A SHADOWLAND OF ARABESQUES
Some breath of reality, some call from the outer world of freedom came
to us from the presence of these girls. They seemed the first real
people I had seen in my captivity, femininity incarnate, human beings in
a shadow-land of arabesques. They were happy and healthy and somehow
outside the insanities of our world. For a moment they gazed at us in
awe, and for another moment in complete sympathy: then they retired with
little squeaks of laughter and busied themselves with their brother's
baggage.
When our preparations were complete and we set off on our long journey,
they stood for a space at the casement window and waved us goodbye,
looking quite charming. I vowed that if Fate by a happy chance were to
lead us back to Baghdad with roles reversed, so that they, not we, were
captives in the midst of foes, my first care would be to repay their
kindly, though unspoken, sympathy. They were too human for the
futilities of war, too amiable to have a hand in Armageddon.
Only prisoners, I think, see the full absurdity of war. Only prisoners,
to begin with, fully realise the gift of life. And only prisoners see
war without its glamour, and realise completely the suffering behind
the lines: the maimed, the blind, the women who weep. Only by a few of
us in happy England has the full tragedy of war been realised. Mere
words will never record it, but prisoners know "the heartbreak in the
heart of things." To us who have been behind the scenes, far from the
shouting and the tumult and the captains and the kings, the wretchedness
of it all remains indelible. Nothing can make us forget the broken men
and women, whose woes will haunt our times.
But I was on the threshold of my experiences then, and the maidens of
Baghdad soon passed from memory, I fear--vanishing like the mists of
morning that hung over the river-bank at the outset of our journey.
We travelled in that marvellous conveyance, the _araba_. To generalise
from types is dangerous, but the _araba_ is certainly typical of Turkey.
Its discomfort is as amazing as its endurance. It is a rickety cart with
a mattress to sit on. A pole (frequently held together by string) to
which two ponies are harnessed (frequently again with string) supplies
the motive power, which is restrained by reins mended with string, or
encouraged by a whip made of string. The contrivance is surmounted by a
patchwork hood tied down with string. A few buckets and hay nets are
strung between its crazy wheels. Such is the _araba_. How it holds
together is a mystery as inscrutable as the East itself. If all the
vitality expended in Turkey on starting upon a journey and continuing
upon it were turned to other purposes, the land might flourish. But the
philosophy which makes the _araba_ possible makes other activities
impossible.
A full two hours before the start, when the world is still blue with
cold, travellers are summoned to leave their rest. Then the drivers
begin to feed their ponies. When this is done they feed themselves.
Then, leisurely, they load the baggage. Finally, when all seems ready,
it occurs to somebody that it is impossible to leave before the cavalry
escort is in saddle. "Ahmed Effendi" is called for. Everyone shouts for
"Ahmed Effendi," who is sleeping soundly, like a sensible man. He wakes,
and, to create a diversion perhaps, accuses a driver of stealing his
chicken. The driver replies in suitable language. Meanwhile time passes.
The disc of the sun cuts the horizon line of the desert, disclosing us
all standing chill and cramped and bored and still unready. A pony has
lain down in his harness, in an access of boredom, no doubt. A goat has
stolen part of my scanty bread ration and is now browsing peacefully in
the middle distance. Far away a cur is barking at the jackals. Some of
our escort have retired to pray, others are still wrangling. Two or
three are engaged in kicking the bored pony.
After recovering from the goat my half-loaf, which is so much better
than no bread in the desert, I watch with amazement the Turkish
treatment of the pony. A skewer is produced and rammed into the
unfortunate animal's left nostril. So barbarous does this seem that I am
on the point of protesting, when suddenly the animal struggles to its
feet, and stands shivering and wide-eyed and apparently well again.
After the wound has been sponged and the pony given a few dates, it
seems equal to fresh endeavour. The blood-letting has cleared its
brain--and no wonder, poor beast.
At length all seems ready. We climb into the _araba_. But we are not off
yet. We sit for another hour while the drivers refresh themselves with a
second breakfast. A rhyme keeps running through my frozen brain:
"Slow pass the hours--ah, passing slow--
My doom is worse than anything
Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe."
But I did not realise then how lucky we were to be travelling by
carriages at all. Nor did I realise what an honour it was to be
presented to the local governors through whose districts we passed. It
was only late in captivity, when merged in an undistinguished band of
prisoners, that I understood the pomp and circumstance of our early
days. Late in 1915 a prisoner was still a new sort of animal to the
Turks. They were curious about us, and to some extent the curiosity was
mutual. One kept comparing them with the descriptions in "Eoethen."
Proceedings generally opened in a long low room. The local magnate sat
at a desk, on which were set a saucer containing an inky sponge, a dish
of sand, and some reed-pens. A scribe stood beside the _kaimakam_ and
handed him documents, which he scrutinised as if they were works of art,
holding them delicately in his left hand as a connoisseur might consider
his porcelain. Then with a reed-pen he would scratch the document, still
holding it in the palm of his hand, and after sprinkling it carefully
with sand would return it to the scribe. All this was incidental to his
conversation with us or with other members of the audience. There were
never less than ten people in any of the rooms in which we were
interviewed, and as they all made fragmentary remarks, one quoting a
text from the Koran, another a French _bon mot_, and a third introducing
some question of local politics, and as the governor asked us questions
and signed papers and kept up a running commentary with his friends, one
felt exactly like Alice at the Hatter's tea party.
"A Turk does not listen to what you are saying," I have since been told,
"he merely watches your expression." That this is true of the uneducated
I have no doubt, and if correct about the educated Turk I daresay it is
not to his discredit. Demeanour in Oriental countries counts for much.
But at Samarra our demeanour was sorely tried. We had been travelling
about three days in the desert, when we arrived at this desolate and
dishevelled spot. I longed to lie down and shut my eyes, and forget
about captivity for a bit, but no!--there came a summons to attend the
ghastly social function I had already learned to loathe.
The Governor of that place was a _tout a fait civilise_ Young Turk,
sedentary, Semitic, and very disagreeable.
"Is it true that you dropped bombs on the Mosque at Baghdad?" he asked.
And--
"Do you know that the population of Baghdad nearly killed you?"
And--
"Do you know that in another month the English will be driven into the
Persian Gulf?" . . . and so on.
We denied these soft impeachments, and then his method became more
direct.
"Some of your friends have been killed and captured," he said--"the
commandant of your flying corps, for instance."
Seeing us incredulous, he accurately described the Major's appearance.
"And there is someone else," the _kaimakam_ continued in slow tones that
iced my blood. "Someone who may be a friend of yours. A young pilot in a
fur coat."
My heart stood still.
"He was killed by an Arab," the _kaimakam_ added. . . .
Here I will skip a page or two of mental history. The defeat of my
country, the death of my friend, the crumbling of my hopes: little
indeed was left. . . . . .
Let five dots supply the ugly blank. There is sorrow and failure enough
in the world without speculating on tragedies that never happened.
Baghdad was taken later, my friend proved to be captured, not killed,
and I write this by Thames-side, not the Tigris.
The inhabitants of Samarra are, I believe, the most ill-balanced people
in the world. This trait is well known to travellers, and we found it no
traveller's tale. On first arriving at Samarra, we halted in the
rest-house on the right bank of the river, and were enjoying our frugal
meal of bread and dates when a sergeant came to us from the Governor
with orders that we were to be instantly conveyed to his residence,
which is situated in the town across the river. We demurred, and our own
sergeant protested, but the Governor's emissary had definite orders, and
we were hurried down in the twilight. Here we found that there was no
boat to take us across. The Samarra sergeant shouted to a boatful of
Arabs, floating down the river, but they would not stop. Louder and
louder he shouted, till his voice cracked in a scream. Growing frantic
with rage, he fired his revolver at the Arabs. Of course he missed them,
but the bullets, ricochetting in the water, probably found a billet in
the town beyond. The Arab occupants merely laughed in their beards. We
also laughed. Then the sergeant declared that we would have to swim, and
we urged him in pantomime to show the way.
Eventually he spied a horse-barge down river, with a naked boy playing
beside it. Reloading his revolver, a few shots in his direction
attracted the lad's attention. Then an old man came out of a hut by some
melon beds, to see who was firing at his son.
Another shot or two and the old man and the boy were prevailed upon to
take us across. We had secured our transport at last, and the whole
transaction seemed (in Samarra) as simple as hailing a taxi.
I bought a melon from the boy, and he snatched my money contemptuously.
To take things without violence is a sign of weakness in Samarra. I
noticed afterwards that all the boys and girls in this happy spot were
fighting each other or engaged in killing something. And their elders
keep something of the feckless violence of youth. I do not think that
there are any good Samarratans.
After the interview with the Governor already mentioned, which ended by
a refusal on our part to speak with him further, we were sent to pass
the night in a filthy hovel, whose only furniture consisted of a bench
and a chair. Our sergeant was sitting on this chair when an officer
rushed in and jerked it from under him, leaving him on the floor. As a
conjuring trick it was neat, but as manners, deplorable. We were glad to
get away from the place.
Very few incidents came to diversify the monotony of our desert travel.
One day, however, we met some Turkish cavalry going down to the siege of
Kut. They were a fine body of troops, a little under-mounted perhaps,
but thoroughly business-like. Their officers were most chivalrous
cavaliers. Here in the desert, where luxuries were not to be had for
money or for murder, they frequently gave us a handful of cigarettes, or
a parcel of raisins, or else halted their squadron and asked us to share
their meal. With these men one felt at ease. They were soldiers like
ourselves. They did not ask awkward questions, and were told no lies. I
remember especially one afternoon in the Marble Hills when we sat in a
ring drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, with the panorama of the
desert spread out before us, from the southward plains of Arabia to the
hills of the devil-worshippers, misty and mysterious, in the north. We
talked about horses all the time. A modern Isaiah delivered himself of
the following sentiment, in which I heartily concur:
"Where there is no racing the people perish."
The first-line Turk has many fine qualities, of which generosity and
gallantry are not the least. Something in Anglo-Saxon blood is in
sympathy with the adventure-loving, flower-loving Turk. But, alas! there
is another type of Ottoman, with the taint of Tamerlane. "When he is
good he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid."
In the latter category I must regretfully place the sergeant who
commanded our escort. He came of decent stock (to judge by his charming
sisters, and his own appearance indeed) but his mind was all mud and
blood. He had been Hunified. Turkey would always be fighting, he said.
The English were almost defeated. The Armenians were almost
exterminated. But the Greeks remained to be dealt with, and the cursed
Arabs. Finally the Germans themselves. In an apotheosis of Prussianism
Turkey was to turn on her Allies and drive them out. Such was his creed.
But a glow of courage lit the dark places of his mind. He loved fighting
for the sheer fun of the thing. A few days beyond Samarra we were
attacked by some wandering Arabs, who swept down on us in a crescent.
Our guards panicked, but he stood his ground, and, seizing a rifle,
dispersed the enemy by some well-directed shots. Whether we were near
deliverance or death on that occasion I do not know, but that the panic
amongst our escort was not wholly unreasonable was evinced by the fact
that only a few hours earlier we had passed the headless trunk of a
gendarme, strapped upon a donkey. He had been decapitated as a warning
to the Samarratans that two can play at the game of savagery.
The sight of the corpse had unnerved our guard, and as for myself, I did
not know whether to be glad or sorry when the Arabs attacked us. To be
taken by them meant either going back to the English or to the dust from
which we came. The alternative was too heroic to be agreeable.
Contrariwise, I was much disappointed when our sergeant finally drove
them off. That evening, as if to point the moral, we found the body of
another gendarme, also murdered, lying on a dung-heap outside the
rest-house. This was at Shergat, the former capital of the Assyrians,
and now a squalid village, where, however, the widows of Ashur were
still "loud in their wail."
Here we dined with the fattest man I have ever seen. He was really a pig
personified, but as we both gobbled out of the same dish and ate the
same salt, I will not further enlarge on his appearance.
In the upper reaches of the Tigris there are wild geese so tame that
they come waddling up to inspect the rare travellers through their land.
I thought it might be possible to catch one of these animals on foot.
Coquettishly enough they kept a certain distance. "We don't mind your
looking at us," they seemed to say, "but we _do_ object to being pawed
about." With the coming of the railway I am afraid a gun will destroy
their belief in human kind.
The geese appeared to enjoy the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, which
prevails in these regions. The whole country is rich in natural oils and
bitumen. One day it will make somebody's fortune, no doubt, and then the
geese will waddle away from perspiring prospectors. . . .
Before we arrived at Mosul we stopped for a bath at the hot springs of
Hammam-Ali, where we met (in the water) a patriarch with a white beard,
who confidently assured us that he was a hundred years old and would
continue to live for another hundred, such were the beneficent
properties of the water. Before his days are numbered he may live to see
a Hydro at Hammam-Ali--poor old patriarch. He told us a lot about Jonah
(whose tomb is at Nineveh, just opposite Mosul, on the other side of the
river), and I am not sure that he did not claim acquaintance with that
patriarch. He was quite one of the family.
Mosul, he told us, was a heaven on earth, a land flowing with milk and
honey, where we should ride all day on the best horses of Arabia, and
feast all night in gardens such as the blessed _houris_ might adorn.
It was with a certain elation, therefore, that I saw the distant
prospect of Mosul next morning, set in its surrounding hills. A fair
city it seemed, white and cool, with orange groves down to the river and
many date-trees. But a closer acquaintance brought cruel disappointment,
as generally happens in the East. The blight of the Ottoman was
everywhere; there was dirt, decrepitude, and decay in every corner.
Children with eye-disease, and adults with leprosies more terrible than
Naaman's jostled each other in the mean streets. Whole quarters of the
city had given up the ghost, and become refuse heaps, where curs grouted
amongst offal. Mosul, like our escort-sergeant's mind, seemed a muddle
of mud and blood.
With sinking hearts we drove to the barracks, and were shown into a
dark, gloomy office, where our names were taken. Thence we were led to a
still murkier and more mouldering room, inhabited--nay, infested--by
some ten Arabs. Through this we passed into a cell with windows boarded
up, which was, if possible even damper, darker, and more dismal than
anything we had yet seen. After the sunlight and great winds of the
desert we stood bewildered. Death seemed in the air.
Then out of the gloom there rose two figures. They were British
officers, who had been captured about a month previously. So changed and
wasted were they that even after we had removed the boards from the
little window we could hardly recognise them. One of these officers was
so ill with dysentery that he could hardly move, the other had high
fever.
Our arrival, with news from the outer world, bad though it was,
naturally cheered them considerably, for nothing could be worse than
their present plight.
The ensuing days called for a great moral effort on our part. It was
absolutely imperative to laugh, otherwise our surroundings would have
closed in on us. . . . We cut up lids of cigarette boxes for playing
cards. We inked out a chessboard on a plank. We held a spiritualistic
seance with a soup-bowl, there being no table available to turn. We told
interminable stories. We composed monstrous limericks; and we sang in
rivalry with the Arab guard outside, who made day hideous with their
melody and murdered sleep by snoring.
But when there is little to eat and nothing to do, time drags heavily.
Two cells with low ceilings that leaked were allotted to the four of us.
In these we lived and ate and slept, except for fortnightly excursions
to the baths. We were allowed no communication with the men, who lived
in a dungeon below. Their fate was a sealed book to us. We had nothing
to read. Under these conditions one begins to fear one's brain,
especially at night. It was then that it began to run like a mechanical
toy. Like a clockwork mouse, it scampered aimlessly amongst the dust of
memory, then suddenly became inert, with the works run down. I grew
terrified of thinking, especially of thinking about my friend in the fur
coat.
The night hours are the worst in captivity. One lies on the floor,
waiting for sleep to come, but instead of blessed sleep, "beloved from
pole to pole," thoughts come crowding thick and fast on consciousness,
thoughts like clouds that lower over the quiescent body. Each second
then seems of inconceivable duration. But there is no escape from Time.
During the day, however, things were more bearable, and occasional
gleams of humour enlivened the laggard moments.
Among our guard there were several sentries who (I thought) might
conceivably help us to escape. One dark night, one of these men
whispered the one word "Jesus," and made the sign of the Cross, as I
passed him. After this introduction I naturally hoped that he might be
of use. He was a fine figure of a man, with a proud poise of head, and
aquiline nose, as if some Assyrian god had been his ancestor. I was
gazing at him in admiration the next day, and gauging his possibilities
through my single eye-glass, when a curious thing happened.
Our eyes met. He seemed mesmerised by my monocle. For a long time we
stared at each other in silence, then, thinking the sergeant of the
guard would notice our behaviour, I discreetly dropped my eye-glass and
looked the other way. The sentry's mouth quivered as if I had made a
joke, but instead of smiling, he burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
The sergeant of the guard (a swart, sturdy little Turk) rushed out to
see what had happened. There was the big sentry, wailing, and actually
gnashing his white teeth. I stood awkwardly, looking as innocent as I
felt. The sergeant bristled like a terrier, pulled the sentry's poor
nose, and boxed his beautiful ears, while the victim continued to
blubber and look piteously in my direction.
But I could not help him at all. I had not the slightest idea what was
the matter, nor do I know now. Hysteria, I suppose.
Eventually that great solvent of perplexity, nicotine, came to relieve
the awkward situation. First the sergeant accepted a cigarette, then,
more diffidently, the sentry. Later I put in my eye-glass again, and
convinced them, I think, that its use did not involve the weaving of any
unholy spell.
This eye-glass, by the way, survived all the fortunes of captivity.
Through it I surveyed the moon-lit plains beyond the Tigris when I
planned escape in Mosul, as shall be told in the next chapter. Later it
scanned the desert's dusty face for any hope of release. At
Afion-kara-hissar it helped me search for a pathway through our guards.
At Constantinople it was still my friend. Through it, a month before
escape, I looked at the slip of new moon that swung over San Sophia on
the last day of Ramazan, wondering where the next moon would find me.
And when the next moon came, I watched the sentries by its aid, on the
night of our first escape. And it was in my eye when I slipped down the
rope to freedom.
But this chapter is getting "gaga." It has a happy ending, however.
One evening when the
". . . little patch of blue,
That prisoners call the sky"
had turned to sulky mauve, and the air was heavy with storm, and our
fellow-prisoners were depressed, and the Arab guard was bellowing songs
outside, and we were peeling potatoes for our dinner by the flicker of
lamp-light, and life seemed drab beyond description, there came great
news to us. Two other officers had arrived.
Next moment they peered into our den, even as we had done. And they were
angry, amazed, unshaven, bronzed by the desert air, even as we had been.
There in the doorway, ruddy and fair and truculent like some Viking out
of time and place, stood the young pilot I had last seen at Aziziah. He
was alive, my friend in the fur coat.
The desert had delivered up its dead!