Table Manners and the custom of washing the hands before and after having a meal

Eating the Arab manner requires to be learnt, and at the beginning I found it humiliatingly impossible … the fingers enclose the rice, and when the hand reaches the mouth the thumb pushes the rice up into it – if, that is to say, there is any rice left to push. The first evening, I found, there rarely was. The mere fact of being cross-legged made the rice a disconcertingly long way off, and no matter how large a handful I set out with, so to speak, it had dwindled to a few grains by the time the hand reached the mouth. (Maxwell)