Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/98

82 been with an equally numerous gathering of white men. Acquaintances, as they met, greeted one another with the customary salaams, the younger ones kissing the hands of their older friends; grave Marabouts, whose hands or shoulders or the edges of whose bournouses were kissed by their followers, laid their palms upon the heads bent down before them in token of their greeting and blessing; friends also kissed each other on the cheeks, as is the custom in Poland.

Near the caravanserai we turned into a small street where coffee is roasted and ground, horses are shod, ropes are made and bags for the transport of merchandise on camels are strongly stitched, where, in a word, everything that is needed by the owners or drivers of caravans is prepared or offered for sale.

Farther along in Kaldoun Street one finds many small dentist's offices, where the local specialists use all sorts of medicaments and magic means—which are, however, under the strict control of the French authorities—as well as talismans and incantations, though at present they more often effect a cure by the ordinary chirurgical means of extraction. These Arab dentists use quite different instruments from those of the European practitioners of today, including small levers such as were in use during my childhood by the assistants of Russian country doctors, and forceps of their own invention; and some of the Arab doctors, who have no special equipment for dental work, perform feats little short of miracles in pulling out teeth with their own forcep-like fingers.

Though this Kaldoun Street is so named because it is the abode of the "extractors of teeth," one finds here also