Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/207

200 a wish to dress before I received visitors; so only my hostess remained. She afterward led me to her room on the ground-floor. It was spacious, but very low. Beds, bedding, and carpets were piled up on a raised stone bench on one side, and on the other cooking utensils, dishes, jars, and stores were arranged. At the end of the room, opposite the door, a carpet was spread, and there I was invited to sit down to breakfast. In a corner a woman was preparing meat for cooking, and a large charcoal brazier stood near the door, where a girl was roasting coffee-berries. This room was evidently the parlor, bedroom, and kitchen, all in one. A charcoal-cellar and the stables occupied the other part of the ground-floor.

The mother of my host was busy superintending the baking of the loaves she had made that morning; so I went to the baking-house at the end of the street to see her. Stacks of wood, tree-branches, and thorn-bushes were piled up just outside the entrance to it. I peeped inside the low, stone building. It was like a furnace. The flat loaves were placed on large sheets of iron, which were heated from beneath by a glowing and crackling wood fire. Several women, whose faces, all but the kohl-stained eyes, were vailed, were waiting to take their cakes of bread in to be baked. They held them on round trays made of wicker-work and straw. A poor little boy, who looked very hungry, came with only one small loaf, and watched anxiously for his turn.

A white, semi-transparent lizard ran out from between the stones by the door. I stooped forward to examine it. The women around shrieked out exclamations of horror and disgust. In answer to my questions, they said, "Ya sittee, that is an evil reptile, he crawls over bread or other food, and breathes his poisonous breath upon it, so that he who eats that corrupted food may die, or be as one smitten with leprosy." Mohammed, our Egyptian groom, who approached at the moment, leading the white mare, said, "God preserve us! The words of the women are true words."