In Smint, however, no cigarettes were forthcoming. The reason was not far to seek. Close to the village the Senussi had built a zawia, and a large number of the inhabitants of the village had already been converted to the tenets of the sect, or, as the natives put it, they “followed the sheykh.” The members of this sect are forbidden to smoke.
SENUSSI ZAWIA AT SMINT.
In company with the ’omda we went to call on the sheykh of the zawia. After speaking to us for a minute or two, he rather sulkily invited us to enter and treated us to the usual tea.
The zawia was an entirely unpretentious looking mud-built building, and might have been only the house of a well-to-do villager. The head of it—Sheykh Senussi by name—was quite a young man in the early twenties, and had probably been given the position owing to the fact that he had married a daughter of Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, the chief Senussi sheykh in Dakhla, who himself had a zawia at Qasr Dakhl, the largest town in the oasis, situated in its north-western corner.
He was said to be an Arab from Tripoli way, a statement that was borne out by his clothing, which consisted of the ordinary white hram of a Tripolitan Arab of the poorer class. He was very silent during the whole of our visit, and when he did condescend to speak it was generally to sneer or laugh at some remark that we made. The interview was consequently cut as short as possible.
Re-soling a Camel’s Foot.
The sharp rocks of the desert sometimes flay the entire skin from the sole of a camel’s foot, the Arabs replace this with a piece of leather sewn on to the camel’s foot. ([p. 35]).
After Qway had succeeded in extracting some barley for his camel off the ’omda we started again, for Mut, which lay about six miles away to the west.