The latter statement unfortunately proved to be true. According to the mamur, he was a most depraved and habitual drunkard. This, however, was an exaggeration.
Between him and this ’omda there was very little love lost. Shortly before my arrival they had quarrelled furiously. I never heard the cause of the dispute—it was probably a case of cherchez la femme, for Dakhla is one of those unfortunate places where, as Byron so nearly expressed it, “man’s love is of his wife a thing apart, ’tis woman’s whole persistence.” These small-minded natives will squabble over the most trivial matters and keep the quarrel going for years. Often a tiff of the most puerile kind will become a family matter and end in a regular hereditary feud. In the Nile Valley this often leads to bloodshed. In the oases, however, the quarrel usually takes the form of the two sides to abusing and telling lies about each other behind their backs, wrangling whenever they chance to meet, and endeavouring at every possible opportunity to subject their opponent to an ayb (insult, slight, snub) often of a most elaborate description.
Shortly before my arrival the ’omda, getting sick of the squabble, or finding that the mamur was making things too unpleasant for him, had held out the olive branch by sending him a basket of early mulberries—a fruit much appreciated in the oasis. The mamur had made this an opportunity to humiliate his opponent. He had thrown the fruit out of his window into the square in front of the mosque, where all the inhabitants had seen it. It was generally considered that he had scored heavily by doing so, and that this was one of the best aybs that had been seen for years. The whole oasis had been talking about it.
The partisans of the ’omda were consequently much discomforted; but endeavoured to cover up their defeat by explaining that it hadn’t really been a good ayb—the mamur had not thrown the whole of the mulberries away, as he had stated, but had taken out all the best ones and had only thrown away the rotten ones out of his window; so as an ayb it didn’t count at all.
The ill-feeling between these two at length rose to such a pitch that some of the leading men in the oasis decided to try and effect a reconciliation between them, and a ceremony known as “making the peace” took place.
The two opponents were invited to meet together in the presence of some of their friends, who had argued with them, and at length the quarrel had been patched up. They had then fallen on each other’s necks and embraced and had agreed to feed together. They had partaken of a huge feast in which whisky apparently played a prominent part, and had both got drunk and started quarrelling furiously again, in their cups. The next morning, when they were both probably feeling rather cheap, the peace-makers had got to work again and explained to them that they had not played the game, and again a reconciliation had been effected; but there was still a good deal of latent ill-feeling between them which vented itself mostly in backbiting, under a show of friendship.
CHAPTER IV
BY Qway’s advice I started feeding my camels on bersim, preparatory to our journey into the dunes. There are two kinds of bersim grown in the oasis: bersim beladi[1] and bersim hajazi.[2] Bersim hajazi, however, should not be fed to camels in its green state, as it very frequently causes them to get hoven.
The bersim was bought off the natives by the kantar, of a hundred Egyptian pounds. At first there was some difficulty in getting it weighed. Abd er Rahman, however, proved equal to the emergency. He discovered a rock, which was supposed to weigh a kantar, and which was the standard weight for the whole oasis. He then rigged up a pair of scales, consisting of two baskets fixed to either end of a beam, suspended from a second beam.