On the way to Sidi Okba, where caravans are frequent, we met a sad little procession—a few men riding, one or two on foot, leading a camel with the body of a man swathed and bound like a mummy, and lying across the saddle. They came slowly, solemnly, out of the mysterious distance and disappeared into it again. As a soul passes so passed they.
The shrine of Sidi Okba is well worth seeing. The drive across the desert alone repays the weariness caused by jolting and shaking on a stony road. A real road it is, and not a bad one, considering that it has to pass over the river-bed and some very rough ground. However, it is no satisfactory desert, though flat and desolate enough, for everywhere there is green scrub sufficient to feed camels and the goats of the nomads. Here is neither a trackless wild nor a waterless waste, though the water has the good taste to hide itself under the ground or in the oases. The goal is visible from the start as a dim purple line, yet there is no lack of interest on the way, for the Djebel Ahmar-Kreddou and the surrounding hills assume new forms as mile after mile is left behind, and the colour comes and goes, waxes and wanes.
Though it is the religious capital of the Ziban and a sacred place, the village of Sidi Okba is built, like its neighbours, of sun-dried mud. But it owns a real bazaar and a large market-place. The bazaar is winding and irregular, shaded here and there by coarse canvas, or matting, stretched on ropes and bars of wood. Canvas of every shade of brown and ochre hangs flapping idly in the breeze over the square, cavernous shops, where, amongst strange, untempting wares, the owners sit motionless, only their eyes awake and on the watch. In other shops men work tirelessly at many trades. Colour exists only in the vividly blue sky, in the palms, and in a few scarlet handkerchiefs. The bazaar and the crowds who surge through it harmonise in tone. The nomads, with wild, dark faces and bare legs, shout as they bargain, unconscious alike of the din and turmoil and of their own value from a picturesque standpoint. Here are no Europeans, no odd contrasts; all is true, unspoilt. Men of the desert swarm in hundreds, but scarcely a woman is to be seen except in the market-place, where, in anticipation of a wedding to take place at night, rows of them sit near a wall, veiled, and listening to passionate, triumphant music, whilst their lords stroll about, or sit in groups as far from them as possible.