A Reed Shaken by the Wind by Gavin Maxwell Read Free Book Online

patch in the centre where a small fire of reeds burned beside a row of coffee pots. Our host fetched cushions with hard wool covers woven in bright designs, and in a moment we were seated cross-legged again as we had been in the tarada. This, though I did not yet know it, was to be the pattern of the whole journey; two or three hours of sitting cross-legged is painful to those unaccustomed to it, and to step out of the canoe only to resume the same position in a matter of seconds can be real torture.
    We drank dessertspoonfuls of coffee from tiny cups as wehad done at Huwair, and then we drank tea from minute glasses half filled with sugar, which is what every marshman offers to his guests, even when he cannot afford coffee. As the hours passed, the house began to fill up, until at last there were more than sixty people crowded on to the floor of that eighteen-by-twelve-foot space; all men and boys, for the women are kept apart, and may not mingle with menfolk outside their own families. It would seem impossible for that sardine-pack to be in any order of precedence, yet they were; and each, too, somehow avoided presenting a complete back view to the man behind him, for that, like presenting the sole of an outstretched foot, is the height of bad manners.
    I was astonished by the rigmarole of social ritual with which these primitive people surrounded themselves. Each entering guest greeted his host, and in some cases the formal exchange of greetings between the two was extended to a machine-gun fire of fifteen or twenty questions and answers. Then the guest would select a place and sit down, but the social duties of his arrival had only just begun. No sooner had he settled himself cross-legged in his cramped position than a single voice out of the crowd would bid him good evening.
    “Messàkum Allâh bil khair.”
    The newcomer would half rise to his feet, his legs still scissored under him.
    “Messàkum Allâh bil khair, Ahmed,” he responded, and began to settle himself again. Then it came from another corner of the room, and again he would bob up on the triangle of his crossed ankles. “Messàkum Allâh bil khair, Daoud,” and soon he would be bouncing up and down like a piston. “Messàkum Allâh bil khair, Mahommed,” “Messàkum Allâh bil khair, Hussein,” “Messàkum Allâh bil khair, Faleh,” until every grown man in the room had shot his round and the newcomer could relax and time the firing of his own ammunition at the next comer.
    Presently a lantern was lit and stood on the dividing platform at the centre of the house, but its little circle of illumination was closed in by the figures round it, and the throng of faces was lit only by the wildly flickering fire of reeds. Our host knelt at the hearth with a great bundle of reeds gripped between his knees, and as the fire consumed them with big wind-gusted flames he moved the bundle up a foot at a time. The fire was like the end of a moving staircase, where the conveyor slides out of sight under the firm ground. Each time as he thrust the reeds farther up into the flames a frantic exodus of small dun-coloured caterpillars could be seen hurrying along the stems away from the fire, going the wrong way on the moving staircase; but the reeds burned slower than the caterpillars could hunch along, so that they always won in the end. I lost sight of them between our host’s knees, and as they seemed never to reappear I wondered what became of them.
    It was beyond my understanding that the house did not catch fire. The gale roared and rattled in the reed matting outside; the burning reeds crackled and flared and the sparks flew upward and glowed in the dim reed roof; cigarettes were stubbed out vaguely and at random on the dry reed matting of the floor. It seemed as though either the reed house or the flames and the sparks must be an illusion, a montage for a cinema set, or a superimposition. I wondered what premium a European insurance company would set on a