ARAFAT DAY: NIGHT[2]
[2] In the East the night precedes the day, thus our Sunday night is
their Monday night.
It has always been difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy the
cravings of an inquisitive nature; and when Seyyid ’Alí left the tent,
singing the Persian lullaby, my curiosity was not long in overcoming
my desire to sleep. It was not the prayerful hum of the canvas city
that kept me awake; it was the undevotional uproar, with the appeal
it made to my love of adventure. I lay there for some time thinking,
as men active and alert in body and mind will, of the chances I might
miss of witnessing some deed of heroism or of violence, were I to allow
myself to count the possible cost of the risk, rather than the certain
opportunities of distinction which its dangers would present to a man
of an enterprising spirit.
With these thoughts in my mind, I leaped to my feet and at once
wandered out in the camp. To me it seemed one vast place of sepulture;
for, go where I might, there I happened upon the victims of the cholera
fiend or its terrible ally, fear. I saw them writhing on the ground,
with limbs hideously contorted and faces blackened like charcoal; I
heard the sick groaning from within the tents as I hurried by to the
more convivial surroundings of the market-place; and I stumbled over
the graves in which the dead had been shovelled with unseemly haste by
their terror-stricken friends. The custom was to bury the dead outside
their tents (or wherever they might happen to fall, if away from the
camp), but to this custom the neighbours sometimes objected in a craven
regard for their own safety; for my part, the longing to recreate my
mind amid more companionable scenes, caused me to run all the way to
the meidán. And there, carousing with the ragtag and bobtail of the
loiterers and stragglers of the encampment, I counted private soldiers,
our guardians of the peace, by the score. They filled the front benches
of almost every coffee-booth, making the night merry with their hearty
laughter, while their companions, not behindhand in conviviality, burst
out singing love-songs to the accompaniment of the clapping of hands.
The Bedouin Sheykhs, virile, dignified, and exclusive, did not deign
to take part in these revels, but spent the vigil of the night on the
Mountain of Mercy or in the cafés that they kept for their private use.
They were not dressed in the pilgrim’s garb; they were arrayed in all
the warlike trappings of their tribal splendour; and being impressed
by this silent declaration of their independence, I came at length to
the conclusion that they, regarding themselves as the chosen people of
the Faith and the holy places as their inheritance, deemed it right
that the winding-sheet of humility should be worn not by themselves,
but by those who visited the Holy Land of Islám from beyond the seas.
Another characteristic of theirs, a characteristic that runs on
parallel lines with the first, is the attitude of the Sheykhs to their
clansmen, and _vice versâ_, as it reveals itself in the expression of
their faces. As every one knows who has studied the laws of this free
and irresistible people, despotism, as it exists in the Muhammadan
monarchies, is a thing impossible amongst them; and the consciousness
of this inalienable grace, why, upon my word, their faces positively
shone with it! Every Sheykh’s face is as free as is that of his
clansman from that meek and submissive servility which is the mark of
the Persian or (in a less degree) the Turkish dependent in the company
of his master. A Sheykh, on the other hand, being first amongst equals,
bears himself towards his followers with a dignity and charm commingled
out of paternal pride and childlike modesty, nor does such an one
consider his position to be threatened because his tribesmen never
cringe. They, too, are freeborn men and carry their heads high even
in the presence of the Sheríf of Mecca, who holds his race too dear
to exact an obsequious homage. Indeed, his face never wears a frown;
his voice is never raised in anger; and yet for all who come near him
the consciousness of his power lies not in themselves, but in the man
himself: in a word, it lies in his complete self-forgetfulness and his
freedom from all arrogance and pretence.
[Illustration: THE SHERÍF OF MECCA IN HIS UNIFORM.]
Well, as I walked along in the direction of the Holy Mountain, I found
a great many pilgrims engaged in calling out the names of such of
their absent friends as had begged to be remembered on the night of
Arafat. The Prophet recommended his followers to perform this act of
remembrance, and said that whosoever among them should thus create
seventy pilgrims by proxy would be rewarded with seventy palaces in
the world to come and the praises of seventy thousand angels. Imagine,
then, with what zeal and devotion my fellow-pilgrims lifted up their
voices! After each name, loud cries of “Here I am, O Allah! here am
I!” were raised by one and all, the Maghrebis singling themselves out,
to my amusement, by the number of women’s names that came tripping
off their tongues; it seemed for all the world as though they were
resolved to win the praise of none save female angels!
Tickled not a little by this delicious trait of character, I wandered
on, falling the while into a vein of pleasant memories on the friends I
had left behind me, until I was suddenly recalled to myself by a mighty
hue and cry. And this is what had happened. A Bedouin thief, breaking
through the tent of a pilgrim whom he knew to be engaged in calling out
names on the plain, saw in a corner a round bundle in a white cloth.
With greedy hands he made to possess himself of its contents when, to
his intense amazement, a woman burst from its folds, shrieking! She had
wrapped herself up in the cloth ere she went to sleep, as the custom
is among Orientals of the lower class, so that not even her head was
visible to the nefarious Bedouin, who, on now perceiving his mistake,
threw himself on the floor, with the intention of slipping headforemost
under the tent. He had certainly got away at once, had not the husband
returned, and, in the belief that the thief had it in the mind to take
advantage of his dearest treasure, laid hold of the intruder by the
leg, giving the alarm that had startled me from my day-dream. The woman
swooned away, while the Bedouin tugged himself free and made good his
escape. A few minutes later, a sergeant and his men shouldered their
way through the crowd that had collected round the entrance--too late
for once.
I hesitated a moment before I ventured to put my fate to the test of
further experience. I knew well that I risked robbery, if not death,
in continuing my ramble; for, as I had noticed from the moment of my
setting out, the camp was haunted by paupers with the most evil and
desperate faces I ever beheld. They lay in wait for the unwary pilgrim
wherever the gloom was densest, and at best the lanterns and torches
about each tent shed but a dismal glimmer on its purlieus; but the
desire to scale the Hill of Arafat and to say my prayers on its summit,
at last overcame the whispers of alarm. My only weapon was a stout
cudgel, which I had picked up as a protection against the pariah dogs
that barked at every passer-by; however, as only a couple of dollars
were left in the little bag round my neck, I felt that I could plod
along in the teeth of danger with no load of uneasy wealth on my mind.
And so, with a fresh glow of courage, I sallied forth.
It was by this time about half-past three in the morning, and a lull
seemed to fall on the camp, or perhaps this was merely a fancy of mine,
a testimony to my jangled nerves. Be this as it may, I had not taken
a hundred paces before I had the evidence of my senses to testify to
the fact that my recent misgivings had been something more than the
suggestions of timidity or nervousness. For, on reaching a secluded
and storm-rent tent, I was suddenly surrounded by a gang of paupers,
who sprang out upon me, clamouring for alms in a tone so threatening,
that my pride rebelled and would not allow me to purchase my safety
at its expense. Enough, I thought, if I seek refuge in yonder tent. A
hail of stones about my head increased my determination to gain the
place of shelter, about fifty yards away, and thither I cudgelled me a
path with a desperate expenditure of strength. The surly rascals trod
close upon my heels, stoning “the devil of a Jew” with surly illwill;
but inside the tent they dared not follow me. For all that, if they
had committed the blunder of counting the booty before the battle was
won, I had soon the discomfiture to discover that innocence in distress
may be less fortunate in its destiny than villainy in disguise. To the
injuries I had received at the hands of the robbers were now added the
insults of the inmates of the tent. They stood on the defensive, taking
me to be a thief; I called heaven to witness that I had come near to
being his victim; whereupon they assumed the offensive, and, catching
me by the nape of the neck, dragged me outside and gave me in charge
of a sentinel who, as ill-luck would have it, happened to be on his
beat. Without saying a word, I disbursed myself of half the money I
had about me, which was a proof of the innocence of my intentions so
convincing to the sentinel, that he let me loose and fell to upbraiding
my unwilling hosts for their unjustifiable suspicions. His eloquence
took the sting out of the reception they had given me, and I went on my
way blithely enough.
When I at last reached the Hill of Arafat, it was to find that the
Bedouins and the Sheykhs of the tribe of Kuraish had already taken
possession of the best places around the enclosure whence the sermon
would be preached on the following afternoon; for it was there, about
half-way up the Hill, that Muhammud was wont to address his followers,
sitting on a dromedary. This place, as well as the summit beyond,
is reached by means of a broad flight of steps, which, winding up
the southern slope of the Mount, gets gradually more precipitate and
narrow. No attempt to keep order was made by anybody in authority, with
the result that the pilgrims going up would meet the pilgrims coming
down, and be locked tight in one another’s arms, each party fighting
its hardest to force a passage through. On the crest the pressure of
the crowd was even greater: I mean more especially in the neighbourhood
of the Makam, or prayer-niche of Adam, with its white-washed platform
and central obelisk, where pious wayfarers from every quarter of Islam
were pouring out their thanks to God from the innermost tabernacle of
the heart.
Having said a two-prostration prayer--a duty that I had not neglected
on passing the sermon enclosure below--I turned to the north where,
in the valley separating the Hill from the surrounding mountains, a
band of Bedouin shepherds had lighted huge roaring bonfires, by the
light of which I could see their flocks (so soon to be slaughtered as
a sacrifice to the Omnipotent) peacefully nibbling the sparse green
herbage of the lowlands.
From the north I went to the south, and gazed down on the plain below,
to where, under the ruddy glare of the torches and the yellow light of
the lanterns, the tents of the faithful stood out against the darkness
beyond. The only regularly pitched camps were those of the soldiery,
the Sheríf, and the other dignitaries of the Hájj; all of these
occupied the space on the left-hand side of the observer; while in the
fore-ground, to the right, as well as to the left, the tents of the
Syrian and the Egyptian caravans were conspicuous: and most of these
were either circular or elliptical in shape and of considerable size,
sometimes as many as twenty pilgrims, and never less than ten, sleeping
in a single tent. For the arrangement between a Syrian pilgrim and his
_moghavem_ is this: The pilgrim pays the _moghavem_ a certain sum of
money in return for which the latter guarantees (1) to find him a seat
in a _kejaveh_ when the caravan is on the move, (2) to give him the use
of a camel on which to set his provisions and belongings, and (3) to
reserve for him a sleeping-compartment within one of the tents that are
thus turned into portable caravanserais.
Now, the Syrian caravan, whose commander considers himself the chief
of all the foreign pilgrims and brings with him a strong detachment of
cavalry, claims superiority over that of Egypt; but both caravans glory
in the possession of a Mahmil or Holy Carpet, a treasure, by the bye,
that is not a carpet at all, but a square wooden frame with a top in
the shape of a pyramid. A becrescented ball of gilt silver is set on
the four corners of the square and on the crest of the pyramid, and
the little shrine is covered all over with rich brocade embroidered in
gold and edged with silk tassels. This covering varies in colour and
in material, but, generally speaking, the Syrian Mahmil is draped with
green velvet and the Egyptian with red. The origin of the Mahmil is
said by some to date back to the year 645 of the Hegira, when a Queen
of Egypt, called the Tree of Pearls, made use of a similar kind of
thing as a litter, on the occasion of her pilgrimage to Mecca; and the
tradition goes that she borrowed the design from the chest in which
Muhammad stored the wares that he took with him on his journey from
Medina to Syria, a journey made before he had revealed to the Arabians
his new doctrine. Nowadays the Mahmil is empty. But a copy of the
Kurán is fastened outside below the topmost crescent. In the course of
time the Egyptian Mahmil came to be known by the name of Aishah, the
Prophet’s second wife, who one day questioned him, saying: “Now am I
not better than Kadijah? She was a widow, old, and had lost her looks;
you love me better than you did her?” And Muhammad answered: “No, by
Allah! She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole
world I had but one friend, and she was that.” And it is after this
peerless woman Kadijah that the Syrians have called their Mahmil. Along
with that of Egypt goes what is called the Kesveh, which consists of
eight pieces of black silk and a green curtain. The first is used for
covering the walls of the Ka’bah, and the second for veiling the tomb
of Abraham. This ceremony, which takes place during the pilgrimage, was
first instituted by Kurb, King of Yemen, and in the year of the Hegira
750, a man named Suleyman bought seven villages in Egypt, the produce
of which has since gone to defray the yearly expenses of the Kesveh.
These villages now yield an income of about £7,000 sterling, and all
this money is spent in purchasing the Kesveh and in despatching it with
great pomp to Mecca.
After meditating for about half an hour on the inexhaustible subject
of my sins, I forced my way through the press to the foot of the Hill,
and after several adventures in a place called the “Kitchen of Adam”
(where the Indian and Meccan pilgrims of the poorest classes pitched
their tents and where even the dervishes and beggars had found a
shelter)--adventures too trivial to be related here, I returned at last
to my own pavilion, and “laid me down with a will” to sleep. The whole
encampment was now wrapped in a solemn hush.