The More A Man Expends Upon His Guests, The Greater Is
His Reputation And Influence; And The Few Families Who Pursue An
Opposite Conduct Are Despised By All The Others.
Kerek is filled with guests every evening; for the Bedouins, knowing
that they are here sure of a good
Supper for themselves and their
horses, visit it as often as they can; they alight at one Medhafe,
[p.385] go the next morning to another, and often visit the whole before
they depart. The following remarkable custom furnishes another example
of their hospitable manners: it is considered at Kerek an unpardonable
meanness to sell butter or to exchange it for any necessary or
convenience of life; so that, as the property of the people chiefly
consists in cattle, and every family possesses large flocks of goats and
sheep, which produce great quantities of butter, they supply this
article very liberally to their guests. Besides other modes of consuming
butter in their cookery, the most common dish at breakfast or dinner, is
Fetyte, a sort of pudding made with sour milk, and a large quantity of
butter. There are families who thus consume in the course of a year,
upwards of ten quintals of butter. If a man is known to have sold or
exchanged this article, his daughters or sisters remain unmarried, for
no one would dare to connect himself with the family of a Baya el Samin
(Arabic), or seller of butter, the most insulting epithet that can be
applied to a man of Kerek.
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