The Wâdî Burdân is one of three valleys that are reputed to stretch across the Syrian desert from the Jebel Ḥaurân to the Euphrates. The northernmost is the Wâdî Ḥaurân, which joins the river above Hît, and the southernmost the Wâdî Lebai’ah, on which stands Kheiḍir. When the snow melts in the Ḥaurân mountains water flows down all three, so I have heard, but later in the year there is no water in the Wâdî Burdân, except at ’Asîleh, though Kiepert marks it “quellenreich.” Muḥammad declared that there was no permanent water west of ’Asîleh save at Wîzeh, a spring which has often been described to me. It rises underground, and you approach it by a long passage through the rock, taking with you a lantern, my informants are careful to add. At the end of the passage you come to a shallow pool where the mud predominates, though it is always possible to quench your thirst at it. ’Asîleh is an autumn camping-ground of the ’Anazeh. The deep fine sand of the valley is bordered by a fringe of tamarisk bushes, covered, when we were there, with feathery white flower. Their roots strike down into the water, which rises into cup-shaped holes scooped out in the sand, and the deeper you dig the clearer and the colder it is. For four days we had found no water that was sweet, and the pools under the tamarisk bushes tasted like nectar. It was a delightful solitary camp. The setting sun threw a magic cloak of colour and soft shadows over the sandhills of the Wâdî Burdân, and under the starlight my companions lingered round the camp fire, smoking a narghileh and telling each other wondrous tales. When I joined them Fattûḥ was holding forth upon the evil eye, a favourite topic with him. I knew by heart the tragedy of his three horses who died in one day because an acquaintance had looked at them in their stable. “And if your Excellency doubts,” said Fattûḥ, “I can tell you that there is a man well known in Aleppo who has one good eye and one evil. And this he keeps bound under a kerchief. And one day when he was sitting in the house of friends they said to him, ‘Why do you bind up the left eye?’ He said, ‘It is an evil eye.’ Then they said, ‘If you were to take off the kerchief and look at the lamp hanging from the roof, would it fall?’ ‘Without doubt,’ said he; and with that he unbound the kerchief and looked, and the lamp fell to the ground.” “Allah!” said Fawwâz. “There is a man at Kebeisah who has never dared to look at his own son.” “At ’Ânah,” observed Ḥussein, letting the narghileh relapse into silence for a moment, “there is a sheikh who wears a charm against bullets.” But Muḥammad knew as much as most men about the ways of bullets, and he thought nothing of this expedient. “Whether the bullet hits or misses,” he remarked, “it is all from God.” He poured me out a cup of coffee. “A double health, oh lady,” said he.