XVII. Children of "The Arabian Nights"
You have taken a long journey since you sailed through the Golden Gate at San Francisco. Now it is time to go home. There is more than one way of going home from school, and a lot of things to see on the way. So, when you are in far away lands, there is more than one way of going home to America. Don't you want to stop, on the way, to see some children who live in a desert? They live very differently from any people that you could find anywhere else in the world. They have two things you like very much—no, three. They have sugary dates to eat, and big humpy camels and dromedaries to ride. What is the difference between a camel and a dromedary? And they have Arabian night's stories.
If you want to see Mehemet and Zaidee in their tent home in Arabia, you must call upon them very early in the morning, or after the sun goes down. From noon until four or five o'clock, when the burning sun blazes on the yellow desert sand, there seems to be no one living in the big tent. The tent is quite forty feet long, because the father of these children is a Sheik, or Arab chief. It is covered with brown camel's hair cloth, or with black and white goat skins.
It stands on a few acres of grass, under some tall date palm trees, beside a spring. The spring makes a green spot in the desert. All around that green place are miles and miles of dry sand. The sand dazzles your eyes, so you think you see other green places and palm trees and blue water. But these are only air pictures that fade away. The sand is blown up by the wind in great drifts, like yellow snow. In the shadows of these drifts and of big rocks, camels and sheep and goats lie asleep. The herders and sheep dogs are asleep among them.
If you should lift the door flap of the tent you would see a white curtain hung across the middle. This divides the big tent into two rooms. The men and boys are in one room, the women and little girls in the other. It is dark and cooler inside the tent. You must step softly, for everyone is asleep. They lie on colored mats and saddle-bag cushions. These are made of O-ri-en'tal or Eastern rugs. American people buy these rugs for their very best rooms, if they have enough money. The Arab chief buys them in the Turkish city
