Читать книгу Sketches of Central Asia (1868) - Armin Vambéry - Страница 11

Table of Contents

The third instance occurred to me when waiting for the arrival of the Herat caravan on the banks of the Oxus, during the hot days of August, in the company of the Lebab Turkomans. I dwelt in the court of a deserted mosque, and in the evenings the Turkomans usually brought with them one of their collections of songs or ballads, from which I had to read to them aloud, and it gave me especial pleasure to witness the undivided attention with which they listened to the deeds of some popular hero, while the silence of the night air around us was only broken by the hollow murmur of the rolling waters of the Oxus. One evening our reading lasted till near midnight. I felt rather tired, and, unmindful of the advice I had often received, not to sleep in the immediate proximity of ruined buildings, I stretched myself out beside a wall, and soon fell sound asleep. After about an hour I was suddenly awakened by an indescribably violent pain in my foot, and jumping up and screaming aloud, I felt as if hundreds of poisoned needles were shooting through my leg, and concentrating in one small point near the big toe of my right foot. My screams awakened the eldest of the Turkomans, who slept near me, and without questioning me, he exclaimed, "Poor Hadji, a scorpion has bitten thee, and that during the unlucky period of the Saratan (the dog days!) May God help thee!" With these words he seized my foot, and bound it up round the ancle with such violence as if he were going to cut it in two, then searching in all haste with his lips for the wounded spot, he sucked with such force that I felt it all through my body. Another soon took his place, and two more bandages having been applied they left me with these words of comfort, that, if it be the will of Allah, between now and the hour of the next morning prayer, it would be seen whether I should be released from pain, or freed from the follies of this world of vanity.

Although I felt completely maddened by the itching, pricking and burning, which kept increasing more and more in violence, yet I remembered the legend of the scorpions of Belkh, well known for their venomous nature even in ancient times. The reasonable apprehension of death rendered the pain still more unbearable, and that, after many hours of suffering, I really did surrender all hopes of recovery, was shown by the fact that, forgetting my incognito, I began to pour out my lament in expressions and sounds which, as the Tartars afterwards told me, appeared to them extremely droll, since they are in the habit of using them when shouting for joy. It is remarkable that the pain spread in a few minutes from the toe to the top of the head, but only on the right side, and kept flowing up and down me like a stream of fire. No words can describe the torment I had to undergo the hour after midnight. Loathing any longer to live, I was about to dash my head to pieces by beating it upon the ground, but my companions observed my intention and tied me fast to a tree. Thus I lay for hours, half fainting, whilst the cold sweat of death was running down me, and my eyes turned fixedly towards the stars. The Pleiades were gradually sinking in the west, and whilst awaiting in perfect consciousness the voice that calls to prayer, or rather the break of morning, a gentle sleep fell upon me, from which I was soon roused by the monotonous la illah il Allah.

No sooner was I fully awake when I was sensible of a faint diminution of the pain. The pricking and burning disappeared more and more, in the same way as it had come, and the sun had not yet risen a lance's height over the horizon when I was able, though weak and exhausted, to rise to my feet. My companions assured me that the devil, having entered my body through the bite of the scorpion, had been scared away by the morning prayer, a fact I dared not of course discredit. But that terrible night will for ever remain engraven on my memory.

It is these three events which were the critical moments in my adventures in Central Asia. As to the rest, the many curious eyes that scrutinised me, the various suspicions I laboured under, as well as the unspeakable fatigues of travelling in the guise of a beggar, all these privations and obstacles have left behind but few sad remembrances. The fascinations in seeing those strange countries, for which my eyes were longing from the earliest days of my youth, possessed in itself a charm at once animating and invigorating, for, except in the few cases just mentioned, I felt always particularly cheerful and happy. This much is certain, that I often miss, in my present civilised European life, the bodily and mental activity of those days, and who knows but that I may, in after years, wish that time to return, when, enveloped in tatters and without shelter, but vigorous and high in spirits, I wandered through the steppes of Central Asia.