It  is  dirty  and  bug  ridden,  but  decent  and  essentially
Oriental.  The  proprietor  is  a  respectable  merchant,  origin-
ally from  Sfax,  who  sits  all  day  in  a  room  on  the  ground
floor,  which  is  his  shop  and  counting-house.  His  trade  is
to  buy  wool  and  other  desert  produce  from  the  Bedouins,
and  to  sell  them  linen  cloth.  A  number  of  them  have  been
all  the  morning  in  the  courtyard,  very  noisy  in  their  bargain-
ings, most  of  them  of  the  Slasi  tribe  who  have  a  good  robber
reputation  inherited  from  past  times.  Our  driver,  Rashid,
pointed  out  to  us  yesterday  the  sandy  passage  in  the  road
where  caravans  used  to  be  attacked  by  them  in  the  good
old  days,  and  even  sometimes  now  of  dark  nights.  This
reminds  me  that  about  ten  miles  from  the  town  we  came
upon  a  mounted  Arab  who  shouted  to  us  as  he  passed  that
a  cousin  of  his  had  just  been  killed  upon  the  road,  and  he
was  riding  for  help.
"  The  proprietor  has  a  son,  a  simple-minded  youth  in  a
white  turban,  who  comes  to  sit  with  us  and  talk,  and  there
are  two  servants,  one  a  merry  man  who  makes  coffee  at
the  door,  the  other  a  vague  old  mendicant  who  occasion-
ally sweeps  out  the  rooms,  and  goes  on  errands.  Both
these  are  hashish  smokers  openly,  for  at  Kerouan  there  is
no  shame  in  the  drug,  and  Terence,  who  went  down  to
spend  the  evening  below  after  I  had  gone  to  sleep,  tells  me
the  kawaji was  most  amusing,  indeed  they  were  all  in  roars
of  laughter  through  the  night.
