Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/35

Rh Jew that revised the text of the Koran, debauched the ritual and customs of Islam and left to the tribes who recognized him as their prophet a body of magic practices, which are carried out as well by the women—dancers, singers and witches—as by certain of the men, who exercise their art as sorcerers or makers of talismans. It is even said that the Mlaina are really a Gipsy tribe.

Such was the enigmatical company that Zofiette and I met in the village nègre, when we as yet knew nothing about the mysterious Mlaina and consequently asked no further questions, only photographing the trio and directing them to proceed with the dance for which they had been promised their twenty francs. One of the men took from his belt a flute and began to play a weird, plaintive tune replete with long-drawn monotonous notes, while the other beat the measure by clapping his hands and the woman sang some verses of a far-from-inspiring song, executing after each some movements of their native dance, among them the now-classical "shimmy," which had its origin in the Gipsy corenta. The whole performance was tedious, ugly and uninteresting, so that we were soon glad to get away from the malodorous temple of the Oran Terpsichore.

After this disillusionment we searched no further in Oran for glimpses of the Arab life, unless we count as such the very different visit to the large mosque of Jama el-Pasha, which was erected in the eighteenth century with the money received as ransom for the Christian slaves in commemoration of the expulsion of the Spaniards from Oran. There in the shaded court of the