Among the Women of the Sahara Author:Arthur Bell, Jean Pommerol Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BEAUTY AMONGST THE ARABS. One day chance led me to a corner of an oasis occupied by the Aulad-Ziane nomads. The crumbling walls of their huts ... more »of dried mud rose along a grey lane of the colour of the desert, and the low doors of their homes admitted only the initiated, that is to say, the husband and a negro gardener; for amongst the Arabs, a negro is looked upon as of no account—he is just a slave, a kind of domestic servant. The nomads of the desert often have within what is called their kasr, or fortified village, a magazine or a garden, sometimes both ; the former serving as a shelter for the grain stored up for food or barter, whilst the latter is the camping ground, and the dates grown on the trees in it are carried away with them when the wanderers move on, either for their own consumption or to be sold. When I knocked at the low door of one of the little huts of the Aulad-Ziane settlement I had notyet obtained all the diplomatic privileges I described just now, so that the man who appeared in answer to my summons greeted me with no titles of honour, nor did he take me for a doctor. To him, too, however, I was a Rumiya, or a foreigner, a traveller who had been saluted by the spahis of the Arab authorities! It was easy to see from the way in which he turned the clumsy wooden key, several inches long, in the primitive lock of his door, that he felt a certain deference for me, mingled with annoyance at my appearance. For these Saharian husbands are always jealous of any intrusion into their homes ; they are afraid of imprudent actions being suggested to their wives, AN UNWILLING GUIDE. 27 or of ideas about the emancipation of women being put into their heads. So he said to me laconically, as he stretched his arm out towards a group invisible...« less