Tafas: Here, you may drink. One cup. Lawrence: You do not drink? Tafas: No. Lawrence: I’ll drink when you do. Tafas: I am Bedu…Tafas: Bedu food. Lawrence: Good. Tafas: More…Bedu!
-screenplay by Robert Bolt
Tafas drank Bedu water from a Harith well and died. Lawrence ate Bedu food with his left hand and lived. Among the Kababish, we khawajas didn’t worry about Bedu etiquette, nor they about ours. They hadn’t read our dinner table rule books by Emily Post or Tish Baldridge, which they, being illiterate, could not have read even if they had wanted. But they applauded us at their aseeda pot, eating with our fingers and drinking from the same pot after they’d wiped it half clean of millet crumbs and cooking oil. De Gustibus, no doubt.