In 1848 Burton determined to pass in India for an Oriental; the disguise
he assumed was that of a half-Arab, half-Iranian, thousands of whom can
be met along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. He set out on his
first pilgrimage as Mirza Abdulla the Bushiri, as a _buzzaz_, vendor of
fine linen, muslins and _bijouterie_; he was admitted to the harems, he
collected the information he required from the villagers; he won many
women's hearts, he spent his evenings in the mosques; and, after
innumerable adventures, he wended his way to Mecca. His account of this
adventure is thrilling. The first cry was: "Open the way for the Haji
who would enter the House!" Then:
Two stout Meccans, who stood below the door, raised me in their arms,
whilst a third drew me from above into the building. At the entrance I
was accosted by a youth of the Benu Shazban family, the true blood of
the El Hejaz. He held in his hand the huge silver-gilt padlock of the
Ka'abeh, and presently, taking his seat upon a kind of wooden press in
the left corner of the hall, he officially inquired my mother-nation and
other particulars. The replies were satisfactory, and the boy Mohammed
was authoritatively ordered to conduct me round the building and to
recite the prayers. I will not deny that, looking at the windowless
walls, the officials at the door, and a crowd of excited fanatics
below--
"And the place death, considering who I was,"
my feelings were those of the trapped-rat description, acknowledged by
the immortal nephew of his uncle Perez. A blunder, a hasty action, a
misjudged word, a prayer or bow, not strictly the right shibboleth, and
my bones would have whitened the desert sand. This did not, however,
prevent my carefully observing the scene during our long prayer, and
making a rough plan with a pencil upon my white _ihram._
After having seen the howling Dervishes in Scutari in Asia, I can
imagine Burton's excitement when in Cairo he suddenly left his stolid
English friends, joined in the shouting, gesticulating circle, and
behaved as if to the manner born: he held his diploma as a master
Dervish. In Scutari I felt the contagion of these dancers, where the
brain reels, and the body is almost swept into the orgy. I had all the
difficulty in the world from keeping back the woman who sat beside me
from leaping over the barrier and joining the Dervishes. In these I felt
the ultimate, because the most animal, the most irrational, the most
insane, form of Eastern ecstasy. It gave me an impression of witchcraft;
one might have been in Central Africa, or in some Saturnalia of
barbarians.
There can be no doubt that Burton always gives a vivid and virile
impression of his adventures; yet, as I have said before, something is
lacking in his prose; not the vital heat, but the vision of what is
equivalent to vital heat. I have before me a letter sent from Hyderabad
by Sarojini Naidu, who says: "All is hot and fierce and passionate,
ardent and unashamed in its exulting and importunate desire for life and
love. And, do you know, the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from
my heart's blood, those quivering little birds are my soul made
incarnate music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions dissolved into
aerial essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is the 'Very You' that
part of me that incessantly and insolently, yes, and a little
deliberately, triumphs over that other part--a thing of nerves and
tissues that suffers and cries out, and that must die tomorrow perhaps,
or twenty years hence." In these sentences the whole passionate, exotic
and perfumed East flashes before me--a vision of delight and of
distresses--and, as it were, all that slumbers in their fiery blood.
"Not the fruit of experience," wrote Walter Pater, "but experience
itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given us of a
variegated dramatic life. To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame,
to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." Alas, how few lives out
of the cloud-covered multitude of existences have burned always with
this flame! I have said somewhere that we can always, in this world, get
what we want if we will it intensely enough. So few people succeed
greatly because so few people can conceive a great end, and work toward
that without tiring and without deviating. The adventurer of whom I am
writing failed, over and over again, in spite of the fact that he
conceived and could have executed great ends: never by his own fault,
always by the fault of others.