FROM JIDDAH TO MECCA
The time at my disposal being limited, I went at once in search of a
guide, who should accompany me to Mecca and thence to Arafat, and put
me in the way of performing the rites and mysteries of the Hájj. The
men who officiate in that capacity are called _moghavems_. The pick
of them had fallen to the lot of the early-comers who had flocked to
Jiddah in great numbers; but with my customary luck, I chanced upon
a Persian _moghavem_, whose knowledge of the ceremonies and the holy
places of the Pilgrimage was seasoned with the waggish conceits of
a singularly original mind. His sceptical witticisms were the more
piquant in that he gloried in the name of Seyyid ’Alí. For the rest,
he had travelled far and wide, had sat down and laughed beside the
waters of Babylon, had wandered on foot as far to the East as Benares,
and had undertaken the Pilgrimage of Mecca half a dozen times. I
congratulated him on his globe-trotting habit, whereupon he showed a
gleam of white teeth, raising himself on the tips of his toes, and
stroked his unkempt beard complacently. Then he aired his knowledge of
geography. “Yá-Moulai,” he said with unexpected gravity, “Allah has
had me in His keeping, may He be praised! He has revealed to me the
innermost secrets of the world, and shown to me the whole creation.
I have been everywhere except in Hell, and even that experience will
not be withheld from me, I trust, when I come to die. True it is,
yá-Moulai, that this life is a riddle; we solve it when we give up the
ghost--perhaps. Anyhow, my one desire in this world is to go to Europe
that I may see China and study the philosophy of that wonderful land.”
I had to avert my head lest he should detect the struggle between
amusement and politeness which convulsed every feature of my face.
“Ah,” said he, “your Excellency is fortunate to have met me: the Hájj
Season is far advanced: _moghavems_ are scarce: and I am one of the
most reasonable of men. If you will burst from the bonds of economics
in the matter of salary, you will find in me a pleasant travelling
companion and a lettered guide.”
“Will two dollars a day content you?” I asked. The offer was a liberal
one, and on the spur of a grateful impulse he clinched the bargain
without a moment’s hesitation. This trait of character endeared him to
me, and so I treated him on a footing of social equality so long as he
was my cicerone.
Now, the day was the sixth day of the moon: a distance of some
forty-six miles lay between us and the Holy City: and, furthermore,
since the Pilgrims had to leave Mecca on the 8th for the hill of
Arafat, it followed that we had not a single moment to lose in making
preparations for our journey. With many words Seyyid ’Alí staked his
wages that, by hiring asses and riding alone, we could cover the
road in eleven hours. “Of course,” said he, “we must run the risk of
being attacked by Bedouins who lie in wait for stragglers. Indeed,
only two days ago, so the rumour runs in the bazaars, a caravan of
forty Persian pilgrims was robbed on leaving Heddah for Mecca: and
everybody we meet--depend upon it--will do his utmost to terrify us
with blood-curdling stories of Arab lawlessness and violence. However,
let us pin our faith not in firearms and bravado, but in our cool heads
and our stout hearts. And, in the meanwhile, I will take you to a
caravanserai, where we shall find an acquaintance of mine, who is the
owner of a drove of the fleetest asses in Hejaz. His name is Nassir,
and he owns allegiance to the fighting clan of Harb. From him we will
hire three donkeys: one for your Excellency, one for the effects we
have with us, and a third for myself. Nassir will accompany us on foot,
and be a protector to us in the wilderness. Let us hasten lest his
services be engaged.”
After bartering with Nassir, it was settled that I should pay him
two dollars for the use of each animal (two-thirds to be paid in
advance and one-third on alighting in Mecca), while he himself was to
receive, in return for his services, a _bakhshísh_ in proportion to his
usefulness on the road.
In appearance he was a typical representative of his race, both in
bearing and in dress, as well as in accoutrements and in strength.
Tall and lean, he had the appearance of a man that had been baked in
an oven: his skin was as brown and as wrinkled as a walnut-shell, his
features seemed to leap out of the face, while his eyes declared the
nobility of a virile though savage nature. He wore a long yellow shirt,
reaching below the knees, with a red cotton belt round the waist, in
which was stuck an ugly-looking dagger. Slung crosswise over his back a
Bedouin generally carries an old-fashioned flint rifle, having a barrel
some two yards in length, with a bow-shaped stock covered all over with
small square chips of white shells. For this ungainly weapon Nassir
substituted a stout Arab club, which was a fortunate thing for Seyyid
’Alí, perhaps, inasmuch as wordy wars between the two men came to be of
hourly occurrence.
About five o’clock in the evening, after having smoked a pipe of peace
at a coffee-house in the bazaars, we mounted our asses, Seyyid ’Alí
and myself, while the fleet-footed driver, go as hard as we might,
kept pace with us, without so much as turning a hair. We rode through
the Mecca gate, and then bore off in a north-easterly direction in
order that I might have an opportunity of visiting Eve’s Tomb. This
excursion, because it took us a little out of our way, was not to
the liking of our Harbi warrior, who, in his anxiety to reach Mecca
by sunrise, was bent on sparing both his own breath and his beasts
of burden. But I, having made up my mind to pay my respects to the
resting-place of our common mother, was not to be gainsaid; and I
contrived to convict my opponent of churlishness by making a point of
reaching my destination within half an hour--that is in less than half
the time he had said it would take.
Assuredly, Arabia is the cradle of credulity. In that land of legend
the historian catches his breath. He is ill at ease, alternately
bewildered and sceptical, as might be expected of a man, who, reaching
out for truth, lays hold of a myth at every step. Thus, on gaining
admittance to the enclosure, I was amazed to notice the exceeding
length of the Tomb, and on measuring the low walls believed to define
the outlines of Eve’s body, I found that they were one hundred and
seventy-three yards long, and about twelve feet broad. In the centre
a low dome is conspicuous; it is said to crown Eve’s navel. “What a
monster!” I cried, laughing, “easy lies the head of our common mother.”
The guide corrected me, saying, “The Well of Wisdom is mistaken. The
tomb was not long enough to contain her blessed head. It is well known
that only the trunk and limbs of her lie here.” Rising to my full
height, five feet nine in my sandals, I asked him to account for the
dwindling in the size of man. “The Fountain of Learning must remember,”
he replied, “that Eve, our Mother, fell, and with her fell the stature
of the human race.” The explanation found a crack in the armour of
my credulity, and so, turning back into the direct road, we resumed
our journey, joining a caravan of about thirty pilgrims of mixed
nationalities, Egyptians, Syrians, Caucasians, Indians, and Malays.
Instead of refreshing breezes, which would have come as a positive
godsend, the wind, blowing from the south-west, spread abroad an
abominable vapour, and caused the sand to rise and fall like the bosom
of the ocean. Sand-heaps twelve feet high might be scattered at any
moment in these whirlwinds; but, fortunately, though our asses often
sunk over their fetlocks, we reached in safety the Hill of Gaem (the
first stage for caravans), where, according to a local superstition,
the Messiah will first appear. A small booth here made ample amends for
the scarcity of water, and I could not remember ever having tasted more
fragrant and delicious coffee.
Slowly but surely the ground now began to rise, and the sand to grow
firmer. A caravan of camels glided stealthily by, bells tinkling,
pilgrims reciting the Kurán, and the drivers singing to their camels a
deeply melodious song called _Hodi_, which has on them the effect of a
goad, urging them on to a brisk unchanging pace. To this accompaniment
a camel will cover a great distance without stopping, the general
belief being that the camel gets drunk with the sweet burden of the
_Hodi_ song.
Overnight, long after sunset, my Harbi driver himself began to sing
aloud in the gathering darkness, asking God to protect him from the
goblins of the wilderness, and always in a lugubrious minor key, as if
he was going to weep. But ever and anon we heard an original song set
to the music of the desert, wild as the wastes, elusive as the winds,
as revealing and obscure as the tuneless solitudes from whose heart
it would seem to spring--a song that broke through melody, and added
its tameless burden to the music of the spheres. On cultured Europeans
these untutored outbursts would have an uncanny effect, causing the
centuries to roll back to the days of their barbarian ancestry, and
awakening within them, perhaps, one of those haunting dream-memories of
birth far back in the misty past, of an anterior existence in keeping
with the strains of incoherent minstrelsy when men, labouring under
the burdens of consciousness, sang as the spirit moved them, knowing
nothing of the laws of counterpoint and harmony. Such a song was sung
by Seyyid ’Alí as we left Heddah, a song written by a famous Sufí
writer--
“My sorrow is Sorrow; my companion is Sorrow; my mate is Sorrow;
Where’er I go there’s none to care for me but Sorrow;
My Sorrow does not let me sleep alone at night;
Well done, my mate! bravo, my mate! hurrah, my Sorrow!”
The surrounding hills caught the intonation in their ragged arms
and flung it back into the dim-lit sea of eddying sand, echoing and
re-echoing the word “Sorrow!” Then my own Arab driver, carried beyond
himself, raised his voice in the self-same song, and soon the whole
caravan burst out, crying, “Well done, my mate! bravo, my mate! hurrah,
my Sorrow,” the hills repeating the last word. Wagner, the one master
who has given us the music of the sea and the stars, of the winds and
the streams, and of all the vague yearnings that torment the human
heart, would have understood us, would perhaps have played the part
of echo on his return to civilisation, would certainly have joined in
the chorus of that wild Arabian air attuned to Arabia’s barren though
luminous solitudes.
Here, at Heddah, a more than usually serious quarrel arose between
Seyyid ’Alí and Nassir on the subject of the national virtues of
their respective countries. It would certainly have ended in a free
fight, had not I, awaking from a snooze at the uproar, turned to the
pugnacious Arab, who had accused the Persian of hypocrisy, and said
in a tone of gentle reproof: “Yá Nassir, is it true that a Persian
is double-faced?” For the space of a minute he eyed the supercilious
Seyyid, deliberating; then he turned to me. “I wish he were only
double-faced,” he replied, “for then I should know how to deal with
him. But Satan has given him as many as two thousand faces, and it is
beyond the power of any one man to see them all in his lifetime.” I
pursued the inquiry, saying, “Oh, Nassir, supposing you were asked to
describe the Persian character, how would you sum it up?” This time
he turned his flashing eyes on me. “Character comes from conscience,”
he answered; “but a Persian has none.” My guide spat derisively on
the sand, muttering, “Courtesy is unknown to these people;” then he
addressed me in his own language, saying: “But, yá-Moulai, there’s
truth in what the burnt-father said, the Almighty Mason having put so
many constituents into the clay of a Persian that it is very difficult
to analyse it. Our countryman has as many coils and colours as a
serpent. He is the essence of politeness and native refinement. He is
the personification of jealousy and envy. Conceit and hypocrisy are
embodied in him, and so also are generosity and _amour propre_.”
The mere sound of the mellifluous Persian drove Nassir beside himself.
Raising his stout Arab club, which the Persians call Hájí Yemút or
the Pilgrim Slayer, he vowed that he would teach the guide a lesson
in courtesy; and then, suddenly bethinking himself that any act of
violence on his part would be sure to affect his pocket in the matter
of _bakhshísh_, he turned a contemptuous back upon his adversary,
and said to me, smiling all over his face: “This club of mine has
many qualifications. It is useful in urging my ass to mend its pace,
it gives me support when I am tired, and shelter from the sun when
I am sleepy”--here he stuck it in the sand, and tied at the top a
strip of cloth on a crossbar--“it serves as a line on which to dry my
washed clothes, as an altar when it is the hour for me to pray, as a
leaping-pole when a mountain torrent stems my path; and, may Allah
be praised, it is my surest defence against all my enemies, be they
men or beasts, and so, when I die, God forbid, I will leave it as an
inheritance to my son.”
Midnight saw us again on the way, and, in the course of our ride over
the gravelly ground that rose ever higher the nearer we approached the
mountains, we overtook a big caravan that was preceded by a couple
of heralds, who bore aloft the green banner of the Faith, whereon
was inscribed the Muhammadan watchword. “There is no God but God,
and Muhammad is His Messenger.” Then came the cavalcade of pilgrims,
the rear being brought up by a string of camels, and other beasts of
burden, heavily laden with tents and water-skins, or mashks, with
kitchen utensils and provisions. Like ourselves, these men were
latecomers, but being overburdened they were soon left far in the rear
by us, indeed they could not hope to reach Mecca before noon on the
following day, whereas we were bent on sighting the Holy City ere the
rising of the sun.
At the last resting-house, I struck up acquaintance with a Persian
pilgrim, seated on a coarse mat; he declared the Arabs to be cowards,
while I defied him to justify this charge. “What!” he cried, “anything
will frighten them; they are so superstitious. For instance, if a
rabbit spring up at their feet and run away from them they will
pursue it until it is lost to sight. But if the rabbit comes towards
them, they will lose heart, turn on their heels and scuttle as fast
as they can lay their legs to the ground, the timid creature in hot
pursuit at their heels. However, I will admit that they hold fast
together, that they are staunch and true to one another, that they will
sacrifice their lives to protect their comrades against the strangers
at their gates.” He then began to scratch himself vigorously, giving
voice the while to an impromptu verse. Said he; “From sunset to early
dawn there’s a merry-making in the kingdom of my body. The mosquitoes
are the flutists, the fleas the dancers, and I’m the harpist”--that
is, the scratcher, the same word being used in Persian. I left the
quaint fellow playing the accompaniment to the dance of the frolicsome
fleas and humming mosquitoes, and rode on my way, singing. The ground
rose higher and higher. On passing Mount Shíní the road takes a
north-easterly direction, and leads to the tomb of Sheykh Mahmud, a
priest who is held in special veneration by the Arabs, though the
dilapidated state of his grave would scarcely confirm this attitude
towards him. And then, at last, on pursuing the way a little further,
the minarets of the City of God rise, with the sun, before the
pilgrim’s eyes. “Oh, would that I, having beheld its domes, might fall
and die,” is now the true Muslim’s devoutest wish.