‘I’m only trying to make you see reason.’ She’s mad, he thought. Another eccentric English woman with illusions of grandeur. History was thick with them. Lady Hester Stanhope galloping about in turban and trousers, Gertrude Bell dodging Turkish officials all over Syria, Sarah Lane the girl who stopped the revolution. No wonder the Arabs are sick of us. It’s time we stayed home.
‘Mr Crawe,’ said Ishmael. ‘I think Miss Lane is absolutely right. I admire her sense of honour. Why can’t she come with us tomorrow?’
‘No, Ishmael! No! No! No!’
Sarah got up abruptly. ‘Thank you, Mr Ishmael, for your kindness. Good night, Mr Crawe. Please don’t bother to see me out.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He spoke stiffly, for he felt ashamed. Not for having tried to dissuade her—he believed sincerely that he had been right advising her to hand the letters over to the police—but for not having been honest in his reasons.
Sarah pressed the lift bell, but no lift came to her summons. She assumed it was out of order, though what had happened was that a Saudi Arabian on the fifth floor had left the door open so that the lift would be waiting for him if he should want to go out, a practice that was indulged in by most of the people in the block for reasons of convenience for themselves and revenge upon their neighbours.
Sarah therefore descended the stairway, treading carefully to avoid pieces of orange peel and melon rind that had slopped over from garbage tins; the garbage collectors, either excited or intimidated by elements in the present crisis, had not been on their rounds that morning.
She had reached the ground floor and was approaching the short flight of steps that led into the street when she heard footsteps on the stairs behind her, and the sound of someone calling her name brought her to a halt.
‘Miss Lane! Miss Lane!’ Ishmael, puffing with exertion, hurried across the foyer toward her. ‘Please wait.’
The foyer was dark, for the globe in the light that was usually kept burning there had been broken some weeks before by revellers returning late from a party. The bottom steps were lit by the street light. Ishmael did not come down them, but hung back in the shadow. His hands twisted one within the other, nervously.
‘I’ll take you, Miss Lane,’ he whispered. ‘You come along tomorrow at nine o’clock. I’ll take you.’
‘But can you? Won’t Mr Crawe be there?’
‘Oh, he never goes on these trips. He can’t bear tourists.’
A car slid by and though Sarah could not see his face, she had the impression that he watched it in the way people whose minds are distraught stare at some insignificant thing nearby, longing to escape into it from themselves.
Why does he want to help me, she wondered. For Ishmael’s manner suggested a desperate boldness, and alarm bordering on terror. Was it pure perversity because his friend had opposed their going, the kind of impulse that makes a Beirut motorist plunge on against the stop signs? Or had her adventure fired his imagination? Perhaps he liked her for championing Colonel Ahmed, and for being stubborn, foolhardy and courageous, all qualities with which the Arabs were abundantly endowed and which they admired when they came across them in other people.
‘He said once,’ Ishmael continued in an abstracted voice, ‘that if he had to listen to one more American saying it was just like California, he’d shut up shop and go back to London.’
But as Sarah smiled he became suddenly agitated. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Lane. I’m absolutely devoted to him. If it hadn’t been for Mr Crawe I don’t know where I would be now—penniless and in jail at that—twice. Except it would only be once because I’d still be there from the first time. You know what the police are like once they get their hooks into you. I could never repay him for what he’s done, but you know, a man wants to call his soul his own.’
Another car swept past. Ishmael stepped back. She saw his plump form recede into gloom by the lift. He hesitated, then turned and hurried up the stairs.
C H A P T E R 9
Everyone conversant with romantic literature knows well that the muezzin, that beautiful haunting call that rings throughout the Muslim East, rouses the sleeper from his morning couch. The occupants of the Hanouches’ house had little hope of defying this tradition, for the mosque in an adjoining street was liberally fitted with loudspeakers, and the voice of its Iman bawled relentlessly through their open windows.
Sarah lay for a moment, listening to this melodious din, then got up and dressed.
She found Mrs Hanouche in Nadea’s sitting room listening to the early morning news from Cairo. The old lady sat on a divan near the window, a cup of coffee precariously tilted and clattering in its saucer as her hand trembled, her head inclined slightly toward the wireless set, which gave out a spate of truculent Arabic from a green profusion of potted ferns. Sarah could not understand the commentary but she could see that it displeased Mrs Hanouche, who scowled, and every now and again emitted exclamations of indignation. After a few moments the news was given in English.
‘Arab brothers, people of Lebanon, what are you waiting for? How long will you continue to suffer under the yoke of the criminals that rule you? Only yesterday another hero and martyr of the freedom-loving Arab peoples, Colonel Raschid Ahmed—that jewel in the forehead of the peace-loving Arab nation—was shot down and trampled in your streets, was murdered and spat upon by cowardly Arab haters under the thumb of the imperialist gangsters … Arise!’
‘The assassins!’ cried little Mrs. Hanouche, her coffee cup trembling violently in her had. ‘The liars! The filthy liars! Listen to their lies, Mademoiselle Sarah. What is to become of us? What can we do? These murderers will cut our throats while we sleep in our beds. Forty years I have lived in this house, forty years.’
Sarah rescued the coffee cup. ‘Is there anything in L’Orient about Colonel Ahmed?’
But Mrs Hanouche was too excited to take the question in. ‘You hear what they are saying, Mademoiselle Sarah? There are fanatics in this country. This is the kind of encouragement they want. There was a time when if people wanted to attack us they had to send armies in to do it. People think twice about that. It’s a big step, and even maniacs hesitate to make it. But they can go on day and night stabbing us to the heart with this monstrous weapon, this diabolical invention.’
Sarah was turning over cushions looking for the morning papers. ‘L’Orient—’
‘There is no morning paper,’ cried Mrs Hanouche. ‘They threw a bomb through the window last night. All the papers are on strike. The suks are closed.’
From what window a bomb had been thrown and where Mrs Hanouche got this information from, Sarah could not find out, for the old lady was too excited to offer rational explanations, but it proved in part at least to be correct; there was no morning paper.
The strike, however, had not yet extended to Rhas Beirut and there was little to inform the casual observer what direction events were taking. Sarah, leaving for the travel agency a little before nine, stepped out into a brilliant morning. The sun, shining as though in defiance of dark events, touched with a satin sheen the new vine leaves in the Hanouches’ garden and burnished the green skins of watermelons in the stall across the road. The only evidence of the crisis was in the still-uncollected garbage spilling over from dustbins onto pavements and into gutters.
She was not the first of the Baalbek party to arrive: two Frenchmen equipped with a quantity of cameras, tripods and photographic gadgets were already waiting by a large red car outside the agency office, and Nigel and Margaret Thorne, also with cameras, were approaching from the opposite direction.
‘Hello, are you coming to Baalbek too?’ called out Margaret in a tone of evident relief.
Oh, damn! Those ghastly English, thought Sarah. ‘I thought you were leaving,’ she said.
‘We are. We’ve got seats on the Monday plane. But it seemed such a pity to miss Baalbek and they said in the hotel there was nothing to worry about. Though I don’t know. Coming along in the tram … I wouldn’t go i
n a taxi … and on the street corner …’
‘Margaret, it was only a friendly argument,’ put in Nigel, looking down at her indulgently.
Sarah noticed this glance and the tender look with which Margaret returned it. So they are in love, she thought and ceased to resent them. She looked around her, impatient to set off. Where was Ishmael? What were they waiting for?
‘As a matter of fact,’ Margaret confided, lowering her voice, ‘we were rather forced into this. Last night we rang up to see if Mr Ishmael, that’s the guide who’s going with us, was still in jail. You remember yesterday we told you how he had been arrested because the police found guns in the back of the car? Well, he answered the telephone himself and persuaded us into this trip today. I wasn’t very keen with everything so unsettled, although of course I want to see Baalbek, but Nigel didn’t want to give him the idea that we hadn’t any confidence in him after what had happened. These people are terribly sensitive.’
This latter pronouncement embodied Margaret’s new approach to the Middle East; she was not disliking it any the less, but a new tenderness between Nigel and herself had made her anxious to accept his views, which meant doing them justice. She was essentially a serious person, constantly examining her ideas of right conduct; she wanted to know what ought to be done, and then to do it. Nigel’s attitude to the world around him, his eagerness to take it all on his own shoulders, she felt to be noble and unselfish. She wanted to emulate him—not because he was Nigel, but because he was right. They had had a long serious talk about it in bed the night before.
‘We are ambassadors, Margaret,’ he told her, as he tentatively caressed her thigh. ‘The future rests with people like us. If you and I can’t show these people that we like and respect them …’
‘But I don’t like them’ she told him. ‘Perhaps other people can like them—I’m sure you do—but I can’t. I like people to be sensible and unemotional and orderly. They have all the qualities I don’t admire.’
Nigel closed his eyes, a way he had of ignoring a remark that he did not want to answer, but as it was pitch dark this manouvere was lost on his wife. ‘Understanding and tolerance …’ he continued, and drawing a little closer, moved his hand over her belly.
Margaret’s flesh jumped nervously under his fingers. ‘Well, why can’t they be tolerant of us?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Why should they? They have every reason to hate us.’
‘But it hasn’t all been our fault. I was reading that history of the Middle East last night and it says that if it hadn’t been for the quarrel between Egypt and Transjordan, the Jews would never …’ But as Nigel’s arm encircled her she began to lose the thread of her discourse. ‘I forget exactly what it was, but anyway the Egyptians behaved abominably.’
Nigel did not want the blame portioned out. He had claimed the lot and could not bear to give any of it up. ‘Of course, after centuries of foreign domination …’
‘But that was the Turks, not us,’ murmured Margaret.
They left it at that while they paused to make love and were too sleepy afterward to continue their discussions. But at breakfast next morning Nigel, recollecting that Margaret had had the last word, reopened the conversation, supporting his case with quotations from the Short History of the Middle East. These had been carefully underlined so he was able to put his finger on them quickly, and Margaret, who had read the book with an open mind and not marked anything, was unable to put up an adequate defence. She allowed herself to be persuaded and set out that morning fortified by a solemn vow to be tolerant and understanding.
This new resolution had, however, been quickly shaken. The tram ride had been a mistake. There had been an incident on a street corner near the American university. Over the heads of the small crowd she had seen two men swinging their fists about, the gleeful little boys, the two indifferent police; moreover the tram itself had been dirty, crowded and, according to a fat man seated on her right, possibly contained a concealed bomb that might explode at any moment, scattering on the road dismembered passengers.
By the time they reached the agency she was wishing they had never set out. How much more pleasant to be back in the hotel, in bed with Nigel. They could have made love again. Memory swept over her and soothed her. She looked at Sarah and, informed by her new experience, thought, She’s in love too, and then, without envy, How beautiful she is!
‘I wonder what’s holding them up,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s hot, isn’t it? Let’s get into the shade.’
They drew into the shadow of the agency doorway and, as on the day before, Sarah, turning her back upon the street, looked at the photographs displayed in the window.
Her gaze moved heedlessly from one to the other—from the six famous columns of Baalbek to the palace at Beit ed Din, to the source of the Adonis River at Akfa. An impulse moved her, as in response to vague, uneasy premonition, and raising her eyes she looked beyond into the shadowy interior of the office.
At the back of the room by the big office desk a man was standing, looking out at her.
Surprised, but not alarmed, Sarah stared back at him. He did not look away, indeed he seemed hardly to realise that he had been observed, imagining that the office window shielded him from view, and something in his expression made her feel that he had been watching her for some little time. He looked desolately sad and frightened. Good God! she thought. It’s Ishmael!
Recovering from her astonishment, she smiled. Abruptly he moved forward, putting out a hand to open the door. It swung open and he came out into the sunlight in all his plump, happy, perspiring reality, a reality so unlike the watchful, sad-eyed man gazing through the office window that she could hardly believe she had seen him there and put the encounter out of her mind.
‘Hello! Hello!’ he cried. ‘Hello, Mrs Thorne! So you found your way all right. We’ll be off in a jiffy.’
‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ said Margaret. ‘But, Mr Ishmael, are you sure it’s all right to be going to Baalbek? I mean, what about the crisis? Someone in the hotel was saying it’s one of the spots where there’s always trouble because of being near to Syria.’
Ishmael laughed. Far from being unhappy, he was excited and gay. ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Thorne, we’ll look after you. That’s our job. In any case, nobody in this country is going to do anything to tourists in Baalbek. It’s the biggest thing they’ve got.’
‘But there are a lot of Muslims in the Bekaa.’
‘Mrs Thorne, I’m a Muslim and I’m not going to eat you.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that!’ said Margaret, blushing furiously.
‘Oh, she didn’t mean that!’ cried Nigel.
‘What I mean is,’ said Margaret, ‘don’t the Syrians feel that the Beka’a ought to belong to them, so that whenever there’s any trouble—’
‘Mrs Thorne, Baalbek doesn’t belong to the Muslims or to the Christians either, or to the Syrians or the Lebanese. It belongs to you.’ He ended grandly, ‘And to Miss Lane, and to the Anglo-Lebanese Travel Agency.’
‘It belongs,’ Sarah put in, ‘to Jupiter.’
‘By Jove,’ cried Ishmael. ‘That’s rather good. It belongs to Jupiter! I say, did you hear what I said? By Jove!’ Laughing immoderately, Sarah thought, at his own witticism, he wheeled about and hurried over to the two Frenchmen. Soon he called out to them, ‘Come on ! We’re off now. I’m going to drive because that fellow disappeared, you know, and in any case we’ve sacked him. Will you all hop in?’
Everyone moved over to the car. The Frenchmen and their photographic gear took up most of the back and the Thornes chose the centre seats. Sarah had just taken her place in front when the agency door opened a second time. Alan came out of it. It swung to with a crash behind him. Standing on the pavement, his hands on his hips, he regarded the party with an expression of bitter irony. He showed no surprise in seeing Sarah—he must have been watching them through the window, as Ishmael had watched, a moment before. She waited, wondering what he intended to do. Sure
ly he would not dare order her out of the car. She gazed at him with an expression at once defiant and supplicating.
She was right in her guess. Alan had been watching them for some moments from the office and had been wondering whether or not to interfere. He had expected Sarah to be there; when Ishmael hurried out the night before, he had guessed that it was to make some arrangement with her about the trip to Chakra, and he had come into the office that morning in the certainty of seeing her. At the time he had only wanted to verify his guess. But when he saw them together he became angry and felt he hated her. She looked so fresh, so vivid, so expectant. Her smile wounded him with its insolent happiness. She looked radiantly beautiful and this radiance at such a time seemed a point she had scored against him.
He turned angrily to Ishmael, who, caught out in guilt, rushed for the car and, scrambling into the front seat, gripped the wheel.
‘Ishmael!’
‘Right ho! Mr Crawe,’ gasped Ishmael. ‘We’re all set! We’re off now. Everything’s ready.’
Abruptly Alan made up his mind to go with them. Beyond this resolution his intentions were vague—his motives also. Had he set out to thwart the wishes of this romantic Syrian, this figure which, even as a ghost, so far outshone him? Or was he protecting an ignorant girl from her own folly? But there was not time to establish the validity of his impulses, even had he wished to do so, and as it happened he preferred not to go into these rather delicate questions. He simply told himself that somebody responsible ought to go along and keep an eye on things. He even indulged in the exasperated reflection that such responsibilities always fell to his lot. Why did he have to chase around cleaning up Ishmael’s messes? Why was it always he who had to be unattractively cautious?
He strode over to the car and, thrusting his head through the window, spoke to Sarah. ‘So you’re going on this wild goose chase?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Alan opened the door. ‘Move over, Ishmael. I’ll drive.’
Arms for Adonis Page 11