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2 The doum tree of Wad Hamid
that you bate dark streets and like to see electric light shining
out into the night. I know, too, that you are not enamoured of
walking and that riding donkeys gives you a bruise on your
backside. Oh, I wish, my son, I wish—the asphalted roads of
the tow t1S--the modern means of transport—the fine comfortable
buses. We have none of all this—we are people who live
on what God sees fit to give us.
Tomorrow you will depart from our village, of this I am
sure, and you will be right to do so. What have you to do with
such hardship? We are thick-skinned people and in this we
differ from others. We have become used to this hard life, in
fact we like it, but we ask no one to subject himself to the
difficulties of our life. Tomorrow you will depart, my son—I
know that. Before you leave, though, let me show you one
thing—something which, in a manner of speaking, we are
proud of. In the towns you have museums, places in which
the local history and the great deeds of the past are preserved.
This thing that I want to show you can be said to be a museum.
It is one thing we insist our visitors should see.
Once a preacher, sent by the government, came to us to stay
for a month. lie arrived at a time when the horse-flies had never
been fatter. On the very first day the man's face swelled up. He
bore this manfully and joined us in evening prayers on the
second night, and after prayers he talked to us of the delights
of the primitive life. On the third day he was down with
malaria, he contracted dysentery, and his eyes were completely
gummed up. I visited him at noon and found him prostrate in
bed, with a boy standing at his head waving away the flies.
`0 Sheikh,' I said to him, 'there is nothing in our village
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