Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

56 Bedouin Tribes of the Eiiphraies. [ch. xvm
would not allow liim to go on, and overwhelmed
liini with a torrent of words. He had been unlucky
enough to remark that the Bedouins were
robbers, and this was the signal for
loud expostulations
from the crowd. " No, no," they called out,
" the Anazeh are quite another thing from the Amur
and the people you, Ali Bey, are accustomed to in the
desert. The English Beg knows better than that."
" But," argued the Mudir, " what does the Beg want
with the Anazeh that he must go off to them
to-morrow. Why cannot he Avait till they come
here " % Wilfrid "
: We are obliged to be back in
our own country, and cannot afford to wait, and we
cannot go without seeinsf the Anazeh. In our own
country it is the custom to travel for sight-seeing,
just as in yours for trade. He who sees most gets
most honour (akram), and if I were to return to
my friends and to tell them, ' I have seen Bagdad,
and seen Aleppo, and seen the Shammar in Mesopotamia,
and Deyr and Palmyra, but I did not see
the Anazeh,' they would laugh at me, and my
journey would be a shame (aib) to me." Now the
word a'ih is in constant use, and I may say abuse,
among the Arabs, both in its literal sense and
metaphorically ; as we say in English, " it will be
a shame if you don't give me sixpence ; " and on
this occasion it exactly suited the understandings of
the audience, and they applauded the sentiment
loudly. "You see," they echoed to Ali Bey, "it
will brino- shame on the Be"' if
o
o he does not see