"I am willing to use all means--all methods."
Ahmed knew the Dead Sea. He knew its moods and a few of its
tricks, so he was suitably scared. He was more of raid of the
treacherous sea than of his captors. They weren't treacherous in
the least. They were frankly disobedient of any law except their
own; respectful of nothing but bullets, brains and their own
interpretation of the Will of Allah. They showed sublime
indifference to danger that always comes of ignorance. Ahmed was
for running straight across to cut the voyage short, because of
the wind that sometimes blows from the south at dawn. He said it
might kick up a sea that would roll us over, for the weight of
the Dead Sea waves in a blow is prodigious.
They overruled his protest with loud-lunged unanimity and lots of
abuse. Anazeh continued to steer a diagonal course for a notch
in the Moab Hills that look, until you get quite close to them,
as if they rose sheer out of the sea. The old chief was pretty
amateurish at the helm, whatever his other attainments. Our wake
was like a drunkard's.
What with the danger in that overcrowded boat, and the manifestly
compromising fact that I had now become one of a gang who boasted
of the murder they had done that night, I did some speculation
that seems ridiculous now, at this distance, after a lapse of
time. It occurred to me that Grim might be disguised as a member
of Anazeh's party. As far as possible in the dark I thoroughly
scrutinized each individual. It is easy to laugh about it now,
but I actually made my way to Anazeh's side and tried to discover
whether the old Sheikh's wrinkles and gray-shot beard were not a
very skillfully done make-up. At any rate, I got from that
absurd investigation the sure knowledge that Grim was not in the
boat with us.
I could not talk with Anazeh very well, because when he tried to
understand my amateurish Arabic and to modify his flow of stately
speech to meet my needs, he always put his head down, and the
helm with it. It seemed wisest to let him do one unaccustomed
thing at a time. I did not care to try to talk with any of his
men, because that might possibly have been a breach of etiquette.
Arab jealousy is about as quick as fulminate of mercury: as
unreasonable, from a western viewpoint, as a love-sick woman's.
But there did not seem any objection to talking with Ahmed. He
was at least in theory my co-religionist, and not a person any
Moslem in that boat was likely to be jealous of. He jumped
at the notion of making friends with me. He made no secret of
the reason.
"You are safe, effendi. They will neither rob you, nor kill you,
nor let you get killed. You are their guest. But as for me,
they would cut my throat as readily as that sheep's, more
especially since they have discovered that you know how to start
the engine. My best chance was to make them believe that the
engine is difficult to understand. Because of your knowledge
they now feel independent of me. So I must yield to them in
everything. And if they force me to swear on a Bible, and on my
father's honour, and in the name of God, that I will not give
evidence against them, I shall have to swear."
"An oath given under compulsion--" I began. But he laughed
cynically.
"Ah! You do not know this land--these folk, effendi. If I were
to break such an oath as that, they would burn my house, steal my
cattle, ravish my wife, and hunt me to the death. If I ran away
to America, Arabs in Chicago and New York would continue the
hunt. This is a land where an oath is binding, unless you are
the stronger. I am weak--an unimportant person."
"What is your business?" I asked.
"There is no business for a man like me. The regulations forbid
commerce in the only goods for which there is a real demand
among Bedouins."
"So you're a smuggler, eh?"
He laughed, between pride and caution, and changed the subject.
"I shall do what they order me, effendi. I think they will keep
my boat over there to bring you back again. But when I get back
the Sikhs will arrest me. So I ask you to bear me witness that I
was compelled by threats and force to go with these people. In
that way, with a little ingenuity--that is to say, the ingenious
use of piastras--perhaps I can contrive to get out of the
difficulty without being punished by both Arabs and British."
I promised to tell no more than I had seen and heard. On the
strength of that we became as fast friends as suspicion
permitted. We trusted each other, because we more or less had
to, like a couple of thieves "on the lam." It suited me. He was
a very good interpreter and slavishly anxious to please. But I
lived to regret it later. When my evidence had cleared him of
collusion in the raid, he chose on the strength of that to claim
me as his friend for life. He turned up in the United States and
tried to live on his wits. I had to pay a lawyer to defend him
in Federal Court. He writes me piously pathetic letters from
Leavenworth Penitentiary. And when he gets out I suppose I
shall have to befriend him again. However, at the moment, he
was useful.
It was just dawn when old Anazeh ran the launch into a cove
between high rocks. Ahmed let out a shriek of anguish at the
violence done the hull. They pitched the sheep overboard to
wade ashore without remembering to untie its legs; it was
almost drowned before it occurred to any one to rescue it.
Perhaps it was dead. I don't know. Anyhow, one fellow prayed
in a hurry while his companion cut the sheep's throat to make
it lawful meat.
"God is good," old Anazeh remarked to me, "and blessed be His
Prophet, who forbade us faithful, even though we hunger, to
defile ourselves with the flesh of creatures whose blood did not
flow from the knife of the slayer."
After that they all prayed, going first into the oily-feeling,
asphaltic water for the ceremonial washing. They were quite
particular about it. Then they spread prayer-mats, facing Mecca.
Every single cut-throat had brought along his prayer-mat, and had
treasured it as carefully as his rifle.
Ahmed and I sat on a rock and watched them. Ahmed pretended he
wanted to pray, too. To impress me, he said he was a very devout
Christian and that nothing should prevent the practice of his
religion. But he was very quick to take my advice not to start
anything that might bring on a breach of the peace. Old Anazeh's
short preliminary sermon to his followers, about the need of
always keeping God in mind, was not addressed to us.
Prayers finished, they proceeded to cut up and cook the sheep.
Ahmed and I subdued the voice of conscience without noticeable
effort and ate our share of the stolen goods. Ahmed said that,
seeing how little was left for him when the rest had all been
served, he sinned only in small degree, but that my share, as an
honoured guest, was huge, and the sin proportionate. So I gave
him some of my meat, and he ate it, and we were equally sinful--
one more bond cementing an "eternal friendship!"
We had hardly finished eating when an Arab on a gray horse came
riding furiously down a ravine that looked like a dry water-
course. He was brought up all-standing fifty yards away. Every
man in the party leveled a rifle at him. Anazeh beckoned me to
come and get behind him for protection. He was very angry when I
refused. He cursed the language and religion of whatever fool
had taught me manners in a land where pigs are lawful food.
However, after they had all had a good look at the horseman they
let him draw near, and there followed a noisy conference, the man
on the horse calling on Allah repeatedly with emphasis, and
Anazeh and his followers all doing the same thing, but from an
opposing viewpoint. I persuaded Ahmed to go up close and listen.
"The man is from El-Kerak," he said presently, while they all
still fought with words, using tremendous oaths by way of
artillery. "A council of the tribes has been summoned, to meet
at El-Kerak, but each sheikh is only to take two men with him,
because of the risk of fighting among themselves. Anazeh says
there can be no proper council without his being present, and
that he will attend the council; but as for taking only two men,
he has pledged his word to escort you with twenty men to El-
Kerak. He swears that he will carry out that pledge, even should
he have to fight the whole way there and back again!"
Anazeh suddenly cut short the war of words. His gesture
suggested that of Joshua who made the sun stand still. He tossed
a curt order to one of his men, who went off at a run toward a
village, whose morning smoke rose blue over a spur of the range a
mile away. Then Anazeh sat down to await events, and took no
more notice of the horseman's arguments. That did not worry the
horseman much. He kept on arguing. Every few minutes one of
Anazeh's men would go to him and repeat some tid-bit, as if the
old sheikh had not heard it; but all he got for his pains was a
gesture of contemptuous dismissal.
Ahmed kept growing more and more uncomfortable all the time. He
had attended to his boat, making it properly fast and covering
the engine, under the eyes of four men who were at pains to see
that he did not crank up and desert. Now he was back beside me,
trying to bolster up his own courage by making me afraid.
"They have determined to take me along with them to prevent me
from escaping," he complained. "That man on the horse is saying
that if more men go with Anazeh than you and two others, there
will certainly be fighting. And Anazeh answers, he has pledged
his word. Can you not say something to persuade Anazeh?"
I would rather have tried to persuade a tiger. Short of knocking
the old raider on the head and standing off his twenty ruffians,
I could not imagine a way of turning him from his set purpose.
And at that, I had not a weapon of any kind. I was the goods,
and the game old sportsman intended to deliver me, right side up,
perhaps, but all in one piece and to the proper consignee.
"I don't see anything to worry about," said I.
"Wait till you hear the bullets!" Ahmed answered. Nevertheless,
bullets or no bullets, I did not see what I could do about it.
Again I remembered Grim's advice: "Do what the leader of the
escort tells you." I had begun to feel sorry for Ahmed in spite
of his self-pity, but his fear wasn't contagious and his advice
wasn't worth listening to.
"Effendi, you are Anazeh's guest. He must do as you demand, if
you ask in the Name of the Most High. Tell him, therefore, that
you have an urgent business in El-Kudz. Demand that he send you
back, with me, in my boat!"
"You are not his guest. He would simply shoot you and destroy
the boat," I answered.
It was not more than half-an-hour before I saw horses coming in
our direction from the village. At sight of them the man on the
gray horse lost heart. With a final burst of eloquence, in which
he spread his breast to heaven and shook both fists in witness
that he was absolved and no blood-guilt could rest on his head,
he rode away at top speed straight up the ravine down which he
originally came.
The horses proved to be a very mixed lot--some good, some very
bad, and some indifferent. But again they treated me as honoured
guest and provided me a mare with four sound legs and nothing
much the matter except vice. She came at me with open teeth
when I tried to mount, but four men held her and I climbed
aboard, somehow or other. As a horseman, I am a pretty good
sack of potatoes.
That was the worst saddle I ever sat in--and Anazeh's second-
best! The stirrups swung amidships, so to speak, and whenever
you tried to rest your weight on them for a moment they described
an arc toward the rear. Moreover, you could not sit well back on
the saddle to balance matters, because of the high cantle. The
result, whether you did with stirrups or without them, was
torture, for anybody but an Arab, who has notions of comfort all
his own.
They put Ahmed on a wall-eyed scrub that looked unfit to walk,
but proved well able to gallop under his light weight. One of
Anazeh's men took my bag, with a nod to reassure me, and without
a word we were off full-pelt, Anazeh leading with four stalwarts
who looked almost as hard-bitten as himself, six men crowding me
closely, and the remainder bringing up the rear.
That is the Arab way of doing things--rush and riot to begin
with. The steepness of the stony ravine we rode up soon reduced
the horses to a walk, after which there was a good deal of
attention to rifle-bolts, and a settling down to the more serious
aspects of the adventure. The escort began to look sullenly
ferocious, as only Arabs can.
There was a time, during the Turkish regime before the War, when
Cook's Agency took tourists in parties to El-Kerak, and all the
protection necessary was a handful of Turkish soldiers, whose
thief employment on the trip was to gather fuel and pitch tents.
Some one paid the Arabs to let tourists alone, and they normally
did. But the War changed all that. A post-Armistice stranger in
1920, with leather boots, was fair quarry for whoever had rifle
or knife.
We passed by a village or two, tucked into folds in the hills and
polluting the blue sky with a smell of ageing dung, but nothing
seemed disposed to happen. A few men stood behind stone walls
and stared at us sullenly. The women looked up from their
grindstones at the doors, covered their faces for convention's
sake, and uncovered them again at once for curiosity. There was
nothing you could call a road between the villages, only a rocky
cattle-track that seemed to take the longest possible way between
two points; and nobody seemed to own it, or to be there to
challenge our right of way.
But suddenly, after we had passed the third village and were
walking the horses up a shoulder of a steep hill-top, three shots
cracked out from in front of us to left and right. Nobody fell,
but if ever there was instantaneous response it happened then.
Anazeh and his four galloped forward up-hill, firing as they rode
for the cover of a breast-high ridge. One man on the off-side
tipped me out of the saddle, so suddenly that I had no chance to
prevent him; another caught me, and two others flung me into a
hole behind a stone. I heard the rear-guard scatter and run.
Two men pitched Ahmed down on top of me, for he was valuable,
seeing he could run an engine; and thirty seconds later I peered
out around the rock to get a glimpse of what was happening.
There was not a man in sight. I could see some of the horses
standing under cover. The firing was so rapid that it sounded
almost like machine-gun practice. A hairy arm reached out and
pushed my head back, and after that, whenever I made the least
movement, a man who was sniping from behind the sheltering rock
swore furiously, and threatened to brain me with his butt-end.
Beyond all doubt they regarded me as perishable freight; so I
hardly saw any of the fighting.
Judging by the sound, I should say they fought their way up-hill
in skirmish order, and when they got to the top the enemy--
whoever they were--took to flight. But that is guesswork. There
were two casualties on our side. One man shot through the arm,
which did not matter much; he was well able to lie about what
had happened and to boast of how many men he had slain before the
bullet hit him. The other was wounded pretty seriously in the
jaw. They came to me for first aid, taking it for granted that I
knew something about surgery. I don't. I had a bad time
bandaging both of them, using two of my handkerchiefs and strips
from the protesting Ahmed's shirt. However, I enjoyed it more
than they did.
When Anazeh shouted at last and we all rode to the hilltop there
was a dead man lying there, stripped naked, with his throat cut
across from ear to ear. One of our men was wiping a long knife
by stabbing it into the dirt. There was also a led horse added
to the escort. Anazeh looked very cool and dignified; he had an
extra rifle now, slung by a strap across his shoulders. He was
examining a bandolier that had blood on it.
We rode on at once, and for the next hour Ahmed was kept busy
interpreting to me the lies invented by every member of the
escort for my especial benefit. If they were true, each man had
slain his dozen; but nobody would say who the opposing faction
were. When I put that question they all dried up and nobody
would speak again for several minutes.
It turned out afterward that there had been a sort of armistice
proclaimed, and all the local chiefs had undertaken to observe it
and cease from blood-feuds for three days, provided that each
chief should prove peaceful intention by bringing with him only
two men. Three men in a party, and not more than three, had
right of way. The engagement may have been a simple protest
against breach of the terms of the armistice, but I suspect there
was more than that in it.
At any rate, we were not attacked again on the road, although there
were men who showed themselves now and then on inaccessible-looking
crags, who eyed us suspiciously and made no answer to the shouted
challenge of Anazeh's men. When the track passed over a spur, or
swung round the shoulder of a cliff, we could sometimes catch
sight of other parties--always, though of three, before and behind
us, proceeding in the same direction.
We sighted the stone walls of El-Kerak at about midafternoon, and
rode up to the place through a savage gorge that must have been
impregnable in the old days of bows and arrows. It would take a
determined army today to force itself through the wadys and
winding water-courses that guard that old citadel of Romans
and crusaders.
We approached from the Northwest corner, where a tower stands
that they call Burj-ez-Zahir. There were lions carved on it. It
looked as if the battlements had been magnificent at one time;
but whatever the Turks become possessed of always falls into
decay, and the Arabs seem no better.
Beside the Burj-ez-Zahir is a tunnel, faced by an unquestionable
Roman arch. Outside it there were more than a dozen armed men
lounging, and a lot of others looked down at us through the
ruined loop-holes of the wall above. Their leader challenged
our numbers at once, and refused admission. Judging by Anazeh's
magnificently insolent reply it looked at first as if he
intended fighting his way in. But that turned out to be
only his diplomatic manner--establishing himself, as it were,
on an eminence from which he could make concessions without
losing dignity.
The arrangement finally agreed to was Anazeh's suggestion, but
showed diplomatic genius on both sides. The old man divided up
his party into sets of three, and asserted that every set of
three was independent. There were twenty-two of us all told,
including Ahmed, but he described Ahmed as a prisoner, and
offered to have him shot if that would simplify matters.
There was a great deal of windy discussion about Ahmed's fate,
during which his face grew the color of raw liver and he joined
in several times tearfully. Once he was actually seized and
half-a-dozen of the castle guards aimed at him; but they
compromised finally by letting him go in with hands tied. Nobody
really wanted the responsibility of shooting a man who had
smuggled stolen cartridges across the Dead Sea, and might do it
again if allowed to live.
We rode for eighty or a hundred paces through an echoing tunnel
into a city of shacks and ruined houses that swarmed with armed
men, and it was evident that we were not the only ones who had
ignored the rule about numbers. Anazeh explained in an aside
to me that only those would obey that rule who did not dare
break it.
"Whoever makes laws should be strong enough to enforce them," he
said sagely. "And whoever obeys such a law is at the mercy of
those who break it," he added presently, by way of afterthought.
To make sure that I understood him he repeated that remark
three times.
Every house had its quota of visitors, who lounged in the
doorways and eyed us with mixed insolence and curiosity. There
were coffee-booths all over the place that seemed to have been
erected for the occasion, where, under awnings made of stick and
straw, men sat with rifles on their knees. Those who had
provender to sell for horses were doing a roaring trade--short
measure and high price; and the noise of grinding was incessant.
The women in the back streets were toiling to produce enough to
eat for all that host of notables.
To have had to hunt for quarters in that town just then would
have been no joke. There was the mosque, of course, where any
Moslem who finds himself stranded may theoretically go and sleep
on a mat on the floor. But we rode past the mosque. It was
full. I would not have liked a contract to crowd one more in
there. Perhaps a New York Subway guard could have managed it.
The babel coming through the open door was like the buzzing of
flies on a garbage heap.
I was trying to sit upright in that abominable saddle and look
dignified, as became the honoured guest with a twenty-man escort,
when a courteous-looking cut-throat wearing an amber necklace
worth a wheat-field, forced his way through a crowd and greeted
Anazeh like a long lost brother. I examined him narrowly to make
sure he was not Grim in disguise, but he had two fingers missing,
and holes in his ears, which decided that question.
After he had welcomed me effusively he led us through a rat-run
maze of streets to a good-sized house with snub-nosed lions
carved on the stone doorposts and a lot of other marks of both
Roman and crusader. No part of the walls was less than three
feet thick, although the upper story had been rebuilt rather
recently on a more economical and much less dignified scale.
Nevertheless, there was a sort of semi-European air about the
place, helped out by two casemented projections overhanging the
narrow street.
There was no need to announce ourselves. The clatter of hoofs
and shouts to ordinary folk on foot to get out of the way had
done that already. Sheikh ben Nazir opened the door in person.
His welcome to me was the sort that comes to mind when you read
the Bible story of the prodigal son returning from a far-off
country. I might have been his blood-relation. But perhaps I am
wrong about that; bloodfeuds among blood-relations are
notoriously savage. He was the host, and I the guest. Among
genuine Arabs that is the most binding relation there is.
He was no longer in blue serge and patent-leather boots, but
magnificent in Arab finery, and he was tricked out in a puzzling
snowy-white head-dress that suggested politics without your
knowing why. He had told me, when I met him at the American
Colony, that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca more than once;
but that white linen thing had nothing to do with his being a
haji, any more than the expensive rings on the fingers of both
hands had anything to do with his Arab nationality.
After he had flattered and questioned me sufficiently about the
journey to comply with etiquette I asked him whether Ahmed might
not be untied. The thong cutting the man's wrists. Sheikh hen
Nazir gave the necessary order and it was obeyed at once. The
liquid-eyed rascal with the priceless amber necklace then led
away the escort, Ahmed included, to some place where they could
stall the horses, and--side-by-side, lest any question of
precedence should be involved, Anazeh and I followed ben Nazir
into the house.
We were not the only guests there. He ushered us into a square
room, in which outrageous imported furniture, with gilt and
tassels on it, stood out like loathsome sores against rugs and
cushions fit for the great Haroun-al-Raschid's throne room. Any
good museum in the world would have competed to possess the rugs,
but the furniture was the sort that France sends eastward in the
name of "culture"--stuff for "savages" to sit on and be civilized
while the white man bears the burden and collects the money.
There were half-a-dozen Arabs reclining on two bastard Louis-
something-or-other settees, who rose to their feet as we entered.
There was another man, sitting on a cushion in a corner by
himself, who did not get up. He wore a white head-dress exactly
like our host's, and seemed to consider himself somebody very
important indeed. After one swift searching glance at us he went
into a brown study, as if a mere sheikh and a Christian alien
were beneath his notice.
We were introduced first of all to the men who had stood up to
greet us, and that ceremony took about five minutes. The Arab
believes he ought to know all about how you feel physically, and
expects you to reciprocate. When that was over ben Nazir took us
to the corner and presented, first me, then Anazeh to the
solitary man in the white head-dress, who seemed to think himself
too important to trouble about manners.
Anazeh did not quite like my receiving attention first, and he
liked still less the off-handed way in which the solitary man
received us. We were told his name was Suliman ben Saoud. He
acknowledged my greeting. He and old Anazeh glared at each
other, barely moving their heads in what might have been an
unspoken threat and retort or a nod of natural recognition.
Anazeh turned on his heel and joined the other guests.
In some vague way I knew that Saoud was a name to conjure
with, although memory refused to place it. The man's air of
indifference and apparently unstudied insolence suggested he was
some one well used to authority. Presuming on the one thing that
I felt quite sure of by that time--my privileged position as a
guest--I stayed, to try to draw him out. I tried to open up
conversation with him with English, French, and finally lame
Arabic. He took no apparent notice of the French and English,
but he smiled sarcastically at my efforts with his own tongue.
Except that he moved his lips he made no answer but went on
clicking the beads of a splendid amber rosary.
Ben Nazir, seeming to think that Anazeh's ruffled feelings called
for smoothing, crossed the room to engage him in conversation, so
I was left practically alone with the strange individual. More
or less in a spirit of defiance of his claim to such distinction,
I sat down on a cushion beside him.
He was a peculiar-looking man. The lower part of his cheek--that
side on which I sat--was sunk in, as if he had no teeth there.
The effect was to give his whole face a twisted appearance. The
greater part of his head, of course, was concealed by the flowing
white kaffiyi, but his skin was considerably darker than that of
the Palestine Arab. He had no eyebrows at all, having shaved
them off--for a vow I supposed. Instead of making him look
comical, as you might expect, it gave him a very sinister
appearance, which was increased by his generally surly attitude.
Once again, as when I had entered the room, he turned his head to
give me one swift, minutely searching glance, and then turned his
eyes away as if he had no further interest. They were quite
extraordinary eyes, brimful of alert intelligence; and whereas
from his general appearance I should have set him down at
somewhere between forty and fifty, his eyes suggested youth, or
else that keen, unpeaceful spirit that never ages.
I tried him again in Arabic, but he answered without looking at
me, in a dialect I had never heard before. So I offered him a
gold-tipped cigarette, that being a universal language. He
waived the offer aside with something between astonishment and
disdain. He had lean, long-fingered hands, entirely unlike
those of the desert fraternity, who live too hard and fight
too frequently to have soft, uncalloused skin and unbroken
finger-nails.
He did not exactly fascinate me. His self-containment was
annoying. It seemed intended to convey an intellectual and moral
importance that I was not disposed to concede without knowing
more about him. I suppose an Arab feels the same sensation when
a Westerner lords it over him on highly moral grounds. At any
rate, something or other in the way of pique urged me to stir him
out of his self-complacency, just as one feels urged to prod a
bull-frog to watch him jump.
He seemed to understand my remarks, for he took no trouble to
hide his amusement at my efforts with the language. But he
only answered in monosyllables, and I could not understand
those. So after about five minutes I gave it up, and crossed
the room to ben Nazir, who seized the opportunity to show me
my sleeping-quarters.
It proved to be a room like a monastery cell, up one flight of
stone steps, with two other rooms of about the same size on
either side of it. At the end of the passage was a very heavy
wooden door, with an iron lock and an enormous keyhole, which I
suppose shut off the harem from the rest of the house; but as I
never trespassed beyond it I don't know. I only do know that a
woman's eye was watching me through that key-hole, and ben Nazir
frowned impatiently at the sound of female giggling.
"The Sheikh Anazeh will have the room on this side of you," he
said, "and the Sheikh Suliman ben Saoud the room on the other.
So you will be between friends."
"Suliman ben Saoud seems a difficult person to make friends
with," I answered.
Ben Nazir smiled like a prince out of a picture-book--beautiful
white teeth and exquisite benignance.
"Oh, you mustn't mind him. These celebrities from the centre of
Arabia give themselves great airs. To do that is considered
evidence of piety and wisdom."
I sat on the bed--quite a civilized affair, spotlessly clean.
Ben Nazir took the chair, I suppose, like the considerate host he
was, to give me the sensation of receiving in my own room.
"He wears the same sort of head-dress you do. What does it
mean?" I asked.
"I wear mine out of compliment to him--not that I have not
always the right to wear it. It is the Ichwan head-dress.
It is highly significant."
"Of what?"
He hesitated for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind
that it did not much matter what he might divulge to an ignorant
stranger soon to return to the United States.
"It is difficult to explain. You Americans know so little of our
politics. It is significant, I might say, of the New Arabia--
Arabia for the Arabs. The great ben Saoud, who is a relative of
this man, is an Arabian chieftain who has welded most of Arabia
into one, and now challenges King Hussein of Mecca for the
caliphate. Hussein is only kept on his throne by British gold,
paid to him from India. Ben Saoud also receives a subsidy from
the British, who must continue to pay it, because otherwise ben
Saoud will attack Hussein and overwhelm him. That, it is
believed, would mean a rising of all the Moslem world against
their rulers--in Africa--Asia--India--Java--everywhere. It began
as a religious movement. It is now political--although it is
held together by religious zeal. You might say that the Ichwans
are the modern Protestants of Islam. They are fanatical. The
world has never seen such fanaticism, and the movement spreads
day by day."
"You don't look like a fanatic," I said, and he laughed again.
"I? God forbid! But I am a politician; and to succeed a
politician must have friends among all parties. My one ambition
is to see all Arabs united in an independent state reaching from
this coast to the Persian Gulf. To that end I devote my energy.
I use all means available--including money paid me by the French,
who have no intention of permitting any such development if they
can help it."
"And the British?"
"For the present we must make use of them also. But their yoke
must go, eventually."
"Then if America had accepted the Near East mandate, you would
have used us in the same way?"
"Certainly. That would have been the easiest way, because
America understands little or nothing of our politics. America's
money--America's schools and hospitals--America's war munitions--
and then good-bye. I am willing to use all means--all methods to
the one end--Arabia for the Arabs. After that I am willing to
retire into oblivion."
Nevertheless, ben Nazir did not convince me that he was an
altruist who had no private ends to serve. There was an
avaricious gleam in ben Nazir's eyes.