Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/574

528 selamlik is met with at rarest intervals. During my travels in the Orient, covering a period of two years and a half, I met with him only once. On this occasion, trusting to my long experience among Moslems, I had the misfortune to quarter myself and party in the fanatic's house during his absence in the fields. On his return he demanded, politely but firmly, that I vacate his premises. For the moment this upset my notions and my experience in regard to Oriental hospitality. But this was an unusual case, for, contrary to the belief which we have inherited from the Crusaders, the religious fanatic is very rare among Moslems. Indeed, during the month of Ramadhan, in which every one, except travellers, must abstain from food, water, and tobacco from sunrise to sunset, many a village priest has enjoyed a cigarette with me, thus committing a deadly sin and imperilling his immortal soul, merely to be polite and hospitable.

In a given village there are as many selamliks, or men's quarters, as there are consequential householders. Many villagers maintain a more pretentious selamlik, to which they give the name of mussafir oda, or stranger's chamber. Besides this, many villages have erected at the expense of the village community a special house, also called mussafir oda, for the entertainment of the stranger within its gates. This house is not supplied with furniture or utensils of any kind, with the exception of the vessels necessary for concocting coffee—a drink exceedingly dear to the Oriental heart. It merely affords shelter to travelling man and beast, so that the traveller must needs bring his bedding and cooking utensils along with him. The raw materials for food may be procured from the villagers, and the weary traveller has the fun of cooking them himself, unless he be lordly enough to bring with him his own cook. But when one stops at the selamlik in the private house of a villager, he is fed at the table of the house-owner. The food is prepared by the villager's wife, but the lady herself does not appear. This is always true in the case of the more prosperous villager, but in that of his equally genteel though more humble neighbor the lines are not drawn so strictly in the matter of the non-appearance of the wife, who frequently simply cannot overcome her burning curiosity in regard to the outlander, and does appear before or after dinner; once there, she examines with undisguised interest and amazement all one's belongings. The courteous, dignified treatment and respectful kindness one receives in the houses of these humble gentlemen—nature's gentlemen—are a beautiful thing and a possession to store away in the memory. It must be confessed that the houses are rarely clean, and fairly swarm with several kinds of unmentionable vermin, many specimens of which the guest always carries away with him. But that is a mere unpleasant detail, for ungrudging, unstinted hospitality, astonishingly Homeric in character and quite worthy of the Phæacians, is there. True democracy is found only in the Orient, where all eat together, host and guest, master and servant, Moslem and Christian,—all sitting on legs crossed beneath them round the foot-high circular table.

The hospitality and thoughtful care of the Oriental villager for the welfare and comfort of the traveller through parched or desert regions are shown in still other ways. Little lodges, consisting of walls roofed over, but open on the sunless side, are built by village communities situated on the outskirts of waterless regions. These lodges are barely large enough to contain a huge earthen jar of water and a cup. They are located in the waterless district, often at a distance of from one to two hours (or more) from the village which maintains them. It is the duty of a certain man of the village to keep the water-jar of a given lodge supplied with water, and that man neglects his own business to take a donkey-load of water each day to the jar in the lodge under his care. The pure humanity of it all is very touching, especially when one has been a beneficiary of the act. Surely they have their reward, for they give the cup of cold water at the price of toil and sweat. The same spirit of humanity prompts the villagers to erect fountains, discharging pure water from their spouts, and watering-troughs for animals, in mountainous regions where one could not easily get water without this divine forethought.

The villagers who entertain the stranger