THE ARAB WORLD
On a placid sea the _Warwickshire_ sped eastward, sighting the mountain
ranges of Corsica and Sardinia, and sweeping through the straits of
Messina so close to the Sicilian shore that we could make out plainly,
from the deck, the evening strollers on the brightly-lighted promenade.
The crew was East Indian. The white quartermasters with whom I messed
were gorged with such food as only a French chef can cook, and valiantly
I struggled to make up for those famished days in the dismal streets of
Marseilles. My official duties were largely confined to “polishin’ ’er
brasses,” and, with all due modesty, I assert that the ship was the
brighter for my presence. The Bibby Line scorned to carry any but
first-class passengers. I took my “watch below” within easy hailing
distance of the promenade deck and those belinened voyagers to whom the
custom of tipping for every possible service had become second nature,
and picked up many a franc and six-pence among them.
On the morning of the fifth day out the brasses were pronounced in a
satisfactory condition, and I was ordered into the hold, with a score of
the native crew, to send up the trunks of Egyptian travelers. The
weather grew perceptibly warmer with every throb of the engines. When I
climbed on deck after the last chest, the deep blue of the ocean had
turned to a shabby brown, but the horizon was still unbroken. Suddenly
there rose from the sea, on our starboard bow, as a marionette bobs up
in a puppet-show, a flat-topped building, then another and another,
until a whole village, the houses of which seemed to sit like gulls on
the ruddy sea, spread out before us. It was Port Saïd. The pilot-boat
had swung alongside and the statue of de Lesseps was plainly visible
before we caught the first glimpse of land, a narrow stretch of reddish
desert sand beyond the town. Slowly the _Warwickshire_ nosed her way
into the canal, the anchor ran out with a rattle and roar of cable, and
there swarmed upon our decks a countless multitude of humans, that
seemed the denizens of some remote and unknown sphere.
Darkness fell soon after. I had signed on the _Warwickshire_ under a
promise that I might leave her at Port Saïd. Through all the voyage,
however, the quartermasters had spent the hours of the dogwatch in
pouring into my ears tales of the horrors that had befallen white men
stranded among the Arabs. The shrieks that rose from the maze of
buildings ashore, the snarling, scowling mobs that raced about our
decks, called back these stories all too vividly. In the blackest of
nights, this new and unknown world was in imagination peopled with
diabolical creatures lying in wait for lone mortals who might venture
ashore unarmed and well-nigh penniless. If I escaped a quick
assassination among these black hordes, a lingering starvation on this
neck of sand might be my lot. The captain had given me leave to continue
to Rangoon. An Englishman, returning to the Burmese district he
governed, had promised me a well-salaried position. Most foolhardy it
seemed to halt in this “dumping ground of rascality” when in a few days
I might complete half my journey around the globe and find a ready
employment.
For an hour I sat undecided, staring into the black inferno beyond the
wharves. Palestine and Egypt, however, were lands too famous to be
lightly passed by. I bade farewell to the astonished quartermasters,
collected my few days’ wages from the mate, and with some two pounds in
francs, lire, and shillings in my pocket, dropped into a _feluca_ and
was rowed ashore.
A scene typically Oriental graced my landing. In my ignorance, I had
neglected to spend a half-hour in bargaining with the swarthy boatman
before stepping into his craft. That the legal fare I paid him was
posted conspicuously on the wharf made him none the less assertive in
his demands. For an hour he dogged my footsteps, howling threats or
whining pleas in a cracked treble, now in his native Arabic, now in such
English as he could muster. The summary vengeance of the Islamites,
prophesied with such fullness of detail by my shipmates, seemed at hand;
but I shook the fellow off at last and set out to find a lodging.
The task at which I had grown so proficient in Europe was a far more
difficult problem in this strange world. To be sure, there were several
hotels along the avenue facing the wharves, before which well-dressed
white men lounged at little tables; and black, barefooted waiters
flitted back and forth, carrying cool drinks that we of America are wont
to associate with August mid-days rather than with December evenings.
But a strong financial backing is nowhere so indispensable as in
hostelries offering “European accommodations” in the Orient. There were,
undoubtedly, scores of native inns in the maze of hovels into which I
plunged at the first step off the avenue, but how distinguish them when
the only signs that met my eye were as meaningless as so many spatters
of ink? Even in Holland I had been able to guess at shop names. But
Arabic! I had not the remotest idea whether the ensign before me
announced a lodging house or the quarters of an undertaker. I returned
to the avenue; but the few white men who paused to listen to my inquiry
for a “native” hotel stared at me as at one who had lost his wits, and
passed on with a shrug of the shoulders. A long evening I pattered in
and out of crooked byways, bumping now and then into a swarthy Mussulman
who snarled at me and made off, and bringing up here and there in some
dismal blind alley. Fearful of wandering too far from the lighted
square, I turned back toward the harbor and suddenly caught sight of a
sign in English: “Catholic Sailors’ Home.” Whether the establishment was
Catholic or Coptic was small matter, so long as it announced itself in a
human language, and I dashed joyfully towards it.
The “Home” comprised little more than a small reading-room. Half-hidden
behind the stacks of ragged magazines sat the “manager,” a Maltese boy,
huddled over paper and pencil and staring disconsolately at an
Italian-English grammar. I stepped forward and offered my assistance,
and together we waded through an interminable lesson. Before we had
ended, six tattered white men wandered in and carefully chose books over
which to fall asleep.
“You must know,” said the manager, as he closed the grammar, “that there
am no sleepings here. And we closes at eleven. But I am fix you oop. I
am shelter all these seamans while I lose my place when the Catholic
society found it out.”
He peered out into the night, locked the doors, blew out the lights, and
aroused the sleepers. We groped our way along a stone-paved corridor to
the back of the building.
“You are getting in here,” said the Maltese, pulling open what proved by
morning light to be a heavy pair of shutters, “but be quietness.”
I climbed through after the others. A companion struck a match that
lighted up a stone room eight feet square, once the kitchen of the Home.
Closely packed as we were, it soon grew icy cold on the stone floor. Two
“beachcombers” rose with exclamations of disgust and crawled out through
the window, to tramp up and down the corridor. I groped my way to a
coffin-shaped cupboard in one corner, laid it lengthwise on the floor,
pulled out the shelves, and, crawling inside, closed the doors above me.
My sleep was unbroken until morning.
By the light of day my bedfellows, squatted against the wall of the
corridor, formed a heterogeneous group. At one end sat a Boer dressed in
heavy, woolen garments of the veldt, of a faded, weather-beaten
condition startlingly in keeping with the bronzed and bewhiskered
countenance of the wearer. A seedy Austrian youth lolled open-mouthed
between the South African and an oily Turk. A Liberian negro was sharing
a mangled crust with a Russian Finn, half-hidden behind a forest of
unpruned whiskers. A ragged Englishman stood stiffly erect near the
door.
We found ample time to divulge the secrets of our past before the
turnkey came to release us. With the Englishman I strolled down to the
harbor. Myriads of “coaling niggers,” in dirty, loose robes, as
indistinguishable one from another as ants, swarmed up the sides of
newly-arrived ships, or returned, jaded and begrimed, in densely packed
boat-loads, from a night of toil. The custom police, big, pompous
negroes beside whom the Arabs seemed light colored, strutted back and
forth within the wharf enclosure. As each band of heavers arrived, the
officers laid aside their brilliant fezes, slipped over their gay
uniforms a bag-like garment that covered them to their gaitered shoes,
and gathered the workmen, one by one, in a loving embrace.
“Affectionate fellows, these followers of the prophet,” I mused.
“Aye,” croaked my companion, “and bloody good smugglers, dressed in them
dirty skys’ls.”
They live in coal, these heavers of Port Saïd. Their beds, their wives,
their children, the merchants with whom they come in contact, even the
little baked fish which bleary-eyed females sell them outside the gates,
are covered with its dust.
The Englishman knew of but one “graft” in Port Saïd. Each day, at noon,
the friars of a Catholic monastery served dinner to the penniless. A
crowd overwhelmingly Oriental lined up with us under the trees of the
convent garden to await the serene pleasure of the tawny Arab who
dispensed the charity of the priests. Between a Tartar and a Nubian, I
received, after long delay, a deep tin-plate, a pewter spoon, and a
misshapen slice of bread. The entire party had lost hope of obtaining
anything more edible, when the monasterial servant appeared once more,
straining painfully along with a huge caldron of soup, which he
deposited on the flat grave-stone of a defunct friar. As we filed by
him, the Arab tossed at each of us a ladleful of the boiling concoction.
Whether it landed in our plates or distributed itself generously over
our nether garments depended entirely on our own dexterity, for the
haughty server dumped the ladle where, in his opinion, our dishes ought
to have been, utterly indifferent as to whether they were there or not.
The Englishman disappeared next day, and I joined fortunes with the
seedy Austrian. With a daily dinner and a lodging, even in a cupboard,
assured, I found Port Saïd a more agreeable halting-place than
Marseilles. There was work to be had here, too. On this second afternoon
we were stretched out on the breakwater, under the shadow of the statue
of de Lesseps, watching the coming and going of the pilot-boats and the
sparkle of the canal that dwindled to a thread on the far horizon of the
yellow desert, when a portly Greek approached and asked, in Italian, if
we wanted employment. We did, of course, and followed him back to land
and off to the westward along the beach to a hovel in the native
section. On the earth floor sat two massive stone mortars. The Greek
motioned to us to seat ourselves before them, poured into them some
species of small nut, and handed each of us a stone pestle. When we had
fallen to work, he sat down on a stool, prepared his _narghileh_ and,
except for an occasional wave of the hand as a signal to us to empty the
mortars of the beaten pulp and refill them, remained utterly motionless
for the rest of the day.
Mechanically we pounded hour after hour. The pestles were heavy when we
began, before the day was done my own weighed at least a ton. What we
were beating up and what, in the name of Allah, we were beating it up
for, I do not know to this day. The Austrian asserted that he knew the
use of the product, but fell silent when I asked to be enlightened.
Night sounds were drifting in through the door of the hovel when the
Greek signed to us to stop, and with the air of one who feels himself to
be over-generous but proud of his fault, handed each of us five small
piastres (12½ cents). My companion at once raised his voice in
vociferous protest, in which, at a nudge of his elbow, I joined. The
Greek was hurt to the point of tears. The ingratitude of man, when he
had, out of the kindness of his heart, given us a whole day’s wages for
a half-day’s work! How could we bring ourselves to complain when he had
cut his own profit in half simply because we were men of his own color
for whom he felt an altruistic and unmercenary sympathy? At the end of a
half-hour of noisy clamoring he consented to present us each with
another piastre, and we hurried away across the beach to a native shop
where spitted mutton sold cheaply.
Two days later I took a “deck-passage” for Beirut and boarded a hulk
flying the British flag. By sundown we lost sight of the low-lying port
and set a course northeastward. A throng of Arabs, Turks, and Syrians,
Christian and Mohammedan, male and female, squatted on the half-covered
deck. In one scupper were piled a half-hundred wooden gratings, the use
of which remained a mystery to me until my fellow-passengers fell to
pulling them down one by one and spreading their beds on them. I alone,
of all the multitude, was unsupplied with bedding; even the lean, gaunt
Bedouins, dressed in tattered filth, had each a roll of ragged blankets
in which, their evening prayers and salaams towards Mecca ended, they
rolled themselves and lay down together in a place apart. This dividing
into groups was general, for caste lines are sharp drawn in the Orient
and, when I stretched out on a bare grating, the entire throng was
huddled in a dozen isolated bands, each barricaded by the sturdiest
males.
Morning broke bright and clear. Far off to starboard rose the
snow-capped range of the Lebanon; but we were bearing northward now, and
several hours did not bring us perceptibly nearer the coast. The time
was close at hand when I must learn something of the modes of travel in
Asia Minor, though, to tell the truth, I had small hope of landing, for
passports were reported indispensable in this mysterious land of the
Turk. I strolled anxiously about the deck. In a group of Christian Turks
I came upon two who spoke French, and engaged them in conversation with
the ulterior motive of “pumping” them. A few stories of the highways of
Europe amused the party greatly. Casually I announced my intention of
walking to Damascus. The interpreted statement evoked loud shouts of
incredulity, not unmixed with derision.
“What!” cried one of the French-speaking Turks, waving a flabby hand
towards the snow banks that covered the wall-like Lebanon range, “Go to
Damascus on foot! _Pas possible._ You would be buried in the snow. This
country is not like Europe! There are thousands of murderous Bedouins
between here and Damascus who would glory in cutting the throat of a dog
of an unbeliever! Why, I have lived years in Beirut, and no man of my
acquaintance, native or Frank, would ever undertake such a journey on
foot.”
“And you would lose your way and die in the snow,” put in the other. All
through the morning the pair were kept busy interpreting the opinion of
the group on the absolutely unsurmountable obstacles against such an
undertaking. It was the first version of a story that grew old and
threadbare before I ended my journeyings in the Orient. But it was a new
tale then, told with an unoriental vehemence, and as I ran my eye along
the snow-cowled wall that faded into hazy distance to the north and
south, I was half inclined to believe that I was nearing a land where my
plans must be abandoned.
The coast line drew nearer. On the plain at the mountain foot appeared
well-cultivated patches, interspersed with dreary stretches of blood-red
sand. At high noon we dropped anchor well out in the harbor of Beirut.
Clamoring boatmen were soon rowing first-class passengers ashore. But
the red flag of quarantine was snapping in the breeze above the custom
house, and as deck passengers, more likely to spread the plague than
tourists well supplied with “backsheesh,” we were detained on board.
Four sweltering hours had passed when a screech sounded ashore, and
several company tenders put out from the inner harbor. Down the gangway
tumbled a mighty cascade of Orientals, male and female, large and small,
dirty and half dirty, pushing, kicking, scratching, and biting each
other with utter disregard of color, sex, or social standing, and
hopelessly entangled with bundles of every conceivable shape. The sinewy
boatmen established something like an equality of burdens by rough and
ready tactics, and amid the shrieks of husbands separated from wives,
children from parents, Bedouins from their priceless rolls of blankets,
the tenders set off for a stern, stone building on a barren rock across
the bay. The spirit of segregation grew contagious. As we swung in
against the rock I caught a haughty Bedouin attempting to separate me
from my knapsack. A well-directed push landed him in the laps of several
heavily-veiled females and I sprang up a stairway cut in the face of the
rock. The building at the summit bore the star and crescent, and the
title “Lazeret.” In small groups we passed into a room where a
pudgy-faced man in European garments, topped by a fez, stared at me long
and quizzically before he beckoned to the first of our party to
approach. One by one my fellow passengers answered a few questions,
received a paper signed by the man in the fez, and fell to quarreling
with him over the price thereof. Well they knew that no amount of
bellowing could reduce the official fee, but as Orientals they could not
have purchased a postage stamp without attempting to “beat down” the
salesman. The officer heaved a sigh of relief when I handed him without
protest the five piastres demanded, and I passed on, still wondering why
I had been taxed. The paper was in French as well as Turkish and
informed me that I had paid for disinfection.
Some time after the last man had paid his fee—the female passengers had
mysteriously disappeared—a second door swung open, an official folded
our papers, tore a round hole in them, and we entered a room containing
several long tables. An unwashed and officious Arab handed to each of us
a garment not unlike a scanty nightshirt, and ordered us to strip. When
our wardrobes had been laid out on the tables in separate heaps, a
half-dozen ragged urchins appeared, rolled each heap into a bundle, and
disappeared through a tight-fitting steel door. Disinfecting a Frank
was, evidently, a new problem in the Lazeret of Beirut. An urchin stared
at my clothing, bawled something to the unwashed official, and passed me
by. The officer picked my garments up one by one with a puzzled air,
handed me my sweater and suspenders, as if he did not feel that such
mysterious articles could be rated as clothing, and sped away with the
rest.
A long hour passed. The nightshirts lent their wearers neither dignity
nor modesty. My own had been designed for the smallest of Arabs and did
a white man meager service, but the jabbering natives would not have
been in the least disturbed if their wardrobe had been reduced to the
fig leaf of notorious past. The steel door opened. We filed into the
next room and found our disinfected bundles arrayed on more long tables
and steaming like newly-boiled cabbages. As rapidly as the garments
cooled, I attired myself and turned out upon a tiny square before the
Lazeret. Suddenly there rang out a cry for passports. An icy bubble ran
up and down my spine, but I stepped boldly forward and thrust my letter
of introduction into the face of a diminutive, white-haired officer at
the gate. He received it gingerly, as if expecting it to explode in his
hands, turned it up sidewise, upside down, sidewise once more, and,
certain that he had found its proper position, began to run his finger
up and down the lines, mumbling to himself and shaking his head sagely
from side to side. Slowly he turned, eyed me suspiciously, and after
several preliminary gurgles, wheezed: “Paseeporto? Paseeporto?”
“Sure, it’s a passeporto!” I replied, nodding my head vigorously. The
officer glanced from the paper to my face and back at the paper several
times, plainly as helpless before a problem for which he knew no
precedent as a child. The doctor who had made out our disinfection slips
stepped out into the square, and the officer, knowing that he read and
spoke French, rushed upon him. The good leech could hold the letter
right side up, but he knew no more of its contents than the man who had
read it sidewise. He turned to ply me with questions. I assured him that
American passports were just such simple things, and he accepted my
assertion. The officer thrust the letter into his sack—for in Turkey
passports are held over night by the police and returned to the owner’s
consulate in the morning—and waved his hand as a sign of dismissal.
Darkness had fallen and the city was some miles distant. The doctor
called a sinister-looking native, attired in a single garment that
reached his knees, and ordered him to guide me to the town. We set off
through the night, heavy with the smell of oranges, along a narrow road,
six inches deep in the softest mud. At the outskirts of the city the
native halted and addressed me in Arabic. I shook my head. Like most
uneducated Orientals, he was of the opinion that, if a full-grown Frank
could not understand language intelligible to the smallest child of his
acquaintance, it was through some fault of his hearing. He put the
question again and again, louder and more rapidly with every repetition.
I let him bellow until breath failed him and he gave up and splashed on.
He halted once more in a square, reeking with mud, in the center of the
city, and burst forth in a greater vehemence of incoherency than before.
“Ingleesee?” he shrieked with his last gasp.
“No,” I answered, comprehending this one word, “Americano.”
“Ha!” shouted the Arab, “Americano?” and he began his bellowing once
more. Evidently he was attempting to explain something about my fellow
countrymen, for the word “americano” was often repeated. Exhausted once
more, he struck off to the southward. I shouted “hotel” and “inn” in
every language I could muster, but after a few mumbles he fell silent
and only the splash of our feet in the muddy roadway attended our
progress. We left the city behind, but still the Arab plodded steadily
and silently southward. Many a quartermaster’s story of white men led
into Mussulman traps passed through my mind. Far out among the orange
groves of the suburbs he turned into a small garden and pointed to a
lighted sign above the portal of the building among the trees. It
announced the American consulate. Not knowing what else to do with a
Frank who did not understand the loudest Arabic, the native had led me
to the only man in Beirut to whom he had heard the term “americano”
applied.
When I had paid my bill next morning in the French _pension_ to which I
had been directed, my worldly wealth was reduced to one English
sovereign. I turned in at the office of Cook and Son and, tossing the
piece to the native clerk, asked him to change it into coin of the
realm, of small denomination. He turned the sovereign over several
times, bit it, laid it carefully away, and set to pulling out boxes and
drawers and dumping the coins they contained on the counter before me.
There were pieces of copper, pieces of silver, pieces of bronze, tin,
iron, nickel, zinc; coins half the size of a dime, coins that looked
like tobacco tags, coins big enough with which to fell an ox, coins with
holes in them, coins bent double, saucer-shaped coins, coins that had
been scalloped around the edge by some erstwhile possessor of artistic
temperament and hours of leisure; and still the clerk continued to pour
out coins until I felt in duty bound, as a tolerably honest member of
society, to call a halt.
“Say, old man,” I put in, “that was only a sov. I gave you, you know.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” panted the native, dumping another handful that
rattled down the sides of the heap like a bucketful of stones on the
pile under a stone crusher, “I know, and I am very sorry I have not
enough to change him. But I give you this and he just make him up.”
He tossed towards me a gold piece of ten francs.
“What!” I cried, “You don’t mean that I get that heap and ten francs
besides, for one quid?”
“Aywa, efendee, yes, that makes one pound,” he answered.
I pawed over the heap. Each rake brought to light pieces of new and
unique pattern. “Fine collection,” I said, “but what’s the answer?”
The clerk drew a long breath as if for an extended lecture, and picked
up one of the tobacco tags; “This,” he said, “is a metleek. It is
worth eleven-twelfths of a half-penny. Five of these coppers make a
metleek—only not quite—that is—here in Beirut—in Damascus five of them
make a metleek and a little more. Ten metleeks make a bishleek—” he
picked up one of the coins the owner of which would be arrested, in a
civilized country, for carrying concealed weapons, “one bishleek—that
is—except one and a half of these copper coins—that is—here—in
Damascus ten metleeks make a bishleek and four coppers—except not
quite—and in Sidon they make the same as in Damascus—only a little
less—and these coins are worth the same as a bishleek—except not
quite—that is—here—if they have a hole in them they are worth a copper
and three-fourths—more—that is, here—in Damascus they are worth a
copper and one-fourth more, and this dish-shaped one is worth three
bishleeks and three metleeks and two coppers and sometimes
three-fourths of a copper more, except they with holes in them which
are worth two metleeks and a copper and a half more, and this
mejeedieh is worth in Damascus seven bishleeks and seven metleeks and
two coppers and sometimes three and sometimes here not so much by two
and a half coppers and in Jerusalem—”
“And suppose it is a rainy day?”
“Oh, that does not make any difference,” said the clerk, with owl-like
solemnity, “but sometimes on busy days, as on feast days, the bishleek
is worth three coppers and a half more—that is, here—in Damascus it is
worth two more and sometimes not so much—as in Ramadan, and in Sidon it
is worth three-fourths of a copper less and in—here in Beirut—”
“Hold on, efendee,” I cried. “If you have a pencil and a ream of paper
at hand—”
I understood his explanation perfectly, of course, but I had an
unconquerable dread of forgetting it in my sleep.
“Certainly,” cried the obliging clerk, and he dragged forth two sheets
of paper and covered both with figures. Reduced to writing, the monetary
system of Syria was simplicity itself. One could see through it as
easily as through six inches of armor plate.
“Now, in carting this around—” I asked, tucking the sheets of paper away
in a pocket, “you don’t hire a porter—”
“Ah,” said the clerk, “you have not the large purse? Our Syrians carry a
purse which is very long, which is long like the stocking which it is
said are worn by the lady; but if you have not such a long purse and you
have not any ladies—” I drew out a large handkerchief and fell to raking
the heap of coins into it. “Ah,” he cried, “that does very good, only
you do not forget that in Damascus the mejeedieh is worth seven
bishleeks and seven metleeks and two coppers and sometimes—” But I had
escaped into the silence outside.
I reduced my burden somewhat by spending the heaviest pieces of junk for
breakfast and, strolling down to the harbor, sat down on a pier. The
bedlam of shrieking stevedores, braying camels, and the rattle of
discharging ships drowned for some time all individual sounds. In a
sudden lull, I caught faintly a shout in English behind me and turned
around. A lean native in European dress and fez was beckoning to me from
the opening of one of the narrow streets. I dropped from the pier and
turned shoreward. The native ran towards me. “You speak Eengleesh?” he
cried, “Yes? No? What countryman you?”
“American.”
“No? Not American?” shrieked the native, dancing up and down, “You not
American? Ha! ha! ver’ fine. I American one time, too. I be one time
sailor on American warsheep Brooklyn. You know Brooklyn? Ver’ nice
sheep, Brooklyn. You write Eengleesh, too, No? Yes? Ver’ fine! You like
job? I got letters write in Eengleesh! Come, you!”
He led the way through the swarming bazaar, shouting answers to the
questions I put to him. He claimed the name of Abdul Razac Bundak and
the profession of “bumboat-man,” one of those familiar figures of
Oriental ports, a native who had picked up a fluent use of so-called
English, the language of the shipping world, and turned it to
practicable account. His activities were varied. He sold supplies to
foreign ships, acted as interpreter for officers ashore, led tourists on
sight-seeing expeditions, and, in the busy season, ran a sailors’
boarding house.
Some distance back from the harbor, in a shoe shop kept by his uncle, I
sat down to write three letters at Bundak’s dictation. By the time we
had finished them—and a dozen cigarettes—my familiarity with other
languages had leaked out, and I wrote three more, two in French and one
in Spanish. With one exception, all six were bids to ship captains
accustomed to visit Beirut. The bumboat-man paid me two unknown coins,
and “set up” a dinner in a neighboring shop.
[Illustration: As I appeared during my tramp in Asia Minor. A picture
taken by Abdul Razac Bundak, bumboat-man of Beirut]
That afternoon we piloted a party of Germans through the labyrinthian
bazaars and out across the orange groves to Dog River. Abdul chattered
in his pidgin English, and I strove to turn his uncouth speech into the
language of the Fatherland. In the days that followed, our “company,” as
Abdul styled it, was the busiest in Beirut. The fame of Bundak’s
“faranchee secretary” spread abroad. The scribes who sat in their little
stands in the market-places were called upon now and then to pen letters
in some European language. Hitherto, they had refused such commissions.
Now they despatched an urchin to the shop in Custom-House street, before
which our “company” was wont to sit dreaming over narghilehs supplied by
a neighboring café, and summoned us to some distant corner of the
bazaars. The priest in his confessional was never entrusted with more
secrets than fell from the lips of the scribes amid the droning of
Bundak, the interpreter. Had those men of letters been less indolent,
the volume of their business might well-nigh have doubled. But they
insisted on exercising their profession after the laggard manner of the
East, and ever and anon drifted away into the land of day-dreams with a
sentence stranded on their lips. The palm of the left hand was the
writing desk to which they were accustomed; it was always with
difficulty that I stirred them up to clear a space on their littered
stands. They and their fathers before them had always written from right
to left; they stared in amazement when I began in the left-hand corner.
More than one burst forth in vociferous protest at this unprecedented
use of a pen, and long harangues from the senior member of our firm did
not always convince them that the result of my labor was more than
meaningless scratches. The fees of this new profession were never
princely. The scribes themselves received no more than a bishleek for a
letter, and must supply the materials. But even from the half of our
share I added something each day to the scrap iron in my handkerchief.
When business lagged there were but two resources left to Abdul—to eat
or to drink. Let his narghileh burn out before a summons came, and the
bumboat-man rose with a yawn and we rambled away through the intricate
windings of the bazaars to some tiny tavern, tucked away in an utterly
unexpected corner. The keepers were always delighted to be awakened from
their siestas by our “company.” While we sat on a log or an upturned
basket and sipped a glass of some native concoction which the proprietor
placed on the ground—there being no floor—at our feet, Abdul spun long
tales of the _faranchee_ world. They were bold forays into the field of
fiction, most of them, but with a live faranchee to serve as
illustration, the shopkeepers were never critical and listened
open-mouthed, after the fashion of all children of the East before a
story teller.
There was really no reason why these taverns should not have supplied
all our wants during the day, for the “free lunch” system, that has long
been credited to America, is indigenous to Beirut. With every drink the
keeper served a half-dozen tiny dishes of hazelnuts, radishes, peas in
the pod, cold squares of boiled potatoes, and berries and vegetables
known only in Syria. But Abdul was gifted with an inexhaustible
appetite, and at least once after every transaction he led the way to
one of the many eating-shops facing the busiest streets and squares. In
a gloomy grotto, the front of which was all door, stood two long tables
of the roughest materials, flanked by rougher benches with barely space
enough between them for the passage of clients. The proprietor rarely
stirred from behind a great block of brick and mortar near the entrance,
over which simmered a score of black kettles. I read the bill of fare by
raising the covers of each caldron in succession, chose a dish of the
least unfathomable mystery, picked up a discus-shaped loaf and a cruse
of water from the bench at the entrance, and retreated to the rear.
Whatever I chose, it was almost certain to contain mutton. The sheep
appears in sundry and strange disguises in the Mohammedan world. The
Arabian cook, however, sets nothing over the fire until he has cut it
into small pieces, and each dinner was an almost unbroken succession of
stews of varying tastes and colors. Each order, whether of meat or
vegetables, we ate separately, with a bread-cake.
Abdul rarely concerned himself with the contents of the kettles, for his
unrivaled favorite was a dish prepared by running alternately tiny cubes
of liver and kidneys on a spit and revolving them over the glowing
coals. I, too, should have ordered this delicacy more often had not
Abdul, with his incurable “Eengleesh,” persisted in referring to it as
“kittens.” I parted from the bumboat-man each evening; for, though his
home was roomy enough, he was a true Mohammedan and would never have
thought of introducing even his business partner into the same building
with his wives. Beds were good and rates low in the native inns. Though
we lived right royally in Beirut, my expenses were rarely twenty-five
cents a day.
With all its mud and squalor there was something marvelously pleasing
about this corner of the Arab world. The lazy droning of its
shopkeepers, the roll of the incoming sea, the twitter of birds that
spoke of summer and seemed to belie the calendar, above all, the
picturesque contrast of orange trees bending under the ripening fruit
that perfumed the soft air, with the snowdrifts almost within stone’s
throw on the peaks above, lent to the spot a charm unique. For all that,
I should not have remained so long in Beirut by choice, for the road was
long before me, and to each day I had allotted its portion of the
journey. The traveler in the East, however, must learn that he cannot
lay plans and expect to hold to them as at home. To the Oriental it is
entirely immaterial whether he sets out to-day or to-morrow, and the
view point of the Frank is beyond his grasp. Had you planned a departure
for Monday and find that some petty obstacle makes it impossible? “Oh!
well,” says the native, “Tuesday is as good a day as Monday. Wait until
to-morrow.” Does Tuesday bring some new difficulty? The native will
repeat his consoling advice just as jauntily as if he had not worn it
threadbare the day before. The expression “wasting time” has no meaning
whatever to the Oriental. Twenty-four hours does not represent to him
one-half the value of one of his miserable copper coins. A certain
number of days must run by between his birth and death. What matters it
just how he occupies himself during that period? He is, perhaps, a bit
happier if a task already planned must be put off, for the postponement
reduces the sum-total of exertion of his allotted span, and nothing does
the Oriental hate so much as exertion.
The officials of the Porte, imbued with this philosophy of life, were in
no haste to examine my papers. Not until my third visit to the consulate
did the air of consternation with which the American representative met
me at the door inform me that my letter had been returned.
“What the devil did you pass this note as a passport for?” shouted the
consul; “Why, man, in ten years I never heard of a man entering Turkish
territory without a passport—except one, and he was fined a hundred
pounds.”
“Tourist, wasn’t he?” I answered, “I’ve found that workingmen pass more
easily.”
“In Europe, perhaps,” said the consul, “but not here. Now don’t venture
into the interior until you have a teskereh—a local passport—unless you
want to be shipped to one of the Sick Man’s dungeons on the double
quick.”
Four days passed before this document, with its description of my
features in the unfathomable orthography of the Turk, was ready. Even
had I received it earlier, it is by no means certain that I could have
set out for Damascus at once. Native or Frank, not a resident of Beirut
admitted knowing which of her reeking alleyways led to the foothills to
the eastward. Abdul threw up his hands in startled horror when I
broached the subject of my intended journey. “Impossible!” he shrieked,
“There is not road. You be froze in the snow before the Bedouins cut
your liver. You no can go. Business good. Damascus no good. Ver’ col’ in
Damascus now.”
It cost me a day’s earnings one afternoon among the tavern keepers to
revive his flagging memory before he recalled that there was a road to
Damascus, and that caravans had been known to pass over it; but even in
such good spirits he persisted with great vehemence that the journey
could not be made on foot.
The bumboat-man left me next morning at the outskirts of the city and a
bend in the road soon hid him from view. For an hour the highway was
perfectly level, flanked by rich gardens and orange groves, and thronged
with dusky, supple-limbed men and women garbed in flowing sheets. Soon
all this changed. The road wound upward, the delicate orange tree gave
place to the sturdy olive, the fertile gardens to haggard hillsides, the
gay throng to an occasional Arab, grim and austere of visage, leading or
riding a swaying camel. Over the dull solitude fell a silence broken
only by the rising wind sighing mournfully through the jagged gullies
and stocky trees. The summer breeze of the sea level turned chilly and I
found it worth while to seek the sunny side of a boulder before
broaching the lunch in my knapsack. Nearer the summit of the first range
the aspect was less dreary. The cedar forests began and broke the
monotony of the ragged landscape. Here and there a group of peasants was
grubbing on the wayside slopes. To the north or south a flat-roofed
village clung to a mountain flank.
How strange and foreign seemed everything about me! The implements of
the peasants, the food in my knapsack, the very tobacco in my pipe,
every detail of custom and costume seemed but to widen the vast gulf
between this and my accustomed world. If I addressed a fellow-wayfarer,
he answered back an incomprehensible jumble of words, wound the folds of
his unfamiliar garments about him, and hurried on. If I caught sight of
a village clock, its hands pointed to six when the hour was midday. Even
the familiar name of the famous city to which I was bound was
meaningless to the natives, for they called it “Shaam.”
My pronunciation of the word was at fault, no doubt, for though I stood
long at a fork in the route in the early afternoon shouting “Shaam” at
each passer-by, I took the wrong branch. Some hours I had tramped along
a rapidly deteriorating highway before a suspicion of this mistake
assailed me. Even then, with no means to verify it, I kept on. At last
the route emerged from a cutting, and the shimmering sea almost at my
feet showed that I was marching due southward. Two peasants appeared
above a rise of ground beyond. As they drew near, I pointed off down the
road and shouted “Shaam?” The pair halted, wonderingly, in the center of
the highway some distance from me. “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!” I repeated,
striving to give the word an accentuation that would suggest the
interrogation point that went with it. The peasants stared open-mouthed,
drew back several paces, and peered down the road and back at me a dozen
times, as if undecided whether I was calling their attention to some
phenomenon of nature or attempting to distract their attention long
enough to pick their pockets. Then a slow, half-hearted smile broke out
on the features of the quicker witted. He stood first on one leg, then
on the other, squinted along the highway once more, and began to repeat
after me, “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam.”
“Aywa, Shaam!” I cried.
He turned to his companion. The parley that ensued was long enough to
have settled all differences of opinion in politics, religion, and the
rotation of crops. Then both began to shake their heads so vigorously
that the muscles of their necks stood out like steel hawsers. Two broad
grins that were meant to be reassuring distorted their leathery visages.
They stretched out their arms to the southward and burst forth in
unharmonious duet: “La! la! la! la! la! Shaam! la! la! la! la! la!” The
Arab says “la” when he means “no.” I turned about and hurried back the
way I had come.
Dusk was falling when I traversed for the second time a two-row village
facing the highway. As I expected, there was not a building in any way
resembling an inn. For the Arab, even of the twentieth century,
considers it a sin that “the stranger within his gates” shall be obliged
to put up at a public house. I had already seen enough of the Syrian,
however, to know the chief weakness of his character—insatiable
curiosity. One thing he cannot do is mind his own business. Is there a
trade going on, a debt being paid, a quarrel raging? The vociferations
of bargaining, the jingle of money, the angry shrieks drive from his
head every thought of his own affairs, and he hastens to join the
increasing throng around the parties interested, to offer his advice and
bellow his criticisms. I sat down on a boulder at the end of the
village.
In three minutes a small crowd had collected. In ten, half the
population was swarming around me and roaring at my vain attempt to
address them, as at some entertainment specially arranged for their
enjoyment. A good half-hour of incessant chattering ensued before one of
the band motioned to me to follow him, and turned back into the village.
The multitude surged closely around me, examining minutely every article
of my apparel that was visible, grinning, smirking, running from one
side to the other, lest they lose some point in the make-up of so
strange a creature, and babbling the while like an army of apes.
The leader turned off the highway towards the largest building in the
village. Ten yards from the door he halted, the multitude formed a
semicircle, leaving me in the center like the chief buffoon in a comic
opera ensemble, and one and all began to bellow at the top of his lungs.
A girl of some sixteen years appeared on the threshold. “Taala hena!”
(come here) roared the chorus. The girl ran down the steps. A roar as of
an angry sea burst forth as every member of the company stretched out an
arm towards me. Plainly, each was determined that he, and not his
neighbor, should have the distinction of introducing this novel being.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” shrieked the girl in my ear.
“Ja wohl,” I answered.
The rabble fell utterly silent at the first word, and I asked to be
directed to an inn.
“There is no hotel in our city of Bhamdoon,” replied the girl, with
flashing eyes; “We should be insulted. In this house, with my family,
lives a German missionary lady. You must stop here.”
She led the way to the door. The missionary met me on the steps with a
cry of delight, which she hastened to excuse on the ground that she had
not seen a European in many months.
“What would supper and lodging cost me here?” I demanded. The habit of
making such an inquiry had become almost an instinct among the grasping
innkeepers of Europe. Luckily, the German lady was hard of hearing. The
girl gave me a quick glance, half scornful, half astonished, which
reminded me that such a question is an insult in the land of the Arabs.
“The lady is busy, now,” said the girl, “come and visit my family.”
She led the way along a hall and threw open a door. I pulled off my cap.
“Keep it on,” said my guide, “and leave your shoes there.”
She stepped out of her own loose slippers and into the room. It was
square and low, the stone floor half covered with mats and cushions; in
the center glowed a small, sheet-iron stove, and around three of the
walls ran a divan. Two men, two women, and several children were seated
in a semicircle on the floor, their legs folded in front of them. They
rose without a word as I entered. The girl placed a cushion for me on
the floor. The family sat down again, carefully and leisurely adjusted
their legs, and then one and all, in regular succession, according to
age, cried “lailtak saeedee” (good evening).
In the center of the group set three large bowls, one of lentils and
another of chopped-up potatoes in oil. The third contained a delicacy
made of sour milk—a cross between a soup and a pudding, that is a great
favorite among the Arabs. On the floor, beside each member of the
family, lay several sheets of bread, half a yard in diameter and as thin
as cardboard, each heap bearing a close resemblance to the famous “stack
of wheats” of our own land. The head of the house pushed the bowls
toward me, ordered a stack of bread to be placed beside my cushion, and
motioned to me to eat. I stared helplessly at the bowls, for there was
neither knife, fork, nor spoon in sight. The girl, however, knowing the
ways of faranchees from years in a mission-school in Beirut, explained
my perplexity to her father. He cast upon me such a look as an American
society leader might bestow upon an Australian Bushman at her table,
begged my pardon, through his daughter, for overriding the dictates of
etiquette by partaking of a morsel before his guest had begun, tore a
few inches from a bread-sheet, and folding it between his fingers,
picked up a pinch of lentils and ate. I lost no time in falling to.
A wonderful invention is this _gkebis_ or Arab bread. If one purchases
food in a native bazaar, it is wrapped in a bread-sheet—and a very
serviceable wrapper it is, for it requires a good grip and a fair pair
of biceps to tear it. A bread-sheet takes the place of many table
utensils: arab matrons, ’tis said, never complain of their dishwashing
tasks. It makes a splendid cover for pots and pans, it does well as a
waiter’s tray. Never have I seen it used to cover roofs, nor as shaving
paper—but the Oriental is noted for his inability to make the most of
his opportunities. In its primary mission—as an article of food—however,
gkebis is not an unqualified success. In taste it is not always
unsavory, but ten minutes chewing makes far less impression on it than
on a rubber mat. It is rumored, too, that more than one Frank has lost
his appetite in striving to pronounce its guttural Arabic name. Very
often—as on this occasion—when weeks have passed since its baking, the
gkebis grows brittle and is inclined to break when used as a spoon. My
host picked up one of my sheets, held it against the glowing stove with
the flat of his hand, and returned it. It was as pliable as cloth and
much more toothsome than before.
The younger man rolled cigarettes for the three of us. We had settled
back to chat—through interpreter—when there came a tap at the door and a
few words in Arabic that caused the family to jump hurriedly to their
feet. An awe-struck whisper passed from mouth to mouth; “sheik! sheik!”
The children were whisked into one corner, the door flung open, and
there entered a diminutive man of about sixty. Long, flowing robes
enveloped his form, a turban-wound fez perched almost jauntily on his
head, and his feet were bare, for he had dropped his slippers at the
door. His face, above all, attracted attention. Deep-wrinkled, with a
long scar across one cheek, a visage browned and weather-beaten by the
wild storms that sometimes rage over the Lebanon, there was about it an
expression of frankness; yet from his eyes there flashed shrewd,
worldly-wise glances that stamped him as a man vastly different from his
simple fellow-townsmen.
The sheik greeted the head of the family, took a seat near me on the
divan, salaamed solemnly to each person present, acknowledged the
greetings they returned, and with a wave of his hand bade them be
seated. The newcomer had, quite plainly, been attracted to the house by
the rumor that a faranchee was visiting the family. After a few
preliminary remarks, the drift of which I could follow from his
expressive gestures and the few words I had picked up, he turned the
conversation, with the ease of a diplomat, to the subject of their
strange guest. My hosts needed no urging. For a time the sheik listened
to their explanations and suppositions with an unruffled mien, puffing
the while at a cigarette with as blasé an air as if faranchees were the
most ordinary beings to him.
As a climax to his tale the head of the house remarked that I was bound
to “Shaam” on foot. The ending was fully as effective as he could have
hoped. The sheik fairly bounded into the air, threw his cigarette at the
open stove, and burst forth into an excited tirade. The girl
interpreted. It was the old story of “impossible,” “can’t be done,” and
the rest; but a new element was introduced into a threadbare prediction;
for the sheik declared that, as village magistrate, he would not permit
me to continue in such a foolhardy undertaking. How many weapons did I
carry? None? What? No weapon? Travel to far-off Damascus without being
armed? Why, his own villagers never ventured along the highway to the
nearest towns without their guns! He would not hear of it; and he was
still disclaiming as only an excited Oriental can, when the missionary
came to invite me to a second supper.
I took leave of my host early next morning, swung my knapsack over my
shoulder, and limped down to the road. But Bhamdoon was not yet done
with me. In the center of the highway, in front of the little shop of
which he was proprietor, stood the sheik and several fellow townsmen.
With great politeness, he invited me to step inside. My feet were still
swollen and blistered from the long tramp of the day before, for the
cloth slippers of Port Saïd offered no more protection from the sharp
stones of the highway than a sheet of paper, and I accepted the
invitation. The village head placed a stool for me in the front of the
shop, in full sight from up or down the route. It soon became evident
that I was on exhibition as a freak of humanity, for the sheik pointed
me out with great delight to every passer-by. Apparently, too, he had
chosen this opportune moment to collect some village tax. On the floor
beside me stood an earthenware pot, and the sheik, as soon as his
exhibit had been viewed from all sides, called upon each newcomer to
drop into it a bishleek (ten cents). Like true Orientals, they gave
smaller pieces, some half bishleeks, some one or two metleeks; but not a
man passed without contributing his mite, for the command of the sheik
of a Syrian village is law to all its inhabitants.
Some time I had served as a bait for tax-dodgers when a villager I had
not yet seen put in an appearance, and addressed me in fluent English.
He had gathered a Syrian fortune in Maine and returned, years before, to
the rugged slopes of his native Lebanon. He insisted that I visit his
house nearby and, once there, fell to tucking bread-sheets, black
olives, raisins, and pieces of sugar-cane into any knapsack, shouting
incessantly at the same time of his undying affection for America and
things American. Out of mere pride for his bleak country, he took care,
on the way back to the shop, to point out a narrow path that wound up
the steep slope of a neighboring range.
“That,” he said, “leads to the Damascus road. But no man can journey to
Damascus on foot.”
The earthenware pot was almost full when I took my seat again on the
stool. I turned to my new acquaintance.
“What special taxes is the sheik gathering this morning?” I demanded.
“Eh! What?” cried the erstwhile New Englander, following the indication
of my finger, “The pot? Why, don’t you know what that’s for?”
“No,” I answered.
“Why, that is a collection the sheik is taking up to buy you a ticket to
Damascus on the railroad.”
I picked up my knapsack from the floor and stepped into the highway. The
sheik and several bystanders threw themselves upon me with cries of
dismay. It was no use attempting to escape from a dozen horny hands. I
permitted myself to be led back to the stool and sat down with the
knapsack across my knees. The sheik addressed me in soothing tones,
pointing at the pot with every third word. The others resumed their
seats on the floor, rolled new cigarettes, and fell quiet once more.
With one leap I sprang from the stool into the street and set off at top
speed down the highway, a screaming, howling, ever-increasing but ever
more distant throng at my heels. A half-hour later I gained the summit
of the neighboring range and slid down the opposite slope onto the
highway to Damascus.
For miles the road ascended sharply, elbowing its way through narrow
gorges, or crawling along the face of a mountain where its edge was a
yawning precipice. The giant cedars of the first slopes had given way to
clumps of stunted dwarfs, cowering in deep-cut ravines behind protecting
shoulders of the range. Few were the villages, and being low and flat
and built of the same calcareous rock as the mountains, they escaped the
eye until one was almost upon them. In every hamlet one or more of the
householders marched back and forth on the top of his dwelling, dragging
after him a great stone roller and chanting a mournful dirge that seemed
to cheer him on in his labor. At first sight these flat roofs seem to be
of heavy blocks of stone. In reality they are made of branches and
bushes, plastered over with mud, and, were the rolling neglected for a
fortnight in this rainy season, they would soon sag and fall in of their
own weight. More frequent than the villages were the ruins of a more
pretentious generation, standing bleak and drear on commanding hillsides
and adding to the haggard desolation. At long intervals appeared a line
of camels, plodding westward with a tread of formal dignity, a company
of villagers on horseback, or a straggling band of evil-eyed Bedouins
astride lean asses. Never a human being alone, never a man on foot, and
never a traveler without a long gun slung across his shoulders. The
villagers stared at me open-mouthed, the camel drivers leered
sarcastically, the scowling Bedouins halted to watch my retreating form
as if undecided whether I was worth the robbing.
The snow, which, seen from Beirut, seemed to cover the entire summit of
the range in impenetrable drifts, lay in isolated patches along the way.
Here was no such Arctic realm as Abdul had pictured. The air was crisp
at noonday; by night, no doubt, it would have been bitter cold—mere
autumn weather to us of northern clime. But it was easy to understand
why those accustomed to the perpetual summer of the coast had fancied
the passage an unprecedented hardship.
At the summit, the snow lay deeper. Far below stretched a rectangular
tableland, a fertile plain dotted with clusters of dwellings, and shut
in on every side by mountain ranges. Across it, like a white ribbon, lay
the Damascus highway, growing smaller and smaller, to be lost in
tortuous windings in the foothills beyond.
I reached the plain by evening and halted in a hamlet not far off the
city of Zakleh. Among the heavy-handed peasants who surrounded me was
one who had labored long enough in Italy to have picked up a smattering
of her language. We of the West might well take lessons in hospitality
from the Arab. Imagine a Syrian arriving at night and on foot in, let us
say, a village of rural Kansas; a Syrian in native costume who, in
answer to the questions put to him could do no more than point to the
road across the prairie and gurgle some such word as “Chikak! Cheekako!”
each time with a different accent. An Arabic-speaking villager, arriving
on the scene, would, possibly, pause to inquire the stranger’s wants. He
might direct him to an inn, but he would not consider it his duty to put
himself to the annoyance of seeing that he found it. Such was not the
Italian-speaking Arab’s notion of the proper treatment of strangers. He
took personal charge of me at once, led the way to the caravanserai,
acted as interpreter, quarreled with the proprietor when he tried to
overcharge me, and to save me a dismal evening surrounded by a jabbering
multitude, remained until late at night.
I took leave of him at the door of a stone stable—the only lodging which
the hamlet offered. The few camel drivers already gathered there were
well supplied with bags and blankets which they made no offer to share
with me. When I had watched them chasing through the mysteries and
hiding-places of their manifold garments the nimble creatures with which
they were infected, I lay down on the cobblestone floor without a sigh
of regret. Long before morning, however, I should gladly have accepted
the most flea-bitten covering. The kodak that served me as a pillow
rattled hour after hour with my shivering. I shivered until my neck and
arms ached with the exertion of vainly trying to hold myself still, and
never before had I realized the astonishing length of a December night.
I put off with the first suspicion of dawn and was already halfway
across the plain when the sun climbed the mountain rampart to the
eastward. To the natives the morning was bitter cold. Bands of laborers
on their way to the fields grinned at me sympathetically and passed
their hands over the scarfs wound round and round their necks and heads.
They were certain that, with face and ears unprotected, I was suffering
acutely; yet each and all of them, in low slippers, was bare of leg
halfway to the knee.
Where the plain ended the highway wound upward through a narrow, rocky
defile. Marauding Bedouins could not have chosen a better spot to lie in
wait for their victims. I started in alarm when a shout rang out at the
summit of the pass. The summons came from no highwayman, however. Before
a ruined hut on the hill above, stood a man in khaki uniform, the reins
of a saddle horse that grazed at his feet over one arm. “Teskereh!” he
bawled. I climbed the hillside and handed over my Turkish passport. The
officer grew friendly at once, tethered his horse, and invited me into
the hut. Its only furnishings were a mat-covered bench that served the
guardian as a bed, and a pan of coals. I drew out a few coins and ate an
imaginary breakfast. The officer could not—or would not—understand my
pantomime. He motioned me to a seat, offered a cigarette, and poured out
a cup of muddy coffee from a pot over the coals. But food he would not
bring forth.
While we sat grinning speechlessly at each other, the tinkle of a bell
sounded up the pass. The officer sprang to his feet and hurried down the
hill. Not once before had I been called upon to produce the teskereh
which the American consul had assured me was indispensable, and a
suspicion that one-half the amount it had cost would have sufficed to
blind the officers of the Porte to its absence grew to conviction at
this Thermopylæ of the Lebanon. A war of words sounded from the highway.
I stepped to the door. The soldier and the driver of an overburdened ass
were screaming at each other in the center of the route. When the
quarrel had reached its height, the traveler dropped something into the
guardsman’s hand and continued on his way. The officer climbed the hill,
smiling broadly, “Teskereh, ma feesh!” he cried, “Etnane bishleek!” (he
had no teskereh! Two bishleeks); and he dropped the coins with a rattle
into a stocking-like purse that was by no means empty. I drew him out of
the hut and, once in the sunshine, opened my kodak. He gave one wild
shriek and stumbled over himself in his haste to regain the hovel; nor
could any amount of wheedling induce him to venture forth again until I
had closed the apparatus. Accepting a bribe was a mere matter of
business; to have his picture taken was a sure way to future perdition.
[Illustration: The lonely, Bedouin-infected road over the Lebanon. “Few
corners of the globe offer more utter solitude than Syria and
Palestine”]
[Illustration: The Palestine beast of burden loaded with stone]
Beyond the pass stretched mile after mile of desolation absolute, hills
upon hills sank down behind each other, barren and drear, except for an
occasional olive tree, a sturdy form of vegetation that, in itself,
added to the general loneliness. Few corners of the globe can equal in
fearful stretches of utter solitude this land so aptly termed, in
Biblical phraseology, “the waste places of the earth.” All through the
day I tramped on, with never a sight nor sound of an animate object,
save once in mid-afternoon, when I broke my fast on bread-sheets and
cakes of ground sugar-cane at an isolated shop. Darkness fell over the
same haggard wilderness. The wind, howling across the solitary waste,
filled my ears. On this blackest of nights I could not have made out a
ghost a yard away, and the unknown highway led me into many a pitfall.
Long hours after sunset I was plodding blindly on, my cloth slippers
making not a sound, when I ran squarely into the arms of some species of
human whose native footwear had rendered his approach as noiseless as my
own. Three startled male voices rang out in guttural shrieks of
“Allah”—Arabic invocations, evidently, against evil spirits—as the trio
sprang back in terror.
Before I could pass on, one of them—plainly a materialist—struck a
match. The howling wind blew it out instantly, but in that brief flicker
I caught sight of three ugly faces under a headdress that belongs to the
roving Bedouin. With a simultaneous scream of “Faranchee!” the nomads
flung themselves upon the particular corner of the darkness where the
match had shown me standing. The motive of their attack, perhaps, was
Oriental hospitality. In the excitement of the moment I credited them
with a desire to increase their capital in the kingdom of black-eyed
houris, and evacuated the spot by a bit of side stepping that would have
won me fame in the roped arena. In my haste to execute the manœuvre,
however, I fell off the highway, and the rattling of stones under my
feet precipitated another charge. A dozen times during the ensuing game
of hide-and-seek I felt the breath of one of the flea-bitten rascals in
my face. The Arabic rules of the game, fortunately, required the players
to keep up a continual howling for mutual encouragement, while I moved
silently, after the fashion of the West. Aided by this unfair advantage,
I eluded their welcoming embraces until they stopped for a consultation,
and, creeping noiselessly on hands and knees, I lay hold on the highway
and sped silently away, by no means certain whether I was headed towards
Damascus or the coast.
An hour later the howling of dogs heralded my approach to some hamlet.
Once in it, I halted to listen for sounds of human life. Its
inhabitants, apparently, were lost in slumber, for what Syrian could be
awake and silent? The lights that shone from every hovel proved nothing,
for the Arab nations are unaccountably fearful of the evil spirits that
lurk in the darkness. I beat off the snapping curs and started on again.
Suddenly muffled peals of laughter and the excited voices of male and
female sounded from the depths of a building before me. I hurried
towards it and knocked loudly on the iron-studded door. The festivities
ceased as suddenly as if I had touched an electric button controlling
them. For several moments the silence was absolute. Then there came the
slapping of slippered feet along the passageway inside, and a woman’s
voice called out to me. I summoned up my limited Arabic: “M’abarafshee
arabee! Faranchee! Fee wahed locanda? Bnam!” (I don’t speak Arabic!
Foreigner! Is there an inn? Sleep!). Without a word the unknown lady
slapped back along the corridor. A good five minutes elapsed. I knocked
once more and again there came the patter of feet. This time a man’s
gruff voice greeted me. I repeated my Arabic vocabulary. There sounded
the sliding of innumerable bolts and bars, the massive door opened ever
so slightly, and the muzzle of a matchlock was thrust out into my face.
The eyes that appeared above it were evidently satisfied with their
inspection. The door was thrown wide open, and a very Hercules of a
native, with a mustache that would have put the Kaiser to shame, stepped
out, holding his clumsy gun ready for instant use. I could not but laugh
at his frightened aspect. He smiled sheepishly and, retreating into the
house, returned in a moment unarmed, and carrying a lamp and a rush mat.
At one end of the building he pushed open a door that hung by one hinge
and lighted me into a room with earth floor and one window, from which
five of the six panes were missing. A heap of dried branches at one end
stamped it as a wood shed.
A gaunt cur wandered in at our heels. The native drove him off, spread
the mat on the ground and brought from the house a pan of live coals. I
called for food. When he returned with several bread-sheets, I drew out
my handkerchief and began to untie it. My host shook his head fiercely,
made the sign of the cross and pointed several times at the ceiling,
implying, evidently, that he was a convert of the Catholic missionaries
and that the Allah of the Christians would pay my bill.
Barely had the native disappeared when the dog poked his ugly head
through the half-open door and snarled viciously at me. He was a wolfish
animal of the yellow mongrel variety so common in Syria, and in his eye
gleamed a rascality that gave him a startling resemblance to the
thieving nomads that infect that drear land. I drove him off and made
the door fast, built a roaring fire of twigs, and rolling up in the mat,
lay down beside the blaze. I awoke from a half-conscious nap to find
that irrepressible cur sniffing at me and displaying his ugly fangs
within six inches of my face. A dozen times I fastened the door against
him in vain. Had he merely bayed the moon all night it would have
mattered little, for with a fire to tend I had small chance to sleep;
but his silent skulking and muffled snarls kept me wide-eyed with
apprehension until the grey of dawn peeped in at the ragged window.
The village was named Hemeh—a station of the railway from the coast not
far beyond told me as much. The dreary ranges of the day before fell
quickly away. The highway descended a narrow, fertile valley in close
company with a small river, on the banks of which grew willows and
poplars in profusion.
A bright morning sun soon made the air grateful, though the chill of
night and the mountains still hovered in the shadows. Travelers became
frequent; peasant families driving their asses homeward from the morning
market, bands of merchants on horseback, well-to-do natives in a garb
that recalled the ill-omened coat of Joseph. Here passed a camel caravan
whose drivers would, perhaps, purchase just such a slave of his brothers
this very day. There squatted a band of Bedouins at breakfast and their
eating was as ceremonial as any meal among the ancient Jews. Beyond rode
a full-bearded sheik who was surely as much a patriarch in appearance as
Abraham of old.
The road continued its descent, the passing throng became almost a
procession, and I swung at last round a mountain spur that had hidden
from view an unequaled sight. Two miles away, across a vast, level
plain, traversed by the sparkling river, and peopled by a battalion of
soldiers in manœuvre, the white city of Damascus stood out against a
background of dull-red hills, the morning sun gleaming on graceful domes
and minarets of superb Saracenic architecture. It was an ultra-Oriental
panorama before which that first quatrain of Omar sprang unbidden to the
lips. I passed on with the throng and was soon swallowed up in the
multitude that surged through “the Street called Straight”—which isn’t.