DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5073#0410
TADMOE.
397
within reach. My companion was generally a fine
young Bedoueen, so very black, but so erect and hand-
some, that we called him " Black Adonis." He used to
lie on the sand close to me while I drew, twisting up
and smoking cigarettes; but after a day or two he began
to be interested in my performances, and got nearer
and nearer: at last I was very much amused to find
him gazing intently over my shoulder, looking up when
I did, and watching my pencil as it moved. I doubted
that he really understood the picture, and, to prove him,
I made a long line which did not exist in nature, when
a deep grunt just at my ear startled me into a sense of
my error: I rubbed it out, and was rewarded with a
" taib, taib;" and for the next three hours that young
savage sat there, forgetting to smoke, looking on with
the deepest attention, keeping up a running accom-
paniment of grunts, and rebuking me with an indignant
" la, la " (no, no), when I put in a figure that I had
seen sitting there the day before, but which was not
there now. At last I gave him a bit of paper and a
pencil, and said " ente amel soora" (you make a pic-
ture),—he burst into a long, low, grave chuckle, and
said " Anazeh fingers too big;" but wre were fast friends
ever after: and I heard him relating my invitation to
his fingers, with much gusto, that night round the even-
ing fire.
One afternoon my sister and I went out together, with,
only the guide, a Tadmor man, to carry our sketch-
books, and stationed ourselves at the Temple of the
King's Mother. Beyond this neither man nor woman
of the town would go alone after dusk; they said the
place was full of jinns,— but the jinns were of flesh and
blood: stray Bedoueens of small tribes might be, and
were almost always, lurking about to plunder any thing
397
within reach. My companion was generally a fine
young Bedoueen, so very black, but so erect and hand-
some, that we called him " Black Adonis." He used to
lie on the sand close to me while I drew, twisting up
and smoking cigarettes; but after a day or two he began
to be interested in my performances, and got nearer
and nearer: at last I was very much amused to find
him gazing intently over my shoulder, looking up when
I did, and watching my pencil as it moved. I doubted
that he really understood the picture, and, to prove him,
I made a long line which did not exist in nature, when
a deep grunt just at my ear startled me into a sense of
my error: I rubbed it out, and was rewarded with a
" taib, taib;" and for the next three hours that young
savage sat there, forgetting to smoke, looking on with
the deepest attention, keeping up a running accom-
paniment of grunts, and rebuking me with an indignant
" la, la " (no, no), when I put in a figure that I had
seen sitting there the day before, but which was not
there now. At last I gave him a bit of paper and a
pencil, and said " ente amel soora" (you make a pic-
ture),—he burst into a long, low, grave chuckle, and
said " Anazeh fingers too big;" but wre were fast friends
ever after: and I heard him relating my invitation to
his fingers, with much gusto, that night round the even-
ing fire.
One afternoon my sister and I went out together, with,
only the guide, a Tadmor man, to carry our sketch-
books, and stationed ourselves at the Temple of the
King's Mother. Beyond this neither man nor woman
of the town would go alone after dusk; they said the
place was full of jinns,— but the jinns were of flesh and
blood: stray Bedoueens of small tribes might be, and
were almost always, lurking about to plunder any thing