Oriental Encounters
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ORIENTAL ENCOUNTERS
Palestine And Syria (1894-5-6)
by
MARMADUKE PICKTHALL
London: 48 Pall Mall
W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
Glasgow Melbourne Auckland
Copyright 1918
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE.
INTRODUCTION 1
I. RASHID THE FAIR 11
II. A MOUNTAIN GARRISON 20
III. THE RHINOCEROS WHIP 28
IV. THE COURTEOUS JUDGE 36
V. NAWADIR 45
VI. NAWADIR (_continued_) 54
VII. THE SACK WHICH CLANKED 68
VIII. POLICE WORK 77
IX. MY COUNTRYMAN 87
X. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 96
XI. THE KNIGHT ERRANT 106
XII. THE FANATIC 117
XIII. RASHID'S REVENGE 125
XIV. THE HANGING DOG 134
XV. TIGERS 142
XVI. PRIDE AND A FALL 151
XVII. TRAGEDY 161
XVIII. BASTIRMA 171
XIX. THE ARTIST-DRAGOMAN 181
XX. LOVE AND THE PATRIARCH 188
XXI. THE UNPOPULAR LANDOWNER 198
XXII. THE CAIMMACAM 209
XXIII. CONCERNING BRIBES 218
XXIV. THE BATTLEFIELD 226
XXV. MURDERERS 237
XXVI. THE TREES ON THE LAND 245
XXVII. BUYING A HOUSE 255
XXVIII. A DISAPPOINTMENT 264
XXIX. CONCERNING CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 273
XXX. THE UNWALLED VINEYARD 282
XXXI. THE ATHEIST 291
XXXII. THE SELLING OF OUR GUN 302
XXXIII. MY BENEFACTOR 311
INTRODUCTION
Early in the year 1894 I was a candidate for one of two vacancies in
the Consular Service for Turkey, Persia, and the Levant, but failed to
gain the necessary place in the competitive examination. I was in
despair. All my hopes for months had been turned towards sunny
countries and old civilisations, away from the drab monotone of London
fog, which seemed a nightmare when the prospect of escape eluded me. I
was eighteen years old, and, having failed in one or two adventures, I
thought myself an all-round failure, and was much depressed. I dreamed
of Eastern sunshine, palm trees, camels, desert sand, as of a Paradise
which I had lost by my shortcomings. What was my rapture when my
mother one fine day suggested that it might be good for me to travel
in the East, because my longing for it seemed to indicate a natural
instinct, with which she herself, possessing Eastern memories, was in
full sympathy!
I fancy there was some idea at the time that if I learnt the languages
and studied life upon the spot I might eventually find some
backstairs way into the service of the Foreign Office; but that idea,
though cherished by my elders as some excuse for the expenses of my
expedition, had never, from the first, appealed to me; and from the
moment when I got to Egypt, my first destination, it lost whatever
lustre it had had at home. For then the European ceased to interest
me, appearing somehow inappropriate and false in those surroundings.
At first I tried to overcome this feeling or perception which, while I
lived with English people, seemed unlawful. All my education until
then had tended to impose on me the cult of the thing done habitually
upon a certain plane of our society. To seek to mix on an equality
with Orientals, of whatever breeding, was one of those things which
were never done, nor even contemplated, by the kind of person who had
always been my model.
My sneaking wish to know the natives of the country intimately, like
other unconventional desires I had at times experienced, might have
remained a sneaking wish until this day, but for an accident which
freed me for a time from English supervision. My people had provided
me with introductions to several influential English residents in
Syria, among others to a family of good position in Jerusalem; and it
was understood that, on arrival in that country, I should go directly
to that family for information and advice. But, as it chanced, on
board the ship which took me to Port Said from Naples I met a man who
knew those people intimately--had been, indeed, for years an inmate of
their house--and he assumed the office of my mentor. I stayed in
Cairo, merely because he did, for some weeks, and went with him on the
same boat to Jaffa. He, for some unknown reason--I suspect
insanity--did not want me in Jerusalem just then; and, when we landed,
spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought to visit were
exceedingly eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it would
be best for me to stop in Jaffa until he sent me word that I was sure
of welcome. His story was entirely false, I found out later, a libel
on a very hospitable house. But I believed it at the time, as I did
all his statements, having no other means of information on the
subject.
So I remained at Jaffa, in a little _gasthaus_ in the German colony,
which had the charms of cleanliness and cheapness, and there I might
have stayed till now had I awaited the tidings promised by my
counsellor. There for the first two weeks I found life very dull. Then
Mr. Hanauer, the English chaplain, and a famous antiquarian, took pity
on my solitary state, walked me about, and taught me words of Arabic.
He was a native of Jerusalem, and loved the country. My sneaking wish
to fraternise with Orientals, when I avowed it after hesitations,
appeared good to him. And then I made acquaintance with a clever
dragoman and one of the most famous jokers in all Syria, who happened
to be lodging at my little hostelry, with nothing in the world to do
but stare about him. He helped me to throw off the European and plunge
into the native way of living. With him I rode about the plain of
Sharon, sojourning among the fellahin, and sitting in the coffee-shops
of Ramleh, Lydda, Gaza, meeting all sorts of people, and acquiring the
vernacular without an effort, in the manner of amusement. From dawn to
sunset we were in the saddle. We went on pilgrimage to Nebi Rubin, the
mosque upon the edge of marshes by the sea, half-way to Gaza; we rode
up northward to the foot of Carmel; explored the gorges of the
mountains of Judaea; frequented Turkish baths; ate native meals and
slept in native houses--following the customs of the people of the
land in all respects. And I was amazed at the immense relief I found
in such a life. In all my previous years I had not seen happy people.
These were happy. Poor they might be, but they had no dream of wealth;
the very thought of competition was unknown to them, and rivalry was
still a matter of the horse and spear. Wages and rent were troubles
they had never heard of. Class distinctions, as we understand them,
were not. Everybody talked to everybody. With inequality they had a
true fraternity. People complained that they were badly governed,
which merely meant that they were left to their devices save on great
occasions. A Government which touches every individual and interferes
with him to some extent in daily life, though much esteemed by
Europeans, seems intolerable to the Oriental. I had a vision of the
tortured peoples of the earth impelled by their own misery to desolate
the happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the after years.
But in that easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance,
as everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat the
hosts of joyless drudgery.
My Syrian friend--the Suleyman of the following sketches--introduced
me to the only Europeans who espoused that life--a French Alsatian
family, the Baldenspergers, renowned as pioneers of scientific
bee-keeping in Palestine, who hospitably took a share in my
initiation. They had innumerable hives in different parts of the
country--I have seen them near the Jaffa gardens and among the
mountains south of Hebron--which they transported in due season, on
the backs of camels, seeking a new growth of flowers. For a long while
the Government ignored their industry, until the rumour grew that it
was very profitable. Then a high tax was imposed. The Baldenspergers
would not pay it. They said the Government might take the hives if it
desired to do so. Soldiers were sent to carry out the seizure. But the
bee-keepers had taken out the bottom of each hive, and when the
soldiers lifted them, out swarmed the angry bees. The soldiers fled;
and after that experience the Government agreed to compromise. I
remember well a long day's ride with Emile and Samuel Baldensperger,
round by Askelon and Ekron, and the luncheon which a village headman
had prepared for us, consisting of a whole sheep, roast and stuffed
with nuts and vegetables; and a day with Henri Baldensperger in the
Hebron region. The friendships of those days were made for life.
Hanauer, the Baldenspergers, Suleyman, and other natives of the
country--those of them who are alive--remain my friends to-day.
In short, I ran completely wild for months, in a manner unbecoming to
an Englishman; and when at length, upon a pressing invitation, I
turned up in Jerusalem and used my introductions, it was in
semi-native garb and with a love for Arabs which, I was made to
understand, was hardly decent. My native friends were objects of
suspicion. I was told that they were undesirable, and, when I stood up
for them, was soon put down by the retort that I was very young. I
could not obviously claim as much experience as my mature advisers,
whose frequent warnings to me to distrust the people of the country
thus acquired the force of moral precepts, which it is the secret joy
of youth to disobey.
That is the reason why the respectable English residents in Syria
figure in these pages as censorious and hostile, with but few
exceptions. They were hostile to my point of view, which was not then
avowed, but not to me. Indeed, so many of them showed me
kindness--particularly in my times of illness--that I cannot think of
them without a glow of friendliness. But the attitude of most of them
was never mine, and the fact that at the time I still admired that
attitude as the correct one, and thought myself at intervals a sad
backslider, made it seem forbidding. In my Oriental life they really
were, as here depicted, a disapproving shadow in the background. With
one--referred to often in these tales--I was in full agreement. We
lived together for some months in a small mountain village, and our
friendship then established has remained unbroken. But he, though not
alone, was an exception.
Owing to the general verdict on my Arab friends, I led what might be
called a double life during the months of my first sojourn in
Jerusalem; until Suleyman, the tourist season being ended, came with
promise of adventure, when I flung discretion to the winds. We hired
two horses and a muleteer, and rode away into the north together. A
fortnight later, at the foot of the Ladder of Tyre, Suleyman was
forced to leave me, being summoned to his village. I still rode on
towards the north, alone with one hired muleteer, a simple soul. A
notion of my subsequent adventures may, perhaps, be gathered from the
following pages, in which I have embodied fictionally some impressions
still remaining clear after the lapse of more than twenty years. A
record of small things, no doubt; yet it seems possible that something
human may be learnt from such a comic sketch-book of experience which
would never be derived from more imposing works.
CHAPTER I
RASHID THE FAIR
The brown plain, swimming in a haze of heat, stretched far away into
the distance, where a chain of mountains trenched upon the cloudless
sky. Six months of drought had withered all the herbage. Only
thistles, blue and yellow, and some thorny bushes had survived; but
after the torrential winter rains the whole expanse would blossom like
the rose. I traversed the plain afterwards in spring, when cornfields
waved for miles around its three mud villages, wild flowers in mad
profusion covered its waste places, and scarlet tulips flamed amid its
wheat.
Now all was desert. After riding for four days in such a landscape, it
was sweet to think upon the journey's end, the city of perennial
waters, shady gardens, and the song of birds. I was picturing the
scene of our arrival--the shade and the repose, the long, cool drinks,
the friendly hum of the bazaars--and wondering what letters I should
find awaiting me, all to the tune of 'Onward, Christian soldiers'--for
the clip-clap of a horse's hoofs invariably beats out in my brain some
tune, the most incongruous, against my will--when a sudden outcry
roused me. It came from my companion, a hired muleteer, and sounded
angry. The fellow had been riding on ahead. I now saw that he had
overtaken other travellers--two men astride of one donkey--and had
entered into conversation with them. One of the two, the hindmost, was
a Turkish soldier. Except the little group they made together, and a
vulture, a mere speck above them in the blue, no other living creature
was in sight. Something had happened, for the soldier seemed amused,
while my poor man was making gestures of despairing protest. He
repeated the loud cry which had disturbed my reverie, then turned his
mule and hurried back to meet me.
'My knife!' he bellowed 'My knife!--that grand steel blade which was
my honour!--so finely tempered and inlaid!--an heirloom in the family!
That miscreant, may Allah cut his life!--I mean the soldier--stole it.
He asked to look at it a minute, seeming to admire. I gave it, like
the innocent I am. He stuck it in his belt, and asked to see the
passport which permitted me to carry weapons. Who ever heard of such a
thing in this wild region? He will not give it back, though I
entreated. I am your Honour's servant, speak for me and make him give
it back! It is an heirloom!' That grey-haired man was crying like a
baby.
Now, I was very young, and his implicit trust in my authority
enthralled me. I valued his dependence on my manhood more than gold
and precious stones. Summoning all the courage I possessed, I clapped
spurs to my horse and galloped after the marauder.
'Give back that knife!' I roared. 'O soldier! it is thou to whom I
speak.'
The soldier turned a studiously guileless face--a handsome face, with
fair moustache and a week's beard. He had a roguish eye.
'What knife? I do not understand,' he said indulgently.
'The knife thou stolest from the muleteer here present.'
'Oh, that!' replied the soldier, with a deprecating laugh: 'That is a
thing unworthy of your Honour's notice. The rogue in question is a
well-known malefactor. He and I are old acquaintance.'
'By the beard of the Prophet, by the August Coran, I never saw his
devil's face until this minute!' bawled the muleteer, who had come up
behind me.
'Give back the knife,' I ordered for the second time.
'By Allah, never!' was the cool reply.
'Give it back, I say!'
'No, it cannot be--not even to oblige your Honour, for whose pleasure,
Allah knows, I would do almost anything,' murmured the soldier, with a
charming smile. 'Demand it not. Be pleased to understand that if it
were your Honour's knife I would return it instantly. But that man, as
I tell thee, is a wretch. It grieves me to behold a person of
consideration in such an unbecoming temper upon his account--a dog, no
more.'
'If he is a dog, he is my dog for the present; so give back the
knife!'
'Alas, beloved, that is quite impossible.'
With a wave of the hand dismissing the whole subject the soldier
turned away. He plucked a cigarette out of his girdle and prepared to
light it. His companion on the donkey had not turned his head nor
shown the slightest interest in the discussion. This had lasted long
enough. I knew that in another minute I should have to laugh. If
anything remained for me to do it must be done immediately. Whipping
my revolver from the holster, I held it close against the rascal's
head, yelling: 'Give back the knife this minute, or I kill thee!'
The man went limp. The knife came back as quick as lightning. I gave
it to the muleteer, who blubbered praise to Allah and made off with
it. Equally relieved, I was about to follow when the utterly forlorn
appearance of the soldier moved me to open the revolver, showing that
it was not loaded. Then my adversary was transfigured. His back
straightened, his mouth closed, his eyes regained their old
intelligence. He stared at me a moment, half incredulous, and then he
laughed. Ah, how that soldier laughed! The owner of the donkey turned
and shared his glee. They literally hugged each other, roaring with
delight, while the donkey underneath them both jogged dutifully on.
Before a caravanserai in a small valley green with fruit-trees, beside
a slender stream whose banks were fringed with oleander, I was sitting
waiting for some luncheon when the donkey and its riders came again in
sight. The soldier tumbled off on spying me and ran into the inn like
one possessed. A minute later he brought out the food which I had
ordered and set the table for me in the shade of trees.
'I would not let another serve thee,' he informed me, 'for the love of
that vile joke that thou didst put upon me. It was not loaded. After
all my fright!... It is a nice revolver. Let me look at it.'
'Aye, look thy fill, thou shalt not touch it,' was my answer; at which
he laughed anew, pronouncing me the merriest of Adam's race.
'But tell me, what wouldst thou have done had I refused? It was not
loaded. What wouldst thou have done?'
His hand was resting at that moment on a stool. I rapped his knuckles
gently with the butt of the revolver to let him know its weight.
'Wallahi!' he cried out in admiration. 'I believe thou wouldst have
smashed my head with it. All for the sake of a poor man of no account,
whom thou employest for a week, and after that wilt see no more.
Efendim, take me as thy servant always!' Of a sudden he spoke very
earnestly. 'Pay the money to release me from the army. It is a
largeish sum--five Turkish pounds. And Allah knows I will repay it to
thee by my service. For the love of righteousness accept me, for my
soul is thine.'
I ridiculed the notion. He persisted. When the muleteer and I set
forth again, he rode beside us, mounted on another donkey this
time--'borrowed,' as he put it--which showed he was a person of
resource. 'By Allah, I can shoe a horse and cook a fowl; I can mend
garments with a thread and shoot a bird upon the wing,' he told me. 'I
would take care of the stable and the house. I would do everything
your Honour wanted. My nickname is Rashid the Fair; my garrison is
Karameyn, just two days' journey from the city. Come in a day or two
and buy me out. No matter for the wages. Only try me!'
At the khan, a pretty rough one, where we spent the night, he waited
on me deftly and enforced respect, making me really wish for such a
servant. On the morrow, after an hour's riding, our ways parted.
'In sh'Allah, I shall see thee before many days,' he murmured. 'My
nickname is Rashid the Fair, forget not. I shall tell our captain thou
art coming with the money.'
I said that I might think about it possibly.
'Come,' he entreated. 'Thou wouldst never shame a man who puts his
trust in thee. I say that I shall tell our captain thou art coming.
Ah, shame me not before the Commandant and all my comrades! Thou
thinkest me a thief, a lawbreaker, because I took that fellow's
knife?' he asked, with an indulgent smile. 'Let me tell thee, O my
lord, that I was in my right and duty as a soldier of the Sultan in
this province. It is that muleteer who, truly speaking, breaks the law
by carrying the knife without a permit. And thou, hast thou a passport
for that fine revolver? At the place where we had luncheon yesterday
were other soldiers. By merely calling on them to support me I could
have had his knife and thy revolver with ease and honesty in strict
accordance with the law. Why did I not do so? Because I love thee! Say
thou wilt come to Karameyn and buy me out.'
I watched him jogging on his donkey towards a gulley of the hills
along which lay the bridle-path to Karameyn. On all the evidence he
was a rogue, and yet my intimate conviction was that he was honest.
All the Europeans in the land would lift up hands of horror and
exclaim: 'Beware!' on hearing such a story. Yet, as I rode across the
parched brown land towards the city of green trees and rushing waters,
I knew that I should go to Karameyn.
CHAPTER II
A MOUNTAIN GARRISON
The long day's ride was uneventful, but not so the night. I spent it
in a village of the mountains at a very curious hostelry, kept by a
fat native Christian, named Elias, who laid claim, upon the signboard,
to furnish food and lodging 'alafranga'--that is, in the modern
European manner. There was one large guest-room, and an adjoining
bedroom of the same dimensions, for some thirty travellers. I had to
find a stable for my horse elsewhere. A dining-table was provided, and
we sat on chairs around it; but the food was no wise European, and the
cooking was degraded Greek. A knife, fork, and spoon were laid for
every guest but several cast these on the floor and used their
fingers. In the long bedroom were a dozen beds on bedsteads. By
offering a trifle extra I secured one to myself. In others there were
two, three, even four together. An elderly Armenian gentleman who had
a wife with him, stood guard with pistols over her all night. He was
so foolish as to threaten loudly anyone who dared approach her. After
he had done so several times a man arose from the bed next to mine and
strolling to him seized him by the throat.
'O man,' he chided. 'Art thou mad or what, thus to arouse our passions
by thy talk of women? Be silent, or we honest men here present will
wring thy neck and take thy woman from thee. Dost thou understand?' He
shook that jealous husband as a terrier would shake a rat. 'Be silent,
hearest thou? Men wish to sleep.'
'Said I not well, O brother?' said the monitor to me, as he got back
to bed.
'By Allah, well,' was my reply. The jealous one was silent after that.
But there were other noises. Some men still lingered in the guest-room
playing cards. The host, devoted to things European, had a
musical-box--it was happily before the day of gramophones--which the
card-players kept going all night long. I had a touch of fever. There
were insects. Sleep was hopeless. I rose while it was yet night, went
out without paying, since the host was nowhere to be seen, and, in
some danger from the fierce attacks of pariah dogs, found out the
vault in which my horse was stabled. Ten minutes later I was clear of
the village, riding along a mountain side but dimly visible beneath
the stars. The path descended to a deep ravine, and rose again, up,
up, interminably. At length, upon the summit of a ridge, I felt the
dawn. The mountain tops were whitened like the crests of waves, while
all the clefts and hollows remained full of night. Behind me, in the
east, there was a long white streak making the mountain outlines bleak
and keen. The stars looked strange; a fresh breeze fanned my cheek and
rustled in the grass and shrubs. Before me, on an isolated bluff,
appeared my destination, a large village, square-built like a
fortress. Its buildings presently took on a wild-rose blush, which
deepened to the red of fire--a splendid sight against a dark blue sky,
still full of stars. A window flashed up there. The sun had risen.