asked us our business, and supplied our needs with
quite a fatherly air.
I left the bargaining to Aissa, for I knew from
experience that he was a past-master in the art.
He squabbled over the price of everything. He
haggled over every sou, and spent as much time in
buying two balls of twine as would have sufficed a
European to buy a whole week’s provisions.
By the time that we had finished our marketing
the pile which represented our purchases had assumed
most alarming proportions. There was a
little tin saucepan for making coffee, a large iron
one for making soup, a frying-pan, and two out-
landish-looking earthenware pots, which Aissa assured
me were absolutely necessary for cooking a
kind of semolina known as couscous, which forms
the bulk of every Arab meal. These, with two
plaited grass baskets for carrying eatables, some
plates, cups, spoons and knives, a tin lantern, a
pound or two of candles, and two or three small tin
boxes containing salt, sugar, and pungent Arab
pepper, were all heaped up on the counter. Finally,
the last straw which looked as though it would
break our camel’s back—came a huge sack containing
four francs’ worth of couscous.
Leaving the things which we had bought in
charge of the shopkeeper to be called for with the
camel on the morning of our departure, we set out
to buy some coffee, which the Mozabite was forbidden
to sell by the laws of the peculiar religious
sect to which he belonged.
A'issa took me off into a back slum, lying