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Figure 33. Camel milk and sweet bread for guests
[Камиље млеко и слатки хлеб за госте]

Sheikh Saeed Al-Khatiri’s Old House

The house is located on the lowest of the terraces of the ridge on which the
family lives. In order to provide a sufficiently flat surface, the ridge was manually
levelled over a length of 30 meters and a width of about 10 meters. It consists
of two units: one unit is an oval-shaped enclosure, about 10 meters in diameter,
and the house itself, which is in ruins and difficult to fully reconstruct.
The vestibule is formed by a dry stone wall partly filled with clay and
grass. The stone wall connected in this way becomes monolithic over time, as
the grass later grows and connects the stone elements into a single unit. The
stone wall is about 2 meters wide at the bottom and 1 meter at the top, and is
about a meter and a half high. It has two entrances placed on opposite sides:
one towards the house and one towards the courtyard.
The space of the house is defined by two stone ovals with a diameter of
4 to 5 meters. In one of the oval rooms, part of the roof structure has been
preserved, consisting of two wooden columns, slightly buried in the ground,
with forks at the top which support a massive roof beam on which the roof
rafters rest. The roof supports are made of massive branches taken in the
immediate vicinity; these are very gnarled and irregular in shape, which is
characteristic of trees in this area with relatively little rain.
After the large branches, smaller branches are placed to support the roof
covering. The wall of the old house is made of unhewn but selected stone, in