sahara he will content himself with a piece of bread and some milk. Time to an Arab is a very vague convention once he has got up. At first it exasperates the European who has been brought up to regular habits, but one realizes little by little that one’s exasperation is a complete mystery to them, and one gives up worrying about punctuality. It is very annoying sometimes when one has made all one’s plans to begin a long excursion early in the morning to find the start fixed for noon, or to invite a lot of men for dinner at seven-thirty and find some arrive at six-thirty, some at eight-thirty, and some not at all!
Photographs by Mr. Julian Sampson
A “Propriétaire”
Numidian Type: Musician of a Marabout
A Moorish Villa
That is another custom which it takes a long time to understand, and one is left hurt that people invited do not arrive, and often do not even make an excuse or consider that one is necessary. It comes from the fact that in all their houses dinner is always going for a dozen or so of people, and one more or less does not count. Every one sits down when the meal is ready, and no one troubles to count the guests. Of course this does not apply to a regular invitation to dinner made with the definite purpose of meeting some one or listening to music; in cases like that no one would dream of being discourteous. At the same time it is very rare for an Arab definitely to accept or refuse an invitation. To your request that he will take a meal with you to-morrow he will reply, “Inch Allah”—“If God wills it”!
Against this, if you are on friendly terms with the Arabs, you can arrive about meal time—no surprise will be shown, and you will squat down and share the meal as if it were your daily habit. In the same way, if some man came in to see one about six-thirty in the evening he would expect to be asked to dine, which is often awkward in a European household.