Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/227

Rh and vegetables, and a dessert of oranges and figs and almonds and raisins, winding up with a delicious cup of coffee. This is very well; but, after all, we only get one meal, while our poor fellows, whom we pity so, feast all the time that the supper is preparing, and devour it a hundred times with their eyes before they take it into their mouths. By-and-by the heap of coals is opened, and the cake turned over. A few minutes more, and the cooking is complete. What would Charles Lamb, who wrote with such delicious humor of the enjoyment in the cooking as well as the eating of roast pig, say to this feast of the desert? When the loaf comes out, it is certainly well done, though thickly crusted with ashes. However, they do not mind that; but dusting it off with an old rag, proceed to break it up into a pot with some greasy mixture, making the whole a thick porridge. Thus the meal is prepared, and now the circle gathers round it, when a boy comes along with a water-skin, pouring a little on the fingers of all in the group, who then proceed, one after the other, to dip their hands in the dish. How their faces shine as they take the savory mess! When they have scraped the pot with their fingers till not a thimbleful remains, then comes the crown of the feast — what is better to them than any dessert — the pipe! They bring out their chibouques, and fill them, and take long, long drafts — deep inhalations. If any one is so unfortunate as not to have a pipe, or tobacco to fill it, his neighbor, in the true spirit of Oriental hospitality, takes his own pipe from his mouth, and puts it into the mouth of his brother, and thus they rejoice together. All these things combined make a feast which an epicure might envy.

But this is not all. Then begins the flow of conversation, which is the delight of the Bedaween, as of more civilized peoples. The camp-fire on the desert is what the