For several days the women are busy cooking cakes and sweets; the best fruit in the gardens is carefully watched over to be ready at the mulid, and certain animals are fed up with a view to being slaughtered. If possible one or two camels are bought from the Arabs and kept at grass till they are fat enough to kill. On the eve of the feast there is a general spring cleaning of the town. The tombs of the sheikhs are freshly painted with whitewash, carpets and coloured blankets are hung from every roof, while the houses are swept and cleaned, and the place looks quite gay with its clean white tombs, and bright mats and rugs hanging out from roofs and windows. In the evening the sheep that are to be slaughtered on the morrow are led in from the fields, and everybody discusses with interest how many animals Sheikh So-and-So is going to kill. Sometimes the richest men kill as many as seven or eight sheep, and this is remembered and often mentioned to their credit, all through the year. One year there was a great scandal in the town because Sheikh Mohammed Hameid had boasted to everybody that he had killed six sheep, but one of his household let out that there had only been three old goats slaughtered. Enormous supplies of lubki are drawn before the holiday in order that it may stand long and become really strong. On the morning of the mulid everybody puts on his best clothes, and even the poorest labourer dons a new shirt or a clean jibba. Every man goes to pray in his own particular mosque, and the women visit the tombs and lay palm branches on the graves of their relations. After this people retire to their houses and eat an enormous meal and as much meat as they can possibly swallow. When the men have eaten, the remainder of the food is sent to the harem, and when the harem have finished, it is sent out to the servants and labourers who pick the bones clean. After this heavy meal and during the two following days everybody calls on everybody else, and on this occasion one may see eastern sheikhs riding haughtily through the western quarter to call on their much-detested neighbours. In all the streets one meets the sheikhs riding along on their best donkeys, wearing gorgeous silk, coloured robes, which emerge from the chests in which they are locked up during most of the year, each followed by an escort of servants. The people let each other know at what time they will be “at home” and when they will ride out visiting.