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2o8 BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD
silently as time flies, we could almost hear its
moments ticking away. It has been said that we
take no note of time except when we count its loss.
It might be said of all Easterns that they are
unconscious of the time they lose, because they take
no note of it; they live unconsciously up to the fact
that, the past being beyond recall and the future
unfathomable, the present only is in our power. And
the Eastern is master of Time because he spends
it absorbing the present.
Meanwhile the berries had blackened, and the man
emptied them into a copper mortar. As he pounded
them he caused the pestle to ring in tune against the
sides of the bowl. The child laughed gleefully and
pointed at him ; the stern old man smiled and shot
a proud glance over at us.
" Fiddle away, old Time," rang out the tones of
the metal pestle. It seemed to give voice to our
joyful derision of Time ; here was Time trying to
weary us with himself and we only laughed at him.
" Fiddle away, old Time—
Fiddle away, old Fellow !
Airs for infancy, youth and prime,
Tunes both shrill and mellow.
Fiddle away,
Or grave or gay,
For faces pink or yellow-
Scrape your song a lifetime long,
Fiddle away, old Fellow !"
Not a soul moved. Outside in the dusk a stunted
black cow thoughtfully chewed the maize stalks of
which the enclosure round the tent was built, and
ARAB HOSPITALITY 209
a kid rubbed his head up and down against a child's
bare leg. Beyond this the darkness had nothing to
conceal. We were in the middle of a bare, largely
uninhabited, desert land known only to a few wander
ing Arab tribes. Outside, the mysterious open vault
of the dark sky with its many hundred points of light;
inside, the mysterious recess of the dark tent with
the fifty-three pairs of gleaming eyes, every one fixed
upon ourselves. Now and then, as a flash of
lightning in the sky at night will expose the imme
diate surroundings to view, so a sudden spark from
the fire revealed the setting of the eyes—the solemn,
dusky, Arab faces.
A splutter on the fire as the pot boiled over put an
end alike to the tune and to the meditations called up
by it. The man transferred the ground berries to
a copper jug and, pouring the boiling water on to
them, placed this second pot on the hot ashes. We
had been sitting there for an hour watching these
preparations, and it seemed as if we might now
reasonably entertain hopes of tasting the results.
Our expectations in this direction were also enhanced
by the appearance of three tiny cups which had been
unearthed from a dark corner, and handed to one
of the men nearest the fire. He proceeded to rinse
them out one by one with hot water, displaying
a care and absorption in the process which contrasted
strangely with the simplicity of his task.
The coffee on the fire came to the boil, the coffee-
maker poured it back into the original pot, which
he again set on the ashes. He then handed the
empty jug to the cup-washer, who rinsed each cup
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