Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/298

282 time to grow old. Better look for a young girl here among our women."

Once more the crowd shouted with laughter and bantered him with jokes and gibes. Er-Rbi'a stood silent in their midst, waited for calm to return and then answered in serious tones:

"I don't want your women. They are slaves, timid, cringing and thoughtless. They fade like flowers in the sun."

"And yours from the mountains, are they better?"

"The women of the Sous are the daughters of kings. When they grace one with their regard, happiness sings in the heart; when they love a man, to him is given the paradise of Allah on earth."

Er-Rbi'a spoke his last words sadly and, looking off into the distance where the contours of low-lying mountains, the last outposts of the Atlas, showed above the hazy dust-clouds of the desert, wrapped himself in his bournous and went away to dream and continue his search.

Such is the Sous land and such is the fate of their beautiful women and of their men who follow their old instinct for roaming the earth. It would seem that some ancient, never-ending tragedy has its stage in these mountains.

Once the sultans located sugar plantations in these uplands and forced the Sous to cultivate the soil and harvest the crop. Story has it that the mountaineers often asked for Christian slaves as a reward for their work. Perhaps it was they who brought the lighter element into the complexion of these people and infused into the