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Updated: June 16, 2025
Like dolphins round a ship, little girls in long shirt-shaped garments swarmed round the whole length of the advancing procession, bearing water-jars on their steady heads, and at a sign from any one who was thirsty were ready to give him a drink.
Soada was pretty and upright, with a full round breast and a slim figure. She carried a balass of water on her head as gracefully as a princess a tiara. This was remarked by occasional inspectors making their official rounds, and by more than one khowagah putting in with his dahabeah where the village maidens came to fill their water-jars.
It is one of those crowded little Turkish towns set on a blazing hillside tangled streets, unpainted, gray, weather-warped frame houses, with overhanging latticed windows and roofs of red tiles; little walled-in gardens with dark cedars or cypresses and a few dusty roses; fountains with Turkish inscriptions, where the streets fork and women come to fill their water-jars a dreamy, smelly, sun-drenched little town, drowsing on as it has drowsed for hundreds of years.
Numerous as they are, they all seem to have enough to do. They carry their scriptural-looking water-jars on their backs, and a smart tray of tin and burnished brass, with meringues and glasses, in front. The glasses are of enormous but not extravagant proportions. These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it were no stronger than beer.
Occasionally he had to dodge round a heap of still burning timber. The heat was almost unbearable, while the smoke penetrating his lungs made him gasp and cough violently; so much so, that twice he had to place his precious water-jars on the ground and clutch at his throat in his distress.
All the way up the Nile we shall see them, and we shall hear the old shadûf songs, that sound as if they came down from the days when they cut the Sphinx out of the living rock, and we shall hear the drowsy song of the water-wheels, as the sleepy oxen go round and round in the sunshine; and we shall see the women coming in lines from the inland villages with the water-jars poised on their heads.
"Now go, and when you have once more filled the water-jars come back to me, and fetch the letters. The sooner you can go the better, for it would be well that you should leave the path through the desert behind you before nightfall, for in the dark there are often dangerous tramps about.
Cooking utensils, crockery, water-jars, a set of useful carpenter's tools, and many other things had to be provided. We put all the groceries and other perishable articles in tin canisters and boxes, having found that this was the only way of preserving them from dampness and insects in this climate. When all was done, our canoe looked like a little floating workshop.
"I wish that potsherd carried water as the flint-chip does fire. However, there's lots of cactus around here, and they're natural water-jars. My knife may get me a drink out of the desert's thorns, as well as kindle a fire from its stones.
On they went, past the street of the potters where anything might be bought, from water-jars as tall as Naomi herself to the tiny cup-shaped Virgin's lamps which, filled with sweet oil, were carried by the Jewish girls. "Look well about thee, child," instructed Aunt Miriam from behind her veil. "We shall not come this way again." "I can tell it all now to Ezra," answered Naomi confidently.
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