At last I have been to a Den. The attempt was first made many years ago
in Lahore City, where my guide was a young Missionary, who wasted all
his time in liking people and making them like him. I have often
wondered what he found to convert, and what his financial backers—old
ladies in America and England—will have to say upon the results of his
labours. He had lived in the Lahore bazaars as a poor man, and as he
walked through their intricacies he explained how this became
comprehensible, and that pardonable, and that inevitable, so soon as one
drew close enough to it to understand. We did interesting things—went
into a temple as big as a cupboard where we were allowed to hold the
gods and ring the bells, visited a lawyer who was defending a client
against the charge of selling a wife—and as the afternoon closed the
Missionary said he supposed I should like to include a Den. He remarked
that a great deal of rubbish was talked about opium, and he led me to a
courtyard, round whose sides were some lean-to’s of straw. “Oh! it isn’t
working,” he said with disappointment. He peered about and pulled from a
lean-to a solitary sinner. “Look at his eyes,” he said. “I’m afraid
that’s all.”
There my acquaintance with Vice stopped, until Egypt, the land of so
much, promised new opportunities. It would not be opium here, but
hashish, a more lurid drug. Concealed in walking-sticks, it gave
delicious dreams. So I was glad of a chance of accompanying the police
of Alexandria upon a raid. Their moral tone was superior to the
Missionary’s, but they had no better luck. Advancing stealthily upon a
fragile door they burst it open and we rushed in. We were in a passage,
open to the stars. Right and left of it, and communicating with one
another, were sheds which the police explored with their heavy shoulders
and large feet. In one of them they found a tired white horse. A
corporal climbed into the manger. “They often secrete bowls here,” he
said. At the end of the passage we came upon human life. A family was
asleep by the light of a lamp—not suspiciously asleep, but reasonably
disturbed by our irruption. The civil father was ordered to arise and
carry the lamp about, and by its light we found a hollow reed, at which
the police sniffed heavily. Traces of hashish adhered to it, they
pronounced. That was all. They were delighted with the find, for it
confirmed their official faith—that the city they controlled was almost
pure but not quite. Too much or too little would have discredited them.
A few weeks later an Egyptian friend offered to take me round the native
quarters of the same town. We did interesting things—saw a circumcision
procession, listened to an epic recitation—and as the evening closed he
asked me whether I should like to include a Den. He thought he knew of
one. Having laid his hand on his forehead for a moment he led through
intricate streets to a door. We opened it silently and slipped in. There
was something familiar in the passage, and my forebodings were confirmed
by the sight of a white horse. I had left as an avenging angel, I was to
return as a devotee. I knew better than my friend that we should find no
hashish—not even the hollow reed, for it had been confiscated as an
exhibit to the Police Station—but I said nothing, and in due time we
disturbed the sleeping family. They were uncivil and refused to move
their lamp. My friend was disappointed. For my own part I could hardly
help being sorry for poor sin. In all the vast city was this her one
retreat?
But outside he had an idea. He thought he knew of another Den, which was
less exposed to the onslaughts of purity since it was owned by a British
subject. We would go there. And we found the genuine article at last. It
was up a flight of stairs, down which the odour (not a disagreeable one)
floated. The proprietor—a one-eyed Maltese—battled with us at the top.
He hadn’t hashish, he cried, he didn’t know what hashish was, he hardly
knew what a room was or a house. But we got in and saw the company.
There is really nothing to say when one comes to the point. They were
just smoking. And at the present moment they don’t even smoke, for my
one and only Den has been suppressed by the police—just as his old
ladies must by now have suppressed my Missionary at Lahore.
------------------------------------------------------------------------