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Updated: May 4, 2025
He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the ground. A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of bread. "Hungry, brother? No?" said the youth. "Cheer up, Sidi! No good letting the donkey ride on your head!"
Almost opposite us a beggar had sat himself down at the edge of the road, under the shelter of the high cane fence a grimy old greybeard, tanned and worn like a walnut, in a tattered jellab and shady turban.
The Arab seated by the well looked first at the donkey, and, remarking its grey colour, half rose to his feet. But as he rose he looked at the man who drove it, and saw that while his jellab was drawn forward over his face to protect it from the sun, his bare legs showed of an ebony blackness against the sand. The donkey-driver was a negro.
It was a rude shock to our faith when his hand found its way into the leather bag at his side under his jellab, and he pulled out and threw on the table two-thirds of the money which had been given him. It was suggested that he should pay the whole sum. No! he was penniless. Then in that case he could sell the new jellab he had just bought. He scoffed at the idea.
He wore a chocolate-coloured jellab, embroidered at the edge with white, and sewn with tufts of red, violet, yellow, and green-coloured silks: a tall, wiry fellow, with a back like a ram-rod, a thin face, and keen, defiant eyes. The light glittered on his long, brass-plated Riffi gun: a red leather pouch full of bullets hung at his side.
He was a great contrast to the labourer who passed us afterwards, also bound for the city an old and grizzled monkey-faced man, with his head tied round with a ragged red cloth gun-case. His jellab hung in tatters, but he also carried a gun, and by a string a brace of partridges and a wild duck, which "bag," after some bargaining, became ours for the sum of one-and-sixpence.
Here the first sign of humanity showed itself: two goatherds drove their flock down to the water, and one of them carried in the hood of his brown jellab a few hours' old kid; they soon passed on and disappeared among the boulders and heath. The long level lines of the green oasis were broken at the edge by diminutive bones of rock protruding through the grass.
To the French Consular Agent we went: a Moor, whose office was in the French Post Office a solemn, dignified man in a flowing blue jellab, over the same in white, both hoods drawn up over his head, showing a long olive face of the true Arab type, black eyes, black beard and moustache. He wore white socks and yellow slippers a most courteous individual.
A white garment waved out in the breeze under the blue jellab; he sat straight as a withy, feeling the mule's mouth with a hard hand, and bringing its nose into the air. There were some bravado and a great deal of assurance in the whole. The world used him well. Moors ride everywhere, if they possess anything with four legs. Why should they give themselves the fatigue of walking?
A scarlet leather bag, hung by a red cord over his shoulders, a leather belt, and his gun, finished off our Moorish servant, who shot us partridges, roasted chickens, and was as good a hand at buttered eggs and coffee as I have ever seen. Out of doors he always wore his brown jellab, embroidered with silk tufts of green and yellow and white.
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