CHAPTER VIII
The Vāli had inquired of me closely whither I was going from Damascus, and when I told him that Ba'albek was my goal he had replied that he must certainly send a small body of armed men to guard so distinguished a traveller. Thereupon I had answered quickly, so as to avoid further discussion, that I should go by train. But as I had in reality no intention of adopting that means of progression it was necessary to make an early start if I would journey alone. We left the city on a bright and sunny morning; the roads were full of cheerful wayfarers, and our horses tugged at the bits after the week's rest. We passed by the Amīr 'Umar's house in the Wādi Barada, and saw that nobleman enjoying the morning sun upon his roof. He shouted down to me an invitation to enter, but I replied that there was business on hand, and that he must let me go.
"Go in peace!" he answered. "Please God some day we may ride together."
"Please God!" said I, and "God requite you!"
A mile or two further we came to a parting of the ways and I altered my route and struck straight into the Anti-Libanus the better to avoid the attentions of all the official personages who had been warned to do me honour. We rode up the beautiful valley of the Barada, which is full of apricots (but they were not yet in flower), crossed the river above Suḳ Wādi Barada, a splendid gorge, and journeyed over a plain between snowy mountains to Zebdāny, famous for its apples. Here we pitched a solitary camp in a green meadow by a spring, the snowy flanks of Hermon closing the view to the south and the village scattered over the hill slopes to the north, and no one in Zebdāny paid any attention to the two small tents. Next day we crossed the Anti-Libanus in a howling wind; a very lovely and enjoyable ride it was nevertheless, but a long stage of eight and a quarter hours. There were Latin inscriptions cut at intervals in the rocks all down the valley that falls into the Yaḥfūfa at Jānta--I imagine we were on the Roman road from Damascus to Ba'albek. The last long barren miles were done in driving rain and we arrived wet through at Ba'albek. It was almost too windy to pitch a camp, and yet my soul revolted against the thought of a hotel; fortunately, Mikhāil suggested a resource. He knew, said he, a decent Christian woman who lived at the entrance of the village and who would doubtless give us a lodging. It happened as he had predicted. The Christian woman was delighted to see us. Her house contained a clean empty room which I was speedily made ready for my camp furniture, Mikhāil established himself and his cooking gear in another, the wind and the rain beat its worst against the shutters and could do us no harm.
The name of my hostess was Ḳurunfuleh, the Carnation Flower, and she was wife to one Yūsef el 'Awais, who is at present seeking his fortune in America, where she wishes to join him. I spent an hour or two with her and her son and daughter and a few relations who had dropped in for a little talk and a little music, bringing their lutes with them. They told me that they were very anxious about their future. The greater part of the population of Ba'albek and round about belongs to an unorthodox sect of Islām, called the Metāwileh, which has a very special reputation for fanaticism and ignorance. These people, when they heard of the Japanese victories, would come and shake their fists at their Christian neighbours, saying: "The Christians are suffering defeat! See now, we too will shortly drive you out and seize your goods." Mikhāil joined in, and declared that it was the same thing at Jerusalem. There, said he (I know not with what truth), the Moslems had sent a deputation to the Mufti, saying: "The time has come for us to turn the Christians out." But the Mufti answered: "If you raise a disturbance the nations of Europe will step in, for Jerusalem is the apple of their eye" (so the Mufti affirmed), "and they will take the whole land and we shall be worse off than before." I tried to comfort Ḳurunfuleh by saying that it was improbable that the Christians of Syria should suffer persecution, the country being so well known and so much frequented by tourists, who would not fail to raise an outcry. The yearly stream of tourists is, in fact, one of the best guarantees of order. Now Ḳurunfuleh was a Lebanon woman, and I asked her why she did not return to her own village, where she would be under the direct protection of the Powers and exempt from danger. She said:
"Oh lady, the house here is taken in my husband's name, and I cannot sell it unless he return, nor yet leave it empty, and moreover the life in the Lebanon is not like the life in the plain, and I, being accustomed to other things, could not endure it. There no one has any business but to watch his neighbour, and if you put on a new skirt the village will whisper together and mock at you saying, 'Hast seen the lady?' Look you, I will show you what it is like to live in the Lebanon. I eat meat in Ba'albek once a day, but they once a month. They take an onion and divide it into three parts, using one part each evening to flavour the burghul (cracked wheat), and I throw a handful of onions into the dish every night. Life pinches in the Lebanon."
Life pinches so straitly that all of the population that can scrape together their passage money are leaving for the United States, and it is next to impossible to find labour to cultivate the corn, the mulberry and the vine. There is no advancement, to use the Syrian phrase. The Lebanon province is a _cul de sac_, without a port of its own and without commerce. True, you need not go in fear of death, but of what advantage is an existence that offers no more than the third of an onion at supper time? As usual, the Sublime Porte has been too many for the Powers. It has accorded all they asked, oh yes, and gladly, but the concessions that seemed to lay open the path of prosperity have in reality closed the gates for ever upon those who should have profited by them.
Next day the rain had not abated. I received the Commissioner of Police, who had run me to earth--he proved to be a charming man--and paid a visit to a large family of Portuguese who were staying at the hotel hard by my lodging. Monsieur Luiz de Sommar, with his wife and daughters and nephews, had come up from Jerusalem to Damascus by the Jebel Druze. I had heard of their arrival at Sweida while I was at Ṣalkhad, and had wondered how they had gained admission. The story was curious and it redounds to the credit of Monsieur de Sommar, while it shows how eager the Government still is to keep the Mountain free from the prying eyes of tourists. The Portuguese family had met Mr. Mark Sykes at 'Ammān, and he had advised them to change their route so as to pass through Ḳanawāt in the Jebel Druze, saying they would have no difficulty in obtaining permission to do so. Monsieur de Sommar went guilelessly forward, but when he reached Sweida, which is the chief post of the Government, the Ḳāimaḳām stopped him and intimated politely but firmly that he must return the way he had come. He replied as firmly that he would not, and sent telegrams to his Consul in Damascus and his Minister at Constantinople. Thereupon followed an excited exchange of messages, the upshot of which was that he was to be allowed to proceed to Ḳanawāt if he would take a hundred zaptiehs with him. The country, said the Ḳāimaḳām, was extremely dangerous--that country through which, as I know well, a woman can ride with no escort but a Druze boy, and might ride alone, even if she had her saddle-bags full of gold. But Monsieur de Sommar was a man of judgment. He replied that he was quite willing to take the hundred zaptiehs, but not one piastre piece should they receive from him. Thus countered, the Ḳāimaḳām changed his note and diminished the escort till it numbered twenty, with which guard the de Sommars reached Ḳanawāt in safety. I congratulated them on their exploit, and myself on having sought my permit from Fellāḥ ul Tsa, and not from the Vāli of Syria.
In spite of the rain, the day at Ba'albek was not mis-spent. Since my last visit the Germans had excavated the Temple of the Sun and laid bare altars, fountains, bits of decoration and foundations of churches, which were all of the deepest interest. Moreover, the great group of temples and enclosing walls set between the double range of mountains, Lebanon and Anti-Libanus, produces an impression second to none save the Temple group of the Athenian Acropolis, which is easily beyond a peer. The details of Ba'albek are not so good as those at Athens; the matchless dignity and restraint of that glory among the creations of architects are not to be approached, nor is the splendid position on the hill top overlooking the blue sea and the Gulf of Salamis to be rivalled. But in general effect Ba'albek comes nearer to it than any other mass of building, and it provides an endless source of speculation to such as busy themselves with the combination of Greek and Asiatic genius that produced it and covered its doorposts, its architraves and its capitals with ornamental devices infinite in variety as they are lovely in execution. For the archæologist there is neither clean nor unclean. All the works of the human imagination fall into their appointed place in the history of art, directing and illuminating his own understanding of it. He is doubly blest, for when the outcome is beautiful to the eyes he returns thanks; but, whatever the result, it is sure to furnish him with some new and unexpected link between one art and another, and to provide him with a further rung in the ladder of history. He is thus apt to be well satisfied with what he sees, and above all, he does not say: "Alas, alas! these dogs of Syrians! Phidias would have done so-and-so;" for he is glad to mark a new attempt in the path of artistic endeavour, and a fresh breath moving the acanthus leaves and the vine scrolls on capital and frieze.
Our departure from Ba'albek was marked by a regrettable occurrence--my dog Kurt was found to have disappeared in the night. Unlike most Syrian pariah dogs, he was of a very friendly disposition, he was also (and in this respect he did not differ from his half fed clan) insatiably greedy; the probability was, therefore, that he had been lured away with a bone and shut up till we were safely out of the road. Ḥabīb set off in one direction through the village, Mikhāil in another, while the Commissioner of Police, who had appeared on the agitated scene, tried to pour balm upon my wounded feelings. After a few minutes Ḥabīb reappeared with Kurt, all wag, behind him on a chain. He had found him, he explained breathlessly, in the house of one who had thought to steal him, fastened with this very chain:
"And when Kurt heard my voice he barked, and I went into the yard and saw him. And the lord of the chain demanded it of me, and by God! I refused to give it him and struck him to the earth with it instead. God curse him for a thievish Metāwileh! And so I left him."
I have, therefore, the pleasure to record that the Metāwileh are as dishonest a sect as rumour would have them to be, but that their machinations can be brought to nought by vigilant Christians.
We rode down the wide and most dreary valley between Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. I might have gone by train to Ḥomṣ, and eke to Ḥamāh, but I preferred to cross from side to side of the valley as the fancy took me, and visit such places of interest as the country had to show, and this could only be done on horseback. North of Ba'albek all Syria was new to me; it marked an epoch, too, that we had reached the frontier of the Palestine Exploration Map. I now had recourse to Kiepert's small but excellent sheet, which I had abstracted from the volume of Oppenheim that had been left at Ṣāleh. There is no other satisfactory map until, at a line some thirty miles south of Aleppo, Kiepert's big Kleinasien 1-400,000 begins; when the American Survey publishes its geographical volume the deficiency will, I hope, be rectified. After four and a half hours we came to Lebweh, where one of the principal sources of the Orontes bursts out of the earth in a number of springs, very beautiful to see; and here we were overtaken by two soldiers who had been sent after us by the Ḳāimaḳām with a polite inquiry as to whether I would not like an escort. I sent one back and kept the other, fearing to hurt the Ḳāimaḳām's feelings; Derwīsh was the man's name, helpful and pleasant he proved, as indeed were all in the long series of his successors who accompanied us until I stepped into the train at Konia. Some of them added greatly to the pleasure of the journey, telling me many tales of their experiences and adventures as we rode together hour by hour. They enjoyed the break in garrison life that was thus afforded them, and they enjoyed also the daily fee of a mejideh (4_s._ roughly) which was so much more certain than the Sultan's pay. I gave them besides a little tip when they reached the term of their services, and they fed themselves and their horses on provisions and grain that I shrewdly suspect were taken from the peasantry by force, a form of official exaction that the traveller is powerless to prevent.
At Lebweh are the ruins of a temple built in the massive masonry of Ba'albek. A podium of four great courses of stones crowned by a simple moulding, a mere splay face, is all that is left of it. The village belongs to a man called Asad Beg, a rich Metāwileh and brother to a certain Dr. Haida, who is a ubiquitous person well known in north Syria. I never go to Damascus without meeting him and never meet him without satisfaction, for he is well read in Arabic literature and exceptionally intelligent. He has recently been engaged in some job on the Mecca railway, and he is, so far as I know, the only example in his sect of a man who has received a good education and risen to a certain distinction.
We pitched camp at Rās Ba'albek, where there is an excellent spring in a gorge of the barren eastern hills an hour and a half from Lebweh. The frost had ceased to pinch us of a morning, praise be to God! but it was still cold. When we rose at dawn the sleet was beating against the tents and we rode all day in the devil's own wind. This was March 8; Spring travels slowly into Northern Syria. I sent my camp by the direct path and rode with Derwīsh to a monument that stands on some rising ground in the middle of the Orontes valley and which in that desolate expanse is seen for a day's journey on either side. It is a tall tower of massive stonework capped by a pyramid and decorated with pilasters and a rough frieze carved in low relief with hunting scenes and trophies of arms. The Syrians call it Ḳāmu'a Hurmul, the Tower of Hurmul after the village close by, and the learned are of opinion that it commemorates some great battle of the Roman conquest, but there is no inscription to prove them right or wrong. It lies two hours to the west of Rās Ba'albek. Buffeted by the furious wind we rode on another hour and a half to a line of little mounds protecting the air-holes of an underground water channel--a Ḳanāt it would be called in Persian, and I believe is so called in Arabic. Another two and a half hours brought us to Ḳṣeir, the mules came up a quarter of an hour later, and we camped hard by the cemetery outside the ugly mud-built town. The wind dropped after sunset, and peace, moral and physical, settled down upon the camp. Even Mikhāil's good humour had been somewhat disturbed by the elements, but Ḥabīb had come in as smiling as ever, and I am glad to remember that I, feeling my temper slipping from me down the gale, had preserved the silence of the philosopher. Muḥammad the Druze was no longer with us, for he had been left behind in Damascus. Whether through his own fault or by reason of a conspiracy against him among the others, difficulties and quarrels were always arising, and it was better to sacrifice one member of the staff and preserve the equanimity of the caravan. My contract with him ceased at Damascus; we parted on the best of terms, and his place was taken by a succession of hirelings, indistinguishable, as far as I was concerned, the one from the other.
The valley of the Orontes was formerly an Arab camping ground and is still frequented in dry seasons by a few skeikhs of the Ḥaseneh and of the 'Anazeh, particularly by the Ruwalla branch of the latter tribe, but the bulk of the Bedouin have been driven out by cultivation. The Ḳāmu'a Hurmul bears the record of them in the shape of ancient tribe marks. It was more curious to reflect that we were in the southern headquarters of the Hittites, whoever they may have been; the famous examples of their as yet undecyphered script which were found at Ḥamāh are now lodged in the museum at Constantinople, where they have baffled all the efforts of the learned. The present population of Ḳṣeir is composed partly of Christians and partly of the members of a sect called the Noṣairiyyeh. They are not recognised by Islām as orthodox, though, like all the smaller sects, they do their best to smooth, away the outward differences between themselves and the dominant creed. They keep the tenets of their faith secret as far as possible, but Dussaud has pried into the heart of them and found them full of the traces of Phœnician tradition. Living apart in mountain fastnesses that have remained almost inviolate, the Noṣairiyyeh have held on to the practices of ancient Semitic cults, and they occupy an honourable position in the eyes of Syriologists as the direct descendants of paganism, while remaining themselves profoundly ignorant of their ancestry. Native report speaks ill of their religion, following the invariable custom by which people whisper scandal of what they are not allowed to understand, and I was told that the visible signs of it as expressed by the conduct of the sect left everything to be desired. Dussaud has, however, washed away the stain that lay upon their faith, and my experience of their dealings with strangers leads me to adopt an attitude of benevolent neutrality. I spent five days in the mountains west of Ḥomṣ and a week near Antioch, in which districts they are chiefly to be found, and had no reason to raise a complaint. Kurt was not so well pleased with the company in which he found himself at Ḳṣeir. He kept up a continual barking all night; I could almost have wished him back in the courtyard of the Metawīleh.
Next day the weather was gloriously fine. With Mikhāil I made a long circuit that I might visit Tell Nebi Mendu, which is the site of Kadesh on the Orontes, the southern capital of the Hittites. Kadesh in its day must have been a fair city. The mound on which it was built rises out of a great corn-growing plain; to the south the wide valley of the Orontes runs up between the twin chains of Lebanon, to the west the Jebel Noṣairiyyeh protect it from the sea, and between the ranges of Lebanon and the Noṣairiyyeh mountains there is a smiling lowland by which merchants and merchandise might pass down to the coast. Northwards to the horizon stretch the plains of Coelo Syria; the steppes of the Palmyrene desert bound the view to the east. The foot of the tell is washed by the young and eager Orontes (the Rebellious is the meaning of its Arabic name), and in the immediate foreground lies the lake of Ḥomṣ, six miles long. The mound of Kadesh is approached by grassy swards, and among willow trees a mill wheel turns merrily in the rushing stream. The site must have been inhabited almost continuously from Hittite times, for history tells of a Seleucid city, Laodocia ad Orontem, and there are traces of a Christian town. Each succeeding generation has built upon the dust of those that went before, and the mound has grown higher and higher, and doubtless richer and richer in the traces of them that lived on it. But it cannot be excavated thoroughly owing to the miserable mud hovels that have inherited the glories of Laodocia and Kadesh, and to the little graveyard at the northern end of the village which, according to the Moslem prejudice, must remain undisturbed till Gabriel's trump rouses the sleepers in it. I noticed fragments of columns and of very rough capitals lying about among the houses, but my interest, while I stood upon the mound, was chiefly engaged in picturing the battle fought at Kadesh by the Hittite king against the Pharaoh of his time, which is recorded in a famous series of hieroglyphs in Egypt. A quarter of an hour's ride to the north of Tell Nebi Mendu there is a singular earthwork which is explained by the Arabs as being the Sefinet Nuh (Noah's Ark) and by archæologists as an Assyrian fortification, and the one account of its origin has as much to support it as the other. It is a heap of earth, four-square, its sides exactly oriented to the points of the compass, standing some forty to fifty feet above the level of the plain and surrounded by a ditch, the angles of which are still sharp. We rode to the top of it, and found it to be an immense platform of solid earth, about an eighth of a mile square, the four corners raised a little as if there had been towers upon them, and tower and rampart and platform were alike covered with springing corn. Whoever raised it, Patriarch or Assyrian, must have found it mighty tiresome to construct, but until a few trenches have been cut across it the object that directed his labours will rest undetermined. We rode down to the lake and lunched by the lapping water on a beach of clean shells. There are two mounds close to the shores, another a mile or two out of Ḥomṣ, while the castle of Ḥomṣ itself was built upon a fourth. They have all the appearance of being artificial, and probably contain the relics of towns that were sisters to Kadesh. The fertile plain east of the Orontes must always have been able to support a large population, larger perhaps in Hittite days than in our own. The day's ride had lasted from 9.30 to 2 o'clock, with three-quarters of an hour at Tell Nebi Mendu and half an hour by the lake.
We approached Ḥomṣ through the cemeteries. That it should be preceded by a quarter of a mile of graves is not a peculiarity of Ḥomṣ, but a constant feature of oriental towns. Every city is guarded by battalions of the dead, and the life of the town moves in and out through a regiment of turbaned tombstones. It happened to be a Thursday when we came to Ḥomṣ, and Thursday is the weekly Day of All Souls in the Mohammedan world. Groups of veiled women were laying flowers upon the graves or sitting on the mounds engaged in animated chat--the graveyard is the pleasure ground of Eastern women and the playground of the children, nor do the gloomy associations of the spot affect the cheerfulness of the visitors. My camp was pitched in the outskirts of the city on a stretch of green grass below the ruins of barracks built by Ibrahīm Pasha and destroyed immediately after his death by the Syrians, who were desirous of obliterating every trace of his hated occupation. All was ready for me, water boiling for tea and a messenger from the Ḳāimaḳām in waiting to assure me that my every wish should have immediate attention, in spite of which I do not like the town of Ḥomṣ and never of free will shall I camp in it again. This resolution is due to the behaviour of the inhabitants, which I will now describe.
The conduct of the Ḳāimaḳām was unexceptionable. I visited him after tea, and found him to be an agreeable Turk, with a little of the Arabic tongue and an affable address. There were various other people present, turbaned muftis and grave senators--we had a pleasant talk over our coffee. When I rose to go the Ḳāimaḳām offered me a soldier to escort me about the town, but I refused, saying that I had nothing to fear, since I spoke the language. I was wrong: no knowledge of Arabic would be sufficient to enable the stranger to express his opinion of the people of Ḥomṣ. Before I was well within the bazaar the persecution began. I might have been the Pied Piper of Hamelin from the way the little boys flocked upon my heels. I bore their curiosity for some time, then I adjured them, then I turned for help to the shopkeepers in the bazaars. This was effective for a while, but when I was so unwary as to enter a mosque, not only the little boys but every male inhabitant of Ḥomṣ (or so it seemed to my fevered imagination) crowded in after me. They were not annoyed, they had no wish to stop me, on the contrary they desired eagerly that I should go on for a long time, that they might have a better opportunity of watching me; but it was more than I could bear, and I fled back to my tents, pursued by some two hundred pairs of inquisitive eyes, and sent at once for a zaptieh. Next morning I was wiser and took the zaptieh with me from the first. We climbed to the top of the castle mound to gain a general idea of the town. Though it has no particular architectural beauty, Ḥomṣ has a character of its own. It is built of tufa, the big houses standing round courtyards adorned with simple but excellent patterns of white limestone let into the black walls. Sometimes the limestone is laid in straight courses, making with the tufa alternate bars of black and white like the facade of Siena cathedral. The mind is carried back the more to Italy by the minarets, which are tall square towers, for all the world like the towers of San Gimignano, except that those of Ḥomṣ are capped by a white cupola, very pretty and effective. All that remained of the castle was Arabic in origin, and so were the fortifications round the town, save at one place to the east, where the Arab work seemed to rest on older foundations. I saw no mass of building of pre-Mohammedan date but one, a brick ruin outside the Tripoli gate which was certainly Roman, the sole relic of the Roman city of Emesa. The castle mound is also outside the town, and when I had completed my general survey we entered by the western gate and went sight-seeing. This is a process which takes time, for it is constantly interrupted by pressing invitations to come in and drink coffee. We passed by the Turkmān Jāmi'a, where there are a couple of Greek inscriptions built into the minaret and a sarcophagus, carved with bulls' heads and garlands, that serves as a fountain. The zaptieh was of opinion that I could not do better than pay my respects to the Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, and to his palace I went, but found that I was still too early to see his lordship. I was entertained, however, on jam and water and coffee, and listened to the lamentations of the Bishop's secretary over the Japanese victories. The Greek Orthodox Church held penitential services each time that they received the news of a Russian defeat, and at that moment they were kept busy entreating the Almighty to spare the enemies of Christendom. The secretary deputed a servant to show me the little church of Mār Eliās, which contains, an interesting marble sarcophagus with Latin crosses carved on the body of it and Greek crosses on the lid, a later addition, I fancy, to a classical tomb. Outside the church I met one called 'Abd ul Wahhāb Beg, whom I had seen at the Serāya when I was calling on the Ḳāimaḳām, and he invited me into his house, a fine example of the domestic architecture of Ḥomṣ, the harem court being charmingly decorated with patterns in limestone and basalt. When I came out, the zaptieh, who had grasped what sort of sight it was I wished to see, announced that he would take me to the house of one Ḥassan Beg Nā'i, which was the oldest in Ḥomṣ. Thither we went, and as we passed through the narrow but remarkably clean streets I noticed that in almost every house there was a loom, whereon a weaver was weaving the striped silk for which Ḥomṣ is famous, while down most of the thoroughfares were stretched the silken yarns. The zaptieh said that the workers were paid by the piece, and earned from seven to twelve piastres a day (one to two shillings), a handsome wage in the East. Living was cheap, he added; a poor man could rent his house, that is a single room, for a hundred piastres a year, and feed his family on thirty to forty piastres a week or even less if he had not many children.
Ḥassan Beg Nā'i was a red-haired and red-bearded man, with a hard-featured face of a Scotch lowland type. He was not at all pleased to see me, but, at the instance of the zaptieh, he slouched out of his bachelor quarters, where he was drinking a Friday morning cup of coffee with his friends, took me across the street to his harem, and left me with his womenkind, who were as friendly as he was surly. They were, indeed, delighted to have a visitor, for Ḥassan Beg is a strict master, and neither his wife nor his mother nor any woman that is his is allowed to put her nose out of doors, not even to take a walk through the graveyard or to drive down to the meadow by the Orontes on a fine summer afternoon. The harem had been a very beautiful Arab house on the model of the houses of Damascus. There were plaster cupolas over the rooms and over the liwān (the audience hall at the bottom of the court), but the plaster was chipping away and the floors and staircases crumbled beneath the feet of those that trod them. A marble column with an acanthus capital was built into one wall, and on the floor of the liwān stood a big marble capital, simple in style but good of its kind. It had been converted into a water basin, and may have done duty as a font before the Arabs took Emesa and after the earlier buildings of the Roman town had begun to fall into decay and their materials to be put to other uses. I passed as I went home a fine square minaret, built of alternate bands of black and white. The mosque or the Christian church to which the tower belonged had fallen; it is reputed, said my zaptieh, to be the oldest tower in the town. The mosque at the entrance of the bazaar was certainly a church of no mean architectural merit.
There was nothing more to see in Ḥomṣ, and as the afternoon was fine I rode down to the meadow by the Orontes, the fashionable resort of all holiday makers in spring and summer. The course of the Orontes leaves Ḥomṣ a good mile to the south-west, and the water supply is both bad and insufficient, being derived from a canal that begins at the northern end of the lake. The Marj ul 'Asi, the meadow of the Orontes, is a good type of the kind of place in which the Oriental, be he Turk or Syrian or Persian, delights to spend his leisure. "Three things there are," says an Arabic proverb, "that ease the heart from sorrow: water, green grass and the beauty of women." The swift Orontes stream flowed by swards already starred with daisies, where Christian ladies, most perfunctorily veiled, alighted from their mules under willow trees touched with the first breath of spring. The river turned a great Na'oura, a Persian wheel, which filled the air with its pleasant rumbling. A coffee maker had set up his brazier by the edge of the road, a sweetmeat seller was spreading out his wares by the waterside, and on a broader stretch of grass a few gaily dressed youths galloped and wheeled Arab mares. The East made holiday in her own simple and satisfactory manner, warmed by her own delicious sun.
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to society and to fruitless attempts to escape from the curiosity of the townsfolk. It was a Friday afternoon, and no better way of spending it occurred to them than to assemble to the number of many hundreds round my tents and observe every movement of every member of the camp. The men were bad enough, but the women were worse and the children were the worst of all. Nothing could keep them off, and the excitement reached a climax when 'Abd ul Ḥamed Pasha Druby, the richest man in Ḥomṣ, came to call, bringing with him the Ḳāḍi Muḥammad Sāid ul Khāni. I could not pay as much attention to their delightful and intelligent conversation as it deserved, owing to the seething crowd that surrounded us, but an hour later I returned their call at the Pasha's fine new house at the gate of the town, accompanied thither by at least three hundred people. I must have breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed upon my escort, for as I established myself in the cool and quiet liwan, 'Abd ul Ḥamed said:
"Please God the populace does not trouble your Excellency; for if so we will order out a regiment of soldiers."
I murmured a half-hearted refusal of his offer, though I would have been glad to have seen those little boys shot down by volleys of musketry, and the Pasha added reflectively:
"The Emperor of the Germans when he was in Damascus gave orders that no one was to be forbidden to come and gaze on him."
With this august example before me I saw that I must bear the penalties of greatness and foreignness without complaint.
The talk turned on religious beliefs. I began by asking about the Noṣairiyyeh, but the Ḳāḍi pursed his lips and answered:
"They are not pleasant people. Some of them pretend to worship 'Ali and some worship the sun. They believe that when they die their souls pass into the bodies of other men or even animals, as it is in the faiths of India and of China."
I said: "I have heard a story that they tell of a man who owned a vineyard, and the man died and left it to his son. Now the young man worked in the vineyard until the time of the harvest, and when the grapes were ripe a wolf entered in, and every evening he ate the fruit. And the young man tried to hunt him forth, and every evening he returned. And one night the wolf cried aloud: 'Shall I not eat of the grapes who planted the vines?' And the young man was astounded and he said: 'Who art thou?' The wolf replied: 'I am thy father.' The young man answered: 'If thou art indeed my father, where did'st hide the pruning knife, for I have not found it since thy soul left thy body!' Then the wolf took him to the place where the pruning knife lay concealed, and he believed and knew it was his father."
The Ḳāḍi dismissed, the evidence.
"Without doubt they are mighty liars," said he.
I asked him next whether he had any acquaintance with the Behā'is. He answered:
"As for the Behā'is and others like them, your Excellency knows that the Prophet (may God give him peace!) said that there were seventy-two false creeds and but one true, and I can tell you that of the seventy-two there are certainly fifty in our country."
I replied that it appertained to prophets alone to distinguish the true from the false, and that we in Europe, where there were none to help us, found it a difficult task.
"In Europe," said the Ḳāḍi, "I have heard that the men of science are your prophets."
"And they make answer that they know nothing," I observed. "Their eyes have explored the stars, yet they cannot tell us the meaning of the word infinity."
"If you speak of the infinite sky," remarked the Ḳāḍi, "we know that it is occupied by seven heavens."
"And what beyond the seventh heaven?"
"Does not your Excellency know that the number one is the beginning of all things?" said he. "When you have told me what comes before the number one, I will tell you what lies beyond the seventh heaven."
The Pasha laughed, and said that if the Ḳāḍi had finished his argument he would like to ask me what was the current opinion in Europe in the matter of thought-reading. "For," said he, "a month ago a ring of price was stolen in my house, and I could not find the thief. Now a certain Effendi among my friends, hearing of my case, came to me and said: 'I know a man in the Lebanon skilful in these things.' I said: 'Do me the kindness to send for him.' And the man came, and he sought in Ḥomṣ, until he found a woman gifted with second sight, and he worked spells on her until she spoke and said: 'The thief is so-and-so, and he has taken the ring to his house.' And we sought in the house and found the jewel. This is my experience, for the event happened under my eyes."
I replied that thought-readers in the Lebanon made a better use of their gifts than any I had heard of in London, and the Pasha said meditatively:
"It may be that the woman of the bazaar had a complaint against the man in whose house we found the ring--God alone knows, may His name be exalted!"
And so we left it.
When I returned to my tent I found a visiting card on my table, bearing the name and title, "Hanna Khabbāz, the preacher of the Protestant Church at Ḥomṣ." Beneath this inscription was written the following message: "Madam,--My wife and I are ready to do any service you need in the name of Christ and the humanity. We should like to visit you if you kindly accept us. I am, your obedient servant." I sent word that I would kindly accept them if they would come at once, and they appeared before sundown, two friendly people, very eager to offer me hospitality, of which I had no opportunity to take advantage. I regretted it the less because the Pasha and the Ḳāḍi had been good enough company for one afternoon, and when I look back on the tumultuous visit to Ḥomṣ, the hour spent with those two courteous and well-bred Mohammadans stands out like the memory of a sheltered spot in a gale of wind.