"Ali Higg's Brains Live in a Black Tent!"
I hate to have to admit that there was any virtue in Suliman, or
anything other than vice in his new chum Abdullah. The two little
devils stole my cigarettes, and deviled me unmercifully about my
disguise, making improper jokes, at which Ali Baba and his sons
laughed uproariously, and which they recalled at intervals for
days afterwards.
But almost immediately after the "lady Ayisha" had left the
governorate I was forced to admit that the brats were useful. In
their own way they served Grim as a pair of hounds work for a man
out hunting rabbits, for they could penetrate places and be
welcome where a grown man would be killed--at the very least--for
intruding or attempting to intrude. Harems, for instance. And
they could be naive and wheedling toward a woman when they chose.
They came in with their tongues hanging out like a pair of pups,
and sticky with the awful stuff men sell for candy in the
El-Kalil bazaars. Evidently some woman had been pumping them
for information, and Grim made them stand in front of him
on the carpet.
"Well?"
They both spoke at once. Now and then one paused for breath and
then the other, but on the whole it was a neck-and-neck race to
tell the tale first.
"There was a woman in the _suk_ who had heard of Jimgrim but
never saw him, and she bought us sweets and took us to her house,
and she asked us questions about Jimgrim, and we told lies, and
she asked us what we were doing in El-Kalil, and we said nothing,
and she said _wallah!_ That was very little, and then she asked
us all over again about Jimgrim. (_Gasp_)
"So we said Jimgrim has already gone back to Jerusalem, and she
did not believe; but we swore by the beard of the Prophet, so she
said what were we going to do now, and we said we would go to the
governorate and beg for bread. (_Gasp_)
"So she said what next, and we said there is a great sheikh here
from Arabia, who makes a journey to Petra, and _inshallah_ he
will take us with him, and she said why did we want to go to
Petra, and we said because our mothers were carried off by the
Turks and sold to the Arabs and _inshallah_ we should find them
near Petra. (_Gasp_)"
"So far, good!" said Grim. "That's what she got out of you. Now
what did you get out of her?"
"She said _wallah!_ There is Ali Higg at Petra and he grinds the
face of the poor and is a great chief and will make us prisoners
and sell us for slaves or have us turned into eunuchs, and we
said (_gasp_) that we are _msakin_* and not afraid of Ali Higg
and he may as well have us as anybody, and if it is written that
we shall be eunuchs then it is written and who shall change it?
(_Gasp_) [* Poverty-stricken]
"And she said what made us think that the great sheikh will take
us to Petra, and we said because he had promised, but he may be a
big liar and we don't know yet."
"What kind of woman is she?" Grim asked.
"A big fat woman with a belly like two waterbags one on top of
the other, thus!"
"What is her name?"
"She is the wife of Ismail ben Rafiki, the wool-dealer."
"Uh-huh. Yes. Go on."
"So she said we should come back here and find out if the sheikh
will really take us and say to the sheikh (_gasp_) there is a
lady in the city who can be of service to him in a certain matter
and he should come back with us and we should lead him to the
house and she will give us money and the sheikh will understand."
"Good!" pronounced Grim. "Not half bad. Just for that I'll go
with you."
He winked at de Crespigny, nodded to me, pulled on a black-and-white
striped Bedouin cloak, and went off with them at once. Whereat
Narayan Singh came in, looking like another person altogether,
although, if anything, bigger than before. He had got out of
uniform and was dressed in a medley of Indian and Arab costume
that made him look like one of those slaves in the "Arabian Nights"
who cut off the heads of women. All he needed was a big curved
simitar to fill the bill.
"Henceforth I am the _hakim's_ servant," he said, showing his
teeth in an enormous grin. "Only," he added, "since it will be I
who instruct the _hakim,_ in secret the sahib must listen to me."
He got out the medicine-chest, and being a Sikh with all of a
soldier's opinion of civilians proposed to teach me what the
labels on the little bottles stood for. Even he laughed after a
minute or two, when he had got himself thoroughly sewed up and
called each bottle by its wrong name.
"Ah! What does it matter!" he exclaimed at last. "Sore
eyes--broken leg--boils--knife-wound--let it be all one. Give
episin salts--always episin. Then, if we are long in one place,
so that a sick man comes a second time, swearing grievously
because of episin, give croton. That person will not come again,
but the fame of the _hakim_ will spread far and wide."
"You'd much better teach me how a _hakim_ sits a camel,"
I suggested.
"All ways, sahib, for the _hakim_ is not seldom a _bunnia_ whose
parents bought him education. Softer than wax is the rump of a
_bunnia_ and one who reads books. He sits this way until the
boils break out, and then that way until the skin chafes. Then
presently he lies across the saddle on his belly and either prays
or curses, according as his spirit is pious or otherwise. But the
camel continues to proceed, since that is its nature."
"Well, go on, instruct the _hakim,_ then. The sahib listens."
"It is well to remember there will be with us, besides those
seventeen thieves of this place, who know who we truly are, four
sons of the desert and a woman. Now the woman, being woman, and
they are all alike, will take note of the _hakim_ and pretend to
little sickness for the sake of making talk. Whereas the men,
being, as it were, the guardians of the woman, will be seized
with pride and jealousy. So that what with the woman's curiosity
and the men's watchfulness there will be great need for discretion."
"How would you define discretion?"
"In the case of the woman, insolence. In the case of the men, a
good humor--with perhaps some such physic for quarrelsomeness as
croton oil administered in their food on suitable occasion.
Whenever they get suspicious, sahib, drench their food!
"When the woman makes great eyes and shams complaints, tell her
what their cursed Prophet said of women. Never mind whether he
said it or not, sahib, for she will not know the truth of it,
never having read the book. Only speak evil of all women, and so
we shall come to Ali Higg's nest in good repute."
"All right. I'll try not to flirt with the lady. What next?"
"The sahib will be accused of being a Persian, and will be
insulted accordingly, for none loves a Persian in this land,
Islam having two chief sects, of which the Persians chose to
adopt the Shia faith, which is not in favor with the Sunni, who
are most numerous and most fanatic. The less the Sunni knows of
his religion the more he despises a Shia; and when these people
despise they steal, strike, abuse, and act otherwise unseemly."
"But I'm not supposed to be a Persian, am I?"
"No, for you could never act a Persian's part. But they will
accuse you of being a Persian because you are an Indian, as I
have heard a man called a dago because he was born somewhere
south of a certain line. When it has been established that you
are no Persian, but an Indian, it must be remembered that there
are only two kinds of Indians whom they do not despise, and they
are Sikhs and Pathans--Sikhs, because a Sikh can smite three
Arabs with one hand, and the Pathan for much the same reason.
"But I must not go as a Sikh because of the religious difficulty;
neither may you be a Pathan, because you in no way resemble one,
nor do you speak the Pushtu tongue. But I will be a Pathan,
because I can speak that language; therefore they will respect me
as a man prone to fight readily and well. And knowing that no
Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no
account, they will more readily respect you, although you are
neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi
Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course
between peace and pugnacity, pretending on the one hand to
restrain my quarrelsomeness, yet on the other depending for
safety on my readiness to take offense--as a man who is
accustomed to a servant of mettle."
The rest of his lecture was about niceties of behavior, religious
observances, and so on. It was a mystery how that man had never
been promoted. He seemed to have eyes for everything and a memory
for everything that he had ever observed. The Sikh despises the
religion of Islam quite as fervently as the follower of the
Prophet scorns Sikhism; yet he seemed familiar with every detail
of Moslem custom, and knew to what extent geography affected it.
The point he seemed to understand best was how to turn the flank
of ignorant fanaticism.
"Whenever you make a mistake, sahib, remember this: you are
Darwaish, which is a man who is privileged, having set behind him
all unimportant matters. So when you are accused of not observing
this or that, or of acting with impropriety, confound the Bedouin
always by sneering at their ignorance, saying that where you come
from men know what is proper. And Jimgrim, having truly made
the pilgrimage to Mecca, will confound them likewise, having
knowledge, whereas most of these rascals only know by hearsay."
I suppose he lectured me for two hours, until Grim came in
looking pleased with himself, followed by the two infants looking
much more pleased. You can't mistake the adventurous air of an
eight-year-old with money hidden on his person, whatever his
nationality may be. De Crespigny followed them in to learn
the news.
"Know anything about old Rafiki, the wool-merchant?" Grim asked.
"Steady-going old party," said de Crespigny. "Says his prayers,
cheats his customers, keeps the curfew law, and runs a three-wife
establishment, I believe, in three parts of town, all according
to the Book. Why, have you run foul of him?"
"He has offered me ten thousand piastres to poison Ali Higg"
"Show me the money!" laughed de Crespigny.
"He was hardly as previous as that. His head wife bribed these
kids to bring me to the house, and the old boy met me in the
wool-store. Said he'd been told I was going to Petra.
"First suggestion he made was that I should take my time on the
road and waylay a caravan that's sure to follow. He'd no idea,
of course, that the lady Ayisha is to travel with me. His
little scheme is to provide her with camels and men on his own
account--mean camels and his own men, who would run away at the
first sign of trouble.
"He assumes that I'm a gay Lochinvar who'd like nothing better
than to carry off the lady. He wants her carried off and ravished
as a spite for Ali Higg.
"Well, I didn't exactly fall for that; said I couldn't very well
approach Ali Higg afterward, and he admitted that relations in
that case might be kind o' strained. So he proposed next that I
should meet up with Ali Higg and poison him. He offered to
supply the poison--stuff that he said would make him die slowly
in agony."
"What's his quarrel with Ali Higg?"
"Seems the old boy had a daughter who was the apple of his
eye--or so he said. She was on her way down to Egypt; and I
suspect she did not travel by train because she's been bought by
some beast of a pasha. They didn't want inquiries by passport
people, or any interfering bunk like that.
"Anyhow, Ali Higg is quite a ladies' man, and he happened to be
crossing the map with part of his gang of thieves somewhere down
Beersheba way. He agreed with the pasha on the point of taste and
carried off the girl. So old wool-merchant Rafiki had to refund
the purchase-price--not that he admitted that to me, of course.
"I suspect that's where the rub comes. If he hadn't been selling
the girl illegally he'd surely have complained to you about the
rape in the first instance. As it was he couldn't think of
anything except revenge.
"I asked him if he'd take the girl back, and he said no, what
should he do with her? What he wants is money, or else the
lingering death of Ali Higg; and seeing it's about as easy to get
money out of that gentleman as cream cheese out of the moon,
he's willing to part with a hundred pounds for either of two
things--the rape of Ayisha or the death of Ali Higg. On those
terms he vows he'd die contented."
"If he finds out that Ayisha goes with you tonight he'll try to
corrupt old Ali Baba or one of his sons," said de Crespigny.
"Yes, and he probably will find it out. But corrupting Ali Baba
would take time and a lot of money; and none of his sons dares do
a thing without the old man's approval. I feel fairly sure of
the gang. Point is, do you know of any other gang that the
wool-merchant could hire right now to attack us somewhere
on the road?"
"There's none in Hebron that would dare. Plenty outside in
the villages."
"The lady Ayisha has probably told that she's going tonight,"
said Grim. "Old Woolly-wits might not find it out until too late,
but I suspect his wives get all the gossip that's going. Then
he'll have to work fast, because we shall move fast. What
villages does he trade with chiefly?"
"The Beni-Assan and the Beni-Khor."
"Small crowds, both of them. Counting her four fanatics, we'll be
four-and-twenty armed men, and tough in the bargain. Is there any
outlying sheikh who owes old Rafiki money? Who are his wives,
for instance?"
"Now you're on the track," said de Crespigny. "One of his
wives--the third, I think--is the daughter of Abbas Mahommed of
the Beni-Yussuf tribe. Abbas Mahommed is always in debt to him."
"Where's his place?"
"Down near the lower end of the Dead Sea. Right near where you'll
want to pitch your first camp. Abbas Mahommed sells him camel
wool and hides, and goes in debt in advance regularly. This
spring, for some reason, he delivered very little, and is still
heavily in debt to Rafiki."
"How many men has he?"
"Might turn out fifty strong."
"That's where we're due for our first trouble, then," said Grim.
"We'll have to put one over on him. I know one way of spoiling
friend Rafiki's game; old Woolly-wits'll fall sure. Suppose you
go and see him, 'Crep, or send for him, and ask him straight out
to provide camels for the lady Ayisha. He'll send his own men
along with them, of course, and give them private instructions.
Let's see--four men and a woman plus provisions, and he'll
probably send five men with them--twelve camels, eh? Who else can
raise seven good camels in this place?"
"Easy. I know where to get 'em."
"Good. Hire them then. Tie them in two strings and send them out
with two policemen to wait for us ten miles along the road. Be
sure they start ahead of us. Soon as we overtake them I'll
dismiss Rafiki's men, who'll be nothing but his spies, swap the
princess and her four men and their loads on to the fresh beasts,
and leave the police to chase Rafiki's experts home again. Will
you do that?"
It was getting well along toward sunset, and de Crespigny had to
hurry; but one of the advantages of being short-handed as
administrator of a district is that you have to keep in intimate
personal touch with all essentials, and there was not much that
young de Crespigny did not know about getting what he wanted done
in quick time. Within half an hour seven pretty good camels were
sauntering southward out of Hebron, with a couple of phlegmatic
Arab policemen perched on the two leaders, and the noses of the
others tied to the empty saddles of the beasts ahead. They were
neither as big nor in as good condition as old Ali Baba's
wonderful string, but very likely better than any that the
wool-merchant would provide, and by that much less likely to
reduce our speed after we should make the change.
"You see how easy it is," said Grim, "for a rascal like Ali Higg
to upset a whole country-side. Here we are getting the crime of
Palestine running in grooves, as it were, so's to regulate it
first and then reduce it to reasonable proportions, and all that
beast needs do is steal a woman and start civil war."
But I did not see that the wool-merchant's private plans for
vengeance amounted to civil war, and said so.
"Hah! Wait and see!" said Grim. "Woolly-wits goes after vengeance.
Somebody gets killed. That means a blood-feud. All the relatives
of the slain man--whether it's Ali Higg or one of his retainers
doesn't matter--take up arms; and all the relatives of Woolly-wits
do ditto. For each man killed in the war that follows the other
side is out for the equivalent in life or goods. Village after
village gets drawn in.
"Suppose that sheikh at the south end of the Dead Sea who's in
debt to Woolly-wits jumps at the chance to loot our caravan and
bag the lady, we'll be lucky if one or two of our men don't get
scuppered. That means a blood-feud between that village and all
old Ali Baba's clan.
"But that isn't nearly all, nor nearly the worst of it. Ali Higg
learns next that the Dead Sea outfit have tried to waylay his
wife; so he takes the warpath. And instead of that making a
three-cornered fight of it, it might mean an offensive alliance
between Ali Higg and Ali Baba's gang.
"Civil war would be a very mild name for that. There'd be brains
brought to bear on it. The administration might have to spend
twenty or thirty thousand pounds and jail a lot of estimable
Arabs. The thing to do is to stop that kind of thing before
it happens."
"By corraling Ali Higg, I suppose?" said I.
"Can't very well do that. He's a free man. Of course he's got no
right to cross our border and steal women, but, on the other
hand, he's made himself boss of a district that no other
government pretends to control.
"If we can catch him our side of the line he's our meat; but
that's reciprocal; if he can catch us on his side there's no law
to prevent his doing what he likes with us. We've got to use our
heads with Master Ali Higg."
I think that was the first time it really dawned on me that this
venture was going to be dangerous. Even so, the calmness with
which Grim considered leaving law and all the means of its
enforcement behind and crossing deserts with a gang of known
thieves for accomplices took most of the edge off it.
You simply couldn't feel scared when that fellow smiled and
exposed the risks in detail, even with dark coming on and the
sound of camels being made to kneel outside the window. For Ali
Baba had become convinced at last that Grim really intended to
start that night, and, making a virtue of necessity, was better
than punctual. The camels were groaning and swearing, as they
always do at the prospect of a night's work.
"As I see it, any tribe out there has as much right to elect Ali
Higg leader as you and I have to elect a president," said Grim.
"I don't suppose they did elect him, but they'll claim they did.
The point is, he's got himself elected somehow. We've no veto. I
don't hold with murder; it sets a bad example and turns loose a
horde of individual trouble-makers who were under something like
control before. It might be easy to have him murdered; you see
how easy old Woolly-wits thought it might be. Murder has always
been the solution of politics in the Old World right down to
date; and look where they're at in consequence!"
"You must have some idea to go on," I suggested.
"What's your plan?"
"They say I look a bit like Ali Higg."
"But what then? Haven't you a plan--nothing you mean to try
first?"
"Oh yes. _Chercher la femme."_
"So there's a woman in it?"
"You bet! Ali Higg's no born statesman. His brains live in a
black tent, and he keeps 'em encouraged with French and English
books bought in Jerusalem--silk stockings--gramophones--all kinds
of things."
"What is she--a Turk? I've heard some of them are educated nowadays."
"No. And she never was a Turk. She was born in Bulgaria of
Greco-Russo-Bulgar parents, educated at Roberts College and
Columbia University, New York, married to a drummer in the
shredded-codfish business, divorced--on what grounds I don't
know--divorced him, though, I believe came out here as war
worker-teacher in refugee camps in Egypt--made the acquaintance
of Ali Higg when he was prisoner of war down there--he was
fighting for the Turks at one time--and helped him to escape.
"I've never set eyes on her, but they say she's a rare
good-looker and has more brains in her little finger than most
men keep under their hats. I'm told she has designs on the throne
of Mesopotamia."
"Mespot? I thought the League of Nations was going to let the
Arabs choose their own king."
"Sure. And as soon as she sees that Ali Higg's pretensions don't
amount to a row of shucks I wouldn't give ten piastres for that
gentleman's lease of life! Borgia had nothing on her, they
tell me."
"So we're out to play chess with a white woman. Why didn't you
tell me this before?"
"What's your hurry?" asked Grim. "If you find out too much all at
once you'll lose your bearings. I'll introduce you to the lady if
we ever reach Petra right side up. Now let's eat, and get a move
on. A full belly for a long march! Come."