Batouch looked grave as he listened to the wind and the creaking of the
palm stems one against another. Sand came upon his face. He pulled the
hood of his burnous over his turban and across his cheeks, covered his
mouth with a fold of his haik and stared into the blackness, like an
animal in search of something his instinct has detected approaching from
a distance.
Ali was beside him in the doorway of the Cafe Maure, a slim Arab boy,
bronze-coloured and serious as an idol, who was a troubadour of the
Sahara, singer of "Janat" and many lovesongs, player of the guitar
backed with sand tortoise and faced with stretched goatskin. Behind them
swung an oil lamp fastened to a beam of palm, and the red ashes glowed
in the coffee niche and shed a ray upon the shelf of small white cups
with faint designs of gold. In a corner, his black face and arms faintly
relieved against the wall, an old negro crouched, gazing into vacancy
with bulging eyes, and beating with a curved palm stem upon an oval
drum, whose murmur was deep and hollow as the murmur of the wind, and
seemed indeed its echo prisoned within the room and striving to escape.
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