"O Shamash, thou art the judge of the world,Thou directest the decisions thereof...."
"O Shamash, thou art the judge of the world,Thou directest the decisions thereof...."
"O Shamash, thou art the judge of the world,
Thou directest the decisions thereof...."
Thus prayed the dwellers of the city four thousand years ago. And with the same light with which you lit the pomp and splendour of the works of their time, you light the decay and ruin and hideous desolation of the present.
"Verily there is a God which judgeth the earth," say we, four thousand years later.
And as you smiled on those who worshipped you as the supreme God and Creator of all things, so you smile on us who look upon you, bound and fixed, with no will of your own, following the inevitable laws of Nature. Will you, four thousand years hence, light with the same light sojourners in this land, and will they wonder at our conception of your nature and function, as we wonder at the faith that your ancient worshippers had in you? Or will you, before them, have run your allotted course and consumed the whole world, whether in the fiery furnace of your wrath or in the uncontrolled madness of your broken bonds?
The next morning we visited Babel, the mound we had passed the day before. We walked for more than a mile through the palm-groves by the river. Under the shade of the trees were numerous huts made of mud, covered and enclosed with piles of fine brushwood. There were various signs of human occupations. Two cows were toiling peacefully up and down an entrenchment, drawing water in skins over a rough windlass; the skins emptied themselves into a channel, and the water wandered about in vaguely directed irrigation. On the bank beside them lolled an Arab with a long pole, who prodded the sleepy beasts in the moments when he was more awake than they were. A large mass of brushwood was moving in front of us; it looked like one of the huts endowed with a pair of very thin brown legs. As we overtook it the mass half-turned towards us, and a woman's form, doubled in two, looked small in the middle of it.
At the doors of the enclosures naked children sprawled about, all with gleaming white teeth and closely shaven heads, save for the one lock of hair, with which they are to be pulled up to heaven; women with tattooed faces and dangling ornaments pounded barley in primitive stone mortars, and baked thin cakes of bread on flat stones.
Leaving the river-side we struck out to the right for half a mile across the bare, parched ground, where tufts of rough grass were trying to get a footing in the white, barren soil. We climbed up the mound, passing bands of workmen tunnelling in the sides and removing the bricks which lay about in tumbled heaps or in bits of standing walls.
From the top of Babel we could look right over the tract of land once enclosed by the walls of Babylon. The descriptions of Herodotus enable the traveller to call up some sort of idea of the scene in his time. We learn from him that the city was built in the form of a square, surrounded by walls of enormous strength; each side of the square was fourteen miles long, each side had twenty-five gates of solid brass and was defended by square towers built above the wall; twenty-five streets went straight across the city each way from gate to gate. The city was thus cut into squares. The houses, three or four stories high, faced the street and were built at a little distance apart from each other; between them were gardens and plantations. A branch of the river ran through the city; its banks were one long quay. The larger buildings stood in the centre of a square, each apparently fortified and surrounded by walls of its own. It is of these smaller walls only that any trace can be detected. From the foot of Babel, where we stood, remains of earthen ramparts could be traced for two or three miles southwards; they then turned at right angles towards the river and extended as far as its eastern bank. The mounds they enclosed were presumably the site of the more important buildings. Babel itself is supposed to represent the temple of Belus. The Mujelibe, or Kasr, lying to the south of us, is identified with the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the hanging gardens; further south still was a lesser mound, Amram. We knew that Birs Nimroud, the great ruin which is looked upon as the Tower of Babel, lay beyond this again, although we could not see it from where we stood.
The whole gleamed white in the strong sunshine. On our right the Euphrates rolled along, as unconcerned in his course as the Sun-god overhead. We could trace the direction of the river southwards to the horizon, marked by the palms along its banks. They made a thin, dark line across a wide, light plain—an alluvial tract which is only waiting to yield its hidden gifts on the day when Man joins hands with Nature and distributes the waters of the river. But not so the actual soil of Babylon; that soil, consisting as it does of building dust and débris, is of a nature which destroys vegetation. "The Lord of Hosts hath swept it with the besom of destruction," and it is doomed perpetually to be a "dry land, a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth."
As we looked upon the great plain which stretched away all round until it carried the eye on into the sky above, we could almost believe with the ancients that the edge of the earth joined the dome of heaven and that both were supported by the waters of Apsn—the deep.
A great wave of silence rolled out of the desert and broke over us. It seemed natural to be immersed in silence; could anything else be expected from a land which had never been alive with the stir of humanity even in far-off ages, of which one might now feel the hush while listening for the echo? The desert had always been silent and would be silent for ever more—a dead, unconscious silence, with no significance save of absence of life. But when we looked at the site of Babylon stretched just beneath us, we became vividly conscious of a real, living silence; we were listening to the "hum of mighty workings"; voices of souls long since dead, the dust of whose bodies lay at our feet, were "wakening the slumbering ages." Had not Nebuchadnezzar entered into the House of the Dead in the great cavern Araltu, the Land of No Return? The dead had been stirred up, even the chief ones of earth, to greet him as he entered hell: "Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee, ..." and they looked at him narrowly, saying, "Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?"
And yet still for us "the wind uttered" and "the spirit heard" his vainglorious cry: "Is not this the great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty?"
The silent answer to it lay at our feet. And, listening, we heard the solemn warnings of Daniel, the sorrowful forebodings of Jeremiah, and, above all, the ironical voice of Isaiah:—
"Let them stand up and save thee,Mappers of heavens, Planet observers, Tellers of new moons,From what must befall thee."
"Let them stand up and save thee,Mappers of heavens, Planet observers, Tellers of new moons,From what must befall thee."
"Let them stand up and save thee,
Mappers of heavens, Planet observers, Tellers of new moons,
From what must befall thee."
As we listened again we heard the noise "like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together....
"A sound of battle is in the land and of great destruction....
"A sound of a cry cometh from Babylon and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans....
"One post ran to meet another post, and one messenger to meet another to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken."
Then we heard a sound of much feasting and revelling; we heard a solemn hush when there came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote upon the wall. Even as we listened to the hush it seemed to grow into the great hush of ages, and we remembered that we stood alone in the living silence of these great dead, surrounded by the dead silence of an uninhabited land.
Overhead the Sun-god silently vaunted his eternal existence; at our feet the Euphrates rolled fresh waters of oblivion from an eternal source to an eternal sea.
CHAPTER XX
THE SOUND OF THE DESERT
The Syrian desert between Baghdad and Damascus; two white tents, a prowling jackal, and a starry sky.
There was a sense of stir in camp; a rattle of tins and a neighing of animals; a faint odour of lighted charcoal was wafted in at the tent door. I opened one eye; X still slumbered peacefully at the opposite side of the tent. Arten appeared at the door with a jug of water and a light. "One o'clock," he said laconically as he placed them on the ground and retired. The stars were still shining, my bed was very warm. True, it was one o'clock in Turkish time only, but no Christian ought to be roused at that hour. X fell out of bed with a determined thump. "It's late," she said. I made no response, but, knowing from experience that X was always right, tried to reconstruct my ideas about time and reconcile the fact that it was late with its being one o'clock in the morning. Besides, if X ordained that it was late, in another half-hour the tent ropes would be loosened regardless of the stage our toilet had reached, and a falling tent, when one has just got one's back hair into shape, is exasperating if not damaging. I got up, and just managed to hurl myself through the door, mostly clothed, as the tent collapsed on the ground. X was already seated cross-legged on a rug outside, holding one blue hand over a few charcoal embers while she munched a piece of dry bread held in the other. "You need not think I have eaten all the butter," she said, "because there wasn't any." Satisfied with the explanation, I munched my bread in silence and swallowed a cup of thick tea; we had been carrying water for three days and it was getting opaque.
The stillness of the night which reigned outside was being invaded by the cries and movements of men; dark forms flitted about as they watered the animals and adjusted the nose-bags for the morning's feed. A horse, impatient of his tether, had broken loose and was galloping defiantly round the camp, inspired to further mischief by the methods of his pursuers, whose idea of reassuming their authority over him was to rush in his direction flourishing whips and uttering piercing cries. He was finally brought to bay entangled in some tent ropes, and a sudden lull fell on the disturbed atmosphere. The Oriental can work himself into a pitch of excitement which would keep a European in hysterics for several hours, and then suddenly drop the matter and become instantly silent and unconcerned. There seems no half-way stage between excessive noise and an indifferent silence.
Somewhat awakened by this incident, the men set to work to pack up the camp; the mules were unloosed and stood about with looks of resignation as the loads were adjusted on the creaking pack-saddles and secured with ropes. There was a subdued din and confusion without any sense of hurry. "Allāh! Allāh!" the native cries when he exerts himself in any way. "Aha, aha!" he cries with equal ardour, mingled with satisfaction, when his task is accomplished.
And now the last knot has been tied, the last cloak laid across the saddle; the last ember of the dying charcoal fire has been carefully raked out to light the cigarette, and we straggle slowly out into the gloom, leaving one charred spot and a sardine tin in the sandy waste.
There had been a suggestion of redness in the gathering light for the last few moments; streaks of silver and bars of gold lined the dusky sky. It is disconcerting to be travelling westwards when one wishes to be aware of a rising sun. I twisted myself round in the saddle and, leaving my horse to pick his way, advanced backwards. The whole scene was soon a vast glow of colour, the yellow sand of the desert holding and reflecting the brilliant reds and yellows; and now the sun appeared on the horizon line and slowly rose, until the whole disc of fire stood out in glowing magnificence and then gradually grew paler as he shared his substance with the surrounding sky. The long straggling line of our caravan, which had looked like a black serpent twisting through a sea of fire, became less black in the growing light, and men and animals assumed individual shapes.
In another half-hour the broad light of day showed the surroundings in their common aspect. I twisted round again in the saddle, and, having turned my back on poetry and romance, became only conscious of the temperature of my extremities. The cold was intense; X and the soldiers were far ahead; the caravan lagged behind; I was alone with cold hands and feet. Poets and philosophers have talked of being alone with the sun and the earth: if ever conditions were favourable for enjoying the sole companionship of these two elements, it might seem to be under the present circumstances. But in the desert one can be more alone even than this, for in some frames of mind the sky and the earth give one no sense of companionship. Cold and implacable the grim silent desert stretched away in front beyond the realms of space; the hard blue sky overhead stared into the abyss of Time, offering no link between Nature and Man. There was nothing one could take hold of; no cloud in the sky of which to ask the question "Whither?"; no shadow on the earth to which one could say "Whence?" You were thrown back on yourself, were only conscious of your beating heart and a void. The words of a great lover of nature rose up in my mind: "There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so dearly, would let you perish on the ground and neither bring forth food nor water. Burning in the sky the great sun, of whose company I have been so fond, would merely burn on and make no motion to assist me." You felt keenly alive in the middle of this cold dead space, and you knew there was something alive in you which demanded something of it: had you no place in the economy of this great silent Universe? was there no way of making yourself heard or felt? Is it that the soul of man must be there to make things alive, and you were now crossing earth where no soul of man had crossed before, and all things were dead? From sheer agony I cried out; no answering echo followed; the sound fell flat and dead. The cold heavens stared placidly on, the surface of the earth was unruffled. I drew rein and listened intently: I heard the roar of London streets; the cry of the newsboy, the milkman's call, the tramp of a million hurrying feet; I heard the rush of trains and the screech of engines; I heard a thousand discordant voices in divers tongues where men were struggling and rushing after material ends. And dominating all this, infinitely louder and more distinct, making itself heard supreme and all powerful, filling the great space in which one had seemed eternally lost, I heard—the Silence of the desert. Why wish to make one's self heard?—better be still and listen to the voice of silence; let its words sink into you and become part of you, and so take some of its quiet and peace back with you into those crowded cities of men.
If there is a link between anything in you and this grim stretch of barren sand and impassive depth of distant sky, it is the response of its silence to the silence in you. It is the material aspect of silence in its crudest form appealing to and recognising in you the unspeakable realms of silence which exist in the region you are dimly conscious of beyond your senses. As we pray to the sea for its depth and calm, to the wind for its freedom, to the sun for its light, so we pray to the desert for its silence. Let your nature expand to the width of this horizon, to the height and depth of this sky, and fill it all with the eternity of this silence.
Ask of the sun why it shines, and if there is light in you it will answer; ask of the wind why it blows, and to fettered and free alike it gives its answer; ask of the desert why it is silent, and if there is silence in you you need no answer.
Is there any calm for you in the sea until you put it there? Do you feel any freedom in the wind until you have created it? But can you, in any mood or under any circumstance, evade the silence of the desert? Its influence extends alike to those who receive it and those who resent it.
The men who have no region of silence in themselves are under the power of its physical aspect; to them it is oppressive, wearying, and deadening; there is an absence of life, a presence of monotony from which there is no escape. But once we recognise its silence as being of the nature of what we possess in ourselves, the shadow of monotony and oppressiveness is lifted. Can its effect be better described than it is in that fundamental doctrine of Islam, where it almost coincides with the teachings of Christianity in its endeavour to give expression to the truth? "Islam," that is the resignation of our own will to that of one great power, the effacement of self, the futility of putting our own will or mind against that of the great, silent, all powerful, inevitable laws of Nature—the Moslem idea of Fate and Power—the Christian's blending of his own will with the Divine will—the scientist's recognition of Law—you may put it how you will; are they not but different interpretations of the unseen power, which, silent in itself and only understood in silence, holds supreme sway in moments of silence, and, when expressed in its physical aspect in these barren regions of the earth, appeals through our eyes and ears to the regions in us, beyond these senses, where it exists in its essential condition?
I rode on; the sun had warmed my left side through and the right was beginning to thaw. My shadow, which had been keeping pace with the horse on the right, now began to creep in front as the sun rose higher. By the time its burning rays poured straight down overhead the foreshortened shadow seemed to be leading the way along the desert track. In time the heat became almost unbearable, and, suddenly awakening to the stern realities of physical discomfort, I brought my whip down on the horse's flank; he leaped, startled, in the air, and then flew after his shadow in a settled gallop. Air, of which one had become unconscious, rushed past one's face, and the muffled thud of his hoofs on the sand seemed to measure time and space. I dashed up to X and stopped dead beside her. She looked round inquiringly. "Let's eat," I said. She looked at her watch. "We have been riding four hours," she said; "we might stop at the next good place." I looked ahead significantly. "One place looks much the same as another," I said. "I think there is a dip in the ground further on," she answered, "where we might get a little shelter." There did seem to be a slight wave in the flat expanse and we rode on to it, but, like all dips in this country, when we arrived at it, it did not seem to be there. We had had so much experience in riding after delusive dips that we decided to stop here, and slid off our horses. The cook unpacked the lunch from his saddle-bags and placed hard-boiled eggs, biscuits, and dates beside us. He carefully filled a cup with a thick, brown liquid from the bottom of his waterskin. "Bitdi," he said, by which expression he conveyed that the fresh water was now finished. Then he and the men retired a few yards and ate their lunch. Nothing was heard but the steady munch of human jaws. Then they stretched themselves on the sand and absolute silence reigned, broken by occasional snores. We too lay back, each concealed from the other under two huge umbrellas, which seemed rather to focus the sun's rays than shade them from us.
When one was alone the desert had seemed full of unqualified silence; in company with others the silence seemed even greater, for the slight sounds which there were made one more conscious of the sound which was not. The clank of the horses' bits, the quiet breathing of one's companions, the stir of a foot, made one realise the intensity of the silence of the whole vast expanse. The far-off tinkling of the mule bells in the approaching caravan gave one a sense of distance in a way one would hardly experience by simply gazing at an unapproachable horizon. The heat and the slight fatigue added a feeling of drowsiness which would make even the solid things around one seem shadowy and distant. It was a waking sleep; one's senses were numb because of the absence of anything to call them into play, though one might "see, hear, feel, outside the senses." In the same way that one is alone in a London street one can live in a whirl in the desert; the throb of humanity—— X's umbrella shut with a bang. "Wake up, the caravan is coming." A cloud of dust, a stamping of animals, a shouting of men, and we were off once more. It was our habit to keep pace with the camp in the latter half of the day, and for the next three hours we dawdled along at caravan pace. It was a motley crew. The muleteers trudge along behind the laden animals, taking turns on the back of a patient, sorrowful donkey, on which they ride sideways with dangling legs, pricking its side with a long needle, the secondary object of which is the repairing of broken straps. The pack-mules go doggedly on in front, jostling one another with their unwieldy loads. Occasionally one gets off the track and wanders aside, only to be urged back into line with yells and blows. Another stops dead, feeling its load slip round sideways. The men rush at it with shouts of "Allāh! Allāh!" the load is shoved up and the ropes tightened. There is a general din of shouting and swearing and jangling of bells; and above it all the disdainful camel moves deliberately on with measured step and arched neck, unmindful of the petty skirmishes so far below it; its owner, infected by its spirit, rocking on the top, surveys the whole scene with a dejected, uninterested air. Bringing up the rear, motionless and erect on small donkeys, ride one or two older Arabs, wrapped in long sheepskin cloaks, their faces entirely concealed in the folds of a keffiyeh, save where two stern and solemn eyes gaze unceasingly at you with expressionless imperturbability. Wild sons of the desert, product of this eternal silence, are you so much a part of it that you are unconscious of its power?
The only gay and careless element is introduced by the Turkish soldiers. Mounted on splendid Arab mares they ride in front, sometimes dashing ahead at a wild gallop, holding out their rifles at arm's length, wheeling suddenly round and coming to a dead stop in front of an imaginary enemy, upright in their stirrups; in their more subdued moments breaking into song with the mournful Eastern refrains.
And so, forming one small world of our own, we "follow and follow the journeying sun," and as it sinks lower on the horizon and its fierce rays cease to beat pitilessly down on the parched ground and thirsty animals, a silence falls on the moving band. The spirit of the desert again holds sway. The men cease quarrelling, the animals' heads sink lower, the donkey looks more resigned, the mule more dogged, the camel more superior, the silent Arab more stern and forbidding; the soldier hums where he sang before. Then at last the walls of a solitary guard-house heave in sight. The men hail it with joyful cries, the soldiers dash ahead, the pack-animals prick their ears and quicken their steps to an amble. There is a general rush and tumble, culminating in a dead halt on the ground which has formed the place for caravans since caravans crossed the desert. All is noise and confusion. The loads are unloosed and fall in promiscuous heaps amongst the medley of animals, who, released of their burdens, roll over on their backs kicking up the dust. A line of men draw water from the well, pulling at a squeaky chain and invoking the aid of Allah in chorus as they pull. A fight is going on in one corner; men are knocking one another down, encouraged by a circle of yelling spectators. The din of excited quarrelling voices, the hammering of tent pegs, dominates everything, broken at times by the sudden neigh of a horse bitten by its neighbour or the harsh, imperious cry of the camel for its supper. And in the middle of it all the Turkish soldier spreads his cloak upon the ground, turns his face to Mecca, and offers up his murmured prayer to Allah, the one restful form in this scene of chaos.
"Allah Akbar" (God is great), prays this son of Islam, and with his hands upon his knees, he bows his head; "Subhana 'llah" (I praise God), and he falls upon his knees; "Allah Akbar" (God is great), and he bows his head to touch the earth; "Subhana 'llah, subhana 'llah, subhana 'llah," and he sits upon his heels; "Allah Akbar," and he again prostrates himself; "Allah Akbar, subhana 'llah."
And on this scene the sun casts his final rays of gold and red. As the shades of night draw in, quiet reigns once more; the men collect round the blazing camp-fire, and in its light we see the outline of their dark forms seated cross-legged, as they eat out of the common bowl or take turns at the bubbling narghile; to one side the mules are tethered in two lines forming a half square; a muleteer is grooming them, and one hears the rattle of his scraper and the ever tinkling bell. The cook is stirring our evening meal in a pot on the fire outside our tent. Hassan fetches our rugs and spreads them on the ground; we lie down and he covers us over with his sheepskin cloak. "Rahat" (Rest), he says, and lifts his hands over us as if pronouncing a blessing. Then he sits down beside us and lights a cigarette. "Bourda ehe," he goes on, describing the universe with a sweep of his hand. "Kimse yok" (It is well here—there is no one). "Is Allah here?" asks X. "Allah is here," he answers with simple reverence, "Allah is everywhere"; and we all lie motionless under the stars, unwilling to probe the silence by the sound of uttered thoughts. The murmur of the men's voices gradually dies away as, one by one, they doze off; a jackal cries in the distance; a star falls down to earth. The day is over, and in this land of the Oriental there is no thought of the morrow.
The passive silence of sleep; the active silence of communing souls; the silence of night—all fitful expressions of the one great Silence brooding over all, be one asleep or awake, by night and by day, in desert places and in busy haunts of men.
CHAPTER XXI
PALMYRA
It burst upon us all at once, Palmyra, in the desert—a chaos of golden pillars in the glow of the setting sun. We had been riding all day towards an indefinite shape on the horizon; slowly it had resolved itself into a barrier of yellow rock with dark lines becoming distinguishable against it. We had passed through the patches of rising corn, making green holes in the brown desert; we had wound through the gardens of pomegranate and plantations of palm trees and turned the corner of the ugly konak which barred the ruins from our view; and there it lay, the desert-girt city, in the unutterable lonely magnificence of its reckless confusion.
We drew rein under the Triumphal Arch; from here the eye is led on down the great colonnade from column to column, now upright, now fallen, to where a mile away a castle crowns a peak of the range under which Palmyra crouches—an old time harbour for the sand sea beyond.
Palmyra. Triumphal Arch.
Palmyra. Triumphal Arch.
Behind us the present village of Tadmor was concealed inside the walls of the great Temple of the Sun; its mud hovels lie rotting behind the gigantic columns of the inner court in the dirt which chokes the massive archways. Here it is that the present life of Palmyra, such as it is, is slowly obliterating the remaining evidences of her past; while on the opposite side of the ruins, where the hills cleave to form a lonely valley, the dead of Palmyra, buried in a line of square tomb-towers, still keep alive the memory of her ancient greatness.
Was it the sun only, with its light on the yellow columns, that made one think of Palmyra purely as a city of gold? Or were one's thoughts unconsciously influenced by the fact that its traditions all rest on the getting of gold; its power was built up on trade; its great men were the successful traffickers of the desert; its statues and columns were raised to the memory of those who brought the caravans of goods from India and Persia unharmed through the dangers of the desert; its temples were dedicated to the Sun-god by those whose lives were spared in their getting of great wealth, or to the memory of those who perished in the attempt.
Those were the days when it was a man's boast that the blood of a merchant ran in his veins—when a youth could aspire to no higher goal than that of being a merchant prince of his proud city.
Her prosperity had been her ruin; the gold had led to her undoing; and now the Sun, to whom the temples had been raised at the time of her pride, mocked her ruins by giving them the semblance of scattered gold.
This is the best way to realise Palmyra—to make it the culmination of a long and tedious journey through the desert. The first sight of it under any conditions must indeed be wonderful, but coming in from Damascus, which is the natural approach for visitors to the ruins, one could never feel about it in quite the same way. Civilisation is only five days behind you; the country you pass through, moreover, although desert enough in a way, does not give you the same sense of being utterly cut off from everything in limitless space; there are chains of mountains to be seen in the distance, and cultivated patches stretching round villages are more frequent. Then when you arrive at Palmyra you ride first through the valley of tombs—it is the dead that give you the first greeting; you get glimpses through the opening ahead of the highest columns, and are slowly prepared for what is coming, until, emerging finally through the gap, the whole scene is laid out before you, with the gleaming desert beyond.
But approach it from the desert side, and all the meaning and force of its one time existence is borne in upon you with an overwhelming realisation. For three weeks you have been following the old trade route from the Persian Gulf. You have made one of a caravan amongst the doggedly jogging mules and the slow stepping camels, both heavily laden with the clumsy pack-saddles holding bales of merchandise; the sound of their jangling bells is the only sound you hear through the long, monotonous ride under the blazing sun; you have spent night after night in the circle round the camp-fire, with the men crouched under the bales of goods piled up on the ground to form a rude shelter; the places where you stop have been the regular halting places for caravans for all time—now they are oases big enough to support a village, now it is merely a well and a guard-house. As you ride through the immeasurable expanse every dark object on the horizon line forms a subject for speculation. Its appearance is a signal for the hasty consolidation of the straggling line of men and animals, arms are looked to, you all close up and ride on, apparently unconcerned, but equally prepared for a sudden onslaught or a friendly greeting. For it is not only the difficulties and dangers due to Nature's barrenness that have to be guarded against. What must it have been in the days when the countless hordes of wealth of a huge caravan were at stake, and when the whole desert was beset with marauding tribes specially on the look-out for such prey? What must have been the feelings of those responsible for its safe conduct when they once more saw the first dim outline of the Palmyra hills in the distance? The goal would be reached that day; the troubles, the anxieties, the sleeplessness of the watching nights would be over; proud and triumphant they would ride down the long colonnade, the pack animals jostling one another in the unaccustomed crush of the bounded way, and the noise of shouting drivers and jangling bells sounding strangely loud and near in the confining space. Down on them from the columns above would look the statues put up to honour those who had achieved the same feat which they themselves had just accomplished. Their names too would now be written up and handed down from generation to generation in remembrance of the service they had rendered their State. For such deeds as these had built up the great city, and their fellow-citizens honoured them in this way.
Hassan
Hassan.
At first it would seem that Tadmor was merely an Arab encampment, a stopping place amongst others for the passing caravans. The abundance of its water and its position on the meeting point of two great trade routes would gradually cause it to become an important centre. Dues were levied on all goods passing in and out, and even the privilege of using the wells was heavily taxed. Slowly it became the market-place of the East and the West; its inhabitants were the carriers between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. As the foundations of the city were built up on trade, so commerce was a pursuit for its aristocracy, involved as it was with all the elements of warfare and danger. Its merchants would be pure Arabs of good blood, welcomed as equals by the shaykhs of the desert tribes through whose territory their goods had to pass. Palmyra had thus gradually built up her own existence as an independent State. Political events then added to her power. The wars of Rome with Persia made her an important military post; recognised by Rome more as a partner State than a dependency, she was able to pursue her own policy with such effect that she tried to assert her entire independence and cut herself adrift from the Western power. Taking advantage of the temporary ascendance of Persia over the Roman arms, the desert Queen, Zenobia, fulfilled her ambition as sole Queen of the East. After her defeat by Aurelian the town was partially destroyed; a change in the political factors which had contributed to her importance now hastened her downfall by lessening the significance of her geographical position; safer trade routes further south led to the decay of her commercial prosperity. Bit by bit she loses her place in historical records, and at the present day Palmyra stands a lonely ruin on a deserted trade route, inhabited by a score of Arab families.
In one sense Time has dealt gently with her; there is no decay from the growth of vegetation in this dry climate. Neither moss nor ivy has softened the aspect of destruction; the overturned columns show as true and sharp a face now as the day they were set up, and the ornate carving stands out in the same relief. One thinks of the place as built entirely of columns; they lie in rank profusion everywhere, like a great forest of trunks overturned by a gale. The great central avenue runs from the Temple of the Sun in a north-westerly direction to the castle on the range of hills which bounds the city to the north. It has been calculated that it alone contains 1,500 columns. Much of this still remains standing, but the gaps become more frequent, until at the castle end the whole thing has collapsed, forming a perfect sea of broken columns and fragments of carved pilasters. It is evident that the minor streets also were lined with pillars in the same way; short rows of them stand up here and there in various directions. Groups of twos and threes suggest also their attachment to some public building or temple. The statues were placed on brackets projecting from the upper part of the pillars, and the inscriptions below, which have escaped destruction, give the names and dates of those whom they were intended to honour.
As we had entered Palmyra with a vivid conception of its life, so we left it with an equally vivid conception of its death.
Standing guard like a row of sentinels at the base of the hills are the square tomb-towers in which Palmyra buried its dead. The proud merchants seem to have been imbued with two main ideas: the erection of columns in their lifetime and of resting places for their families in death. Many of the towers are over a hundred feet high and consist of five and six stories. The bodies were arranged in tiers in the recesses on either side of a central chamber. Some of these buildings are still nearly perfect, others are practically heaps of ruins. The bones of the proud merchants are mingled with the bones of the wild beasts who have sought refuge there through the long ages.
We turn our backs on the city and ride away through the gap in the hills. The city is hidden from view, but the tomb-towers still stand in silent rows down the valley on either side.
We forget the golden pillars and all the ruined magnificence; we can think of nothing but these ghostly towers seeing us out, as it were, from this city of the dead.
High up on the hill above, in the still morning air, a shepherd boy pipes merrily at them, and flocks of goats and sheep browse unconcernedly at their feet.
CHAPTER XXII
AN ARMENIAN AND A TURK
I.Arten.
Arten was an Armenian; he was quick, thin, methodical, dirty, intelligent, and untruthful; he was also the cook. I saythecook advisedly, foracook he was not. No doubt he would have made an excellent cook if he had known anything about the art; but it was not till after we had engaged him in this capacity that we discovered that he had not thought this qualification necessary. At any rate, he knew, being a hungry man himself, that we were in need of food of some sort at stated intervals. In this he was a decided improvement on the Greek cook we had just dismissed; this man had a habit of coming to us, after we had been waiting hours in momentary expectation of a meal, and saying with a languid air, "Do you wish to eat?" He was a good cook, but always seemed overcome with astonishment when we expected him to cook.
Arten was a dirty man, and he looked dirtier than he was owing to his dark complexion and hairy hands; besides this, his unbrushed and greasy black European clothes showed off to disadvantage amongst the simpler Eastern garments of his companions.
"Arten is not a clean cook," Hassan would say, and Arten would smile sadly. He must have been slightly conscious of this defect, for he never handed me a plate or a spoon without saying "Temiz" (clean) as a forestalling measure before I had even looked at it. He spent a good deal of time rubbing smeary plates with a blackish cloth, murmuring "Temiz, temiz."
He had a sincere desire to please us; but he always imagined this object was attained by the vigorous assertion of any fact that seemed necessary for our pleasure. "Taze" (fresh) he would say every time he handed me an egg; and, when I cut off the top and an explosion followed, "Taze" he would say again.
"Eat it yourself then," I would suggest, handing it back to him; after putting his great nose right into it, "Taze," he would say. But he never ate it; he kept it for omelettes.
His nose was his chief feature. One saw the nose first and then the man behind it. On cold days, when we all wrapped our heads and faces entirely in keffiyehs, Arten would be always distinguishable from the others by this protrusion. He had a jet black drooping moustache which he was always wiping furtively with a jet black pocket-handkerchief, for Arten was a greedy man and the only person who loved the taste of his own cookery.
"I like to see him getting fat," X would say; "he looked half starved when he came to us."
But Hassan and I were not so charitable.
"Look," Hassan would say, "the door of the tent is shut; that pig Arten is stealing the food," and he would go and kick at the tent until Arten looked out, guiltily wiping his moustache.
"You are cold, I suppose," says Hassan with lofty sarcasm. Arten mops his perspiring brow—he was always perspiring.
"How cold?" he answers with well feigned surprise.
"Because you shut the tent door," answers Hassan.
"Amān," rejoins Arten, "what am I to do? if the muleteers see me cooking they come and ask for food; they are such greedy men, the muleteers."
Hassan returns to us snorting.
"Arten says the muleteers are greedy men. Mashallah! greedy men! We know who is the greedy man!" And he slaps his thigh vehemently.
Arten's notions of cookery were, as I have said, limited. His staple dish was a mixture of mutton, potatoes, onions, and rice, which were all cooked up together in the same pot, each ingredient being thrown in according to the length of time it took to cook. It certainly tasted very good, and I would suggest the method to those in England who dislike washing many saucepans. His other idea of cooking mutton was less satisfactory in results, though simpler in method, and I have no hesitation in not recommending it to English housewives, though I append the recipe as a matter of interest from its originality.
Take a piece of sheep, and with an axe cut it into chunks, regardless of bones or gristle; take a chunk and throw it on to red-hot charcoal in a brazier; when there is a distinct smell of burning and the hissing has nearly ceased, turn it over on the other side. When it resembles a piece of burnt charcoal, remove it and serve at once; swallow whole, as if you try to bite it your teeth will remind you of it for a considerable time, and in any case you will be conscious of its resting-place for the remainder of the day.
When staying at a consulate in the middle of our tour, the consul's wife, horrified at our fare, offered to let her cook teach Arten a few simple dishes which would considerably add to our comfort. Arten acquiesced with very good grace, and was inducted, amongst other things, in the art of making cutlets. On our departure our kind hostess, moreover, provided us with a piece of meat suitable for cutlets. The first evening there was an undercurrent of excitement in the air; there were to be cutlets for dinner. Arten had an important, self-conscious bustle about him and looked mysterious; the Zaptiehs seemed awed and asked questions under their breath; the greedy muleteers were distinctly interested; we pretended to be unmoved. Finally, with a modest air, through which bumptiousness glared furiously, Arten announced that supper was ready. There was a covered dish keeping warm under the brazier; Arten very deliberately placed it before us and with a dramatic flourish removed the cover. We were only conscious of a yellow-looking crumby paste.
"Where are the cutlets?" we asked, keeping up our courage nobly.
"That is cutlets, Pasha."
We tasted it; it appeared to consist of fried eggs and breadcrumbs. We felt justified in contradicting him, but he still persisted that it was cutlets.
"But we want the cutlets, like those the Effendi's cook showed you how to make."
"Yes, that is it, Pasha; that is what the Effendi's cook showed me."
"But cutlets are meat," we persisted.
"Yes, Pasha; but that is cutlets without the meat."
This reasoning was incontrovertible. We tried to fill up with dates and rice and went to bed crestfallen and hungry. The next day we returned to the charge. I undertook to show Arten how to cook cutlets, though I had not the smallest idea myself how it ought to be done. I had an inkling, however, that egg and breadcrumbs were in it somehow.
"Arten," I said, "cut the meat as the Effendi's cook did for cutlets." Arten obeyed.
"Make egg and breadcrumb," I said. He did this also.
"Now do with it what the Effendi's cook did," I said. Arten smeared the meat with it. I began to see light and breathed more freely, but I had still one venture to make.
"Now cook the meat as the Effendi's cook did," I said.
I held my breath; for all I knew they might now have to be boiled in a saucepan or toasted on a fork. But Arten appeared to know what he was doing. He took a frying-pan and fried them in fat. A glow of satisfaction crept all over me as I watched them beginning to resemble the finished appearance I was acquainted with. When they were actually on a dish, I said loftily:—
"Please remember for the future that when we say we want cutlets, this is what we mean."
"As you please," he answered affably; "I call them frisolen. I knew how to cook them before the Effendi's cook showed me," he went on.
"Why did you never let us have them, then?" I said severely.
"How could I know you would like them?" he answered with injured innocence.
"How did you know we liked tough chunks burnt on a brazier?" was my icy retort.
Arten shrugged his shoulders; there never has been any accounting for the whims of women.
Small differences of opinion such as these were continually cropping up between us; and I would tell him in calm and measured tones, though in forcible English, what I thought of him. As the language was unintelligible to him, this method had the advantage of relieving my feelings without hurting his. But there were secret bonds of sympathy between us. We both suffered intensely from the cold, and Arten would carefully wrap things round me so that the apertures and crevices were not on the windward side. There is a good deal of art in this, and he did it very scientifically.
"Little things feel the cold," he would say compassionately, and in such a kindly spirit that, for the moment, I forgave him his greed and forgot to feel undignified.
We were also on common ground when I tried to cook dishes which I did not know how to cook. Currents of great sympathy ran between us when things did not seem to be turning out right and Arten would tentatively suggest various ways and means. But he never did what a foolish or disagreeable person would have done: he never expressed in his looks that I was no better than himself, which obviously would not have been true, since I did not pretend to be a cook, while Arten did.
And then when the critical moments of our existence arrived and we placed the dish before X, we both watched with the same intensity for the expression of her face after the first mouthful. X was singularly appreciative, and, when she kept assuring us how excellent it was, Arten would glance at me encouragingly and appear to share the delight I experienced at my own prowess. X thought Arten's cookery good, too, but then she never knew what she was eating, and, if you do not know the name of the dish, how can you judge whether or not it is cooked as it ought to be?
"What is this?" X would ask one day.
"Mutton," Arten would answer.
"What is this?" she would say the next day, when the identical substance was handed to her.
"Chicken," Arten would answer. And X was perfectly satisfied.
The next day it would be "tinned meat," and it was all the same to her—and to me; but then I knew what a liar Arten was.
His kindness of heart and his desire to please us made it all the more difficult not to be irritated with him when circumstances did not draw out the better side of his nature. It is uncomfortable to despise people in a qualified manner, and I found it impossible to despise Arten unreservedly and therefore happily. There was no doubt that he was a horrible coward. If he had said, "I am a coward—I am afraid," he would have enlisted my sympathy for what it was worth, because I was a coward myself and admired sincerity. If he had even preserved a decent silence on the subject I should have been unable altogether to despise him, for that was the course I pursued myself. But when any real or imaginary danger was past he would come out with assumed and aggressive hilarity, and make tales about it and his prowess, which latter he had already made conspicuous enough by its absence. Yet his position was no doubt complicated: he knew that the Turks in our train despised not only him but his race; there was no one to suggest his courage if he did not do it himself, and, as he was unable to exhibit it in deeds, I have no doubt he saw no other course to pursue but that of publishing it by word of mouth. Moreover, he had suffered personally from bad treatment; the tale was a piteous one. Near his native town of Adana he had a small mill where he ground corn through the season. On one occasion he had done well and was on his way back to his wife and children in the town, carrying his earnings, which were to keep them through the winter. Half way home he was attacked by a band of robbers, who relieved him not only of his gold but of all his clothes. He had to remain in hiding by the roadside until some one passed from whom he could borrow a garment in which to return starved and penniless to his expectant family. Small wonder that the poor man shuddered at the word "Khursus" (brigand) which we laughingly joked about.
"What is it to you?" he said one day; "you have rich relations, kind friends, and a just Government. If you are robbed, justice is done to you. But what can I expect but more abuse and ill-treatment?—and I have a wife and small children into the bargain!"
When he was not posing as a hero, he was posing as a feature in the landscape. This was particularly exasperating, for no amount of pity for his condition would turn him into a picturesque martyr, even in the foreground of ancient ruins. No sooner was my camera produced than Arten produced himself. The only occasion on which I knew him keep out of sight was when I was trying to get a snap-shot of the band of Kurds who held us up on the Tigris. He seemed to have no desire to show himself, although I was considerate enough to invite him to occupy a prominent position for once. His appearance was not calculated to enhance the effect of any picture. He was like a starved black scarecrow dressed up in tight and clerical garments, with a fez on the top—and then there was the nose. He would have made any warm desert scene look cold, as it would not be obvious that he was perspiring, and in any group of picturesque natives he would look ludicrous.
I recall, as I write, isolated moments of exasperation—when, for instance, he sat, singing a hymn, kicking up the dust with his heels, when we were trying to inflate ourselves with worthy feelings on the contemplation of Babylon, awed by the silence and desolation of the scene around us. Or again, how in a fit of nervousness he hurled the whole of our dinner in agitation on the floor, while we, after an unusually long fast, could have cried for food.
But reviewing him calmly at a distance, one remembers a man that one alternately laughed at and pitied; who annoyed one by his transparent faults, but who commanded one's sympathy by his tragic condition, and one's admiration by his cheerful willingness in trying circumstances. A man who was meant by nature to be light-hearted and happy, kind to his fellows, energetic and interested in his work, ambitious for his children; but who fate dictated was to have his spirit quenched, his nature hardened, and mean and cowardly qualities developed owing to the fear, injustice, and poverty in which, like the rest of his countrymen, he was condemned to live.
II.Hassan.
Hassan was an Albanian Turk; he belonged to one of the old Turkish families and looked every inch the gentleman that he was. Introduced to us by a common friend, he accompanied us during our seven months' wandering through Asiatic Turkey in a semi-professional capacity, but what that capacity was it would be difficult to define by any particular name. A dragoman he was not, though he called himself our "tergeman." "Tergeman," literally translated, being "interpreter," he could claim nothing entitling him to this function, for he spoke no European language, and it was not till we learnt Turkish that we could hold any spoken communication with him. Briefly, he acted as a sort of amateur dragoman without any of the qualifications usually expected of these gentlemen—and possessing a great many of the virtues in which, as a rule, they are sadly lacking. Essentially he was our Figure-head, and a splendid one he made, six foot six in stature and broad in proportion, as straight as a die and as supple as a willow, with a handsome head set well back on strong shoulders, and keen, kindly eyes which looked out very straight from under shaggy eyebrows. When he walked he put into his great stride a grace and dignity which soon earned for him the nickname of "the Prince." His chief characteristics were that gentleness which comes of great strength under perfect command; the courtesy which arises from a sense of other people's worth measured by a sense of his own; and an imperturbability which could be as irritating as it was admirable. "Ne faidet?" (what is the use?), was a favourite expression of his, and "ne faidet," he looked all over. In scenes of human quarrel, excitement, or danger, one was chiefly conscious of his calm indifference of mind and manner as he silently surveyed his companions in fear of brigands or in joy over a piece of meat. Yet he was a man full of the passions of his race, capable of an iron self-control when he thought fit to make use of it, but occasionally roused into a state of temper bordering on madness. On these occasions he would afterwards say his "jan" had had him by the throat, and he did not know what he was doing.
A great man with a great imprisoned soul, as free and light-hearted as a careless boy when roaming in the great forests or on the bare mountain-side of his native home, fettered and fretful when the bonds of artificial civilisation held him.
"What a Kallabalak! what is the use of this Kallabalak?" he would say with a wave of disgust when he got into the middle of a noisy crowd. "This is good, this is keyf," was his comment, with great gasps of enjoyment, when we three sat on the ground together in some lonely spot of a lonely desert. One felt he was breathing freely again. A silent man by nature, he could not bear loquacious people. "Burra, burra, burra," he would say, pointing his thumb at them; "burra, burra, burra, what is the use of all this talking?" If the remarks were addressed to him, they were always answered with stern courtesy. A talkative young Armenian rode with us one day and tried to draw him into conversation. "Is not that mirage in front of us? What a wonderful sight—trees and water and mountains! Do you not think it must be mirage, Effendi?"
"With the eyes that Allah has given me, it does seem to be so, young man," was Hassan's grim answer, and he rode on without turning his head to right or left.
Yet on occasion he enjoyed a refined "Kallabalak." One night in Cairo, when we had done for the time with camping and were seated in cleanliness and finery in the hotel garden, a confetti feast was going on. Serious young men and maidens, larky old men and festive matrons, were diverting themselves in the essentially hilarious proceeding of scattering confetti on one another. The garden was hung with Chinese lanterns; fireworks hissed and spluttered, shooting flames of colour. Hassan sat in convulsed enjoyment of the gay scene. It was a revelation to him of the lighter side of life. And when a charming young lady, bolder than the many who cast coy and curious glances at the handsome Turk, came and administered a dose of confetti down the back of his neck, he was overcome with glee and merriment. Afterwards, on subsequent wanderings in wilds and deserts, he would turn to us after hours of silence, and, bursting into a deep roar of laughter, would say, "Do you remember the paper and the foolish men and women?"
His function, as I have said, was first and foremost that of Figure-head; he escorted us on our visits to Turkish officials and dignitaries, and, with grave dignity and courtly manner, unembarrassed by his own unshaven chin or the stains and dust of travel on our weather-worn and unwashed garments, he would make the most of anything entitling us to belong to "the great ones of England." He cast a general air of respectability over us, and we always felt it was largely due to him that we were shown so much consideration in a land where all travellers are treated with suspicion, and where women are not regarded in a particularly chivalrous light.
But beside this, he was general caretaker of our personal comforts: he put up our camp-beds and arranged our tent; he always sat beside us at meals, which we took seated cross-legged on the ground, either outside by the camp-fire, or in bad weather on the floor of the tent. His first self-constituted duty was to peel the oranges with which we generally finished a meal; he removed the peel to form two cups, in which he neatly piled the sections and placed them beside us, carefully counting the pieces to make sure that he had treated us alike. "Shimdi" (now) he would say when we had finished the first course and we would ask for dates. "Shimdi" he would say again when the last of these were demolished. "Shimdi Kahiveh," and coffee would come in its turn. "Shimdi." "Nothing more." "Nothing," he would exclaim; "nothing?" "We will smoke now." "Tütün (tobacco), aha, Shimdi tütün," and he would light us each a cigarette. Then, when this too was finished, "Shimdi"—"Shimdi Rahat" (now rest), we answer—and he makes pillows for us with our saddle-bags and covers us over with rugs. This process was repeated every day until it became a stock joke. His jokes were all of this kind; there were certain standing ones which had to be gone through periodically. My Turkish was limited to about fifty words, so that conversation between us did not flow, but X, who had learned to speak more fluently, would ride with him for hours together, holding endless conversations on Turkish religion, habits, and ideas. When X and he fell out he would come and joke with me: one day I teazed him about being a better friend to her than to me.
"How can that be?" he said gravely.
"Because," I answered, "you quarrel with the Vali Pasha" (X was the Vali Pasha and I was the Padishah), "and then you make it up and are great friends again. But you are never cross with me. If I were your friend you would quarrel with me, too. But I am glad I am not your friend, or you would get angry with me." This idea seemed to tickle him immensely, and every day after this conversation there would be a moment when he would ride alongside of me, and, feigning an air of great disgust, would shrug his shoulders and say, "Istemen, istemen" (I do not want you). It was his singularly primitive way of acting a quarrel with me, and thereby showing that he and I were also friends. X would also attack him on the subject.
"Why don't you go and scold the Padishah?" she said on one occasion; "she thinks the same as I do about these things, only she cannot talk Turkish, so she does not say them."
"The Padishah is but a child," he answered; "it would hurt her. It would be a shame to hurt a child."
As a matter of fact I was older than X in months, but her bodily proportions were larger than mine, and everything goes by size in the East.
As time went on, however, we too had our little rubs, and his methods of making friends again were what one would expect from his schoolboy nature. If I was in the tent, he would throw stones at it until I looked out smiling; this was taken as a sign that the quarrel was over; he would roll up an extra large cigarette for me, and we would sit on the ground and have a smoke of peace together. Our friendship was of a silent nature. I made my fifty words express everything I had to say, and to simplify matters only used the verbs in the infinitive and nouns in the nominative. Long custom had established a certain meaning to various sentences between us which would have been unintelligible to any other Turk.
"What Turkish, amān, what Turkish she speaks!" he used to say to X, holding up his hands in amused dismay.
We taught him a few English sentences, of which he was very proud.
"Pull it up," he invariably said when he held out his hand to help us off the ground.
"Pull it down," was his formula when he arranged our habit skirts after mounting us.
"Pull it off," when he helped us off with our oats.
When he was in a temper I made him say, "I am a silly man," which he pronounced:
"I am——
"A Silliman."
Although he did not know the meaning of the words, he connected them with his own misdemeanours.
"Silliman yok (not), silliman yok," he used to say fiercely when he was beginning to repent and get ashamed of himself. He always said "Good-bight" for "Goodbye," confusing it with "Good-night."
Great was his pleasure whenever in the course of our travels we came across a European, or any one who could speak a language which I understood.
"See now," he would exclaim at the unwonted sight of me talking with any one, "she has found a friend!" And then, when we parted and I relapsed into silence: "See now, how sad she looks! She is thinking of her friend."
And he would ride up to me compassionately.
"Where is your friend now, Padishah?"
"Where, indeed?" I answer. "I have no friend; you must buy me one in the bazaars next time we get to a town."
"And how much money must I give for him, Padishah?"
"You must not give much, because I am poor, but you must get a very good one."
"Amān, amān, see now what she says: I must get a good one, and yet not give much money. Do you hear, Vali Pasha?"
And when he came back from the bazaars:
"I have bought the friend, Padishah."
"Where is he? I don't see him."
"He is here, in my bag."
"How much did you give for him?"
"Ten piastres."
"He cannot be a good one if he is as cheap as that, and so small that he will go in your bag."
"Oh yes, he is a good friend," and he produces a roll of tobacco; "a good friend and little money. That was what you said, wasn't it, Padishah?"
And I reflect that there is many a true word spoken in jest.
"Has she no friend in England," he asked X one day, "or does she never speak in England either?"
"Yes," said X, "she has a friend in England, and she does not speak because she is thinking of him."
"And you, Vali Pasha, have you also a friend in England?"
"Yes," I answered for X; "she has twenty-nine friends in England, and you are only the thirtieth."
And Hassan would ride on in silence, pondering over the strange ways of English ladies.
Amongst his other duties he had to purchase the food, pay the muleteers and soldiers, and give tips; and it fell to my lot to do up the accounts with him periodically. The unusual mental exertion required by this he found very trying. His imperturbability would forsake him completely. On the first occasion he broke down altogether. "What can I do with figures?" he said, the tears rolling down his cheeks; "let me go back to my hills and forests; I am only a poor hunter. She brings out her little book and I shall not know how the piastres have gone, and she will think I have taken her piastres," and he laid his head on his knees and groaned aloud.
When we became better acquainted, however, "hisab" (accounts) became a joke, though they always caused him to perspire profusely.
At first my entire ignorance of the language made our intercourse over the account-book somewhat difficult. We would sit on the ground opposite one another, and Hassan would fumble in the folds of his belt until he had found his spectacles and his account-book.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Peki (very good), Effendim; yimurta (eggs), 2 piastres." I would write it down.
"Yasdin me?"
"Ne yasdin me?" (what is "yasdin me?").
"Yasdin me? yasdin me? yasdin me?"
I have not the smallest idea what "yasdin me" means, but I pretend to write it down and then say:
"How many piastres was it?"
Hassan makes a gesture of despair.
"Yasdin me? yasdin me? yasdin me?" he repeats again.
"X," I shout across the tent, "what does 'yasdin me' mean? I suppose it's some sort of food, only he won't tell me how many piastres it costs."
"It means 'Have you written it?'" said X calmly.
"Yasdin me?" repeats Hassan again.
"Yes," I answer meekly.
"Aha, now she know," says Hassan, and he mops his forehead vigorously. "I say 'Yasdin me' and she says, 'How many piastres?' Amān, amān!"
"Peki, Effendim" (very good), he goes on. "Etmek (bread), 3 piastres. Have you written it?"
"Yes."
"Peki, Effendim. Et (meat), 12 piastres. Have you written it?"
"Yes."
"Peki, Effendim. Pilij (chicken), 3 piastres."
"Ne Pilij?" (what is pilij?).
"Pilij,pilij,pilij."
"Yes, but what is it?"
"Pilij, pilij—she doesn't know pilij, and she learns it every day."
He begins to crow like a cock.
"Oh yes, I know."
"Ah, ah, now she knows! Peki; pilij 3 piastres. Have you written it?"
"Yes."
"Peki, Effendim."
And so we go on through all the items, and finally add up the total in our respective languages. By means of holding up our ten fingers a large number of times, we ascertain whether the results tally, for in those early days I could only count in Turkish up to twenty-nine, and knew the words for a hundred and a thousand. Then Hassan would give a great sigh, close his book, fold his spectacles, take off his fez, and wipe his head all over, and finally forget his troubles under the soothing influence of tobacco.