September, As In England, Is The
Autumn Of This Land; The Wild Fruits Are Ripe, Some Of Which Are
Not Unpleasant, But They Are Generally Too Sweet,--They Lack The
Acidity That Would Be Agreeable In This Burning Climate.
There is
an orange-coloured berry that has a pleasant flavour, but it is
extremely oily; this has a peculiarly disagreeable effect upon
the system, if eaten in any quantity.
Several varieties of
excellent wild vegetables grow in great abundance throughout this
country: beans, three kinds of spinach; the juicy, brittle plant
cultivated in Lower Egypt, and known as the 'regle;' and lastly,
that main-stay of Arab cookery, 'waker,' well known in Ceylon and
India under the names of 'Barmian' and 'Bandikai.' This grows to
the height of thirteen or fourteen feet in the rich soil of the
table lands: the Arabs gather the pods and cut them into thin
slices; these are dried in the sun, and then packed in large
sacks for market. The harvest of waker is most important, as no
Arab dish would be perfect without the admixture of this
agreeable vegetable. The dried waker is ground into powder
between two stones; this, if boiled with a little gravy, produces
a gelatinous and highly-flavoured soup.
"September 29.--We have just heard that Atalan Wat Said, by whom
we were so well received, is dead! The Arabs have a disagreeable
custom of paying honours to a guest by keeping the anniversary of
the death of any relatives whose decease should be known to them;
thus, when Atalan Wat Said paid a visit to Sheik Achmet Abou
Sinn, the latter celebrated with much pomp the anniversary of his
(Atalan's) late father's death.
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