All this was just the polite way to begin a conversation— all except the words, “who is a good lad,” which his friends need not say unless they wanted to. So Sadoc was pleased. Nobody ever asked him how Kadijah, his wife, was, for that would have been as impolite as the other was proper. The Arabs never speak to each other of their women folks if they can possibly avoid it.

Abdul Aziz, being only a boy, was allowed to go into the neighbors’ houses. So he knew most of the women. Sometimes even, at the season of the olive crop, he worked with them. For in the village of Hammamet it is the women and the children who harvest the olives in the orchards outside the town.