Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/355

Rh Failing response to this, it is considered that the soul has left the body and that burial preparations should be immediately begun. Without allowing any further period of time to elapse, the relatives quickly prepare the body and carry it to the cemetery for interment. With this most primitive method of determining whether life is extinct, there have occurred, I was told, cases in which men who were still alive have been placed in the ground.

The dead are laid on their sides with their faces toward the kiblah, that is, looking in the direction of Mecca. After the burial ceremony the relatives hold a banquet, which resembles very closely the ancient Slavic burialfeast, or trizna, the primitive forms of which have been preserved in Russia in the pominki. With the Berbers the feast comprises several varieties of kouskcus, which again marks a parallel with the Russian custom of serving wheat, buckwheat and rice. In this use of the cereal foods the influence of the East is visible, marking a change from the earlier form of trizna, at which only a horse or an ox was slaughtered and no vegetable foods whatever were served.

During our subsequent excursions the sun continuously hid itself behind clouds that frequently poured upon us. Under the ever-courteous guidance of Colonel Pariel we visited the whole reach of the neighboring valley of the Zusfana, ran over much of the desert surrounding Figig and, in the course of our several expeditions, at one time came upon a region of serried aregs, or low hills in the desert, covered in places with a thin coating of alfa-grass and elsewhere with thousands of Anabasises.

At one point along the river, where the stream cuts