Algernon Blackwood

“ There is scorn in their eyes, as they circle about their wives. High on their splendid camels, they have a regal air, making the great brutes turn and double as easily as horses, and shouting angrily if anyone goes near the water-sellers. This is their last watering-place before the Tomb is reached, and to trifle with a Bedouin’s water is like trifling with his wives. And no wonder they wear this princely mien, for the whole Imperial Desert is their home. Upon the slower camels in their lordly train, sometimes four abreast, their women, all carefully veiled, sit with the little children. ”

“ At sunrise the tents are struck, and the entire mass moves on across the sand in single file, a procession stretching for miles. At the Tomb itself, two days later, to the light of a thousand camp fires, the Fantasia is renewed in full earnest The animals are sacrificed. There is endless praying, dancing, singing, acting and the rest. Then all return the way they went. The Bedouin scatter again to their various resting-places in the desert-home. The camels come slouching and shuffling through the sands past Helouan. ”

“ The Fantasia grows fast and furious, while the crouching camels munch and the cries of goats and donkeys mingle with the women’s weird ululating. In one corner a ring is formed and the band begins to play⁠—two pipes and a tomtom. To the endless repetition of a single phrase, half melody, half chant enters a Sheikh upon his Arab horse. The gold and silver trappings gleam in the moonlight. His headdress shines; the horse’s metal necklace chinks and rattles. Holding the reins in one hand, the other grips a staff with its point in the sand ”

“ Little fires spring up, built over stones. Voices are low; noises die down one by one⁠—braying of donkeys, gurgling grunts of camels, bleating of goats and kids soon to be sacrificed. Groups gather closely round he fires, for the night air nips. Coffee is made in tiny china cups, and the gaunt heads of the camels thrust forward over the very shoulders of their owners They chew and chew and chew. Those dark bundles in the sand lying apart by themselves, are men already asleep, wrapped from head to feet in sheets of black and blue and white and yellow. ”

“ The rejoicing is among themselves, no question of display or showing off for others. They simply do what they have done for centuries, and will do for centuries to come. A sense of something eternal, and infinite as the desert itself, rises from the camp. ”

“ We outsiders watch and stare and question, yet get no nearer to them. Centuries lie between. The courtesy is perfect. They accept cigarette, lighting it with flint and steel, offering the latter as a present that may not be refused. The young man, playing his reeds so softly to a group of listeners, hands them over to an admirer who has praised them, with “Please accept them from me.” ’ Behind, in the sand, men are praying on their knees toward Mecca. ”

“ Some are hidden from sight in tent-like canvas gorgeously striped and coloured. It sways to and fro with the enormous knee-stroke of the camels like a boat at sea. Solemnly the Muslim world files past across the sands. ”

“ But Helouan soon comes down to see. Few of them tarry here; they go straight through; the Bedouin do not like the people, houses, tourists. They resent the cameras, flourish their whips of buffalo-hide and trot past almost fiercely. ”

“ Mind, heart and soul are concentrated. He is oblivious to the world about him as he bows towards the East and his forehead taps the ground.
As the moon rises higher and night becomes all white the fun begins in earnest⁠—Fantasia, as they call it, borrowing a foreign word. ”

“ Yet these are merely fellaheen, the peasant toilers of the Delta, who accompany the great Bedouin Pilgrimage to the Desert Tomb of Abou Seria, Father of Speed, one of Muhammad’s generals⁠ ⁠... And after midnight one or two of them rise quietly und resume their journey. “Our camels travel better in the nighttime.” Off they go, with their donkeys, goats and children, carrying all they possess in this world with them. The unmeasured desert swallows them. No sound comes back. They vanish in the moonlight as softly as they came. ”

“ In another direction a circle several hundred strong, packed close as herrings, sit round upon the sand, and a storyteller stands in the centre, reciting wonderful adventures with many wild gesticulations. ”

“ The Arabs take no notice of us outsiders, beyond making way when we approach, offering here and there a word of explanation or inviting us to drink coffee with them when we draw near to their fire-circles. ”