We must return before sunset, when the gates are locked and the keys are carried to the Hajj, a vain precaution, when a donkey could clear half a dozen places in the town wall. The call to evening prayer sounds as we enter: none of my companions pray [20], but all when asked reply in the phrase which an Englishman hates, "Inshallah Bukra"—"if Allah please, to- morrow!"—and they have the decency not to appear in public at the hours of devotion. The Somal, like most Africans, are of a somewhat irreverent turn of mind. [21] When reproached with gambling, and asked why they persist in the forbidden pleasure, they simply answer "Because we like." One night, encamped amongst the Eesa, I was disturbed by a female voice indulging in the loudest lamentations: an elderly lady, it appears, was suffering from tooth-ache, and the refrain of her groans was, "O Allah, may thy teeth ache like mine! O Allah, may thy gums be sore as mine are!" A well-known and characteristic tale is told of the Gerad Hirsi, now chief of the Berteri tribe. Once meeting a party of unarmed pilgrims, he asked them why they had left their weapons at home: they replied in the usual phrase, "Nahnu mutawakkilin"—"we are trusters (in Allah)." That evening, having feasted them hospitably, the chief returned hurriedly to the hut, declaring that his soothsayer ordered him at once to sacrifice a pilgrim, and begging the horror-struck auditors to choose the victim. They cast lots and gave over one of their number: the Gerad placed him in another hut, dyed his dagger with sheep's blood, and returned to say that he must have a second life. The unhappy pilgrims rose en masse, and fled so wildly that the chief, with all the cavalry of the desert, found difficulty in recovering them. He dismissed them with liberal presents, and not a few jibes about their trustfulness. The wilder Bedouins will inquire where Allah is to be found: when asked the object of the question, they reply, "If the Eesa could but catch him they would spear him upon the spot,—who but he lays waste their homes and kills their cattle and wives?" Yet, conjoined to this truly savage incapability of conceiving the idea of a Supreme Being, they believe in the most ridiculous exaggerations: many will not affront a common pilgrim, for fear of being killed by a glance or a word.
Our supper, also provided by the hospitable Hajj, is the counterpart of the midday dinner. After it we repair to the roof, to enjoy the prospect of the far Tajurrah hills and the white moonbeams sleeping upon the nearer sea. The evening star hangs like a diamond upon the still horizon: around the moon a pink zone of light mist, shading off into turquoise blue, and a delicate green like chrysopraz, invests the heavens with a peculiar charm. The scene is truly suggestive: behind us, purpling in the night-air and silvered by the radiance from above, lie the wolds and mountains tenanted by the fiercest of savages; their shadowy mysterious forms exciting vague alarms in the traveller's breast. Sweet as the harp of David, the night- breeze and the music of the water come up from the sea; but the ripple and the rustling sound alternate with the hyena's laugh, the jackal's cry, and the wild dog's lengthened howl.
Or, the weather becoming cold, we remain below, and Mohammed Umar returns to read out more "Book of Lights," or some pathetic ode. I will quote in free translation the following production of the celebrated poet Abd el Rahman el Burai, as a perfect specimen of melancholy Arab imagery:
"No exile is the banished to the latter end of earth,
The exile is the banished to the coffin and the tomb
"He hath claims on the dwellers in the places of their birth
Who wandereth the world, for he lacketh him a home.
"Then, blamer, blame me not, were my heart within thy breast,
The sigh would take the place of thy laughter and thy scorn.
"Let me weep for the sin that debars my soul of rest,
The tear may yet avail,—all in vain I may not mourn! [22]
"Woe! woe to thee, Flesh!—with a purer spirit now
The death-day were a hope, and the judgment-hour a joy!
"One morn I woke in pain, with a pallor on my brow,
As though the dreaded Angel were descending to destroy:
"They brought to me a leech, saying, 'Heal him lest he die!'
On that day, by Allah, were his drugs a poor deceit!