CHAPTER IX

A LONELY JOURNEY

For miles the road climbed sharply upward, or crawled along the face of a mountain at the edge of a yawning pit. The villages were far apart, and as they were low and flat, and built of the same rock as the mountains, I did not notice them until I was almost upon them. In every such place one or more of the householders marched back and forth on the top of his dwelling, dragging after him a great stone roller and chanting a mournful tune that seemed to cheer him on in his labor.

At first sight these flat roofs seemed to be of heavy blocks of stone. But they were really made of branches and bushes, plastered over with mud. If the rolling had been neglected for a fortnight in this rainy season, the roofs would soon have sagged and fallen in of their own weight.

Most of the way was lonely. At one time I met a line of proud and scornful-looking camels plodding westward. Some time later a company of villagers on horseback appeared, and a long moment afterward I came upon a straggling band of evil-eyed Bedouins astride lean asses. Never a human being alone, never a man on foot, and never a traveler without a long gun slung across his shoulders. The villagers stared at me open-mouthed; the camel-drivers leered wickedly; and the scowling Bedouins halted to watch me, as I went on, as if they were trying to decide whether I was worth the robbing.

The highway wound upward through a narrow rocky passage between tall hills. As I went on I noticed how lonely the pass was. I began to think that wandering Bedouins could not choose a better spot in which to lie in wait for the victims they meant to rob. Suddenly a shot rang out at the top of the pass. I started in alarm.

The command came from no highwayman, however. Before a ruined hut on the hill above stood a man in khaki uniform, the reins of a saddled horse that grazed at his feet over one arm. “Teskereh!” he bawled.

I climbed the hillside, and handed over my Turkish passport. The officer grew friendly at once, and invited me into his hut. Its only furnishings were a mat-covered bench that served as a bed, and a pan of coals. I drew out a few coins and ate an imaginary breakfast. The officer could not or would not understand my acting. He motioned me to a seat, offered a cigarette, and poured out a cup of muddy coffee from a pot over the coals; but food he would not bring forth.

After we had sat grinning speechlessly at each other for a while, I drew him out of the hut, and, once in the sunshine, opened my camera. He gave one wild shriek, and stumbled over himself in his haste to get back into the hovel. Nor could any amount of coaxing lead him to come out again until I had closed the camera.

Beyond the pass stretched mile after mile of rocky country, the loneliest that I had ever seen. Hills upon hills sank down behind each other, rocky and drear. Here and there a single olive tree added to the loneliness of the surroundings. It was truly a “waste place of the earth.”

All through the day I tramped on, with never a sight or sound of any living thing. Darkness fell over the same bare and rocky wilderness. The wind howled across the lonely waste. On this blackest of nights I could not have made out a ghost a yard away, and the unknown highway led me into many a pitfall. Long hours after sunset I was plodding blindly on, my cloth slippers making not a sound, when I ran squarely into the arms of some kind of person whose native footwear had made his approach as noiseless as my own. Three startled male voices rang out in hoarse shrieks of “Allah!” as the trio sprang back in terror.

Before I could pass on, one of them struck a match. The howling wind blew it out instantly, but in that brief flicker I caught sight of three ugly faces under the headdress that belongs to the roving Bedouin. “Faranchee!” they screamed, and flung themselves upon the particular corner of the darkness where the match had shown me standing.

In the excitement of the moment I jumped aside so hastily that I fell off the highway. The rattling of stones under my feet told them my whereabouts, and they charged upon me again. A dozen times, in the game of hide-and-seek that followed, I felt the breath of one of the flea-bitten rascals in my face.

The Arabic rules of the game, fortunately, made the players keep up a continual howling, while I moved silently, after the fashion of the West. Helped in this unfair way, I managed to escape them until they stopped to whisper together. Then, creeping noiselessly on hands and knees, I lay hold on the highway and sped silently away, by no means certain whether I was headed toward Damascus or the coast.

An hour later the howling of dogs told me that I was near a village. Once I halted to listen for sounds of human voices. Everybody, it seemed, was asleep, for what Syrian could be awake and silent? The lights that shone from every hovel proved nothing, for Arabs are afraid of the evil spirits that lurk in the darkness and leave their lamps burning all night. I beat off the snapping curs and started on again.

Suddenly sounds of laughter and excited voices sounded from a building before me. I hurried toward it and knocked loudly on the door. The merriment ceased. For several moments there was not a sound. Then there came the slapping of slippered feet along the passageway inside, and a woman’s voice called out to me. I called back in the few Arabic words I knew: “M’abarafshee arabee! Faranchee! Fee wahed locanda? Bnam!” (“I don’t speak Arabic! Foreigner! Is there an inn? Sleep!”)

Without a word, the unknown lady slapped back along the hall. A good five minutes passed. I knocked once more, and again there came the patter of feet. This time a man’s gruff voice greeted me. I repeated what I had said before. Then I heard the sliding of many bolts and bars, the heavy door opened ever so slightly, and the muzzle of a gun was thrust out into my face. The eyes above the musket peered cautiously out into the darkness.

A moment later the door was flung wide open, and a very giant of a native, with a mustache that would have made the Kaiser jealous, stepped out, holding his clumsy gun ready for instant use. I had to laugh at his frightened look. He smiled shamefacedly, and, going back into the house, returned in a moment without his gun, and carrying a lamp and a rush mat. At one end of the building he pushed open a door that hung by one hinge, and lighted me into a room with earth floor and one window from which five of the six panes were missing. A heap of dried branches at one end showed it to be a wood-shed.

A starved-looking cur wandered in at our heels. The native drove him off, spread the mat on the ground, and brought from the house a pan of live coals. I called for food. When he returned with several bread-sheets, I drew out my handkerchief containing the coins, and began to untie it. My host shook his head fiercely and pointed several times at the ceiling to show that the missionaries had made a Christian of him and that he would not accept pay.

Barely had the native disappeared when the dog poked his ugly head through the half-open door and snarled viciously at me. He was a wolfish animal, the yellow cur so common in Syria, and in his eye gleamed a wickedness that gave him a startling likeness to the thieving nomads that rove over that drear land. I drove him off and made the door fast, built a roaring fire of twigs, and rolling up in the mat, lay down beside the blaze.

I woke from a doze to find that cur sniffing at me and showing his ugly fangs within six inches of my face. A dozen times I fastened the door against him—in vain. Had he merely bayed the moon all night it would have mattered little, for with a fire to tend I had small chance to sleep, but his silent skulking and his muffled snarls kept me wide-eyed with uneasiness until the gray of dawn peeped in at the ragged window.

The village was named Hemeh. I left it and continued my journey. The dreary hills of the day before fell quickly away. The highway sloped down a narrow, fertile valley in close company with a small river. On the banks of the river grew willows and poplars in great masses.

A bright morning sun soon made the air agreeable, although the chill of night and the mountains still hovered in the shadows. Travelers became frequent. I met peasant families driving their asses homeward from the morning market, bands of merchants on horseback, and well-to-do natives in clothes that made me think of the unlucky coat of Joseph. Here passed a camel caravan whose drivers would, perhaps, purchase just such a slave of his brothers this very day. There squatted a band of Bedouins at breakfast. Beyond rode a full-bearded sheik who reminded me of Abraham of old.

The road continued downward. The passing crowd became almost a procession. I swung, at last, round a group of hills that had hidden from view an unequaled sight. Two miles away, across a vast level plain, crossed by the sparkling river, and peopled by a battalion of soldiers drilling in the sunlight, the white city of Damascus stood out against a background of dull red hills, the morning sun gleaming on its graceful domes and slender towers. I passed on with the crowd, and was soon swallowed up in “the street called Straight”—which isn’t.