Friends in Strange Garments∵IN THE WILDERNESS
Friends in Strange Garments
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Rahmeh’smother brought the smoking dish of mutton and cauliflower from the clay brazier where it had been cooking over a fire of thorns, and placed it in the middle of the rug, on a large round straw tray. Then she laid a little flat loaf of bread at each place and clapped her hands to call the family to their meal.
Yussef and his father came in quickly, but Rahmeh stayed outside to feed Nib, the camel, with the cauliflower leaves that she had saved for him.
Nib was Rahmeh’s pet, and the great awkward beast followed the little girl about like a lamb. He was on his knees now, tied down to a peg in the ground to prevent his wandering away. His melancholy, drooping eyes watched the little figure coming toward him with hands full of green; his loose gray lips trembled wistfully and his teeth slid slowly back and forth as he moved his jaws in anticipation. Close on Rahmeh’s heels came Jeida, her little donkey, thrusting his nose over her shoulder and sniffing enviously at the fresh leaves whichNib tucked under his long lips. He looked on sulkily as Rahmeh tied a blue bead to Nib’s collar and patted his head, which felt like a mat of spongy moss. The blue bead was a charm against the evil eye in the great city, where so many strange and perhaps envious people might look at Nib as he threaded his way through the crowded streets; for he was about to make a journey up to Jerusalem with his master and Yussef.
Rahmeh and Jeida longed for a real adventure like going to Jerusalem. Sometimes they made short trips to the orange groves of Jericho, or, with a load of vegetables, to the British soldiers encamped on the shore of the Dead Sea; but usually they herded sheep in the gullies.
Now Rahmeh helped her brother Yussef prepare for the journey. She brought a long coat to put over his white cotton garment. It was of striped black and yellow and reached to his heels; a girdle of wine-colored wool fastened it at the waist.
‘You must take yourabyah, too, Yussef,’ said his mother, ‘it will be snowing, up in Jerusalem.’
Yussef, looking up at the hot, blue sky, which stretched over the Jordan Valley, laughed incredulously. But he took theabyah, or woolen cloak, from its peg, hoping that his mother might be right about the snow. It would add another excitement to the trip.
His father was already loading Nib with sacks of fruit and nuts. From the saddle hung beautiful bags richly woven by the children’s mother. Into these she now stuffed bread and cheese and figs for the journey. At last they were off over the white road that slipped away among the folded hills, ashen gray, dun and blue, soft as the wings of a dove.
Diab, the children’s father, was a rich man. Besides the orange grove on the Plain of Jericho, he owned large flocks of sheep and goats. In his house were fine rugs and great bins for grain, reaching nearly to the ceiling. The grain was poured in at the top and taken out through a round hole near the bottom. Diab had rings of silver and of gold, and his wife, the children’s mother, had such a weight of coins on her headdress that it made her head ache. On ordinary days she laid it aside and wore imitation ornaments, which were lighter. Rahmeh, too, had a string of coins across her forehead, and chains of silver, which, fastened to her cap in front of her ears, swung down under her chin.
Her mother had made her a little jacket of purple velvet embroidered with orange, and her skirt was worked with bands of flowers.
That night Ismail, the big brother, said: ‘Rahmeh, you will have to go with me to the hills to-morrow.There are too many little lambs for me to look after them alone.’
Rahmeh was delighted. She rode her own little donkey, Jeida, and carried a pocketful of dates and bread. Jeida was chubby and serious; like his mistress, he went unshod, and, like her, he wore gorgeous raiment, for his saddlebags were hung with tassels of orange and crimson and blue. He had, too, a necklace of large blue beads, and a silver and blue ornament was hung over his shaggy forelock for luck.
Ismail led the flock; and Rahmeh, mounted on Jeida, rounded up the straying sheep from behind. Wherever she saw a clump of thorns thick with Dead Sea apples, she slid from Jeida’s back and gingerly plucked them from the prickly mass. They looked like great beads of amber. But they were filled with pith, and, strung on a long strand of wool, would make a magnificent necklace for Nib on his return. There was not a tree in sight—only the pale sagebrush and the tangle of thorns and a great waste of sandy hills dipping down to the Dead Sea, which lay in its bowl of blue hills, a quiet, sunshiny lake with hardly a ripple. Along the roadside, patches of salt cropped to the surface and lay on the brown earth as white as hoar frost.
Ismail led the flock back into the hills away from theDead Sea. He separated the little lambs from the rest of the flock and left them behind with Rahmeh in a hidden ravine, which ran like a streak of life across the immense gray wilderness. Rahmeh sat tossing and counting her lapful of Dead Sea apples, wondering whether father and Yussef had yet reached Jerusalem, that great walled city nearly four thousand feet above her, which to her imagination seemed to touch the sky. Was the ground up there covered with that white mysterious thing called snow, which never came to them in the Jordan Valley?
Suddenly over the edge of the ravine the wind swept a flock of small quail, all whirring and chirping, and dropped them into the warm hollow. There they lay, fluttering and bewildered, but so tame that Rahmeh could easily have caught them. She looked up at the sky. The wind must be blowing up there, she thought, and then she heard Ismail calling. He was coming over the top of the hill carrying three little long-legged black lambs, and behind him trooped the rest of the flock, black, white, and brown, tinkling and bleating and nibbling at the shrubs as they passed.
‘Rahmeh,’ said Ismail, ‘there’s a storm coming. You had better start ahead on Jeida and take these three little fellows who are too weak to walk. I can bring inthe rest.’ Ismail dropped two of the lambs into the bags attached to Jeida’s saddle and gave the third one to Rahmeh to carry across her lap. ‘Take the Dead Sea road,’ he called after her.
Jeida chose a sheep track to the top of the ravine and from there a stony way, like the bed of a torrent, which ran down into the valley. He dropped nimbly from boulder to boulder until they came down to the sand-dunes which lie about the end of the Dead Sea, now dark as slate between its rocky shores.
The sky was heavy with gray clouds. As they came over a hill that was like a great bare dune, Rahmeh felt Jeida suddenly quiver under her; then snorting with terror he plunged down the hill, and, not stopping to pick his way, made straight for the valley road. Casting a swift glance backward, Rahmeh saw what seemed to be a large fierce dog just over the brow of the next sand-dune. He was following them in a crooked, skulking way, his head down, but his evil yellow eyes turned upward. He was striped with bands of yellow across his shoulders. A mane of coarse, bristling hair stood upright.
Rahmeh’s heart gave a great thump of fright, for she realized that this was a hyena and that he was after the lambs; after Jeida, too, perhaps; for though hyenas aregreat cowards, they do sometimes attack donkeys and other animals that cannot fight. Jeida, sweating and trembling and galloping wildly toward the valley road, was not more frightened than Rahmeh. All the dark stories she had ever heard about hyenas came back to her—that they stole lambs from the fold and babies from the cradle; that they even stole yourmind, until you were forced to follow wherever they went. Rahmeh tightened her hold on the lamb in her lap until its little round head pressed tightly against her chest, and leaning over caught Jeida’s neckband with both hands. It is probable that if she had not been an Arab child she would not have held on at all. Of course if she had dropped the lamb on the road the hyena would have stopped following, in order to devour it; but Rahmeh was too good a shepherdess even to think of such a thing. Her one idea was to protect and save the lamb.
Until now Jeida had kept ahead, but he was winded and trembling, and suddenly stumbling, he came down on his knees, almost throwing Rahmeh over his head.
At the same time the hyena, leaving the shelter of the sand-dunes, circled about to head them off. He was very near now, humping his shoulders in an ugly fashion, and showing his fangs. The lambs bleated with terror.
Then, as Rahmeh shut her eyes in a spasm of fright,and Jeida, regaining his feet, jerked backward on quivering flanks, there came the sharp crack of a rifle, and with a yelp the hyena rolled over in a cloud of dust.
A man in khaki came running over the dunes, rifle in hand. He was an English soldier who, on his way to camp, had seen the peril of the little shepherdess.
‘All right,’ he cried, ‘don’t be afraid!’ But Rahmeh and Jeida were already fleeing toward the gray house where there were sheltering walls, a well of cold water, and mother.
The next day Rahmeh stayed at home and strung the Dead Sea apples into a magnificent necklace, not for big Nib, but for brave little Jeida.