Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/183

THE DESERT CAPITAL feast which the sheikh gave the entire village in honor of his birthday. Feeding the poor in this wholesale way is regarded by the Arabs as a deed of great merit. A slaughtered camel provided the pièce de résistance of the banquet. In the center of the room was placed an enormous tray piled with a mountain of burghul, or boiled wheat, into which had been inserted huge pieces of camel's meat. A large funnel-shaped depression had been scooped out in the top of the pile and filled with melted butter. This percolated through the mass and added the final touch of flavor to what was—if you liked it—a most rich and delicious repast. The anxious villagers were then admitted in groups of eight or ten. They immediately squatted around the tray, thrust their hands into the mass, grasped as much as they could, plunged it into their mouths and, in order not to lose any time, swallowed it with as little mastication as possible. One greedy fellow got an unusually large chunk of camel's meat into his throat and, as a consequence, nearly choked to death before his comrades relieved him by strenuous blows upon his back.

In order to visit Hama, we returned from Palmyra by another route; and, as a large part of this journey was to be across a trackless, waterless and absolutely uninhabited desert, we engaged a Bedouin to act as our guide.

Not long after setting out, we passed through a gap in the hills a quarter of a mile wide, whose sides [ 141 ]