apartment by no means splendid, preferring an Arish or kind of cow-house—as the Anglo-Indian Nabobs do the bungalow
"with mat half hung,
The walls of plaster and the floors of …,"
—to all his substantial double-storied houses. The ground was wet and comfortless; a part of the reed walls was lined with cots bearing mattresses and silk-covered pillows, a cross between a diwan and a couch: the only ornaments were a few weapons, and a necklace of gaudy beads suspended near the door. I was placed upon the principal seat: on the right were the governor and the Hammal; whilst the lowest portion of the room was occupied by Mohammed Sharmarkay, the son and heir. The rest of the company squatted upon chairs, or rather stools, of peculiar construction. Nothing could be duller than this assemblée: pipes and coffee are here unknown; and there is nothing in the East to act substitute for them.[1]
The governor of Zayla, Al-Hajj Sharmarkay bin Ali Salih, is rather a remarkable man. He is sixteenth, according to his own account, in descent from Ishak al-Hazrami,[2] the saintly founder of the great Girhajis and
- ↑ In Zayla there is not a single coffee-house. The settled Somal care little for the Arab beverage, and the Badawin's reasons for avoiding it are not bad. "If we drink coffee once," say they, "we shall want it again, and then where are we to get it?" The Abyssinian Christians, probably to distinguish themselves from Moslems, object to coffee as well as to tobacco. The Gallas, on the the other hand, eat it: the powdered bean is mixed with butter, and on forays a lump about the size of a billiard-ball is preferred to a substantial meal when the latter cannot be obtained.
- ↑ The following genealogical table was given to me by Mohammed Sharmarkay:—
1. Ishak (ibn Ahmad ibn Abdillah).
2. Girhajis (his eldest son).
3. Sa'id ( the eldest son; Da'ud being the second).
