SOFIA, SALONIKA, AND SO TO BED
Stimulated by the knowledge that Varna was occupied by the British we
walked the decks openly, flaunting our protean rôles of British
officers, highly contented men, first-class passengers, and third-class
scarecrows.
Like the _Batoum_, the Red Cross ship brought others who began the
voyage as semi-stowaways. Commodore Wolkenau had told us in Odessa that
among our shipmates would be a certain General from Denikin's army. We
found him--a tall, bearded, Grand-Duke-Nicholas-like man--dining in the
second-class saloon, and wearing a suit of clothes nearly as shabby as
our own. To dodge investigation by the Austrian port authorities he had
assumed, with the connivance of the ship's captain, the character of an
engineer's mate. The "engineer" who owned him as mate was in reality a
commander of the Russian Imperial Navy, also attached to Denikin's
forces. The pair of them were travelling to Salonika, as emissaries of
General Denikin, to ask the Franco-British command for arms,
ammunition, and financial support.
Another fellow-passenger was a former lieutenant of the Russian navy,
who, since the German occupation of Sevastopol, had been acting as an
agent of the Allies. He carried a complete list of the German and
Austrian ships and submarines in the Black Sea, and details of the
coast defences.
The three days' voyage was uneventful. The Black Sea remained at its
smoothest. A pleasant sun harmonized with the good-will and
friendliness of all on board, and with our deep content, as we
continued to tread on air and impatient expectation. A Bulgarian
destroyer pranced out to meet us, and led the vessel through the
devious minefields and into the miniature, toy-like harbour of Varna.
The Bulgarian authorities imposed a four days' quarantine upon all
passengers; but the general, the naval commander, and the
Franco-British agent joined with us in avoiding this delay by sending
ashore a collective note to the French naval officer who controlled the
port. As at Odessa, we rowed ashore with our complete luggage wrapped
in two newspapers, each of which contained a toothbrush, a revolver,
some cartridges, a comb, a razor, a spare shirt, a spare collar, and a
few handkerchiefs.
Outside the docks a British trooper in dusty khaki, shoulder-badged
with the name of a famous yeomanry regiment, passed at a gallop. The
sight of him sent an acute thrill through me, for he was a symbol of
all that I had missed since the day when I woke up to find myself
pinned beneath the wreck of an aeroplane, on a hillside near Shechem.
White looked after him, hungrily. He had been among the Turks for three
years, and since capture this was his first sight of a British Tommy on
duty.
"How about it?" I asked.
"I don't know. Somehow it makes me feel nohow in general, and anyhow in
particular."
We reported to the British general commanding the force of occupation,
and gladly delivered ourselves of information about Odessa for the
benefit of his Intelligence Officer. At the hotel occupied by the staff
there were preliminary doubts of whether such hobo-like ragamuffins
could be British officers; but our knowledge of army shop-talk, of the
cuss words fashionable a year earlier, and of the chorus of
"Good-bye-ee" soon convinced the neatly uniformed members of the mess
that we really were lost lambs waiting to be reintroduced to rations,
drinks, and the field cashier.
For many days our extravagant shabbiness stood in the way of a complete
realization that we were no longer underdogs of the fortune of war, but
had come back into our own. Bulgarian officers, their truculence in no
way impaired by their country's downfall, wanted us to leave our
first-class carriage on the way to Sofia. Outside Sofia station it was
impossible to hire a cab, for no cabman would credit us with the price
of a fare. The staff of the British Mission, to whom we gave reams of
reports, tried their politest not to laugh outright at our clothes, but
broke down before the green-and-yellow check waistcoat, many sizes too
large, which White had received from a British civilian in Odessa.
Even the real Ford car, lent us by the British Mission for the journey
to Salonika, failed to establish a sense of dignity. Once, when we
stopped on the road near a British column, the driver was asked who
were his pals the tramps.
We drove joyously down the Struma valley and through the Kreshna and
Ruppel passes, still littered with the débris of the Bulgarian retreat.
Rusted remnants of guns lolled on the slopes descending to the river.
Broken carts, twisted motor-lorries, horse and oxen skeletons--all the
flotsam of a broken army--mottled the roadside. In the rocky sides of
the mountain passes were great clefts from which dislodged boulders had
hurtled down on the Bulgarian columns when British aeroplanes helped
the retreat with bomb-dropping. We passed through the scraggy uplands
of Lower Macedonia, and so to Salonika.
The real Ford car halted in the imposing grounds that surrounded the
imposing building occupied by British General Headquarters at Salonika.
As we climbed the steps leading to the front door, warmly expectant of
a welcome by reason of our information from South Russia, an orderly
pointed out that this entrance was reserved for Big Noises and
By-No-Means-Little Noises. We swerved aside, and entered an
unpretentious side-door, labelled "Officers Only."
"Wojer want?" asked a Cockney Tommy, who sat at a desk inside it.
"We want to report to Major Greentabs, of the Intelligence Department."
The Tommy looked not-too-contemptuously at our sunken cheeks, our
shapeless hats, our torn, creased, mud-spotted tatterdemalion clothes,
and almost admiringly at White's check waistcoat.
"Nah, look 'ere, civvies," he instructed, "yer speak English well inuf.
Carncher read it? The notice says 'Officers Only', an' it means only
officers. Dagoes 'ave ter use the yentrance rahnd the corner, so aht
_yew_ go, double quick."
That day Salonika gave itself up to revelry by reason of an unfounded
report that an armistice had been signed on the Western front. One of
the celebrators was a certain 2nd-class air mechanic of the Royal Air
Force. We stopped him in the street, and asked the way to R.A.F.
headquarters. Beatifically he breathed whiskied breath at me as he
stared in unsteady surprise.
"George," he called to his companion, "the war's over--_hic_--and
here's two English blokes in civvies. Want to join the Royal Air Force,
they do." Then, tapping me on the chest--"Don't you join the Royal Air
Force. We're a rotten lot."
Armed with signed certificates of identity we went to the officers'
rest house to demand beds.
"Speak English?" said a quartermaster-sergeant as we entered.
"Yes."
"Been expecting you. The Greek contractor's sons, aren't you?"
Later, not long before the bulletin-board showed the rumoured armistice
with Germany to be premature, an orderly in the rest house wished to
share the great news that wasn't true with the nearest person, who
happened to be White. He stopped short on seeing a dubious civilian.
But his good-fellowship was not to be denied. French being the _lingua
franca_ of the multi-nationalitied troops in Salonika, he slapped White
on the back and announced: "_Matey, la guerre est finie_!"
Metamorphosed by ordnance uniforms from third-class scarecrows to the
regulation pattern of officer, we spent glorious days of rest and
recuperation. Then, by the next boat for Port Saïd, we left Salonika
the squalid for Cairo the comfortable; and so to the world where they
dined, danced, demobilized, and signed treaties of peace.
EPILOGUE
A DAMASCUS POSTSCRIPT; AND SOME WORDS ON THE KNIGHTS OF ARABY, A
CRUSADER IN SHORTS, A VERY NOBLE LADYE AND SOME HAPPY ENDINGS
Of all the cities in the Near and Middle East Damascus is at once the
most ancient, the most unchanged by time, the most unreservedly
Oriental, and the most elusive.
Constantinople is Byzantium--cum Mohammedan lust for power--cum Ottoman
domination--cum Levantine materialism--cum European exploitation and
Bourse transactions, in a setting of natural andarchitectural
magnificence; a city that expresses itself variously and inharmoniously
by a blendless chorus from an unmixable mixture of creeds and races; a
charming, feminine city with a wayward soul; a cruel, unstable city of
gamblers; a city of pleasant, vine-trellised alleyways, delightful
waterways, fear-haunted prisons and extravagant rogueries; to my mind
the most intriguing city in the world.
Cairo is a compound of sphinx-and-pyramid antiquity, modern opulence,
degenerate Arab touts, Arab Babudom, reserved and Simla-like
officialdom, the cosmopolitan gaiety of four great hotels, sordid and
curious vice, sand-fringed suburbs, traffic in tourists and fake
scarabs, and the compelling, changeless charm of the Nile.
Alexandria is bastard Byzantine-Levantine, with a wonderful past, an
insistent Cotton Exchange, a lovely harbour, a crooked racecourse where
crooked races are run, and a summer colony for Cairo's white-ducked
Westerns.
Port Saïd is a dull, heat-heavy hell, at which the traffic to the Far
East calls of unwelcome necessity, pays its tolls, skirts the
green-gray statue of De Lesseps, and gladly glides down the
turquoise-toned Suez Canal.
Suez is a hard-faced ex-courtesan, formerly famed for outrageous
spectacles, but now converted by that missionary of war-time expedience
the British Provost-Marshal into an unreal, uninviting, hypocritical
respectability; a harbour landlady for squat-sailed, dancing _dhows_.
Mecca is the pilgrim city _in excelsis_, with a Holy Stone,
overpowering heat, much colour and squalor, a reputation for
impenetrability, and no traditions earlier than the birth of the
Prophet.
Jerusalem has a stupendous history and is yet the most disappointing
city in the world; a small, gilded-gingerbread city with no beautiful
building except the blue-tiled Mosque of Omar, no first-class view
except that of the walls and roof-tops from the Mount of Olives; a city
trading its past for Western charity; a city with a rebuilt Tower of
David masquerading as the original, a probably authentic relic in the
Tomb of Absalom, and many dubious ones where, within the space of fifty
square yards of beflagged church-floor, mumbling guides point out to
pilgrims in pince-nez the supposed tombs of Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph
of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, hard by the supposed site of Calvary,
strewn with supposed fragments of the Cross; a city sacred to three
great religions, exemplified locally by scheming town-Arabs;
ring-curled, lethargic Jews aloof from their Western kindred; and
swarthy, lethargic Christians educated and largely supported by
Euro-American subsidies; a city of narrow, denominational schools that
ignore the Fellowship of Man; a city whose Church of the Holy Sepulchre
should be an epitome of peace and good-will, but yet is a place where,
in the name of Christian charity, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian,
and various kinds of Protestant priests intrigue and squabble over
claims to guard relics, windows, and corners, and defray the cost of
holy candle-light by collecting from visitors enough money to burn a
hundred and one candles for one and a hundred years; a city better read
about than examined.
Bagdad is a city with a romantic name, some fine Arabian architecture,
and an impressive western gate whence the Damascus-bound caravans move
dustily across the desert; a city fallen from greatness to the date and
grain trade, minor bazaars, and the steamer and dhow traffic of the
broad-bosomed Tigris; a city redolent of all that Haroun-al-Raschid was
and modern Mesopotamia's opportunist sheikhs emphatically are not; a
city with a prosperous future, thanks to the British engineers who have
irrigated the Tigris-Euphrates basin into the way it should go.
Mosul is an unlovely mud city that straggles around the ruins of
Nineveh the Magnificent.
But Damascus is indescribably a city with an unfathomable soul. In its
complex ancestry are the strains of many ancient civilizations. The
crooked alleys and decrepit buildings of its oldest quarter, perched on
a mountain projection high above Damascus proper, have an origin lost
in the conjectural mists of an epoch when the written word was not.
Another part of it was co-incident with Baalbek and sun-worship. The
plain façade of many a house (purposely plain to divert the cupidity of
Turkish pashas) hides a wide, white courtyard soothed by fountains, the
plashing of which is coolingly heard in divanned rooms precious with
rugs and hangings, and ornamented by minutely detailed designs in fancy
arches and miniature cupolas--houses exactly as they were when tenanted
by rich merchants who flourished under the greater Arabian caliphs. The
Street called Straight, the glass-roofed, unique bazaar and a dozen
other city-marks are bafflingly suggestive of contact with a dozen
periods of greatness. And last year, when the demoralized Turks marched
out of the city under the Arab flag that flew defiantly from the city
gate, Arab thinkers began to dream of yet another period of greatness,
in which Damascus was to be the centre of a re-united Arabian
Empire....
* * * * *
My motive in returning to Damascus was threefold--certain minor work at
Air Force Headquarters, an unpraiseworthy resolve to buy carpets and
knick-knacks before other officers of the Palestine Army chose their
pickings from the merchants' war hoards, and a sneakingly benevolent
desire to see George, the mongrel interpreter who had been bullied into
betraying my escape plans in Baranki Barracks, but who was yet such a
pathetic little nondescript.
With a passenger I left Ramleh aerodrome in a Bristol Fighter; for with
an aeroplane available who would think of travelling by train or
automobile over the disordered rails and roads of Syria? It was a
sun-shimmery day, pleasantly cool in the early part of a Palestine
November. Everything suggested peace as we flew northeastward--the calm
cloudlessness, the silent, sparkling countryside, the rhythmic purring
of the motor. The ground mosaic was radiant with that acute clearness
which makes flying so much more interesting in the East and Middle East
than elsewhere.
Far away to the right we could see from our height of 6,000 feet the
ghostlike outline of the Dead Sea behind the bleak-ridged hills beyond
Jericho. To the left were the shining sea, white-roofed Jaffa, and the
lines of sand dunes that curved in and out of the coloured
country-side. Ahead and around were brown surfaces of grain land and
green blotches of woodland, interspaced with gray-gleaming villages.
Soon the Bristol Fighter droned over what had been the old front of
Allenby's left flank, with uneven trenches snaking southeastward from
the sand-bordered coast to the Jordan basin. The Jordan itself twisted
and writhed through its green-and-gold valley, over which occasional
trenchworks zigzagged. Then came the hill desolation of Lower Samaria.
Near Shechem I reached out a fur-gloved hand and showed my passenger
the approximate spot where, seven months earlier, I was shot down and
awoke to find Arab nomads approaching my wrecked machine. Slightly to
the west was Nazareth, perched pleasingly on high ground.
The pear-shaped Sea of Galilee flickered with iridescent twinkling in
the sunlight. Just north of where the river flows into the lake I
picked out the point at which a regiment of the Australian Light Horse,
confronted on the far bank by a Turco-German force sent from Damascus
to defend the ford, swam their horses across the Jordan and routed the
enemy.
The patchwork flatness below changed to more plains of gray-brown
grain-country and gray-green orchard land neighboured on the east by
the desert that was a populous province in the days when armies of
age-old civilizations--Assyrian, Babylonian, Medean, Persian,
Macedonian, and Arabian--swept backward and forward in waves of
conquest and counter-conquest, to and from Nineveh, Babylon, Ctesiphon,
and Old Bagdad, until the Turkish hordes swarmed across from Central
Asia and ruined all the lands they conquered.
Small and indistinct at first, then expanding into a vivid clearness as
we flew toward it, Damascus came into sight; and of all the views from
the air that I remember from flights in Palestine, Egypt, Syria,
France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, England, and America, this was
incomparably the loveliest.
Far away to the west was Mount Lebanon, and from it stretched a line of
mountains, growing ever bleaker as they neared the Syrian Desert. The
low ground dominated by the heights was a maze of forests,
wheat-fields, pasturage, and orchard land, intermingled with patches of
sand. Straight ahead was the ancient city of Damascus, a straggling
surface of white roofs pierced by the domes and minarets of many
mosques, all in a gray whiteness, as if powdered with the dust of its
four thousand years of history. Pharpar and Abana, the twin rivers of
Damascus, showed up plainly as, converging and diverging, they
descended from their sources on the rim of the mountain, and lost
themselves in the jig-saw of crooked streets and square-topped houses.
The background is the wide, shimmering desert that loses itself on the
eastern horizon.
Having, to the roaring accompaniment of a 1918 Hispano-Suiza
aero-engine, circled over this city half as old as time, I spiralled
down and landed on the aerodrome.
On horses borrowed from the Sikhs who guarded the aerodrome we cantered
towards the city, three miles distant. The road was utterly vile, for
apart from Turkish neglect it had for three years been dented and
spoiled by German motor lorries. Every few yards we had to edge our
horses round some large hole.
Inside Damascus long-disused tram-lines rose high above the roadway.
Through the narrow, winding streets there streamed a medley of camels,
horses, fat men riding on thin donkeys, goats, rainbow-robed Bedouins,
veiled women in black, and fezzed Syrians and Armenians. All of
them--camels, donkeys, horses, and humans--wound in and around each
other without any pretence at order.
Under such conditions the least mishap is enough to bring about a block
in the haphazard traffic. We were held up for nearly twenty minutes
when a donkey, with a huge load of wood straddled on its back, lay down
near a hole in the road, and refused to budge. Men, women, and animals
mingled confusedly, and exhortation and imprecations were flung at the
donkey and its master. The onlookers were raining advice as we halted
our horses on the rim of the crowd, but none made an attempt to help.
And the following is an approximate but far from literal translation of
a few remarks:
"O thou unfortunate one! He has a donkey with a stubborn spirit. It has
deposited itself on the ground and most annoyingly refuses to rise."
"Beat it hard, I say! I have a string of camels which become unruly
because they cannot proceed. Beat it, I say!"
"Nay, rather speak kindly and apply gentle pressure to the under-parts.
Then will it lift its forefeet and stand erect. Stubborn donkeys care
naught for blows."
"Cow-faced son of an exceedingly fat she-dog! Displace thy heavy hoof
from my astonishingly painful toes!"
"_Ah-ee! Ah-ee!_ But a moment hence I had a money-purse, and it has
left me."
"O thou unfortunate one! He had a money-purse, and it has left him. O
thou unfortunate one!"
And although all knew that the purse was probably hidden in the folds
of some Arab's robe, those near the unfortunate one searched and
scratched the ground, probably none more assiduously than the man who
could have produced it.
Now if the period had been two months earlier a Turkish gendarme would
have taken the donkey-owner apart, and, if he failed to offer a bribe,
shot his prostrate beast and hauled its carcase to the roadside. As
likely as not it would have been the gendarme who stole the unfortunate
one's money.
What actually happened was this. A sun-browned man in light khaki
tunic, short trousers, and bare knees sauntered along, a cigarette
drooping from the left-hand corner of his mouth.
"_Saa-eeda, Tommy Effendi_," said one of the loiterers, making way for
him.
"Damned old fool of a moke," said the man in shorts; then bent down and
alternately stroked, pushed, and spoke to the donkey. Somehow he
persuaded it to rise and start walking. The crowd disentangled itself
and its animals from each other, and dispersed. And the man in shorts,
his cigarette still dangling from the left-hand corner of his mouth,
passed on, as casual and unsurprised as if he had been in Brixton or
Birmingham.
Both in appearance and in spirit Damascus had changed much since the
days of my captivity. Destitution was yet evident, but far less
flagrantly than when I had seen starving babies lying against the walls
and crying their hunger. There were no more furtive looks, and many
more smiles. The swaggering Germans were supplanted by companionable
Tommies, the tyrannous Turkish gendarmes by the headdressed Arab
police. In the long, arcaded bazaar the traders had brought out their
stocks of carpets, prayer-rugs, silks, and precious stones, hoarded
during the war, and were selling them at prices far below those ruling
in war-time Cairo or war-time anywhere else. And everywhere the Arabian
flag was prominent.
For many a day the talk in the bazaars had been of a new Arabian
Empire, as a reward for the exploits of King Hussein's Arabs--exploits
that had not only freed Arabia and helped to free Syria, but had
involved the abolition of all blood-feuds in a thousand miles of
semi-lawless country. The Emir Feisul, son of King Hussein (and thus a
direct descendant of the Prophet), was on his way to the Peace
Conference in Paris, accompanied by Colonel Lawrence, the young
Englishman who was the soul of the Arab national revival, and of the
Arabs' epic campaigns between Mecca and Damascus. And many citizens of
Damascus were hoping that he would return with the realization of their
dreams that the city was to be the centre of pan-Arabian greatness.
* * * * *
My enquiries at Baranki Barracks, and in the offices of the British
Provost-Marshal and the Arab gendarmerie, failed to trace the fate of
George; and I had to be content with the memory of a futile little
figure standing on the steps of our railway carriage, on the morning
after our betrayal, and saying, with despair in his voice: "I have so
little courage. I ask pardon."
Of the other intimate characters in the story I can account for all but
two. Jean Willi, the Israelite dragoman who was my benefactor at
Nazareth, has not yet given me the chance to pay back in part the good
deeds that I owe him; but I still have hopes. And I can only guess at
what has happened to Michael Ivanovitch Titoff, now somewhere behind
the screen which, since the Bolshevist reoccupation of last spring,
separates Odessa from the normal world. From what I know of his
character I am certain that when the Soviet troops arrived he
proclaimed himself a Bolshevist, and took full advantage of the
conditions whereby the unrighteous have special opportunity to
flourish.
Vladimir Franzovitch--a Russian as estimable as Michael Ivanovitch was
despicable--died for the country he loved and despaired of, fighting in
Denikin's army.
For the rest, I can offer happy endings as conventionally apposite as
those of the worst "best-seller" of any lady novelist.
Miss Whittaker, the noble girl who played in Constantinople the heroic
part of an Edith Cavell, is now Lady Paul. Less than a month ago an
American warship took her from Constantinople to Beyrout, where she
married Captain Sir Robert Paul, one of the British officers whom she
had helped to escape. She now lives in Aleppo, where Paul commands the
Arab gendarmerie. In this crowded narrative I have failed to do justice
to the brave and gifted woman who many times risked liberty and life in
aiding unfortunate countrymen; but only because the last thing she
would desire is advertisement have I refrained from writing the eulogy
she deserves.
Another happy ending, almost too good to be true, was the recent
wedding of Colonel Newcombe and Mlle. "X", the girl who arranged his
escape from Broussa and concealed him in Constantinople while he worked
for a withdrawal of Turkey from the war.
Mr. S., the British merchant who jeopardized his neck in helping no
less than seven British officers to liberty, has returned to England,
and should be conscious of much merit.
The Turkish armistice happened a few days before Theodore was to have
been hanged. Fulton and Stone were released from the Ministry of War
Prison, and twenty-four hours later, by means of threats, they obtained
reprieve and freedom for the Greek waiter who had hidden them. He was
then half dead, as a result of insufficient food, and of the dreadful,
disease-ridden, insanitary, crowded state of his dungeon; but he
recovered under careful nursing, and returned to his mother and
sisters, in the house where the gendarmes had captured Yeats-Brown,
Fulton, and Stone.
The Maritza restaurant, near Stamboul station, still flourishes; but
Theodore is no longer there. With the money gained by acting as
conspirator-in-chief for British prisoners, he talks of coming to
London and opening a small restaurant of his own. If this happens, he
can count on regular customers from among those who saw him, with his
bent shoulders and blue-glassed spectacles, flicking a secret letter on
to the tablecloth, under cover of a menu-card.
Those of us who schemed, escaped, hoped, feared, wore disguises and
whiskers, assumed illnesses and insanities, suffered, and amused
ourselves generally are dispersed over five continents. Fulton and
Stone are still in Constantinople, but as responsible officials instead
of under-dogs of war. White is a quiet-living manufacturer in
Melbourne. Hill and Jones, the madmen of Yózgad, Haidar Pasha, and
Gumuch Souyou have gone their demobilized ways in sanity and content,
one to Sydney, the other to Glasgow. Paul is in Syria, Colonel Newcombe
in Egypt. Yeats-Brown, ex-Mlle. Josephine Albert, is in London, with an
eyeglass which he kept intact through three years of adventurous
captivity, from the day when he was taken prisoner near Bagdad to the
day when, from the verandah of his hiding-place opposite the deserted
British Embassy in Constantinople, he looked along the Grande Rue de
Pera and learned, from the fluttering Allied flags, that the Turkish
armistice had been signed. Last and least, I am now in civilian
blessedness and America.
Often I have left the satisfying solidity of London, the restful beauty
of a Thames backwater, the comforting hospitality of New York, the
wealth-conscious heartiness of Chicago, to hear the chanted summons to
prayer from the minaret that faced my prison in Damascus, watched the
intrigues that coloured Constantinople during the twilight of the
Turkish Empire, discuss Bolshevism and the price of revolvers with
Vladimir Franzovitch, as he sits on a camp bed in his tiny room at
Odessa.
And Time, the greatest of romantics, has nearly persuaded me to
disregard memory and believe that I enjoyed it all.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
End of Project Gutenberg's Eastern Nights - and Flights, by Alan Bott