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the doum tree. "Had you that instant brought along a woman and
had her stand among those men as naked as the day her mother bore
her, they could not have been more astonished." (lines 162-164)
They were intolerably furious at the civil servant's suggestion
that they should change their weekly pilgrimage to the tomb of Wad
Hamid. "Had the official told these men at that moment that every
one of them was a bastard, that would not have angered them more
than this remark of his". (lines 172-173)
The narrator is not desperately pessimistic; a faint glimpse of
hope for a better and more civilized life hangs on his half-smiling
face at the end of the discourse. The impact of the text is condensed
in a moment of over-wrought emotional intensity when the narrator
parts with the narratee. "When he had been silent for a time, he gave
me a look which I don't know how to describe, though it stirred within
me a feeling of sadness, sadness for some obscure thing which I was
unable to define. Then he said: "Tomorrow, without doubt, you will be
leaving us. When you arrive at your destination, think well of us and
judge us not too harshly". (lines 365-367. That indescribable look on
the face of the narrator, slightly tinted with a faint smile hanging on
the edges of his half-parted lips, speaks of an imminent hope for a
better future for the village and its population.
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