by Alec Waugh
Occasionally one has an Arak evening. Five of you sit at a small table. There are some twenty dishes, cold or nearly cold. There are sliced hard-boiled eggs, pistachios, kibbé (which is minced meat pounded up with corn into a cake), gherkins, cheese, olives, various kinds of salads—most of them with a garlic flavour. You are served with flat rounds of Arab bread with which you scoop up the salad. Every now and then you will prepare a particularly good mouthful and feed a friend with it. A hot dish of small birds is brought. You first mop up the gravy with your bread. You eat very slowly. The meal lasts three hours. You will drink not more than four small glasses of Arak in the evening. Later you will turn on the radio and dance.
Appeal to Cæsar: extract from a letter addressed to Spears’s Mission Syria.
“… I know, your Excellency, that it is the Syrian authority to whom I should apply for my return to work. But what can I do if the said authority is unwilling to consider my grievance. And does your Excellency’s conscience consent and get restful while there is a person complaining of deprival and injustice in a country over which the British banner waves.
“I belong to a family occupying the first place in the Moslem and Arab worlds, and the history certifies that; which thing prevents me from doing low work not corresponding with my social position.
“I do swear by the life of His Majesty the King and Emperor, and by the glory of that most noble British nation whose civilization has been spread all over the world, and whose noble instruction has been distributed among mankind, that I should return with the British flag waving, to the function of a district officer in compensation for the prejudice and injustice which I have undergone.
“I do come before your Excellency just as an Arabian comes upon a mighty Emir and I should find in you, refuge and support. And if the field of functions will not accept me, there is no doubt that the British generosity would welcome me.
“Closing my letter by saying with all my heart, long live Britain, defender of oppressed men and long live the Allies and God save the King.”
Loss of Morale. The G.2 sat silent. He had just returned from a short tour. Something clearly had gone wrong. He should have been in excellent form, full of gossip and anecdote. But his brow was lined. He drank a third and then a fourth gin. But they left him silent. His gloom was so marked that the G.1 laughed at him.
“Come along now, John, it can’t be as serious as that.”
The major shook his head. “In all my years of service, no, never did I expect to see a thing like that. I had heard certain things about the modern army, but that—no. That I could not have believed.”
It was so terrible, that the truth had to be dragged out of him. He had visited, it seemed, a detachment of his own regiment, to find that the coconut matting that had been sent up by the N.A.A.F.I. for a cricket pitch was being used in winter as a carpet in the mess.
An Arab Proverb.
My enemies have done me much good:
May god keep for me mine enemies.
They found out my faults. I avoided them.
They competed with me, I reached higher places.
Advanced Studies. He had seen in a hostess’s house an anthology of Shakespearian speeches called The Stages of Man. The name of the play was not printed below the extract. He had been ashamed to find how many quotations he could not place. He commented on this to his G.2.
“You can hardly blame yourself,” the major said. “It’s a long time since you left school, you know.”
Literature. There was a great lack of anything to read. Beirut being French had no store of English books to draw from. Nothing since June 1940 had come out of France. Back numbers of Nash’s, with ragged covers, fetched 3/6. The main trade in the bookshops, as in Palestine, was in 1935 issues of Snappy Stories.
The stories were in every case turned out to pattern. Marriage following an illicit night, so that both reader and moralist was satisfied. The stock of these magazines seemed inexhaustible. An enterprising salesman, when it became clear that La vie Parisienne and Sourire would be available no longer, had produced samples of Saucy and Snappy Stories, with the offer to obtain a few old copies. He was given orders for three thousand. He delivered a quarter of a million. The booksellers, when the first shock was over, were delighted with their acquisition.
“Here we go round the mulberry bush …” On the 9th January the Political Officer, Beirut, originally British Vice-Consul, and now fulfilling precisely the same duties in the same house, as a lieutenant-colonel on the strength of Spears’s Mission Syria writes to the O. i/c N.A.A.F.I., Beirut to ask permission for employees of the U.S. Consulate to make purchases at the N.A.A.F.I. The N.A.A.F.I., Beirut, refers the matter to H.Q., N.A.A.F.L, Palestine.
On 31st January H.Q., N.A.A.F.L, Palestine, refers the matter to H.Q., Ninth Army.
On 5th February H.Q., Ninth Army, writes to Spears’s Mission asking its opinion on the correspondence which it omits to enclose.
On 10th February Spears’s Mission teleprints a request for the correspondence.
On 16th February Spears’s Mission sends a negative reply to H.Q., Ninth Army, Staff Captain “Q” ringing up the Political Officer to inform him of this decision. H.Q., Ninth Army, then proceeds to inform H.Q., N.A.A.F.L, Palestine of this decision, who passes it on to O. i/c N.A.A.F.L, Beirut, who on 3rd March answers the Political Officer’s letter of the 9th January.
Tabooli. A Lebanese speciality: a Lebanese ritual.
It is served at a quarter to six with Arak. A large dish contains what looks like a mixed green salad. It is composed of wheat pounded up with vegetables. It is eaten with the fingers, scooped up with lettuce leaves. It has a fresh cool taste. Balls of kibbé are served with it. The Tabooli is cleared away and tea is served with biscuits and very sweet and sticky cakes that have an almond flavour. Afterwards one is offered cherry brandy.
Letter from England. “… Larks are beginning to sing now and primroses and daffodils to come out and one has the fantastic desire for new clothes, but, alas, no coupons …”
Tea Party for the Duke of Gloucester. English women in 1938 hats, highly perturbed as to whether they should wear gloves or not.
Levée du Corps. A Troupe Spéciale Guard of Honour in green red-braided epaulettes. The coffin is brought out of the chapel and placed on a small stand. It is piled high with flowers and white streamers embroidered in gold, “à mon père bien aimé.” The long beard of the priest in black against the white and gold of his vestments. The guard presenting arms. The French General saluting. Officers not knowing whether or not they should remove their hats. The French General reads a message from General Catroux, then pins a medal on the coffin. Then decorates the widow.
A French Colonel makes a speech. The sun is shining and rainless clouds drift lazily across the sky. Bougainvillea is blue against the dull yellow of the chapel. From the balcony of the hospital patients watch. The widow stands at the exit and as the officers file past, one by one, shakes hands with them.
Arab Restaurant. The kitchen is in the open, at the end of a souk, with tables set out under the protection of the high curved roof. Slices of meat on a long skewer are roasted over a charcoal fire. There are great steaming vats of stew. The cook scoops out your rice for you in a bowl so that when inverted on the plate it is a rounded hillock over which stew can be poured or slices of fish arranged. You have scarcely taken your seat before a shoeblack starts to importune you. A vendor of lemonade strolls by. Under his left arm he carries a large bronze jug from whose mouth projects a block of ice pink-tinged across its base. Under his right arm is a brass-bound tray of glasses. Over his shoulder is slung a jug of water from which he can wash the glasses. He clatters two cups together as he walks. Every time he makes a sale he sings.
Daily Conference. Every evening there is a Mission Conference. It is taken by the Minister. It is attended by the heads of sections, its object is to go over the telegrams that have been received that day and see what action has been taken on the
m.
The Minister has the telegrams in front of him. As each section sees only the cables on which its own action was required, it is not possible to tell which cable will be dealt with next. The Minister sits with his back to the light. He wears glasses so that you cannot see the expression of his eyes, nor tell whom he is looking at. He has a pipe in his mouth. He speaks English less clearly than he speaks French. You cannot tell as he shuffles the telegrams about what he is speaking nor to whom.
Aiguille Dorée. The “West End” tailor has christened his shop “Smart.” He has invented a reconstruction of a battledress collar that though contrary to regulations makes one feel “dressed” as opposed to being “clothed.”
Aiguille Dorée is a jobbing tailor on the edge of the souk by the Place des Canons. He will run you up a bush shirt if you can produce the material for six Syrian pounds. The workmen are paid piece-work rates. The proprietor does the cutting-out. The workers do the sewing up. They get three Syrian pounds a jacket. The seven-year-old errand boy who brings you coffee receives one Syrian pound a week.
On each side of the door are pictures of officers and girls. A part of the picture is transparent and real material is arranged behind. The material is changed according to the season. In summer the sailor’s picture will be backed with white, in winter with blue. The girls’ suits will be changed each month. In summer the soldiers wear khaki jackets and white whipcord breeches.
Bain Militaire. You can bathe elegantly and expensively at the small plage in front of the St. George’s where the fashionable Lebanese will be sunbathing, paddling and throwing medicine balls, or you can drive out two-thirds of a mile along the coast to a small bay that has been appropriated by the military. It is so much a natural bathing-place that you would not think it was a plage. But there are bathing cabins and a floating raft and just before the bay opens in to the sea there are steps fixed into the rocks and a high diving board. Half-way up the cliff there is an open air restaurant where they serve omelettes and filet mignon. You seem very far from your files and telephones as you sit there after your swim looking down on the rocks and water.
On the rise of the hill there is an old-world lighthouse painted black and white. The balloon barrage over the port seems to have been set there as a piece of decoration.
Champion des Bains. A Sapeur Pompier, the champion swimmer of the coast and the instructor and general cabin attendant at the bain militaire, he is covered in a thick fur whose blackness he accentuates with short white bathing trunks. He paces backwards and forwards along the strip of concrete that lines the bay between the cabins and the restaurant as though he were a monarch surveying his slaves and subjects. He is so conscious of his dignity that when an altercation with a French officer leads to a box over the ears, he retires in mortification behind the cabins and cries into his hat.
Lunch with a Retired Gangster. A Spanish Arab, with a very red face and black, curled moustaches, he will start on a shooting expedition in a tight-fitting tweed suit, tight-fitting button boots and a tarboosh. In his bedroom he has a shield covered with his various weapons. He speaks neither French nor English. His children—a girl of seven and a boy of twelve—speak both and are incredibly loquacious.
As the two English guests sip their Arak before going into lunch the small boy delivers himself of a long exposition of Churchill’s policy. The speech is continued through the greater part of lunch. The children, who have already eaten, ply the guests with food. The little girl describes in detail a film that is running at the National. Her mother upbraids her from preventing the guests from eating. Beer is served from a champagne bucket. When the meal is finished the host rises to his feet and speaks for seven minutes. In translation, the speech proves to be a welcoming of his guests as representatives of the country to which the Lebanon owes its safety and its wheat. The English reply which lasts half a minute is in translation elaborated into the full four-minute oration that formal courtesy demands. The small boy shifts restlessly during the speeches. The instant they are over, he takes the guests up on the roof to see the pigeons. He produces a collection of religious postcards. He invites his British friends to make their choice. On the back of the selected card he writes: “En souvenir, le Capitaine—de son petit ami.”
Duty Officer. The Minister was gregarious. He liked to feel that at any moment he could lay hands on any of his officers. The daily duty officer was the most important officer on his staff. A duty officer, who was once eighteen minutes late, was given eighteen days consecutive duty officer. When officers left the building in the evening they signed a form showing the itinerary they proposed to keep. One evening the Minister wished to find the recorder of this narrative at ten o’clock at night. As the duty officer failed to contact him till eleven, by which time the Minister had gone to bed, a notice was sent round the office on the following morning to be signed by every officer to the effect that any officer who could not be found within a quarter of an hour, at any hour of the day or night, would be “dealt with under Section— of the Army Act.”
From that time onwards the list that had to be signed by every officer at night became a very illuminating document. And the duty officer’s rest would be disturbed by last minute changes of direction. “No, I’m not going to the Kitcat, I’m going to the Manoir.” And a little later: “The Mimosa’s lousy. You can find me at Jeanette’s.”
The Wheat Scheme.* Thousands died in 1918 in the Lebanon of starvation, in the streets and hedges. Vast fortunes were made by the Damascus merchants who hoarded the wheat and forced the prices up. The people in 1942 were terrified lest the horrors of the last war should be repeated. The merchants were hoping to repeat their “coup.” In the winter of 1941 the situation had been saved by the importation of Australian wheat. In 1942 the changed situation in the Far East had made such a remedy impossible. A scheme was devised, initiated and sponsored by Spears’s Mission by which all the wheat and barley in the country was to be bought up by a central office and distributed at a fixed price to the public. The O.C.P. (Office des céréales panifiables) was formed. The produce of the entire country was to be registered, village by village, by a series of wheat commissioners. The Spears’s Mission staff were rushed from their files and telephones to the remoter quarters of Syria and the Lebanon. The Staff Captain “Q” was despatched to the Hauran.
88
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
In six and a half months he had only twice been outside Beirut. It was winter when he had left it last. The long valley of the Bekaa dazzled him. He had forgotten that such a colour as green existed.
A green oasis in the desert. Damascus, a city in the plains of mosques and minarets, that has, as you come to it from the south, a look of Oxford.
Looking down on the city from the citadel you can see how the bazaars run, from the arched domes of corrugated iron that protects them. The Damascenes are very proud of that iron covering, but the souks in consequence are less picturesque than those of cities like Marrakesh that are roofed with reeds through which the sun strikes in sharp anglings of light.
From the citadel you can see that the souks follow an ordered pattern, but under their arched roofs you feel yourself in a labyrinth. The souks are arranged, so you are told, in order; certain sections being set apart for certain trades. There is one street reserved for silversmiths and one for goldsmiths. The gold is sold by weight. Its yellow under the electric light is so vivid that it seems unreal. The designs of the bangles are so commonplace, so tasteless, that you feel that you are being offered brasswork at a country fair. Certain streets are reserved for goods of a certain quality. There is the equivalent of Regent Street and the equivalent of the Bon Marché, Brixton. But to the inexperienced visitor it is all one jumble.
There is a constant noise in the souks, the rattle of harness, the tinkle of camel bells, the honking of horns, the raising of impatient voices, the murmur of gossip. Cabs and carts and camels jostle the pedestrians into the gutter. But the salesmen in the small thea
tres of their shops contribute little to the general din. They sit impassive among their goods. They do not solicit custom. They will bargain with you endlessly; that is their game and they enjoy it. But their pride will not allow them to invite refusal. If you are interested in their goods they will display them to you, for as long as you choose to look, in a spirit of Arab hospitality. Their time is yours, you are their guests. They will not press you to buy. Sometimes they will offer you a cup of coffee, but the offer of it entails no obligation. There is a dignity of salesmanship in the souks.
When you look down on the souks from the citadel you can see how much space is included within the framework of the bazaars in the same way that looking down on England from an aeroplane you can see how much land lies behind the ribbon development of the roads that radiate from London. It is here, between and behind the souks, that many of the rich Damascene merchants have their houses. One such house, the Azid Palace, is on show to tourists. It is a large, low building, or rather a succession of low buildings, with courtyards and fountains playing, with rooms set round them—rooms with painted ceilings and rich, harmonizing colours. There is a spacious air here of leisure and deliberation. It is hard to realize that only a few yards away are the din and traffic of the souks.
Damascus is a long-storied city. But it is not only by the street that is called straight, nor by the outline of the old city whose shape you can recognize from the citadel by the arrangement of the mosques, nor by the glimpses of the old wall itself, with iron work let into its great stone gates, that you come across in the net work of the souks—it is not only by these that one is given a sense of the past, of history, of crumbled empires.