Iv - University of Salford Institutional Repository

The doum tree of Wad Hamid 7
awakens from sleep and tells his neighbour how he found himself
in a vast sandy tract of land, the sand as white as pure
silver; how his feet sank in as he walked so that he could only
draw them out again with difficulty; how he walked and
walked until be was overcome with thirst and stricken with
hunger, while the sands stretched endlessly around him; how he
climbed a hill and on reaching the top espied a dense forest
of down trees with a single tall tree in the centre which in
comparison with the others looked like a camel amid a herd of
goats; how the man went down the hill to find that the earth
seemed to be rolled up before him so that it was but a few
steps before be found himself under the doum tree of Wad
Hamid ; bow he then discovered a vessel containing milk, its
surface still fresh with froth, and how the milk did not go down
though he drank until he had quenched his thirst. At which
his neighbour says to him, 'Rejoice at release from your
troubles.'
You can also bear one of the women telling her friend: 'It
was as though I were in a boat sailing through a channel in
the sea, so narrow that I could stretch out my hands and touch
the shore on either side. I found myself on the crest of a
mountainous wave which carried me upwards till I was almost
touching the clouds, then bore me down into a dark, bottomless
pit. I began shouting in my fear, but my voice seemed to be
trapped in my throat. Suddenly I found the channel opening out
a little. I saw that on the two shores were black, leafless trees
with thorns, the tips of which were like the heads of hawks.
I saw the two shores closing in upon me and the trees seemed
to be walking towards inc. 1 was filled with terror and called
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