CITIES OF OLD
The whistle of the locomotive is now heard in the suburbs of Damascus;
for, besides the railway to the coast, a new line brings to the ancient
city the produce of the vast and fertile plain beyond Jordan. A few
single telegraph wires, too, connect “Shaam” with the outside world, and
the whir of the American sewing-machine is heard in her long,
tunnel-like streets. But these few modern improvements make the ancient
ways of the city seem stranger still.
Here is a man with a stone hammer, beating into shape a vessel of brass
on a flat rock. There a father and son are turning a log into wooden
shoes with a very old-fashioned buck-saw, the man standing on the log,
the boy kneeling on the ground beneath. Beyond them is a strange-looking
turning-lathe. The workman squats on the floor of his open shop, facing
the street; for no Damascan can carry on his business with his back
turned to the sights and sounds made by the passing crowd. With his
right hand he holds a sort of Indian bow which has its cord wound once
around the stick he is shaping. As he moves this bow back and forth, the
stick, whirling almost as rapidly as in a steam lathe, is whittled into
shape by a chisel which he holds with his left hand and his bare toes.
Mile after mile through the endless rows of bazaars, such old-fashioned
trades are carried on. Every foot of space on either side of the narrow
streets is in use. Wherever the overdressed owners of great heaps of
silks and rugs have left a pigeonhole between their shops, sits a ragged
peddler of sweetmeats and half-inch slices of cocoanut.
Stores selling the same kind of article are found together in one part
of the city, and nowhere else. In one section are crowded a hundred
manufacturers of the red fez cap of the Mohammedan. In another a colony
of brass-workers makes a deafening din. Beyond sounds the squeak of
hundreds of saws where huge logs are slowly turned into lumber by hand
power. The shopper who wants to buy a pair of slippers may wander from
daylight to dusk among shops overflowing with every other imaginable
ware, to come at last, when he is ready to give up, into a section where
slippers of every size, shape, and color are displayed on either side of
the street, as far as he can see.
To try to make headway against the pushing crowd is much like attempting
to swim up the gorge of Niagara. Long lines of camels splash through the
human stream, caring nothing for the small boys under their feet.
Donkeys all but hidden under great bundles of fagots that scrape the
building on either side, asses bestraddled by shouting boys who guide
the beasts by kicking them behind the ears and urge them on by a queer
trilling sound, dash out of darkened and unexpected side streets. Not an
inch do they turn aside, not once do they slacken their pace. The
_faranchee_ who expects them to do so is sure to receive many a jolt in
the ribs from the donkey, or from his load, and to be sent sprawling—if
there is room to sprawl—as the beast and his driver glance back at him
with a wicked gleam in their eyes.
Hairless, scabby curs, yellow or gray in color, prowl among the legs of
the throng, skulking through the byways, devouring the waste matter they
find, or lie undisturbed in the puddles that abound in every street. The
donkey may knock down a dozen foot travelers an hour; but he takes good
care to step over the dogs in his path. Often these beasts gather in
bands at busy corners, yelping and snarling, snapping their yellow
fangs, and raising a din that puts a stop to bargainings a hundred yards
away. If a by-stander wades among them with his stick and drives them
off, it is only to have them collect again five minutes after the last
yelp has been silenced.
A _metleek_ is only a cent. Yet, as you pass through the streets of
Damascus, the constant calling for it sounds like a multitude searching
the wilderness for a lost child. “Metleek!” cries the seller of flat
loaves, on the ground at your feet. “Metleek!” screams the wandering
bartender, jingling his brass disks. The word is shouted commandingly
from the peddler whose novelty has attracted a crowd, fiercely from the
angry-looking fellow whose stand has been deserted, pleadingly from the
crippled beggar, who threads his way with astonishing swiftness through
the human whirlpool. Unendingly the word echoes through the openings and
windings of the bazaars.
When night came on I was wandering dismally through the winding streets
where long lines of merchants were setting up the board shutters before
their shops. It mattered not in what European language I inquired for an
inn of those I met. Each one muttered, “M’abarafshee” (“I don’t
understand”), and hurried on.
I sat down before a lighted tobacco booth and pretended I was asleep.
The proprietor came out to drive off the curs sniffing at my feet, and
led the way to a neighboring caravan inn, where the keeper spread me a
bed of blankets on the cobblestone floor.
The next day I discovered the Hotel Stamboul, facing the stable that
serves Damascus as post-office. I went in with little hope either of
making my wants known or of finding the price within my means. The
proprietor, strange to say, spoke a little French, and, stranger still,
assigned me to a room at eight cents a day.
I spent four days in Damascus before I began to make plans for getting
out of it. I had intended to strike southwestward through the country to
Nazareth. On the map the trip seemed easy. But I had found, on my
journey from the coast, that maps do not show the distance to be covered
in this little-known country. It was late in December, and the rainy
season was at hand. Several violent downpours that made me think of the
flood described in the Bible had already burst over Damascus. These
storms were sure to have made Palestine a muddy marsh, and to have
turned its summer brooks into roaring torrents.
The trip, however, could not have been more difficult than it was to
find out about it. The people in the cities of Asia Minor are the most
incurable stay-at-homes on the globe. They know no more of the country a
few miles outside their walls than they do of the other side of the
earth.
I spent a day inquiring about it, and learned nothing. Toward evening I
came across a French-speaking tailor who claimed to have made the first
few miles of the journey. Gleefully I jotted down his directions in my
note-book. An hour’s walk next morning brought me out on a wind-swept
stretch of grayish sand beyond the city. For some miles a faint path led
across the dreary waste. Wild dogs growled and snarled over the dead
bodies of horses and sheep that lined the way. The wind whirled on high
tiny particles of sand that bit my cheeks and filled my eyes. A chilling
rain began to fall, sinking quickly into the desert. The storm was
becoming violent, when the path ceased at the brink of a muddy torrent
that it would have been madness to try to cross.
A lone shepherd was plodding along the bank of the stream. I pointed
across it and shouted, “Nazra?” The Arab stared at me a moment, tossed
his arms above his head, crying to Allah to note the madness of a roving
_faranchee_, and sped away across the desert.
I plodded back to the city. In the iron-workers’ bazaar a sword-maker
called out to me in German, and I halted to ask him about the road to
Nazareth. The workman paused in his task of pounding a queer-looking
sword, to tell me that the tailor was a fool and that the road to
Nazareth left the city in exactly the opposite direction. “’Tis a broad
caravan trail,” he went on, “opening out beyond the shoemakers’ bazaar.”
The next morning I struck out in the direction the sword-maker had
pointed out to me. The morning was cloudy and the air biting. Before I
had passed the last shoemaker’s shop a cold drizzle set in. On the
desert it turned to a wet snow that clung to bushes and rocks like
shreds of white clothing. The sword-maker certainly had played a joke on
me. A caravan track there was beyond the last wretched hovel—a track
that showed for miles across the bleak country. But, though it might
have taken me to Bagdad or to the steppes of Siberia, it certainly did
not lead to the land of the chosen people.
I turned and trotted back to the city, cheered by the hope of sitting
before such a fire as roars up the chimneys of American homes on the
well remembered days of the first snow. The hope showed how little I
knew of Damascan customs. The hotel proprietor and his guests were
shivering over a pan of coals that could not have heated a doll’s house.
I fought my way into the huddled group, and warmed first a finger and
then a toe. But the chill of the desert would not leave me. A servant
called the landlord to another part of the building. He picked up the
“stove” and marched away with it, and I left my shivering fellow guests
and went to bed, as the only possible place where I could get the chill
out of my bones.
The next day I spent Christmas in a stuffy car on the cogwheel railway
over the Lebanon hills, and stepped out at Beirut shortly after dark, to
run directly into the arms of Abdul Razac Bundak.
On the afternoon of December twenty-seventh I set out on foot for Sidon.
Here, at least, I could not lose my way, for I had but to follow the
coast. Even Abdul, however, did not know whether the ancient city was
one or ten days distant. A highway through an olive grove soon broke up
into several narrow paths. The one I chose led over low hills of sand,
where the misfit shoes that I had picked up in a pawn-shop of Beirut
soon filled to overflowing. I swung them over a shoulder and plodded on
barefoot. A roaring brook blocked the way. I crossed it by climbing a
willow on one bank and swinging into the branches of another opposite,
and plunged into another wilderness of sand.
Toward dusk I came upon a peasant’s cottage on a tiny plain, and halted
for water. A youth in the much patched uniform of the Turkish soldier,
sitting on the well-curb, brought me a basinful. I had started on again,
when a voice rang out behind me: “Hé! D’ou est-ce que vous venez? Ou
est-ce que vous allez?” In the doorway of the hovel stood a slatternly
woman of some fifty years of age. I told her my nationality.
“American?” she cried, this time in English, as she rushed out upon me.
“Oh, my! You American? Me American, too! Oh, my!”
I could hardly believe her, for she looked decidedly like a Syrian, both
in dress and features.
“Yes,” she went on. “I live six years in America, me! I go back to
America next month. I not see America for one year. Come in house!”
I followed her into the cottage. It was the usual dwelling of the
peasant class—dirt floor, a kettle hanging over an open fire in one
corner, a few ears of corn and bunches of dried grapes suspended from
the ceiling. On one of the rough stone walls was pinned a newspaper
portrait of McKinley.
“Oh, my!” cried the woman, as I glanced toward the portrait. “Me
Republican, me. One time I see McKinley when I peddle by Cleveland,
Ohio. You know Cleveland? My man over there”—she pointed away to the
fertile slopes of the Lebanon hills—“my man go back with me next month,
vote one more time for Roosevelt.”
The patch-work youth poked his head in at the door.
“Taala hena [Come here], Maghmood,” bawled the noisy Republican. “This
American man! He no have to go for soldier, fight long time for greasy
old Sultan. Not work all day to get bishleek, him! Get ten, fifteen,
twenty bishleek day! Bah! You no good, you! Why for you not run away to
America?”
The woman kept a sort of lodging-house in a near-by stone hut, and
insisted that I spend the night there. Chattering about one thing and
another she prepared a supper of lentils, bread-sheets, olives, and
crushed sugar-cane, and set out a bottle of _beet_ (native wine). The
meal over, she lighted a cigarette, leaned back in a home-made chair,
and blew smoke at the ceiling with a far-away look in her eyes.
“Oh, my!” she cried suddenly. “You sing American song! I like this
no-good soldier hear good song. Then he sing Arab song for you.”
I undertook to play the wandering minstrel with uncertainty. At the
first lines of “The Swanee River” the soldier burst forth in a roar of
laughter that doubled him up as if he were having a fit.
“You great fool, you,” shouted the woman, shaking her fist at the
property of the Sultan, who was lying at full length on the floor. “You
no know what song is! Shut up! I split your head!”
This gentle hint made the youth sit up and listen most attentively, with
set teeth, until the concert of the Western world was ended.
When his turn came, he struck up a mournful chant that sounded like the
wailing of a lost soul, and sang for nearly an hour on about three
notes, shaking his head from side to side and rocking his body back and
forth as his voice rose to an ear-splitting yell.
The mournful tune was interrupted by a shout from the darkness outside.
The woman called back in answer, and two ragged, bespattered Bedouins
pushed into the hut. The howling and shouting that followed made me
wonder whether murder or merely highway robbery had been committed. The
men shook their fists, and the woman almost cried. The quarrel lasted
for a full half hour, and then there was quiet again. The woman took
from the wall a huge key, and stepped out, followed by the Bedouins.
“You know for what we fight?” she demanded, when she returned. “They
Arabs. Want to sleep in my hotel. They want to pay only four coppers. I
say must pay five coppers—one _metleek_. Bah! This country no good.”
Four fifths of a cent was perhaps as great a price as she should have
asked from any lodger in the “hotel” to which she led me a half hour
later.
All next day I followed the faintly marked path that clung closely to
the coast. Here and there a care-worn peasant toiled behind the wooden
plow that the tiny oxen dragged back and forth across the fields. At
times, when the peasant turned to look at me, his plow struck a root or
a rock, and he was obliged to pick himself up out of the mire. Nineteen
showers flung their waters upon me during that day. Sometimes these
showers were separated from each other by periods of the brightest
sunshine.
Late in the afternoon the sun was smiling bravely, when the path turned
into a well kept road winding through a forest of orange trees, where
countless natives were stripping the overloaded branches of their fruit.
I had reached the ancient town of Sidon. From the first shop in the
outskirts of the place, the bazaar was one long orange-colored streak.
I spent the night at a caravan inn. The next day I went on southward,
guided by the booming of the Mediterranean. Mile after mile the way led
over slippery ridges of the mountain chain, through streams and across
marshes in which I sank half way to my knees.
The gloomy day was drawing to a close when I began to look for shelter.
But I found none, and a gnawing hunger made me hurry on. I was crossing
a crumbling stone bridge that humped its back across a wandering stream
when an unhoped-for sight caught my eye. Miles away, at the end of a low
cape, rose the slender tower of a Mohammedan church, surrounded by a
jumble of flat buildings. I hurried toward it.
Dusk turned to utter darkness. Far ahead twinkled a few lights, that
seemed to move on before me as fast as I tried to draw near them. The
flat sand gave way to rocks and boulders against which I barked my shins
repeatedly.
I had almost given up trying to reach the village that night, when the
baying of dogs fell on my ear.
In the dim moonlight I noticed a faintly marked path up the sloping
beach. I followed it across sand-hills, and came up against a fort-like
building, pierced in the center by a gateway. Two flickering lights
under the archway cast wavering shadows over a group of Arabs huddled in
their blankets near the gate. When I stepped before them out of the
blackness of the night, they sprang to their feet with excited cries.
I pushed through the group, and plunged into crooked alleyways filled
with wretched hovels. All was silent in the bazaars; but the keeper of
one shop was still dozing over his pan of coals between a stack of aged
bread-sheets and a simmering kettle of sour-milk soup. I prodded him
until he was half awake, and gathering up the bread-sheets sat down in
his place. He dipped up a bowl of soup from force of habit; then,
catching sight of me for the first time, spilled the jelly-like mixture
over my outstretched legs.
The second serving reached me in the proper manner. A group of Arabs
gathered outside in the circle of light cast by the shop lamp, and
watched me eat. I finished the bowl of soup and called for a second.
They stared, astonished. Again I sent the bowl back. The bystanders
burst into a roar of laughter, and the boldest stepped forward to pat
their stomachs mockingly.
I inquired for an inn. A ragged giant stepped into the arc of light, and
crying “Taala,” set off to the westward. Almost at a trot he led the way
by cobbled streets, down the center of which ran an open sewer, up hill
and down. The corners we turned were so many that I could not count
them.
We came, at last, to a brightly lighted café, where a dozen jolly Arabs
sat smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. My guide began calling out
mournfully in the darkness, and drew me into the circle of light. A roar
went up from the men in the café, and they tumbled pell-mell out upon
us.
My guide explained my presence in a trumpet-like voice. From every
dwelling around poured forth dark, half-dressed men who, crowding
closely about, began talking all together. Some one said that we ought
to go inside the café. We did so, and the keeper, with his best company
smile, placed a chair for me in the center of the room. The older men
grouped themselves about me on more chairs, and the younger squatted on
their heels around the wall. We were trying to talk in the language of
signs, when a native pushed into the circle and addressed me in French.
Through him they asked me where I came from, and why I was there, and
were not satisfied until I had told them the entire history of my
wanderings.
I ended my story with the statement that I had left Sidon that morning.
“Impossible!” shouted the one who could speak French. “No man can walk
from Sidon to Soor in one day.”
“Soor?” I cried, recognizing the native name for Tyre, and scarcely
believing my ears. “Is this Soor?”
“Is it possible,” gasped the native, “that you do not know you are in
the ancient city of Tyre? Yes, indeed, my friend; this is Soor. But if
you left Sidon this morning you have slept a night on the way without
knowing it.”
I inquired about the men in the room. The interpreter introduced them,
one by one: the village clerk, the village barber, the village
carpenter, the village tailor, and—even thus far from the land of
chestnut trees—the village blacksmith. They every one decided that I
could not be allowed to continue on foot. Some days before, they said,
between Tyre and Acre, a white man had been found murdered by some blunt
instrument, and nailed to the ground by a stake driven through his body.
They told the story, leaving out none of the horrors. Then they told it
again to each other in Arabic, and acted it out for me. The village
carpenter was the white man, a fisherman and the clerks were the
assassins, and a piece of water-pipe was the stake.
Midnight had long since passed. I promised the good citizens of Tyre to
remain in their city for a day, to think it over. The keeper offered to
let me sleep on a rush mat in a back room of the café. I accepted the
invitation, and the men put up the shutters and marched away.
The ancient city of Tyre is to-day a collection of stone and mud huts
covering less than a third of the sandy point that was once filled with
the life of a great city. Its four thousand humble people are now
without education, art, or ambition. To the north, in the wretched
harbor, were a few old fishing-boats, far different from the fleets
whose sailors once made merry and sang in the streets of Tyre. Down on
the encircling beach, half buried under the drifting sands and worn away
by the lapping waves, lay the ruins of what must long ago have been
great business blocks. The Tyreans of to-day have carried away these
ruins, stone by stone, to build their own humble dwellings. Even as I
looked, half a dozen ragged Arabs were prying off the top of a great
pillar, and loading the pieces into an old sailing-vessel.
The next morning I passed through the city gate and continued my journey
on foot. From a short distance the gloomy group of huts behind looked
pitifully small and mean, huddled together on the great plain near the
vast blue sea.
I came to the “Ladder of Tyre,” a steep hill, which I climbed with many
bruises. Beyond, range after range of rock-covered hills stretched out
from the top of the ladder. Half climbing, half sliding, I went down the
southern slope, and struggled on across a trackless country in a
never-ceasing downpour.
Night came on. The sun was settling to his bath in the Mediterranean.
Across the throbbing sea, stretched a wavering ribbon of orange and red.
Away to the eastward, in the valleys of the Lebanon, darkness already
lay. Here and there on the rugged peaks, a tree, swaying in a swift
breeze, stood out against the evening sky. Near by a lonely shepherd
guarded a flock of fat-tailed sheep. Beyond him lay a sea of darkness.
The level plain soon changed to row after row of low sand-hills,
unmarked by a single footprint, over which my path rose and fell with
the regularity of a tossing ship.
The last glint of the blazing sun sank beneath the waves, leaving an
unbroken plain of black water. The swaying trees became dim; the very
peaks blended into the darkening sky of evening. It became difficult to
see where the hills ended and the trough began.
I stumbled half way up every slope. The shifting sands made walking
difficult. On the summit of the ridges sounded the low moaning of the
wind, rising and falling like far-off sobbing. It was easy to imagine
the surrounding blackness peopled with murderous nomads. Somewhere among
these never-ending ridges the “staked _faranchee_” had been done to
death.
Mile after mile the way led on. My path rose and fell so frequently that
it seemed like crossing the same sandy billow over and over. The rain
had ceased, but not a star broke through the darkened sky, and only the
hoarse boom of the sea guided my steps.
Once, when coming down a ridge with my feet raised high at each step in
expectation of another hill in front of me, I plunged into a hole in
which I sank almost to my knees in the mire. From force of habit I
plowed on. The booming of the waves grew louder, and the wind from off
the sea blew stronger and more chilling. Suddenly there sounded at my
feet the rush of water. I moved forward cautiously, and felt the edge of
what seemed to be a broad river pouring seaward. I could not cross it on
a black night. I drew back from the brink, and, finding a spot that
seemed solid enough, threw myself down.
But I sank, inch by inch, into the wet earth. Fearful of being buried
before morning, I rose and wandered toward the sea, stumbling over a
heap of cobblestones probably piled there by peasants. I built a bed of
stones on the side of the pile sheltered from the wind, tucked my camera
in a hole among them, and, pulling my coat over my head, lay down. A
patter of rain sounded on the coat; then another, and another, faster
and faster; and in less than a minute there began a downpour that lasted
all night.
The heap of stones gave small protection against the piercing wind. My
bed was short and like a half-circle in shape, so that I had to lie
motionless on my right side, in order to protect my camera and films
beneath. The rain quickly soaked through my clothing and ran in streams
along my skin. The wind turned colder and whistled through the chinks of
the pile. Through it all the sea boomed constantly, and in the
surrounding marshes unwearying frogs croaked a dismal chorus.
I was certainly awake at the first gleam of day. The new year was
peering over the Lebanon when I rose to my feet. My left leg, though
creaking like rusty armor, held me up all right; but I had no sooner
shifted my weight to my right than it gave way like a thing of straw and
let me down suddenly into the mud. After rubbing it for some time I
recovered the use of the limb: but even then an attempt to walk in a
straight line sent me round in a circle from left to right.
Daylight showed the river to be lined with quicksands. Some distance up
the stream I managed to cross without sinking below my arm-pits. Far off
to the southeast lay a small forest. Thinking that a village might be
hidden in its shade, I pushed eagerly forward through a sea of mud.
When I reached the forest I found it to be a large orange grove
surrounded by a high hedge and a ditch filled with water. There was not
a house in sight. The trees were loaded with fruit. I emptied my
knapsack, plunged through ditch and hedge, and tore savagely at the
tempting fare. With half-filled bag I got back to the plain, caught up
my scattered belongings, and struck southward, peeling an orange. The
skin was close to an inch thick; the fruit inside looked juicy enough to
make anybody hungry. Greedily I stuffed a large piece into my mouth, and
stopped stock-still, feeling as if I had been struck a sudden blow in
the back of the neck. The orange was as green as the Emerald Isle, its
juice more sour and bitter than half and half of vinegar and gall. I
peeled another, and another. Each was more sour and bitter than the
last. Tearfully I dumped the golden treasure into the mire and stumbled
on.
In the early afternoon I fell in with a band of roving Bedouins, and
traveled on with them, splashing long hours through surf and stream
along the narrow beach. Night had fallen before we parted in the Haifa
market-place.
At a Jewish inn in Haifa I made the acquaintance of a fellow countryman.
He was born in Nazareth, of Arab blood, and had never been outside Asia
Minor. But his grandfather had lived for a few years in New York, and,
though the good old gentleman had long since been resting in his grave,
his descendants were considered citizens of the United States in their
native land, and did not have to pay taxes to the Turkish officials.
They had the right to greet travelers from the new world as fellow
countrymen. Nazry Kawar was overjoyed at meeting a man from his own
country. He spent the afternoon drawing sketches of the routes of
Palestine for me, and took his leave, promising to write me a letter of
introduction to his uncle, a Nazarene dentist.
Early the next morning I started out on the road to Nazareth. Toward
noon, in the lonely hills beyond the first village, two Bedouins, less
bloodthirsty than hungry, fell upon me while I ate my lunch by the
wayside. They bombarded me with stones from opposite sides; but they
threw like girls, and dodged like ocean liners, so that I caused more
injury than I received. Finally I started a race down the highway. They
were no mean runners; but, when over the hill, they caught sight of a
road-repair gang of bronze-faced and muscular women, and were forced to
stop.
An hour later I reached the highest point of the route. Far beyond,
colored by the delicate blue air that trembled and wavered in the
afternoon sunshine, stretched a vast plain, walled by mountain ranges,
that seemed many miles away. I followed the route along the top of the
western wall, now passing between two mountain-peaks, now coming out on
a plateau; and, rounding at last a gigantic rock, I burst into Nazareth,
the city where Christ spent his boyhood.
[Illustration: On the road between Haifa and Nazareth I met a road
repair gang, all women but the boss.]
Nazareth was a mere village in the time of Christ. To-day it covers the
bowl-shaped valley in which it is built, and climbs to the summits of
the surrounding hills. Seen from a distance, it looks like the
amphitheater of a circus.
I went on down into the city. In the crowded, babbling bazaars, I tried
in vain to find the dentist Kawar to whom my letter was addressed. When
my legs grew a-weary of wandering through the winding streets, and my
tongue could no longer misshape itself in attempts to pronounce the
peculiar sounds of the Arabic language, I sat down on a bazaar stand and
leaned back carelessly, knowing that I should soon be taken care of.
Near me on all sides rose a whisper, in the hoarse voice of squatting
shop-keepers, in the high-pitched voice of passing children: “Faranchee!
Fee wahed faranchee!”
Hardly a moment had passed before a scared-looking boy stopped near by
to stare at me, in the manner of one ready to run in terror at the first
sign of an unfriendly move on the part of this strange creature, whose
clothes were so queer, whose legs were clothed in separate garments.
Here, surely, was one of those dread bogey men who are known to dine on
small Arabs, and so near that—perhaps he had better edge away and take
to his heels before—But no; here are a dozen men of familiar look
collecting in a half-circle back of him! And there comes his uncle, the
camel-driver. Perhaps the bogey man is not so fearful, after all, for
the men crowd close around, calling him _faranchee_ and _efendee_, and
appearing not in the least afraid.
The camel-driver is doubly brave,—who would not be proud to be his
nephew?—for he actually begins to speak to the strange being, while the
crowd behind him grows and grows.
“Barhaba!” says the camel-driver in greeting. “Lailtak saeedee! Where
does the efendee hail from? Italiano, perhaps?”
“No; American.”
“Amerikhano!” The word runs from mouth to mouth, and the faces of all
hearers light up with interest. “America?” Why, that is where Abdul el
Kassab, the butcher, went long years ago. It is said to be far away,
further than El Gkudis (Jerusalem) or Shaam (Damascus). But the
camel-driver has found out something else about this _faranchee_.
Listen: “Bahree! The faranchee is a bahree, a sailor, a man who works on
the great water, the ‘bahr’ that any one can see from the top of yonder
hill and on the shores of which this same camel-driver claims to have
been. It is even said that to reach this America one must travel on the
great water! Indeed, ’tis far away, and were the faranchee not a bahree,
how could he have journeyed from far-off America to this very Nazra?”
But the few words of the Arabic that I knew were soon spent. I sat
there, unable to tell them more. To the simple Nazarenes I was as much
to be pitied as a deaf-mute, and they burst forth in pitying cries of
“Meskeen” (“poor devil”). The camel-driver was still trying to find out
more about me, when a well dressed native pushed through the crowd and
spoke to me in English. I held up the letter.
“Ah,” he cried, “the dentist Kawar?” And he took the note out of my hand
and tore it open.
“But here,” I cried. “Are you the dentist?”
“Oh, no, indeed,” said the native, without looking up from the reading.
“Then what right have you to open that letter?” I demanded, grasping it.
The native gazed at me a moment, astonished and hurt.
“Oh, sir,” he said, “the Kawar is my friend. If it is my friend’s letter
it is my letter. If it is my letter it is my friend’s letter. Arabs make
like that, sir. I am Elias Awad, cook to the British missionary and
friend to the dentist. Very nice man, but gone to Acre. But Kawar family
live close here. Please, you, sir, come with me.”
Ten minutes later I had been welcomed by the family Kawar like a
long-lost friend. Their dwelling showed them to be people of Nazarene
wealth and importance. The father, keeper of a dry-goods store, had once
been sheik, or mayor, of Nazareth, and was a man of most agreeable
manners. He spoke only Arabic. His sons ranged from bearded men to a boy
of nine. They had been distributed among the different mission schools
of the town. Two of them spoke English; a third spoke German; the fourth
spoke French, and the fifth Italian; the youngest was already beginning
to learn Russian. While I was bombarded with questions in four
languages, I found a moment here and there to congratulate myself on my
ignorance of the tongue of the Cossacks.
While the evening meal was preparing, the family, a small army of all
sizes, went forth to show me the sights. They pointed out Mary’s Well,
the workshop of Joseph, and other things that we read of in the Bible.
After supper three of the sons of the family persuaded me to go to a
little church on the brow of the valley, although I was very tired. The
sermon was preached in Arabic, but I had heard the tunes of the hymns
before. The worshipers in the church behaved quite differently from any
I had seen. The men, who sat in the front pews, wore fezes in the latest
style; while the women, dressed all alike in white gowns, sat silently
in the back seats, scarcely daring to breathe. Now and then one of the
men kicked off his loose slippers and folded his legs on his seat. And
even the most religious among them could not keep from turning to stare
at a _faranchee_ who sat bare-headed in church. At the close of the
service the ladies hurried home, but not one of the men was missing from
the crowd that waited to greet us as we left the church. My companions
told them all they knew of me—and more. Among the hearers were two young
men, Shukry Nasr and Nehmé Simán, teachers of English in the mission
school. Being eager for a chance to practice talking the English
language, and touched with the curiosity of the Arab, they would not go
until I had promised to be their guest after my stay with the Kawars.
The next day I learned something of the customs and ways of the
better-class Arab. Shukry Nasr and Nehmé Simán called early and led me
away to visit their friend, Elias, the cook. On the way, if I chanced to
want to buy something at the shops we passed, one or the other of my
companions insisted on paying for it. “You are our guest, sir,” said
Nehmé; “we are very glad to have you for a guest and to talk English.
But, even if we did not like, we should take good care of you; for
Christ said ‘Thou shalt house the stranger who is within thy gates.’”
“Why,” said the cook, when we began talking about the same subject after
reaching the mission, “in the days of my father, for a stranger to pay
for a place to live would have been an insult to all. A stranger in
town! Why, let _my_ house be his—and _mine!_—and _mine!_ would have
shouted every honorable citizen!”
“But Nazareth is getting bad,” sighed Shukry. “The faranchees who are
coming are very proud. They will not eat our food or sleep in our small
houses. And so many are coming! So some inns have been built, where they
take pay. Very disgraceful.”
“Did you give any policeman a nice whipping?” asked Elias suddenly.
“Eh?” I cried.
“If a faranchee comes to our country,” he explained, “or if we go to
live in America and come back, the policeman cannot arrest.”
“Yes, I know,” I answered.
“If a policeman touches you, then, you must give him a nice whipping,”
continued the cook. “If my father had been to America I would give nice
whippings every day. Many friends I have the policeman dare not touch.”
“If they only refuse to obey the soldiers,” said Nehmé, “that is
nothing. Everybody does that. But here is the wonderful! They do not
have even to give backsheesh!”
“Do you have backsheesh in America?” demanded Shukry.
“Ah—er—well, the name is not the same,” I stammered.
“To-morrow,” said Shukry, as I stropped the razor which the cook had
invited me to use, “you are coming to live with me.”
“Look out, sir!” said the cook; “you are cutting your moustaches.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Aah!” shrieked the cook, as I scraped my upper lip clean. “Why
faranchees make that? So soon I my moustaches would shave, so soon would
I cut my neck.”
The next morning, shod in a pair of Nazarene slippers, heelless and as
thin as Indian moccasins, I set out with the teachers for the home of
Shukry. It was a simple dwelling half way up a hill, and from its roof
spread out the bowl-shaped village at our feet. The death of the father
a short time before had left the youth to rule over the household.
Although he was only seventeen years old, he seemed like a man, boasting
already a bristling moustache, for human beings grow up early in the
East.
It was January seventh, a holiday among the Greek churchmen, and a day
for visiting among all Christians. We had our shoes off, and were
sitting on a divan, when the guests began to appear. They were all men,
of course. Shukry stood erect in the center of the room, and bowed low
to each guest as he appeared. The visitor returned his bow. There was no
hand-shaking. After the greeting each arrival slid out of his slippers,
and squatted on the long divan. When all were firmly seated everybody
said “Naharak saeed” (“good evening”), and bowed again to everybody else
in turn.
If the newcomer were a priest, Shukry’s small brother slid forward to
kiss his hand, and ran back to some out-of-the-way corner. After all the
greetings had been given, each guest was served with cigarettes and a
tiny cup of coffee. Visitors who attended the same church as Shukry
broke into a lively talk with him. Others—the Greek priests
especially—sipped their coffee in absolute silence, puffed at a
cigarette, and, with another “Naharak saeed” glided into their slippers
and departed.
Later in the day we went to call on all the Christian families in the
village, finally stopping at the Kawar home. The former mayor, dressed
in _faranchee_ clothes, with a broad white vest, sat cross-legged in his
white stocking-feet, a fez perched on his head. He talked long and
pleasantly of things American, then wrote me four letters of
introduction to friends in towns I meant to visit.
“Without these letters,” he explained, “you would not dare to stay in
Gineen or Nablous; for my friends are the only Christians there, and
those are very bad towns. My friends in Jerusalem and Jaffa—if you ever
get there alive—may be able to find you work.”