Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/350

334 water can be led down from them to flow out over the lands and make possible the culture of the dates, figs, pomegranates and grapes that mean sustenance and life to the inhabitants of the oasis. In the stretches not set with trees one finds also small fields of grain and vegetables.

But even with the resolution of tire great problem of water and the frequent genial contact there has been between men of the different villages, working in some mole runway underground or laboriously driving a shaft through formations of rock to form an artery for the life-blood of the land, the old enmity has not entirely disappeared, as an evidence of which one can still find families that will not permit marriage with the inhabitants of a neighboring ksur and even some men of such obstinate ill-will that they will not deign to enter one of the other settlements.

The delegates from all the villages meet in a neutral place, in the local agora of the Figig council, which gathers in the patio of the square white building that has been erected for this purpose. Owing to this traditional and deep-seated antagonism between the various individuals, these Berbers never can succeed in choosing a chairman acceptable to all, so that they deliberate without one and with such a concomitant of noise, vociferous demonstrations and real parliamentary pandemonium that one would never believe they could come to anything but blows. However, in some mysterious fashion they arrive at an understanding and formulate decisions.

Illustrative of their difficulties. Colonel Pariel recounted to us a very amusing and characteristic case.