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Updated: May 15, 2025
Before she had time to put her foot to the ground the door was thrown wide open, and two stout Negroes dressed exactly alike in flowing white burnouses stepped out of the house to stand on either side the carriage door. Raising their arms as high as their heads they made two white walls of their long cloaks between which Victoria could pass, as if enclosed in a narrow aisle.
Among the Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered looking like conquerors. "Cirez! Cirez!" cried incessantly the Arab boot-polishers, who scuffled and played tricks among themselves while they waited for customers. "Cirez, moosou!
Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of burning wood and boiling peppers.
It was near the prayer-hour, and worshippers were flocking in, laying off their shoes and burnouses, washing their faces at the fountains and their feet in the central tank, or stretching themselves out in the shadow of the enclosing arcade.
Suddenly two Arabs, in dirty white burnouses and turbans bound with cords of camel's hair, came running along the wharf. The siren hooted again. The Arabs bounded over the gangway with grave faces. All the recruits turned to examine them with a mixture of superiority and deference, such as a schoolboy might display when observing the agilities of a tiger.
George arrived at the oasis town of Djazerta he had with him in his small caravan no other man in the uniform of the Legion. He had only camel-drivers in white or brown burnouses, nomads who live in tents, and whose womenfolk go unveiled without losing the respect of men.
Night folded down over the desert, hot and velvety, like the wings of a mother-bird covering her children; but before darkness fell, the tents glimmered under the stars. There were two only, a large one for the women, and one very small for Maïeddine. The Negroes would roll themselves in their burnouses, and lie beside the animals.
Some bones of a camel, at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, looked like a living camel going along with several people, the white bones representing the burnouses of the men. A small white stone, not ten inches high, appeared to be several feet in height, at the distance of a quarter of an hour's ride. And so of the few other discernible objects on this wide expanse of optical delusion.
Already the great bare café was filling up. In the dim yellow light of lamps that hung from the ceiling, or branched out from the smoky, white-washed walls, the throng of dark men in white burnouses, crowding the long benches or sitting on the floor, was like a company of ghosts.
When the news came respecting Sidi Jafel taking advantage of our supposed fears they boldly demanded a sword, some burnouses, and one hundred reals in money. All these demands I firmly resisted as long as I could; but at length, when a compromise seemed necessary, we arranged for a hundred reals more in goods. A part we have given here, and the rest we have promised on our arrival at Aheer.
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