MAGIC IN THE DESERT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3379, 20 June 1927, Page 8

MAGIC IN THE DESERT.

(!iv Uosita Forbes.)

Adventure haunts tho most illogical places. It may he a desert sunset, when the tribesmen are huddled outside their mud walls, waiting lor night to release them from the long fast of Ramadan. It may be dying into Helsingfors above a carpet of clouds, with the 8000 islands of the Gulf of Finland glimpsed through holes in the rugged

tvliitoiioss. It may he, the red walls of Marrakesh sprawling like a wounded leviathan at the foot of the Atlas.

Adventure is just the unexpected, and when Marrakesh, the tourist-rid-den and yet the illusively mysterious, is crowded with every race, from negro and fetish worker to pallid Northern Arah. and every colored skin, from the eonatornil variety that looks like black taffeta crinkled round little red puddles which arc eyes, to [ho bloodless parchment of tlit' cloistered learned, there is plenty of the unexpected. In the great square, where the Kou-

tuhia. one of the world’s throe great towers, soars like a golden banner above* the’eyprosscs of a palace garden, jugglers, magicians, and dancers collect each their separate crowds. Within one white-robed circle, smelling strongly of garlic am! goat’s flesh, a wild creature with matted hair and leeth stuck like chessmen in his yellow gums, boiled a kettle on a tripod. W hen steam poured from its spout and the lid clapped up and down above the bubbling water, he seized the whole apparatus. tilted jt above his head, and poured the boiling, liquid down a throat which hiii't have been cast-iron. In the centre of a neighbouring circle an unusually efficient illusionist harangued his thrilled audience. He was going to amputate the hand of Ids small, unmoved accomplice, and replace it without doing the hoy any harm.

ihe knife, of steel mid sharp as a razor, wa-; handed round, and everybody felt it. Then —apparently—the magician proceeded to saw through the 1 child's wrist. The small hoy himself regarded Ilia operation without emotion.

A lew moments later, alter the hand ■md apparently been on. the [joint of severance, it was hack again, intact and sound.

A little dried-up conjurer, with the smile of a naughty child and a thumb less right hand, which he attributed to

a bullet in the dark. hut which meant that he had been indulging in the national sport of raiding, gently pulled a hau into half-n-dozon Unify and wholly unsurprised chickens, or brought to life again the deadest birds I have ever seen, apparently without touching

M was all most mysterious and improbable, and the snow-crowned Atlas dazzling among a welter of flat mudroofs trained by shivering silver olives and sentinel uahns. added the last loueli of nnrealtv.

No. not the last! On the edge of tin

so mire, in a (pdel. dim house, with chain muslin -covered mattresses, ranged like the shore round a. gulf of carpets. girls postured Ibe age-old dance of Africa.

! be tallest, having offered ns amber-

scented tea. sweet pastries, rose-water in long-stemmed, silver flasks. and burning incense |o dry its moisture, bale nee. I the tray on her head, and danced first on her lively feet, then on her back, and dually lying on her face! I 'ho tray, fully set with bright colored "lasses and perfume lamps, remained steady; but, when we congratulated the maiden on her performance, the only Fu'ropean words she know were, cry impregnable. by wlifeh eventually we gathered she meant ‘‘impractical !’ 5