Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/249

Rh place was so thorough a charlatan that he was not even abashed when we approached him in company with an official chouse, for he turned his impudent face in our direction and winked one of his eyes as though he were plainly saying:

"My physics will not help, but they will also do no harm; so do not prevent me from fooling these poor individuals. I, too, must live."

A cure was just in progress. The figure of a bedraggled woman, wrapped in a dirty rag of a bournous, stood unveiled before the hakim. The greenish-gray hue of her face combined with the lusterless eyes and a cough that shook her wasted frame to make clear the severity of the patient's malady. She stood before the wonderworker humble and silent with her gaze fixed upon a figure which he had drawn in the sand. Then the "doctor" held up a bottle containing, as he loudly advertised, water from a magic spring—but which he probably took from the nearest well—recited continuously some unintelligible phrases, prayed intermittently and then touched the head, breast and abdomen of the patient with the bottle. Following this, he made her drink some of the water, took from her a coin and threw the dirty haik over her face, as he lightly pushed her toward the crowd to make place for the next "happy victim." As the woman walked away stiff, indifferent and silent, the chouse, laughing, explained to me:

"The people here in Marrakesh continue to go to the hakims in spite of the fact that there is an immense French hospital for natives in Mamunia Park. They are so stupid!"