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THE GUEST-ROOM AT ENIGHIL 253
in one great bowl, a white raound of rice mingled with
sheep- tail fat, from which all eat with the naked hand
or perhaps with spoons. Children always take part
in these meals, and fortune will be uncommonly kind
if you do not find them dirty and diseased and spoilt.
They paw the food with filthy hands, and are
laughed at for their pretty ways. If you are working
at an exclusive spot in the pilaf, carefully avoiding
the scene of your neighbours' operations on either
side, and congratulating yourself on doing ver}^ well,
one of these horrible children, whose face maybe is
covered with sores, is sure to detect your satisfaction
and drive a loathsome hand into the heart of
your food. Even more difficult is the question of
what you shall drink or not drink. Turks are connoisseurs
of water ; they find it sweet or not sweet,
and spare no pains to get it to their liking. But its
so-called sweetness is merely the taste and sparkle
and clearness, and has nothing to do with analytical
purity. They believe that after water has run over
seven stones— or perhaps nine—it is drinkable ;
and
with that comfortable belief, if the water is sweet
and clear, they drink without misgivings, and expect
their guest to do likewise.
Having had experience in these matters, I always
preferred my own food in the loneliness of a khan to
any imaginable hospitality in a guest-room. Ighsan
recognised my preference, without knowing the cause,
and continually lamented that I should go to a khan
when a guest-room was available. He had, indeed,
good reason for his liking, as in a guest-room he was
at free quarters, being covered by my gift, whereas in
a khan he had to pay his lot. Now that we were
become guests perforce, I told him I should cook and
eat my own food as usual, and that he could have
whatever the house provided.
Our host hastened to make a fire as the first need
of his cold and famished guests. The district was a
treeless one, therefore cakes of tizek (cow-dung mixed
with straw, and dried) and dead thistles were the