Читать книгу Working my Way Around the World - Harry Alverson Franck - Страница 10

Table of Contents

On a peaceful sea the Warwickshire sped eastward. My work was “polishin’ ’er brasses,” and I can say without boasting that the ship was brighter because I was there.

On the morning of the fifth day out, I was ordered into the hold to send up the trunks of Egyptian travelers. When I climbed on deck after the last chest, the deep blue of the sea had turned to a shabby brown, but there was no land in sight. Suddenly there rose from the sea a flat-topped building, then another and another, until a whole village lay spread out on the water before us. The houses appeared to sit like gulls on the ruddy sea. It was Port Said. Beyond the town we could see a stretch of reddish desert sand. Slowly the Warwickshire nosed her way into the canal, the anchor ran out with a rattle and roar, and there swarmed upon our decks a multitude of strange-looking people who seemed to belong to another world.

Darkness soon fell. I had signed on the Warwickshire under a promise that I might leave her at Port Said. Through all the voyage, however, my shipmates had spent the hours of the dog-watch telling me tales of the horrors that had befallen white men who became penniless among the Arabs. Perhaps my shipmates spoke truly. It seemed as if they might have done so as I sat gazing off into the blackest of nights, listening to the shrieks that rose from the maze of buildings ashore, and the snarling, scowling mobs that raced about our decks. Perhaps I should be murdered if I ventured ashore among these black tribes. Or, if I escaped murder, I might be left to die of starvation on this neck of sand.

The captain had given me leave to go on to Rangoon. An Englishman, who was returning to the Burmese district he governed, had promised me a position with good pay. It seemed foolhardy to halt in this land of rascals, when in a few days I might complete half my journey around the globe and find ready employment.

For an hour I sat staring into the black night, trying to decide whether to risk going ashore or to go on with the ship. I finally decided that I must see Palestine and Egypt, countries I had read much of in the Bible. They were lands too famous to be lightly passed by. I bade farewell to my astonished shipmates, collected my few days’ wages, and, with about nine dollars in my pocket, dropped into a boat and was rowed ashore.

At the landing I paid the dusky boatman the regular fare—the amount was posted in plain sight on the wharf. But he was not satisfied. For an hour he dogged my footsteps, howling threats or whining in a high-pitched voice, now in his native Arabic, now in such English as he could put together. But I shook him off at last, and set out to find a lodging.

It was not an easy thing to do. To be sure, I passed several hotels before which well dressed men lounged at little tables, and barefooted black waiters flitted back and forth carrying cool drinks. But to stop at such a hotel would take more money than I had had for some time. There must have been dozens of native inns among the maze of hovels into which I plunged at the first step off the avenue. But how could I tell where they were, when the only signs I could see were as meaningless to me as so many spatters of ink? Even in Holland I had been able to guess at shop names. But Arabic! I had not the least idea whether the signs I saw announced a lodging-house or the quarters of an undertaker! A long evening I pattered in and out of crooked byways, bumping now and then into a dark Arab who snarled at me and made off, and bringing up here and there in some dismal blind alley. Fearful of wandering too far from the lighted square, I turned back toward the harbor. Suddenly I caught sight of a sign in English: “Catholic Sailors’ Home.” I dashed joyfully toward it.

The Home was little more than a small reading-room. Half hidden behind the stacks of ragged magazines, sat the “manager,” a Maltese boy, huddled over paper and pencil and staring in a discouraged manner at an Italian-English grammar. I stepped forward and offered to help him, and together we waded through a very long lesson. Before we had ended, six tattered white men wandered in and carefully chose books over which to fall asleep.

“You must know,” said the young manager, as he closed the grammar, “that there am no sleepings here. And we closes at eleven. But I am fix you oop. I am shelter all these seamens, while I lose my place when the Catholic society found it out.”

He peered out into the night and locked the doors. Then he blew out the lights and awoke the sleepers. We groped our way through a long stone-paved passageway to the back of the building.

“You are getting in here,” said the Maltese, pulling open what appeared to be a heavy pair of shutters; “but be quietness.”

I climbed through after the others. A companion struck a match that lighted up a stone room, once the kitchen of the Home. Closely packed though we were, it soon grew icy cold on the stone floor. Two of the ragged men rose with cries of disgust, and crawled out through the window to tramp up and down the hall. I felt my way to a coffin-shaped cupboard in one corner, laid it lengthwise on the floor, pulled out the shelves, and, crawling inside, closed the doors above me. My sleep was unbroken until morning.

On my second afternoon in Port Said, one of my room-mates at the Home—an Austrian—wandered with me out to the break-water. We lay stretched out, watching the coming and going of the pilot-boats and the sparkle of the canal, that narrowed to a thread far away on the yellow desert.

A portly Greek approached, and asked in Italian if we wanted work. We did, of course. We followed him back to land and along the beach until we came to a hut in the native part of the city. On the earth floor sat two widemouthed stone vessels. The Greek motioned to us to seat ourselves before them, poured into them some kind of small nut, and handed each of us a stone pestle. When we had fallen to work pounding the nuts, he sat down on a stool, prepared his water-bottle pipe, and, except for a wave of the hand now and then as a signal to us to empty the vessels of the beaten mass and refill them, remained utterly motionless for the rest of the day.

Like machines we pounded hour after hour. The pestles were heavy when we began; before the day was over mine weighed at least a ton. What we were beating up, and what we were beating it up for, I do not know to this day. The Austrian said that he knew the use of the product, but fell strangely silent when I asked him to explain. Night sounds were drifting in through the door of the hut when the Greek signed to us to stop. Then he handed each of us five small piasters (12½ cents). We hurried away across the beach to a native shop where mutton sold cheaply.

Two days later I took a “deck-passage” for Beirut, and boarded an old ship flying the English flag. A crowd of Arabs, Turks, and Syrians, Christians and Mohammedans, men and women, squatted on the half-covered deck. In one place were piled a half hundred wooden gratings. What these were for was a mystery to me until my fellow passengers fell to pulling them down, one by one, and spreading their bed-clothes on them! I was the only one of all the multitude without bedding; even the lean, gaunt Bedouins, dressed in tattered filth, had each a roll of ragged blankets in which, after saying their evening prayers with many bowings toward the city of Mecca, they rolled themselves and lay down together. When I stretched out on a bare grating, the entire throng was lying huddled in a dozen separate groups.

Morning broke bright and clear. Far off to the right rose the snow-capped range of the Lebanon Mountains. I strolled anxiously about the deck. In a group of Turks I came upon two who spoke French. I began to talk with them, chiefly because I wanted to ask them questions. I told them a few of my experiences on the highways of Europe. These stories amused them greatly. Then I spoke of my intention of walking to Damascus. They shouted with astonishment. It was plain that some of them did not believe me.

“What!” cried one of the French-speaking Turks, waving a flabby hand toward the snow-banks that covered the wall-like range of mountains. “Go to Damascus on foot! Impossible! You would be buried in the snow. This country is not like Europe! There are thousands of murderous Bedouins between here and Damascus who would glory in cutting the throat of a dog of an unbeliever! Why? I have lived years in Beirut, and no man of my acquaintance, native or Frank [European], would ever undertake such a journey on foot.”

“And you would lose your way and die in the snow,” put in the other.

Throughout the morning the pair were kept busy translating for me what the others of the group said about the absolute foolishness of such an undertaking. It was a story I heard again and again while traveling in the Far East; but it was new to me then, and as I ran my eye along the snow-hooded wall that faded into hazy distance to the north and south, I half believed it.

The coast-line drew nearer. On the plain at the foot of the mountains I could see here and there well cultivated patches between dreary stretches of blood-red sand. A few minutes later we dropped anchor well out in the harbor of Beirut. Down the gangway tumbled a mighty landslide of Asiatics, men and women, large and small, dirty and half dirty, pushing, kicking, scratching and biting one another, hopelessly entangled with bundles of every thinkable shape. Shouting boatmen rowed us ashore. As we swung in against the rock, I caught a proud-looking Bedouin trying to separate me from my knapsack. A well directed push landed him in the laps of several heavily veiled women, and I sprang up a stairway cut in the face of the rock.

The city itself was miles away from the landing-place. One of the officials called an evil-looking native, clothed in a single garment that reached to his knees, and ordered him to guide me to the town. We set off through the night, heavy with the smell of oranges, along a narrow road six inches deep in the softest mud. On the outskirts of the city the native halted and began talking to me in Arabic. I shook my head. He seemed to think that I was unable to understand him because of some fault in my hearing. So he asked the question again and again, louder and more rapidly each time he repeated it. I let him shout until breath failed him and he gave up and splashed on. He halted once more, in a square reeking with mud in the center of the city, and burst forth excitedly in a jumble of words more difficult to understand than before.

“Ingleesee?” he shrieked, with his last gasp.

“No,” I answered, understanding this one word; “Americano.”

“Ha!” shouted the Arab. “Americano?” And once more he began his shouting. He seemed to be trying to explain something about my fellow countrymen, for he repeated the word “Americano” again and again. Once more he gave up trying to make me understand and struck off to the southward. I shouted “hotel” and “inn” in every language I could call to mind; but, after a few mumbles, he fell silent, and only the splash of our feet in the muddy roadway could be heard.

We left the city behind, but still the Arab plodded steadily and silently southward. Many a story of white men led into Arabic traps passed through my mind. Far out among the orange groves beyond the city, he turned into a small garden, and pointed to a lighted sign above the door of a building among the trees. It was the home of the American consul. Not knowing what else to do with a Frank who did not understand the loudest Arabic, the native had led me to the only man in Beirut whom he had heard called “Americano.”

When I had paid my bill next morning at the French inn to which I had been sent, I stepped into the office of that great tourist agency, Cook & Son, and exchanged a sovereign for so many iron and tin coins that I could hardly carry them. Then I ate a native breakfast, and, strolling down to the harbor, sat on a pier.

For a time the uproar made by shrieking Arabs, braying camels, and the rattle of ships discharging their freight, drowned all other sounds. Then suddenly I caught faintly a shout in English behind me, and turned around. A lean native in European dress and fez cap was beckoning to me from the opening of one of the narrow streets. I dropped from the pier and turned shoreward. The native ran toward me. “You speak Eengleesh?” he cried. “Yes? No? What countryman you?”

“American.”

“No? Not American?” shrieked the native, dancing up and down. “You not American? Ha! ha! ver’ fine. I American one time, too. I be one time sailor on American warsheep Brooklyn. You write Engleesh too? No? Yes? Ver’ fine! You like job? I got letters write in Engleesh! Come, you!”

He led the way through the swarming streets, shouting answers to the questions I asked him. He said his name was Abdul Razac Bundak and his business that of “bumboat man.” That is to say, he sold supplies to ships, acted as guide for officers ashore, led tourists on sight-seeing trips, and in the busy season ran a sailors’ boarding-house.

Some distance back from the harbor, in a shoe-shop kept by his uncle, I sat down to write three letters for him. By the time these were finished he had discovered that I knew other languages, and I wrote three more, two in French and one in Spanish. They were business letters to ship captains who often put in at Beirut. The bumboat man paid me two unknown coins and invited me to dinner in a neighboring shop.

In the days that followed, our “company,” as Abdul called it, was the busiest in Beirut. I wrote many letters for him and for other Arabs in the city who had heard of me. Had those men been less indolent they might have doubled their business. But they did not like to hurry. Again and again, while telling me what to write, they would drift away into the land of dreams with a sentence left half finished on their lips. The palm of the left hand was the writing-desk, and it was always with difficulty that I stirred them up to clear a space on their littered stands. I did not get much pay for this work; but I added something each day to the scrap iron in my pocket.

When business was slow, Abdul could think of nothing better to do than to eat and drink. Let his cigarette burn out, and he rose with a yawn, and we rambled away through the windings of the bazaars to some tiny tavern. The keepers were always delighted to be awakened from their dreams by our “company.” While we sat on a log or an upturned basket and sipped a glass of some native drink, Abdul spun long tales of the faranchee world. Some of these stories could not have been true; but, with a live faranchee to serve as illustration, the shop-keepers were satisfied and listened open-mouthed.

With every drink the keeper served a half dozen tiny dishes of hazelnuts, radishes, peas in the pod, cold squares of boiled potatoes, berries, and vegetables known only in Arabia. But Abdul was gifted with an unfailing appetite, and at least once after every business deal he led the way to one of the many eating-shops facing the busiest streets and squares. In a gloomy, cave-like shop, the front of which was all door, stood two long, rough tables, with long, rough benches beside them. The proprietor sat near the entrance behind a great block of brick and mortar over which simmered a score of black kettles. I read the bill of fare by raising the cover of each kettle in turn, chose a dish that seemed less mysterious than the rest, picked up a large ring-shaped loaf and a bottle of water from a bench, and withdrew to the back of the shop. Whatever I chose, it was almost certain to contain mutton. The Arabian cook, however, sets nothing over the fire until he has cut it into small pieces. Each dinner was a stew of some kind, of differing tastes and colors.

Abdul did not often concern himself with the contents of the kettles, for his prime favorite was a dish prepared by running a row of tiny cubes of liver and kidneys on an iron bar, and turning them over and over above glowing coals. I too should have ordered this delicacy more often, had not Abdul, with his incurable “Eengleesh,” persisted in calling it “kittens.”

With all its mud and careless disorder, there was something very pleasing about this corner of the Arab world: the lazy droning of its shop-keepers, the roll of the incoming sea, the twitter of birds that spoke of summer and seemed to contradict the calendar—above all, the picturesque orange trees bending under the ripening fruit that perfumed the soft air, with the snow-drifts almost within stone’s throw on the peaks above.

For all that, I should not have remained so long in Beirut by choice, for the road was long before me, and I had planned to cover a certain part of it each day. But my friends in the East could not understand why I was anxious to go at once. “To-morrow is as good as to-day; wait until to-morrow,” they would say, when some small matter had kept me from starting on the day I had planned. But when to-morrow came, they repeated the same words. They could not understand my hurry.

There was no one in Beirut who could tell me which road led to Damascus. Abdul threw up his hands in horror when I spoke to him of my intended journey. “Impossible!” he shrieked. “There is not road. You be froze in the snow before the Bedouins cut your liver. You no can go. Business good. Damascus no good. Ver’ col’ in Damascus now.”

One afternoon, however, while in unusually good spirits, he admitted that there was a road leading to Damascus, and that caravans had been known to pass over it. But even then he insisted that the journey could not be made on foot.

The bumboat man left me next morning just outside the city, and a bend in the road soon hid him from view. For an hour the highway was perfectly level. On each side were rich gardens and orange groves, thronged with dusky men and women clad in flowing sheets. Soon all this changed. The road wound upward, the delicate orange tree gave place to the sturdy olive, instead of fertile gardens there were now rocky hillsides all about, and the only persons to be seen were now and then an Arab, grim and scowling, leading or riding a swaying camel.

The way was lonely and silent. A rising wind sighed mournfully through the gullies and trees. The summer breeze of the sea-level turned chilly. I hunted until I found the sunny side of a large rock before attempting to eat the lunch in my knapsack. Farther up the cedar forests began. Here and there groups of peasants were digging on the wayside slopes. To the north and south I could see flat-roofed villages clinging to mountain-sides.

How strange and foreign seemed everything about me! The dress and tools of the peasants, the food in my knapsack, everything was so different from the world I had lived in. If I spoke to those I met, they answered back in a strange jumble of words, wound the folds of their queer garments about them, and hurried on. If I caught sight of a village clock, its hands pointed to six when the hour was noon. Even the familiar name of the famous city to which I was bound was meaningless to the natives, for they called it “Shaam.”

My pronunciation of the word must have been at fault; for, though I stood long at a fork in the road in the early forenoon, shouting “Shaam” at each passer-by, I took the wrong branch at last. I tramped for some hours along a rapidly disappearing highway before I suspected my mistake. Even then I kept on, for I was not certain that I was going in the wrong direction. At last the route led forth from a cutting in the hills, and the shimmering sea almost at my feet showed me that I was marching due southward.

Two peasants appeared above a rise of ground beyond. As they drew near I pointed off down the road and shouted, “Shaam?” The pair halted wonderingly in the center of the highway some distance from me. “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!” I repeated, striving to give the word a pronunciation that they could understand. The peasants stared open-mouthed, drew back several paces, and peered down the road and back at me a dozen times, as if they were not sure whether I was calling their attention to some wonder of nature, or trying to get them to turn around long enough to pick their pockets. Then a slow, half-hearted smile broke out on the features of the quicker-witted. He stood first on one leg, then on the other, squinted along the highway once more, and began to repeat after me: “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!”

“Aywa, Shaam!” I cried.

He turned to his companion. They talked together so long that I thought they had forgotten me. Then both began to shake their heads so forcibly that the muscles of their necks stood out like steel cords. Two broad grins wrinkled their leathery faces. They stretched out their arms to the southward and burst forth in unmusical duet: “La! la! la! la! la! Shaam! La! la! la! la! la!” The Arab says “la” when he means “no.” I turned around and hurried back the way I had come.

Dusk was falling when I came a second time to a two-row village facing the highway. As I expected, there was not an inn, or anything like one, in the place. I had seen enough of the Arabian, however, to know that he has his share of curiosity. So I sat down on a large rock at the end of the village.

In three minutes a small crowd had collected. In ten, half the population was swarming around me and roaring at my useless effort to make myself understood. They stood about me, grinning and chattering, for a good half hour before one of the band motioned to me to follow him, and turned back into the village. The crowd followed me, closely examining every part of my clothing, grinning, smirking, running from one side to the other, lest they lose some point in the make-up of so strange a creature, and babbling the while like an army of apes.

The leader turned off the highway toward the largest building in the village. Ten yards from the door, he halted. The crowd formed a half circle, leaving me in the center, and then one and all began to shout something at the top of their lungs.

A girl of some sixteen years appeared at the door. “Taala hena!” (“Come here!”) roared the chorus. The girl ran down the steps. A roar as of an angry sea burst forth, as every member of the company stretched out an arm toward me. Plainly each was determined that he, and not his neighbor, should be the one to introduce this strange being.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” (“Do you speak German?”) shrieked the girl in my ear.

“Ja wohl.” (“Yes, indeed”), I answered.

The rabble fell utterly silent at the first word, and I asked to be directed to an inn.

“There is no hotel in our city of Bhamdoon,” replied the girl, with flashing eyes. “We should be insulted. In this house with my family lives a German missionary lady. You must stop here.”

She led the way to the door. The missionary met me on the steps with a cry of delight. She explained that she had not seen a European in many months.

“What would supper and lodging cost me here?” Luckily, the German lady was hard of hearing. The girl gave me a quick glance, half scornful, half astonished, which reminded me that such a question is an insult in the land of Arabs.

“The lady is busy now,” said the girl. “Come and visit my family.” She led the way along a hall and threw open a door. I pulled off my cap.

“Keep it on,” said my guide, “and leave your shoes there.”

She stepped out of her own loose slippers and into the room. It was square and low. The stone floor was half covered with mats and cushions. In the center glowed a small sheet-iron stove; and around three of the walls ran a long cushioned seat. Two men, two women, and several children were seated in a half circle on the floor, their legs folded under them. They rose without a word as I entered. The girl placed a cushion for me on the floor. The family sat down again and carefully and slowly folded their legs as before. Then, after they were firmly seated, one and all in turn, according to age, cried “Lailtak saeedee” (Good evening).

In the center of the group were three large bowls, one of lentils and another of chopped-up potatoes in oil. A third contained a delicacy made of sour milk, half soup and half pudding, that is a great favorite among the Arabs. On the floor, beside each member of the family, lay several sheets of bread, half a yard wide and as thin as cardboard. The head of the house pushed the bowls toward me, ordered a stack of bread to be placed beside my cushion, and motioned me to eat. I stared helplessly at the bowls, for there was neither knife, fork, nor spoon in sight. The girl, however, knowing the ways of faranchees from years in a mission school in Beirut, explained my difficulty to her father. He cast a scornful look at me, begged my pardon, through his daughter, for being so impolite as to eat a morsel before his guest had begun, tore a few inches from a bread-sheet, and, folding it between his fingers, picked up a pinch of lentils and ate. I lost no time in following his example.

A wonderful invention is this Arab bread. If one buys food in a native bazaar, it is wrapped in a bread-sheet, and a very good wrapper it is, for it requires a good grip and a fair pair of muscles to tear it. A bread-sheet takes the place of many dishes. It makes a splendid cover for pots and pans; it does well as a waiter’s tray. Never have I seen it used to cover roofs, nor as shaving paper; but, then, the Arab is slow and he may not have thought of making use of it in those ways yet. As an article of food, however, this bread is not an entire success. The taste is not unpleasant, but ten minutes’ chewing makes far less impression on it than on a rubber mat. The bread I ate that night must have been very old, for it would fall into pieces when I used it as a spoon. My host picked up one of my sheets, held it against the glowing stove with the flat of his hand, and returned it. It bent as easily as cloth and was much more agreeable to the taste than before.

The younger man rolled cigarettes for himself and his father. They asked me questions, which the girl repeated to me in German. She was about to tell them my answers, when there came a tap at the door and a few words in Arabic that caused the family to jump hurriedly to their feet. “Sheik! sheik!” they whispered excitedly. The children were whisked into one corner.

The door was flung open, and there entered the room an under-sized man of about sixty. Long, flowing robes enveloped his form, a turban-wound fez perched almost merrily on his head, and his feet were bare, for he had dropped his slippers at the door. His face, deeply wrinkled, with a long scar across one cheek, was browned and weather-beaten by the wild storms that sometimes rage over the Lebanon.

The sheik greeted the head of the family, took a seat near me on the divan, bowed low to each person present, bowed again when they each returned his greeting, and then with a wave of his hand invited them to be seated. The newcomer had quite plainly been attracted to the house because he had heard that a faranchee was visiting the family. He was asking questions about me, as I could tell by his gestures and the few words I understood. The family began eagerly explaining and telling him how they supposed I happened to be in that part of the world. For a time the sheik listened without showing the least surprise. He sat there puffing at a cigarette as quietly as if it were nothing new to have faranchees wander into his town on foot at night.

At the end of his story, however, the head of the house remarked that I was on my way to “Shaam” on foot. This news was as astonishing as he could have wished. The sheik fairly bounded into the air, threw his cigarette at the open stove, and burst forth excitedly. The girl explained his words. He said it was “impossible,” it “couldn’t be done”; and at the close of his speech he declared that, as village mayor or sheik, he would not permit me to continue on such a foolhardy undertaking. How many weapons did I carry? None? What—no weapon? Travel to far-off Damascus without being armed? Why, his own villagers never ventured along the highway to the nearest towns without their guns! he would not hear of it! And he was still talking excitedly when the missionary came to invite me to a second supper.

I bade farewell to the family early next morning, swung my knapsack over my shoulder and limped down to the road. But Bhamdoon was not yet done with me. In the center of the highway, in front of the little shop that he kept, stood the sheik and several of his townsmen. With great politeness he invited me to step inside. My feet were still swollen and blistered from the long tramp of the day before, for the cloth slippers of Port Said offered no more protection from the sharp stones of the highway than a sheet of paper; so I accepted the invitation. The village head placed a stool for me in front of the shop, where everybody walking up or down the road could see me.

It soon began to look as if I were on exhibition as some strange animal that had been discovered, for the sheik pointed me out with delight to every passer-by. It was plain, too, that he was making use of the moment to collect some village tax. For on the floor beside me stood an earthenware pot, and as soon as the visitors had looked me over from all sides, the sheik invited them to drop into it a bishleek (ten cents). Not a man passed without giving something; for the command of a sheik of a Syrian village is a law to all its people.

After I had sat there for some time, a villager I had not yet seen appeared and began talking to me in English. I learned that he had once lived in Maine, where he had earned money enough to live in ease in his native country, to which he had returned years before. He insisted that I visit his house near by. While I was there he fell to tucking bread-sheets, black olives, raisins, and pieces of sugar-cane into my knapsack, shouting all the while of his undying love for America and things American. Out of mere pride for his dreary country, he took care, on his way back to the shop, to point out a narrow path that wound up the steep slope of the neighboring range of mountains.

“That,” he said, “leads to the Damascus road; but no man can journey to Damascus on foot.”

The earthenware pot was almost full when I took my seat again on the stool. I turned to my new acquaintance.

“What special taxes is the sheik gathering this morning?” I demanded.

“Eh! What?” cried the former New Englander, following the direction of my finger. “The pot? Why, don’t you know what that’s for?”

“No,” I answered.

“Why, that is a collection the sheik is taking up to buy you a ticket to Damascus on the railroad.”

I picked up my knapsack from the floor, and stepped into the highway. The sheik and several bystanders threw themselves upon me to hold me back. It was no use trying to escape from a dozen horny hands. I permitted myself to be led back to the stool, and sat down with the knapsack across my knees. The sheik addressed me in soothing tones, as if he were trying to coax me to wait, pointing to the pot with every third word. The others went back to their seats on the floor, rolled new cigarettes, and became quiet once more. With one leap I sprang from the stool into the street, and set off at top speed down the highway, a screaming, howling, ever-increasing, but ever more distant crowd at my heels.

Half an hour later I reached the top of a neighboring range of mountains, and slid down the opposite slope on to the highway to Damascus.