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116 DAYS IN THE SUN
gutter, with his chin on his hands, day-dreaming, trying
to fixate the tip of his own nose with his eyes. If you
talk to the most wretched of these philosophers and
ask him the way, or express some kindly polite thought,
or offer him a profitable errand to run—you can in-
terpret his expression and his inapt answers as mean-
ing only one thing: his desire for repose.
That is what he has: repose. Excepting the Jewish
quarter, the whole city is as dreamily silent as the
castle of the Sleeping Beauty, except when the Berbers
come to town. Life glides along with mechanical uni-
formity, with a sort of somnambulistic lethargy. The
Moor sits by the gate of his little shop, at shop after
shop, one right next to the other, and he reads in his
Koran or ponders, indifferent as to whether purchasers
come or not. He has made things comfortable for
himself, has drawn his legs up under him completely,
and his posture is such as to enable him to reach with
his hands any object in the shop, as well as to take
your money, without being obliged to rise. He has by
his side everything he needs: a jug of water and a
piece of bread. He can barely make the effort of
speech when the black water-carrier comes by and he
needs to have his jug refilled.
If there is a customer, the shopkeeper will hand
him the required article silently and without raising his
eyes, whereupon he slips the money into another jug
and continues reading or idling. He will not consent
to engage in haggling, nor will he take the pains to
submit a number of articles, so that the purchaser may
select what he wants. After the customer has received
his article and finds that it is too large or too small,
or at any rate not the right thing, and asks for another
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