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We all three arose, and quickly arraying ourselves in white cotton burnouses, wrapping the haicks around our heads in the manner of the Arabs a fashion adopted by some in the City in the Clouds and pulling them across our faces, so as to partially conceal our features, we went forth with our guide on the tiptoe of expectation. "What sight, I wonder, are we going to witness?"
The dead saints are, however, here, and perhaps everywhere else in Tunis, more decently lodged, and their marabets are real "whitewashed sepulchres." They make many burnouses at Toser, and every house presents the industrious sight of the needle or shuttle quickly moving. We tasted the leghma, or "tears of the date," for the first time, and rather liked it.
I considered it highly impolitic to allude to the treaty in the hearing of the Turks, who would have thought I was secretly going to enter into an alliance offensive and defensive with the Ghâteen against them. The Tuaricks, however, stood upon the point, that when the burnouses were promised first, there was no talk of an equivalent, and I was obliged to concede.
It was the strangest sight Stephen had seen yet, and he hardly noticed that, in a burst of sunlight, rain had begun to pelt down through the canopy of trees. The band of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier.
They were also presented with silver shields, gold-worked saddles, mules, horses, &c.; their wives with richly embroidered burnouses, ornaments of gold and silver; and to enhance their position in the country they were allowed all the privileges of a Ras.
The Master saw innumerable dark faces peering down from snowy burnouses and haiks. He saw the gleam of steel. Not one of the figures on the wall was veiled. Not one woman, therefore, had as yet been permitted to leave the perfumed dimness of the harems, even for this stupendous event in the city's history.
Never had a London mob on some great fete day seemed so significant and personal to Domini as this little mob of desert people, come together for the bartering of beasts, the buying of burnouses, weapons, skins and jewels, grain for their camels, charms for their women, ripe glistening dates for the little children at home in the brown earth houses.
On the hot earth over which, whenever there is any wind from the desert, the white sand grains sift and settle, were laid innumerable rugs of gaudy colours on which were disposed all sorts of goods for sale; heavy ornaments for women, piles of burnouses, haiks, gandouras, gaiters of bright red leather, slippers, weapons many jewelled and gilt, or rich with patterns in silver pyramids of the cords of camels' hair that bind the turbans of the desert men, handkerchiefs and cottons of all the colours of the rainbow, cheap perfumes in azure flasks powdered with golden and silver flowers and leaves, incense twigs, panniers of henna to dye the finger-nails of the faithful, innumerable comestibles, vegetables, corn, red butcher's meat thickly covered with moving insects, pale yellow cakes crisp and shining, morsels of liver spitted on skewers which, cooked with dust of keef, produce a dreamy drunkenness more overwhelming even than that produced by haschish musical instruments, derboukas, guitars, long pipes, and strange fiddles with two strings, tomtoms, skins of animals with heads and claws, live birds, tortoise backs, and plaits of false hair.
On each side of the road were trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, earthen barriers, canals filled with barges. And on the road were lines of transports and a file of Spahis on horseback, picturesque in their flowing burnouses, bearded and dark-skinned, riding their unclipped horses through the roads under the single rows of trees.
Work stopped for the day. The men and youths of the Zaouïa climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the mosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The doves of the minaret called Imams, because they never leave the mosque or cease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards began to wheel and cry plaintively.
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