AMONG THE ARABS
On a peaceful sea the _Warwickshire_ sped eastward. My work was
“polishin’ ’er brasses,” and I can say without boasting that the ship
was brighter because I was there.
On the morning of the fifth day out, I was ordered into the hold to send
up the trunks of Egyptian travelers. When I climbed on deck after the
last chest, the deep blue of the sea had turned to a shabby brown, but
there was no land in sight. Suddenly there rose from the sea a
flat-topped building, then another and another, until a whole village
lay spread out on the water before us. The houses appeared to sit like
gulls on the ruddy sea. It was Port Said. Beyond the town we could see a
stretch of reddish desert sand. Slowly the _Warwickshire_ nosed her way
into the canal, the anchor ran out with a rattle and roar, and there
swarmed upon our decks a multitude of strange-looking people who seemed
to belong to another world.
Darkness soon fell. I had signed on the _Warwickshire_ under a promise
that I might leave her at Port Said. Through all the voyage, however, my
shipmates had spent the hours of the dog-watch telling me tales of the
horrors that had befallen white men who became penniless among the
Arabs. Perhaps my shipmates spoke truly. It seemed as if they might have
done so as I sat gazing off into the blackest of nights, listening to
the shrieks that rose from the maze of buildings ashore, and the
snarling, scowling mobs that raced about our decks. Perhaps I should be
murdered if I ventured ashore among these black tribes. Or, if I escaped
murder, I might be left to die of starvation on this neck of sand.
The captain had given me leave to go on to Rangoon. An Englishman, who
was returning to the Burmese district he governed, had promised me a
position with good pay. It seemed foolhardy to halt in this land of
rascals, when in a few days I might complete half my journey around the
globe and find ready employment.
For an hour I sat staring into the black night, trying to decide whether
to risk going ashore or to go on with the ship. I finally decided that I
must see Palestine and Egypt, countries I had read much of in the Bible.
They were lands too famous to be lightly passed by. I bade farewell to
my astonished shipmates, collected my few days’ wages, and, with about
nine dollars in my pocket, dropped into a boat and was rowed ashore.
At the landing I paid the dusky boatman the regular fare—the amount was
posted in plain sight on the wharf. But he was not satisfied. For an
hour he dogged my footsteps, howling threats or whining in a
high-pitched voice, now in his native Arabic, now in such English as he
could put together. But I shook him off at last, and set out to find a
lodging.
It was not an easy thing to do. To be sure, I passed several hotels
before which well dressed men lounged at little tables, and barefooted
black waiters flitted back and forth carrying cool drinks. But to stop
at such a hotel would take more money than I had had for some time.
There must have been dozens of native inns among the maze of hovels into
which I plunged at the first step off the avenue. But how could I tell
where they were, when the only signs I could see were as meaningless to
me as so many spatters of ink? Even in Holland I had been able to guess
at shop names. But Arabic! I had not the least idea whether the signs I
saw announced a lodging-house or the quarters of an undertaker! A long
evening I pattered in and out of crooked byways, bumping now and then
into a dark Arab who snarled at me and made off, and bringing up here
and there in some dismal blind alley. Fearful of wandering too far from
the lighted square, I turned back toward the harbor. Suddenly I caught
sight of a sign in English: “Catholic Sailors’ Home.” I dashed joyfully
toward it.
The Home was little more than a small reading-room. Half hidden behind
the stacks of ragged magazines, sat the “manager,” a Maltese boy,
huddled over paper and pencil and staring in a discouraged manner at an
Italian-English grammar. I stepped forward and offered to help him, and
together we waded through a very long lesson. Before we had ended, six
tattered white men wandered in and carefully chose books over which to
fall asleep.
“You must know,” said the young manager, as he closed the grammar, “that
there am no sleepings here. And we closes at eleven. But I am fix you
oop. I am shelter all these seamens, while I lose my place when the
Catholic society found it out.”
He peered out into the night and locked the doors. Then he blew out the
lights and awoke the sleepers. We groped our way through a long
stone-paved passageway to the back of the building.
“You are getting in here,” said the Maltese, pulling open what appeared
to be a heavy pair of shutters; “but be quietness.”
I climbed through after the others. A companion struck a match that
lighted up a stone room, once the kitchen of the Home. Closely packed
though we were, it soon grew icy cold on the stone floor. Two of the
ragged men rose with cries of disgust, and crawled out through the
window to tramp up and down the hall. I felt my way to a coffin-shaped
cupboard in one corner, laid it lengthwise on the floor, pulled out the
shelves, and, crawling inside, closed the doors above me. My sleep was
unbroken until morning.
On my second afternoon in Port Said, one of my room-mates at the Home—an
Austrian—wandered with me out to the break-water. We lay stretched out,
watching the coming and going of the pilot-boats and the sparkle of the
canal, that narrowed to a thread far away on the yellow desert.
A portly Greek approached, and asked in Italian if we wanted work. We
did, of course. We followed him back to land and along the beach until
we came to a hut in the native part of the city. On the earth floor sat
two widemouthed stone vessels. The Greek motioned to us to seat
ourselves before them, poured into them some kind of small nut, and
handed each of us a stone pestle. When we had fallen to work pounding
the nuts, he sat down on a stool, prepared his water-bottle pipe, and,
except for a wave of the hand now and then as a signal to us to empty
the vessels of the beaten mass and refill them, remained utterly
motionless for the rest of the day.
Like machines we pounded hour after hour. The pestles were heavy when we
began; before the day was over mine weighed at least a ton. What we were
beating up, and what we were beating it up for, I do not know to this
day. The Austrian said that he knew the use of the product, but fell
strangely silent when I asked him to explain. Night sounds were drifting
in through the door of the hut when the Greek signed to us to stop. Then
he handed each of us five small piasters (12½ cents). We hurried away
across the beach to a native shop where mutton sold cheaply.
Two days later I took a “deck-passage” for Beirut, and boarded an old
ship flying the English flag. A crowd of Arabs, Turks, and Syrians,
Christians and Mohammedans, men and women, squatted on the half-covered
deck. In one place were piled a half hundred wooden gratings. What these
were for was a mystery to me until my fellow passengers fell to pulling
them down, one by one, and spreading their bed-clothes on them! I was
the only one of all the multitude without bedding; even the lean, gaunt
Bedouins, dressed in tattered filth, had each a roll of ragged blankets
in which, after saying their evening prayers with many bowings toward
the city of Mecca, they rolled themselves and lay down together. When I
stretched out on a bare grating, the entire throng was lying huddled in
a dozen separate groups.
Morning broke bright and clear. Far off to the right rose the
snow-capped range of the Lebanon Mountains. I strolled anxiously about
the deck. In a group of Turks I came upon two who spoke French. I began
to talk with them, chiefly because I wanted to ask them questions. I
told them a few of my experiences on the highways of Europe. These
stories amused them greatly. Then I spoke of my intention of walking to
Damascus. They shouted with astonishment. It was plain that some of them
did not believe me.
“What!” cried one of the French-speaking Turks, waving a flabby hand
toward the snow-banks that covered the wall-like range of mountains. “Go
to Damascus on foot! Impossible! You would be buried in the snow. This
country is not like Europe! There are thousands of murderous Bedouins
between here and Damascus who would glory in cutting the throat of a dog
of an unbeliever! Why? I have lived years in Beirut, and no man of my
acquaintance, native or Frank [European], would ever undertake such a
journey on foot.”
“And you would lose your way and die in the snow,” put in the other.
Throughout the morning the pair were kept busy translating for me what
the others of the group said about the absolute foolishness of such an
undertaking. It was a story I heard again and again while traveling in
the Far East; but it was new to me then, and as I ran my eye along the
snow-hooded wall that faded into hazy distance to the north and south, I
half believed it.
The coast-line drew nearer. On the plain at the foot of the mountains I
could see here and there well cultivated patches between dreary
stretches of blood-red sand. A few minutes later we dropped anchor well
out in the harbor of Beirut. Down the gangway tumbled a mighty landslide
of Asiatics, men and women, large and small, dirty and half dirty,
pushing, kicking, scratching and biting one another, hopelessly
entangled with bundles of every thinkable shape. Shouting boatmen rowed
us ashore. As we swung in against the rock, I caught a proud-looking
Bedouin trying to separate me from my knapsack. A well directed push
landed him in the laps of several heavily veiled women, and I sprang up
a stairway cut in the face of the rock.
The city itself was miles away from the landing-place. One of the
officials called an evil-looking native, clothed in a single garment
that reached to his knees, and ordered him to guide me to the town. We
set off through the night, heavy with the smell of oranges, along a
narrow road six inches deep in the softest mud. On the outskirts of the
city the native halted and began talking to me in Arabic. I shook my
head. He seemed to think that I was unable to understand him because of
some fault in my hearing. So he asked the question again and again,
louder and more rapidly each time he repeated it. I let him shout until
breath failed him and he gave up and splashed on. He halted once more,
in a square reeking with mud in the center of the city, and burst forth
excitedly in a jumble of words more difficult to understand than before.
“Ingleesee?” he shrieked, with his last gasp.
“No,” I answered, understanding this one word; “Americano.”
“Ha!” shouted the Arab. “Americano?” And once more he began his
shouting. He seemed to be trying to explain something about my fellow
countrymen, for he repeated the word “Americano” again and again. Once
more he gave up trying to make me understand and struck off to the
southward. I shouted “hotel” and “inn” in every language I could call to
mind; but, after a few mumbles, he fell silent, and only the splash of
our feet in the muddy roadway could be heard.
We left the city behind, but still the Arab plodded steadily and
silently southward. Many a story of white men led into Arabic traps
passed through my mind. Far out among the orange groves beyond the city,
he turned into a small garden, and pointed to a lighted sign above the
door of a building among the trees. It was the home of the American
consul. Not knowing what else to do with a Frank who did not understand
the loudest Arabic, the native had led me to the only man in Beirut whom
he had heard called “Americano.”
When I had paid my bill next morning at the French inn to which I had
been sent, I stepped into the office of that great tourist agency, Cook
& Son, and exchanged a sovereign for so many iron and tin coins that I
could hardly carry them. Then I ate a native breakfast, and, strolling
down to the harbor, sat on a pier.
For a time the uproar made by shrieking Arabs, braying camels, and the
rattle of ships discharging their freight, drowned all other sounds.
Then suddenly I caught faintly a shout in English behind me, and turned
around. A lean native in European dress and fez cap was beckoning to me
from the opening of one of the narrow streets. I dropped from the pier
and turned shoreward. The native ran toward me. “You speak Eengleesh?”
he cried. “Yes? No? What countryman you?”
“American.”
“No? Not American?” shrieked the native, dancing up and down. “You not
American? Ha! ha! ver’ fine. I American one time, too. I be one time
sailor on American warsheep _Brooklyn_. You write Engleesh too? No? Yes?
Ver’ fine! You like job? I got letters write in Engleesh! Come, you!”
He led the way through the swarming streets, shouting answers to the
questions I asked him. He said his name was Abdul Razac Bundak and his
business that of “bumboat man.” That is to say, he sold supplies to
ships, acted as guide for officers ashore, led tourists on sight-seeing
trips, and in the busy season ran a sailors’ boarding-house.
Some distance back from the harbor, in a shoe-shop kept by his uncle, I
sat down to write three letters for him. By the time these were finished
he had discovered that I knew other languages, and I wrote three more,
two in French and one in Spanish. They were business letters to ship
captains who often put in at Beirut. The bumboat man paid me two unknown
coins and invited me to dinner in a neighboring shop.
In the days that followed, our “company,” as Abdul called it, was the
busiest in Beirut. I wrote many letters for him and for other Arabs in
the city who had heard of me. Had those men been less indolent they
might have doubled their business. But they did not like to hurry. Again
and again, while telling me what to write, they would drift away into
the land of dreams with a sentence left half finished on their lips. The
palm of the left hand was the writing-desk, and it was always with
difficulty that I stirred them up to clear a space on their littered
stands. I did not get much pay for this work; but I added something each
day to the scrap iron in my pocket.
When business was slow, Abdul could think of nothing better to do than
to eat and drink. Let his cigarette burn out, and he rose with a yawn,
and we rambled away through the windings of the bazaars to some tiny
tavern. The keepers were always delighted to be awakened from their
dreams by our “company.” While we sat on a log or an upturned basket and
sipped a glass of some native drink, Abdul spun long tales of the
_faranchee_ world. Some of these stories could not have been true; but,
with a live _faranchee_ to serve as illustration, the shop-keepers were
satisfied and listened open-mouthed.
With every drink the keeper served a half dozen tiny dishes of
hazelnuts, radishes, peas in the pod, cold squares of boiled potatoes,
berries, and vegetables known only in Arabia. But Abdul was gifted with
an unfailing appetite, and at least once after every business deal he
led the way to one of the many eating-shops facing the busiest streets
and squares. In a gloomy, cave-like shop, the front of which was all
door, stood two long, rough tables, with long, rough benches beside
them. The proprietor sat near the entrance behind a great block of brick
and mortar over which simmered a score of black kettles. I read the bill
of fare by raising the cover of each kettle in turn, chose a dish that
seemed less mysterious than the rest, picked up a large ring-shaped loaf
and a bottle of water from a bench, and withdrew to the back of the
shop. Whatever I chose, it was almost certain to contain mutton. The
Arabian cook, however, sets nothing over the fire until he has cut it
into small pieces. Each dinner was a stew of some kind, of differing
tastes and colors.
Abdul did not often concern himself with the contents of the kettles,
for his prime favorite was a dish prepared by running a row of tiny
cubes of liver and kidneys on an iron bar, and turning them over and
over above glowing coals. I too should have ordered this delicacy more
often, had not Abdul, with his incurable “Eengleesh,” persisted in
calling it “kittens.”
With all its mud and careless disorder, there was something very
pleasing about this corner of the Arab world: the lazy droning of its
shop-keepers, the roll of the incoming sea, the twitter of birds that
spoke of summer and seemed to contradict the calendar—above all, the
picturesque orange trees bending under the ripening fruit that perfumed
the soft air, with the snow-drifts almost within stone’s throw on the
peaks above.
For all that, I should not have remained so long in Beirut by choice,
for the road was long before me, and I had planned to cover a certain
part of it each day. But my friends in the East could not understand why
I was anxious to go at once. “To-morrow is as good as to-day; wait until
to-morrow,” they would say, when some small matter had kept me from
starting on the day I had planned. But when to-morrow came, they
repeated the same words. They could not understand my hurry.
There was no one in Beirut who could tell me which road led to Damascus.
Abdul threw up his hands in horror when I spoke to him of my intended
journey. “Impossible!” he shrieked. “There is not road. You be froze in
the snow before the Bedouins cut your liver. You no can go. Business
good. Damascus no good. Ver’ col’ in Damascus now.”
One afternoon, however, while in unusually good spirits, he admitted
that there was a road leading to Damascus, and that caravans had been
known to pass over it. But even then he insisted that the journey could
not be made on foot.
The bumboat man left me next morning just outside the city, and a bend
in the road soon hid him from view. For an hour the highway was
perfectly level. On each side were rich gardens and orange groves,
thronged with dusky men and women clad in flowing sheets. Soon all this
changed. The road wound upward, the delicate orange tree gave place to
the sturdy olive, instead of fertile gardens there were now rocky
hillsides all about, and the only persons to be seen were now and then
an Arab, grim and scowling, leading or riding a swaying camel.
The way was lonely and silent. A rising wind sighed mournfully through
the gullies and trees. The summer breeze of the sea-level turned chilly.
I hunted until I found the sunny side of a large rock before attempting
to eat the lunch in my knapsack. Farther up the cedar forests began.
Here and there groups of peasants were digging on the wayside slopes. To
the north and south I could see flat-roofed villages clinging to
mountain-sides.
How strange and foreign seemed everything about me! The dress and tools
of the peasants, the food in my knapsack, everything was so different
from the world I had lived in. If I spoke to those I met, they answered
back in a strange jumble of words, wound the folds of their queer
garments about them, and hurried on. If I caught sight of a village
clock, its hands pointed to six when the hour was noon. Even the
familiar name of the famous city to which I was bound was meaningless to
the natives, for they called it “Shaam.”
My pronunciation of the word must have been at fault; for, though I
stood long at a fork in the road in the early forenoon, shouting “Shaam”
at each passer-by, I took the wrong branch at last. I tramped for some
hours along a rapidly disappearing highway before I suspected my
mistake. Even then I kept on, for I was not certain that I was going in
the wrong direction. At last the route led forth from a cutting in the
hills, and the shimmering sea almost at my feet showed me that I was
marching due southward.
Two peasants appeared above a rise of ground beyond. As they drew near I
pointed off down the road and shouted, “Shaam?” The pair halted
wonderingly in the center of the highway some distance from me. “Shaam!
Shaam! Shaam!” I repeated, striving to give the word a pronunciation
that they could understand. The peasants stared open-mouthed, drew back
several paces, and peered down the road and back at me a dozen times, as
if they were not sure whether I was calling their attention to some
wonder of nature, or trying to get them to turn around long enough to
pick their pockets. Then a slow, half-hearted smile broke out on the
features of the quicker-witted. He stood first on one leg, then on the
other, squinted along the highway once more, and began to repeat after
me: “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!”
“Aywa, Shaam!” I cried.
He turned to his companion. They talked together so long that I thought
they had forgotten me. Then both began to shake their heads so forcibly
that the muscles of their necks stood out like steel cords. Two broad
grins wrinkled their leathery faces. They stretched out their arms to
the southward and burst forth in unmusical duet: “La! la! la! la! la!
Shaam! La! la! la! la! la!” The Arab says “la” when he means “no.” I
turned around and hurried back the way I had come.
Dusk was falling when I came a second time to a two-row village facing
the highway. As I expected, there was not an inn, or anything like one,
in the place. I had seen enough of the Arabian, however, to know that he
has his share of curiosity. So I sat down on a large rock at the end of
the village.
In three minutes a small crowd had collected. In ten, half the
population was swarming around me and roaring at my useless effort to
make myself understood. They stood about me, grinning and chattering,
for a good half hour before one of the band motioned to me to follow
him, and turned back into the village. The crowd followed me, closely
examining every part of my clothing, grinning, smirking, running from
one side to the other, lest they lose some point in the make-up of so
strange a creature, and babbling the while like an army of apes.
The leader turned off the highway toward the largest building in the
village. Ten yards from the door, he halted. The crowd formed a half
circle, leaving me in the center, and then one and all began to shout
something at the top of their lungs.
A girl of some sixteen years appeared at the door. “Taala hena!” (“Come
here!”) roared the chorus. The girl ran down the steps. A roar as of an
angry sea burst forth, as every member of the company stretched out an
arm toward me. Plainly each was determined that he, and not his
neighbor, should be the one to introduce this strange being.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” (“Do you speak German?”) shrieked the girl in my
ear.
“Ja wohl.” (“Yes, indeed”), I answered.
The rabble fell utterly silent at the first word, and I asked to be
directed to an inn.
“There is no hotel in our city of Bhamdoon,” replied the girl, with
flashing eyes. “We should be insulted. In this house with my family
lives a German missionary lady. You must stop here.”
She led the way to the door. The missionary met me on the steps with a
cry of delight. She explained that she had not seen a European in many
months.
“What would supper and lodging cost me here?” Luckily, the German lady
was hard of hearing. The girl gave me a quick glance, half scornful,
half astonished, which reminded me that such a question is an insult in
the land of Arabs.
“The lady is busy now,” said the girl. “Come and visit my family.” She
led the way along a hall and threw open a door. I pulled off my cap.
“Keep it on,” said my guide, “and leave your shoes there.”
She stepped out of her own loose slippers and into the room. It was
square and low. The stone floor was half covered with mats and cushions.
In the center glowed a small sheet-iron stove; and around three of the
walls ran a long cushioned seat. Two men, two women, and several
children were seated in a half circle on the floor, their legs folded
under them. They rose without a word as I entered. The girl placed a
cushion for me on the floor. The family sat down again and carefully and
slowly folded their legs as before. Then, after they were firmly seated,
one and all in turn, according to age, cried “Lailtak saeedee” (Good
evening).
In the center of the group were three large bowls, one of lentils and
another of chopped-up potatoes in oil. A third contained a delicacy made
of sour milk, half soup and half pudding, that is a great favorite among
the Arabs. On the floor, beside each member of the family, lay several
sheets of bread, half a yard wide and as thin as cardboard. The head of
the house pushed the bowls toward me, ordered a stack of bread to be
placed beside my cushion, and motioned me to eat. I stared helplessly at
the bowls, for there was neither knife, fork, nor spoon in sight. The
girl, however, knowing the ways of _faranchees_ from years in a mission
school in Beirut, explained my difficulty to her father. He cast a
scornful look at me, begged my pardon, through his daughter, for being
so impolite as to eat a morsel before his guest had begun, tore a few
inches from a bread-sheet, and, folding it between his fingers, picked
up a pinch of lentils and ate. I lost no time in following his example.
A wonderful invention is this Arab bread. If one buys food in a native
bazaar, it is wrapped in a bread-sheet, and a very good wrapper it is,
for it requires a good grip and a fair pair of muscles to tear it. A
bread-sheet takes the place of many dishes. It makes a splendid cover
for pots and pans; it does well as a waiter’s tray. Never have I seen it
used to cover roofs, nor as shaving paper; but, then, the Arab is slow
and he may not have thought of making use of it in those ways yet. As an
article of food, however, this bread is not an entire success. The taste
is not unpleasant, but ten minutes’ chewing makes far less impression on
it than on a rubber mat. The bread I ate that night must have been very
old, for it would fall into pieces when I used it as a spoon. My host
picked up one of my sheets, held it against the glowing stove with the
flat of his hand, and returned it. It bent as easily as cloth and was
much more agreeable to the taste than before.
The younger man rolled cigarettes for himself and his father. They asked
me questions, which the girl repeated to me in German. She was about to
tell them my answers, when there came a tap at the door and a few words
in Arabic that caused the family to jump hurriedly to their feet.
“Sheik! sheik!” they whispered excitedly. The children were whisked into
one corner.
The door was flung open, and there entered the room an under-sized man
of about sixty. Long, flowing robes enveloped his form, a turban-wound
fez perched almost merrily on his head, and his feet were bare, for he
had dropped his slippers at the door. His face, deeply wrinkled, with a
long scar across one cheek, was browned and weather-beaten by the wild
storms that sometimes rage over the Lebanon.
The sheik greeted the head of the family, took a seat near me on the
divan, bowed low to each person present, bowed again when they each
returned his greeting, and then with a wave of his hand invited them to
be seated. The newcomer had quite plainly been attracted to the house
because he had heard that a _faranchee_ was visiting the family. He was
asking questions about me, as I could tell by his gestures and the few
words I understood. The family began eagerly explaining and telling him
how they supposed I happened to be in that part of the world. For a time
the sheik listened without showing the least surprise. He sat there
puffing at a cigarette as quietly as if it were nothing new to have
_faranchees_ wander into his town on foot at night.
At the end of his story, however, the head of the house remarked that I
was on my way to “Shaam” on foot. This news was as astonishing as he
could have wished. The sheik fairly bounded into the air, threw his
cigarette at the open stove, and burst forth excitedly. The girl
explained his words. He said it was “impossible,” it “couldn’t be done”;
and at the close of his speech he declared that, as village mayor or
sheik, he would not permit me to continue on such a foolhardy
undertaking. How many weapons did I carry? None? What—no weapon? Travel
to far-off Damascus without being armed? Why, his own villagers never
ventured along the highway to the nearest towns without their guns! he
would not hear of it! And he was still talking excitedly when the
missionary came to invite me to a second supper.
I bade farewell to the family early next morning, swung my knapsack over
my shoulder and limped down to the road. But Bhamdoon was not yet done
with me. In the center of the highway, in front of the little shop that
he kept, stood the sheik and several of his townsmen. With great
politeness he invited me to step inside. My feet were still swollen and
blistered from the long tramp of the day before, for the cloth slippers
of Port Said offered no more protection from the sharp stones of the
highway than a sheet of paper; so I accepted the invitation. The village
head placed a stool for me in front of the shop, where everybody walking
up or down the road could see me.
It soon began to look as if I were on exhibition as some strange animal
that had been discovered, for the sheik pointed me out with delight to
every passer-by. It was plain, too, that he was making use of the moment
to collect some village tax. For on the floor beside me stood an
earthenware pot, and as soon as the visitors had looked me over from all
sides, the sheik invited them to drop into it a _bishleek_ (ten cents).
Not a man passed without giving something; for the command of a sheik of
a Syrian village is a law to all its people.
After I had sat there for some time, a villager I had not yet seen
appeared and began talking to me in English. I learned that he had once
lived in Maine, where he had earned money enough to live in ease in his
native country, to which he had returned years before. He insisted that
I visit his house near by. While I was there he fell to tucking
bread-sheets, black olives, raisins, and pieces of sugar-cane into my
knapsack, shouting all the while of his undying love for America and
things American. Out of mere pride for his dreary country, he took care,
on his way back to the shop, to point out a narrow path that wound up
the steep slope of the neighboring range of mountains.
“That,” he said, “leads to the Damascus road; but no man can journey to
Damascus on foot.”
The earthenware pot was almost full when I took my seat again on the
stool. I turned to my new acquaintance.
“What special taxes is the sheik gathering this morning?” I demanded.
“Eh! What?” cried the former New Englander, following the direction of
my finger. “The pot? Why, don’t you know what that’s for?”
“No,” I answered.
“Why, that is a collection the sheik is taking up to buy you a ticket to
Damascus on the railroad.”
I picked up my knapsack from the floor, and stepped into the highway.
The sheik and several bystanders threw themselves upon me to hold me
back. It was no use trying to escape from a dozen horny hands. I
permitted myself to be led back to the stool, and sat down with the
knapsack across my knees. The sheik addressed me in soothing tones, as
if he were trying to coax me to wait, pointing to the pot with every
third word. The others went back to their seats on the floor, rolled new
cigarettes, and became quiet once more. With one leap I sprang from the
stool into the street, and set off at top speed down the highway, a
screaming, howling, ever-increasing, but ever more distant crowd at my
heels.
Half an hour later I reached the top of a neighboring range of
mountains, and slid down the opposite slope on to the highway to
Damascus.