Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IVVarious
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
You will understand that your own party of Arabs is not of the genuine
desert breed. They are dwellers in cities, not dwellers in tents. They
are mongrel, like the population of a sea-port. They pass from Palestine
to Egypt with caravans of produce, like coast-traders, and are not pure
Bedoueen. But they do not dishonor their ancestry. When a true Bedoueen
passes upon his solitary camel, and with a low-spoken salaam, looks
abstractedly and incuriously upon the procession of great American
Moguls, it is easy to see that his expression is the same as that of the
men around you, but intensified by the desert.
Burckhardt says that all Orientals, and especially the Arabs, are little
sensible of the beauty of nature. But the Bedoueen is mild and
peaceable. He seems to you a dreamy savage. There is a softness and
languor, almost an effeminacy of impression, the seal of the sun's
child. He does not eat flesh--or rarely. He loves the white camel with a
passion. He fights for defense, or for necessity; and the children of
the Shereefs, or descendants of the Prophet, are sent into the desert to
be made heroes. They remain there eight or ten years, rarely visiting
their families.
The simple landscape of the desert is the symbol of the Bedoueen's
character; and he has little knowledge of more than his eye beholds. In
some of the interior provinces of China, there is no name for the ocean,
and when in the time of Shekh Daheir, a party of Bedoueen came to Acre
upon the sea, they asked what was that desert of water.
A Bedoueen after a foray upon a caravan, discovered among his booty
several bags of fine pearls. He thought them dourra, a kind of grain.
But as they did not soften in boiling, he was about throwing them
disdainfully away, when a Gaza trader offered him a red tarboosh in
exchange, which he delightedly accepted.
Without love of natural scenery, he listens forever to the fascinating
romances of the poets, for beautiful expressions naturally clothe the
simple and beautiful images he every where beholds. The palms, the
fountains, the gazelles, the stars, and sun, and moon, the horse, and
camel--these are the large illustration and suggestion of his poetry.
Sitting around the evening fire and watching its flickering with
moveless melancholy, his heart thrills at the prowess of El-Gundubah,
although he shall never be a hero, and he rejoices when
Kattalet-esh-Shugan says to Gundubah, "Come let us marry forthwith,"
although he shall never behold her beauty, nor tread the stately
palaces.
He loves the moon which shows him the way over the desert that the sun
would not let him take by day, and the moon looking into his eyes, sees
her own melancholy there. In the pauses of the story by the fire, while
the sympathetic spirits of the desert sigh in the rustling wind, he says
to his fellow, "Also in all true poems there should be palm-trees and
running water."
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