“ ’Ain el ’Awâsil burns,” said Fawwâz. “A shepherd has set it alight.”
There was a small pitch-well an hour away to the south-east, and if springs that burn when the tinder touches them are more logical than spirits that issue from a bottle when the seal is broken, then the explanation of Fawwâz may be accepted. But at that moment I could not stay to think the problem out, for if it was hot riding, sitting still was intolerable, and we were not anxious to linger when every half-hour’s march meant half-an-hour of dangerous country behind us. From noon to sunset the desert is stripped of beauty. Hour after hour we journeyed on, while the bare forbidding hills drew away from us on the right, and the plain ahead rolled out illimitable. We saw no living creature, man or beast, but an hour from ’Ain el ’As{.}fûrîyeh, where we had lunched, we came upon a deep still pool in an outcrop of rock, the water sufficiently sweet to drink. This spot is called Jelîb esh Sheikh; it contains several such pools, said Fawwâz, and he added that the water had appeared there of a sudden two years before, but that now it never diminished, nor rose higher in the rocky clefts. Just beyond the pool we crossed the Wâdî Muḥammadî, which stretched westwards to the receding ridges of the Gar’at ej Jemâl, and east to the Euphrates; it was dry and blotched with an evil-looking crust of sulphur. Fawwâz turned his camel’s head a little to the east of south and began to look anxiously for landmarks. We hoped to find at Abu Jîr an encampment of the Deleim, and, eagerly as we wished to avoid the scattered horsemen of the tribe by day, it was essential that we should pass the night near their tents. The desert is governed by old and well-defined laws, and the first of these is the law of hospitality. If we slept within the circuit of a sheikh’s encampment he would be “malzûm ’aleinâ” (responsible for us) and not one of his people would touch us; but if we lay out in the open we should court the attack of raiders and of thieves. Two hours from the Wâdî Muḥammadî we reached a little tell, from the top of which we sighted the ’alâmah (the landmarks) of Abu Jîr, a couple of high-piled mounds of stones. An hour later they lay to the east of us, and we saw still farther to the south-east the black line of tamarisk bushes that indicated the oasis. But it was another hour before we got up to it, and the sun was very low in the sky when we set foot on the hard black surface that gives the place its name. There was no time to lose, and we embarked recklessly on the “Father of Asphalt,” only to be caught in the fresh pitch that had been spread out upon the wilderness by streams of sulphurous water. We dismounted and led our animals over the quaking expanse, coasting round the head-waters of the springs—there are, I believe, eight of them—and experimenting in our own persons on half-congealed lakes of pitch before we allowed the camels to venture across them. The light faded while we were thus engaged, and seeing that too much caution might well be our undoing, I shouted to Fattûḥ to follow, and struck out eastwards. Fattûḥ was half inclined to look upon our case as a result of premeditated treachery on the part of Fawwâz, but I had noted unmistakable signs of fear and bewilderment in the bearing of the latter, and at all hazards I was resolved not to sleep in a pool of tar. We made for a line of tamarisk bushes behind which lay a thin haze of smoke, and as we broke through the brushwood we beheld a black tent crouching in the hollow. We rode straight up to the door and gave the salaam.
“And upon you peace,” returned the astonished owner.
“What Arabs are you, and where is your sheikh’s tent?” said I, in an abrupt European manner.
He was taken aback at being asked so many questions and answered reluctantly, “We are the Deleim, and the tent of Muḥammad el ’Abdullah lies yonder.”
We turned away, and I whispered to Fattûḥ not to hasten, and above all to approach the sheikh’s tent from in front, lest we should be mistaken for such as come upon an evil errand. He fell behind me, and with as much dignity as a tired and dusty traveller can muster, I drew rein by the tent ropes and gave the salaam ceremoniously, with a hand lifted to breast and lip and brow. A group of men sitting by the hearth leapt to their feet and one came forward.
“Peace and kinship and welcome,” said he, laying his hand on my bridle.
I looked into his frank and merry face and knew that all was well.
“Are you Muḥammad el ’Abdullah, for whom we seek?”
“Wallah, how is my name known to you?” said he. “Be pleased to enter.”
Ḥussein Onbâshî, when he appeared with the camels a quarter of an hour later, found a large company round the coffee-pots, listening in breathless wonder (I no less amazed than the rest) while the sheikh related the exploits of—a motor!
“And then, oh lady, they wound a handle in front of the carriage, and lo, it moved without horses, eh billah! And it sped across the plain, we sitting on the cushions. And from behind there went forth semok.” He brought out the English word triumphantly.
“Allah, Allah!” we murmured.
Ḥussein took from his lip the narghileh tube which was already between them and explained the mystery.
“It was the automobile of Misterr X. He journeyed from Aleppo to Baghdâd in four days, and the last day Muḥammad el ’Abdullah went with him, for the road was through the country of the Deleim.”
“I saw them start,” said Fattûḥ the Aleppine. “But the automobile lies now broken in Baghdâd.”
Muḥammad paid no heed to this slur upon the reputation of the carriage.
“White!” said he. “It was all painted white. Wallah, the Arabs wondered as it fled past. And I was seated within upon the cushions.”
That night Fattûḥ and I held a short council. We had won successfully through a hazardous day, but it seemed less than wisdom to go farther without an Arab guide, and I proposed to add Muḥammad el ’Abdullah to our party, if he would come.
“He will come,” said Fattûḥ. “This sheikh is a man. And your Excellency is of the English.”
Muḥammad neither demurred nor bargained. I think he would have accompanied me even if I had not belonged to the race that owned the carriage. Our adventure pleased him; he was one of those whose blood runs quicker than that of his fellows, whose fancy burns brighter, “whom thou, Melpomene, at birth” ... upon many an unknown cradle the Muse sheds her clear beam.
“But if we were to meet the raiders of the Benî Ḥassan?” I asked, mindful of the unsuccessful parleyings at Hît.
“God is great!” replied Muḥammad, “and we are four men with rifles.”
There was once a town at Abu Jîr, guarded by a little square fort with bastioned angles like Ḳaṣr Khubbâz. It was, however, much more ruined; of the interior buildings nothing remained, while the outer walls were little better than heaps of stones. But below this later work there were remains of older foundations, more careful masonry of larger materials, and outside the walls traces of a pavement, composed of big slabs of stone, accurately fitted together. All round the fort lay the foundations of houses, stone walls or crumbling mounds of sun-dried brick, not unlike the ruins of Ma’mûreh. There must have existed here a mediæval Mohammadan settlement, if there was nothing older, and the discovery was sufficiently surprising, for Abu Jîr now lies far beyond the limits of fixed habitation. The Deleim still turn the abundant water of the oasis to some profit, planting a few patches of corn and clover in the low ground below the ruins, but the insecurity of the desert forbids all permanent occupation. We had not gone far on our way next morning before Muḥammad stopped short in the ode he was singing and bent down from his saddle to examine some hoof-prints in the sandy ground. Two horsemen had travelled that way, riding in the same direction that we were taking.
“Those are the mares of our enemies,” he observed.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I heard that they had passed Abu Jîr in the night,” he answered and resumed his song. When he had brought it to an end, he called out—
“Oh lady, I will sing the ode that I composed about the carriage.”
At this the camel-riders and Ḥussein
drew near and Muḥammad began the first ḳaṣîdah that has been written to a motor.
“I tell a marvel the like of which no man has known,
A glory of artifice born of English wit.”
“True, true!” ejaculated Fawwâz ecstatically.
“Eh billah!” exclaimed Ḥussein.
“Her food and her drink are the breath from a smoke-cloud blown,
If her radiance fade bright fire shall reburnish it.”
“Allah, Allah!” cried the enraptured Fawwâz.
“On the desert levels she darts like a bird of prey,
Her race puts to shame a mare of the purest breed;
As a hawk in the dusk that hovers and swoops to slay,
She swoops and turns with wondrous strength and speed.”
“Wallah, the truth!” Ḥussein’s enthusiasm was uncontrollable.
“Eh wallah!” echoed Fawwâz and Sfâga.
“He who mounts and rides her sits on the throne of a king....”
“A king in very truth!” cried Fawwâz.
“If the goal be far, to her the remote is near....”
“Near indeed!” burst from the audience.
“More stealthy than stallions, more swift than the jinn a-wing,
She turns the gazelle that hides from her blast in fear.”
“Allah!” Fawwâz punctuated the stanza.
“Not from idle lips was gathered the wisdom I sing....”
“God forbid!” exclaimed Fawwâz, leaning forward eagerly.
“In the whole wide plain she has not met with her peer.”
“Mâshallah! it is so! it is the truth, oh lady!” said Ḥussein.
“I did not quite understand it all,” said I humbly, feeling rather like Alice in Wonderland when Humpty Dumpty recited his verses to her. “Perhaps you will help me to write it down this evening.”
So that night, with the assistance of Fawwâz, who had a bowing acquaintance with letters, we committed it to paper, and I now know how the masterpieces of the great singers were received at the fair of ’Ukâẓ in the Days of Ignorance.
“The truth! it is the truth!” shouted the tribes between each couplet. “Eh by Al Lât and by Al ’Uzzah!”
Three hours from Abu Jîr we cantered down to the Wâdî Themail and saw some black tents pitched by a tell on the farther side. Flocks of goats were scattered over the plain; the shepherds, when they perceived our party, drew them together and began to drive them towards the tents. At this Muḥammad pulled up, rose in his stirrups, and waved a long white cotton sleeve over his head—a flag of truce.
“They take us for raiders,” said he, laughing. “Wallah, in a moment we should have had their rifles upon us.”
The mound of Themail is crowned by a fort built of mud and unshaped stones (Fig. 68). It has a single door and round bastions at the angles of the wall, like Khubbâz, but the figure described by the walls is far from regular, and there is no trace of construction within. The existing building looked to me like rough Bedouin work, though I suspect that it has taken the place of older defences (Fig. 69). A copious sulphur spring rises below it and flows into the cornfields of the Deleim. With a supply of water so plentiful Themail must always have been a place worth holding. We stayed for an hour to lunch, Muḥammad’s kinsmen supplementing our fare with a bowl of sour curds. Fawwâz was all for spending the night here, for there would be no tents at ’Asîleh, where we meant to camp, and the noonday stillness was broken by a loud altercation between him and the indignant Fattûḥ. I paid no attention until the case was brought to me for decision—the final court of appeal should always be silent up to the moment when an opinion is requested—and then said that we should undoubtedly sleep at ’Asîleh.
“God guide us, God guard us, God protect us!” muttered Muḥammad as he settled himself into the saddle. He never took the road without this pious ejaculation.
Four hours of weary desert lie between Themail and ’Asîleh, but Muḥammad diversified the way by pointing out the places where he had attacked and slain his enemies. These historic sites were numerous. The Deleim have no friends except the great tribe of the ’Anazeh, represented in these regions by the Amarât under Ibn Hudhdhâl. To the ’Anazeh he always alluded as the Bedû, giving me their names for the different varieties of scanty desert scrub as well as the common titles. Even the place-names are not the same on the lips of the Bedû; for example El ’Asîleh is known to them as Er Radâf.
“Are not the Deleim also Bedû?” I asked.
“Eh wah,” he assented. “The ’Anazeh intermarry with us. But we would not take a girl of the Afâḍleh; they are ’Agedât” (base born).
The friendship between the Amarât and the Deleim is intermittent at best, like all desert alliances. As we neared the Wâdî Burdân, Muḥammad called our attention to some tamarisk bushes where he and his raiding party had lain one night in ambush, and at dawn killed four men of the Amarât and taken their mares.
“Eh billah!” said he with a sigh of satisfaction.
The very rifle he carried had been taken in a raid from Ibn er Rashîd’s people. He showed me with pride that the name of ’Abdu’l ’Azîz ibn er Rashîd, lately Lord of Nejd, was scratched upon it in large clear letters.
“I did not take it from them,” he explained. “I found it in the hands of one of the Benî Ḥassan.” I fell to wondering how many midnight attacks it had seen, and how many masters it had served since Ibn er Rashîd’s agents brought it up from the Persian Gulf.
The Wâdî Burdân is one of three valleys that are reputed to stretch across the Syrian desert from the Jebel Ḥaurân to the Euphrates. The northernmost is the Wâdî Ḥaurân, which joins the river above Hît, and the southernmost the Wâdî Lebai’ah, on which stands Kheiḍir. When the snow melts in the Ḥaurân mountains water flows down all three, so I have heard, but later in the year there is no water in the Wâdî Burdân, except at ’Asîleh, though Kiepert marks it “quellenreich.” Muḥammad declared that there was no permanent water west of ’Asîleh save at Wîzeh, a spring which has often been described to me. It rises underground, and you approach it by a long passage through the rock, taking with you a lantern, my informants are careful to add. At the end of the passage you come to a shallow pool where the mud predominates, though it is always possible to quench your thirst at it. ’Asîleh is an autumn camping-ground of the ’Anazeh. The deep fine sand of the valley is bordered by a fringe of tamarisk bushes, covered, when we were there, with feathery white flower. Their roots strike down into the water, which rises into cup-shaped holes scooped out in the sand, and the deeper you dig the clearer and the colder it is. For four days we had found no water that was sweet, and the pools under the tamarisk bushes tasted like nectar. It was a delightful solitary camp. The setting sun threw a magic cloak of colour and soft shadows over the sandhills of the Wâdî Burdân, and under the starlight my companions lingered round the camp fire, smoking a narghileh and telling each other wondrous tales. When I joined them Fattûḥ was holding forth upon the evil eye, a favourite topic with him. I knew by heart the tragedy of his three horses who died in one day because an acquaintance had looked at them in their stable.
“And if your Excellency doubts,” said Fattûḥ, “I can tell you that there is a man well known in Aleppo who has one good eye and one evil. And this he keeps bound under a kerchief. And one day when he was sitting in the house of friends they said to him, ‘Why do you bind up the left eye?’ He said, ‘It is an evil eye.’ Then they said, ‘If you were to take off the kerchief and look at the lamp hanging from the roof, would it fall?’ ‘Without doubt,’ said he; and with that he unbound the kerchief and looked, and the lamp fell to the ground.”
“Allah!” said Fawwâz. “There is a man at Kebeisah who has never dared to look at his own son.”
“At ’nah,” observed Ḥussein, letting the narghileh relapse into silence for a moment, “there is a sheikh who wears a charm against bullets.”
But Muḥammad knew a
s much as most men about the ways of bullets, and he thought nothing of this expedient.
“Whether the bullet hits or misses,” he remarked, “it is all from God.” He poured me out a cup of coffee. “A double health, oh lady,” said he.
The sun had not risen when we left ’Asîleh, but it fell upon us as we climbed the sandhills, and gave to every little thorny plant a long trail of shadow.
Amurath to Amurath Page 14