United States or Oman ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"'Make haste, please, and open the door. I am going to fetch my friend. "He pulled the bolts, grumbling and swearing, and I went out into enfer. For he was right. A sandstorm at night in Beni-Kouidar is hell.
It is a wild and turbulent city, divided into quarters the Arab quarter, the Jews' quarter, the freed negroes' quarter, and so on and furthermore, is infested at certain seasons by the Sahara nomads, who camp in filthy tents on the huge sand dunes round about, and sell rugs, burnouses, and Touareg work to the inhabitants, buying in return the dates for which the palms of Beni-Kouidar are celebrated.
"'The conversation appeared to be carried on by signs, he responded. 'That did not make it less but more dangerous. "I'm afraid I was rude, and whistled softly. "'Monsieur l'Aumônier, I said, 'you must forgive me, but this air is certainly the very devil. "He smiled, not without irony. "'I became aware of that myself, monsieur, when first I came to live in Beni-Kouidar.
In common politeness he could scarcely refuse my company, since he had asked me as a favour to let him come with me to Beni-Kouidar. I waited, watching the moon rise, till my cigar was smoked out. Then I lit another. Still he did not come. I heard the distant throb of tomtoms beyond the Bureau Arabe in the quarter of the freed negroes. They were having a fantasia.
"I ran to my room, fetched my revolver, slipped it into my pocket, and hurried to the front door. The landlord heard me trying to undo the bolts, and came out protesting. "'M'sieu cannot go out into the storm. "'I must. "'But m'sieu does not know what Beni-Kouidar is like when the sand is blown on the wind. It is enfer. Besides, it is not safe. In the darkness m'sieu may receive a mauvais coup.
No intonations of the Oxford don lurked in the voice. No reminiscences of the Oxford 'High' clung about the manner. A man sober and the same man drunk are scarcely more different than the Marnier who had ridden with me up the sandy street of Beni-Kouidar the previous day and the man who sat opposite to me at dinner in the 'Rendezvous des Amis' that night.
"And it happened in some remote place in the Sahara Desert?" "In Beni-Kouidar. I was with Henry Marnier in Beni-Kouidar at the time." "Go ahead!" said young England more eagerly. "Poor Marnier was not an old friend of mine, but an acquaintance whom I had met casually at Beni-Mora, which is known as a health resort." "I send patients there sometimes," said the doctor.
Beni-Kouidar lies in the midst of immeasurable sands, and the air that blows through its palm gardens, and round its mosque towers, and down its alleys under the arcades, is startling: dry as the finest champagne, almost fiercely pure and fresh, exhilarating well, too exhilarating for certain people." The doctor nodded. "Champagne goes very quickly to some heads," he interjected.
Many murders have been done in the court on black nights, and no one can say who has done them. For all the time men go in and out to the rooms of the dancers. "'Nevertheless, Safti, I must "I stopped speaking, for at this moment Batouch, the brother of the Caïd of Beni-Kouidar, came slowly in through the doorway from the blackness of the sand-swept court.
He never left me long out of his sight in these outlandish places. "'That is the Batouch Sidi, the brother of the Caïd of Beni-Kouidar, he said. 'Algia, the dancer to whom Monsieur Henri has just given money, is his chère amie. But as the government has just made him a sheik, he dares not have her in his house for fear of the scandal. So he has put her with the dancers.
Word Of The Day