CHAPTER XX—DAMASCUS—THE GARDEN CITY OF THE EAST.
Dimitri and his hotel—Court-yards and fountain—How people live in Damascus—Parlors, bed-rooms and boudoirs—A bet and its decision—The “Doubter and his Donkey”—The Street called “Straight”—Bab-Shurky—Spots famous in history—Shaking hinds across a Street—Scene of St. Paul’s conversion—The Window of escape—Tombs of Mohammed’s Wives—The “Doubter” figuring on probabilities—An unexpected upset—Visiting the lepers’ hospital—A frightful spectacle—The Great Mosque—View from the Minaret—The Bazaars and Curiosity Shops—Making a trade—A case of Fraud.
THE hotel at Damascus is kept by a Greek named Dimitri, who has been familiar with Syria for a great many years, and was in his younger days a dragoman.
His house is spacious, and more comfortable than I had expected to find it, and in appearance is the most Oriental of all the hotels I have seen in the East. You enter by a low, narrow doorway, and passing a short vestibule find yourself in a marble paved court open to the sky, and possessing a fine fountain When I say a fine fountain, I mean that it is so from an Oriental point of view—i. e., there is a broad tank, with stone sides, where the water is kept constantly changing by means of a two inch supply-pipe, and an equally large waste pipe. To the right of the fountain there is a recess about twenty feet square, where are divans and chairs in abundance.
Beyond the fountain on the opposite side of the court is the parlor or saloon. It is entered by an ordinary door, and you find inside a marble floor as long as the room is wide,—about six feet in width,—and having a fountain in the centre. The rest of the apartment on each side of the marble floor is elevated about two feet and has steps leading up to it.
The spaces thus elevated are richly carpeted and have divans on three sides. They have in Dimitri’s hotel a few chairs in front of the divans; but these are rather out of place, and are only kept there out of deference to the foreign patrons. The roof is high, and the highest part of it all is in the centre. We have reason to know about it, as we got into a discussion while waiting for dinner, and two of the party risked a bottle of champagne on the result.
One said the roof was thirty feet above the marble floor, and the other thought it was twenty-nine and a half. The nearest was to win, and Dimitri sent for a pole and ladders and we measured it. The result was twenty-nine feet ten and one-quarter inches, and I lost the wine.
I have been thus particular in describing the court, fountain, and saloon of Dimitri’s Hotel for the reason that it will answer for any well-to-do house in Damascus, with the exception of the chairs, which should not be introduced there.
“Take away the chairs,” said Dimitri, “and my house is Oriental, but with them here, it is not. The instant chairs are introduced the Oriental character is gone.”
I should have added that his court contains several orange and other tropical trees; on some of the former the oranges were ripening, and were plucked and offered to us.
The height of the roof of the saloon may seem considerable, but we were told that it is frequently ten or twelve feet more, and before leaving the city I saw some parlors which had I think forty feet of distance between floor and roof.
Next morning we took a guide and started out for the sights.
“The weather is fine to-day,” said the guide; “you had better take donkeys, and see what we have to see of the outside of the town. To-morrow it may rain, and we can then see the bazaars, mosques, and houses.”
We took his advice and donkeys, and started at once. He led us through crowded streets to the gates, or rather to one of the gates, and then we proceeded to make a circuit of Damascus.
Our starting point was Bab-Shurkey or the East Gate It is a picturesque piece of architecture somewhat dilapidated, but containing traces of its former glory. Here was once a magnificent Roman portal with a central and two side arches which were walled up more than eight hundred years ago. This gate is at the end of the “street called Straight,” by which St. Paul entered the city, and from the top of the gate one can look along the street until it is lost in a confusion of buildings. It is not straight as we use the word, but is enough so for Oriental notions.
In the Roman period, and down to the Mohammedan conquest, there was a wide avenue where this street now is; it was about a hundred feet wide and was divided by Corinthian columns into three parts corresponding to the three arches of the gate. They have been distinctly traced in several localities. As you look down there now you see a narrow lane with uneven rows of buildings on either side; the projecting windows almost touch each other, and in some localities they are less than a foot apart. Hand-shaking and osculation would be easy across the streets, and elopements and intrigues are facilitated by the proximity of opposite dwellings. We went near the wall outside of the city, and were shown several of the local curiosities. We passed a projecting tower of early Saracenic masonry, and near it our attention was called to an old gateway, which has been walled up more than 700 years. This is the reputed scene of Paul’s escape from Damascus.
The window was shown until within the past twenty years, when some changes in the wall removed it.
In front of the gate we were shown the tomb of George, the porter who aided St. Paul in his escape, and was martyred in consequence. Our guide was a Christian Arab, and spoke of the place with great veneration, as do all the native Christians. Beyond this is the Christian cemetery, which was desecrated by the Moslems at the time of the massacre of 1860. Some of the tombs were opened and the bones were scattered about; afterward some of those wounded in the massacre were thrown alive into the pit. The scene of St. Paul’s conversion is located here.
Not far away is the foreign cemetery; among those buried there is the accomplished historian, H. T. Buckle.
The guide called our attention to the houses upon the wall of the city; it was from a house of this sort that Paul was let down in a basket, and one can readily see that it was easy for Rahab, who dwelt upon the town wall of Jericho, to let “down the spies” by a cord through the window. On several occasions in time of war, these houses have been removed, but they have speedily re-appeared on the return of peace.
The walls of the city were no doubt of some importance formerly, and are still a sufficient defense against Bedouin cavalry, but they would be of no consequence to-day. Modern artillery would make short work of them, and there are places where a battery of ordinary field guns could destroy them in a few hours.
The city has outgrown the walls in several localities, and it is said that a third of the inhabitants are extra-mural. The population of Damascus is estimated at about one hundred and fifty thousand. Twenty thousand of these are Christians and six thousand Jews. The remainder are Moslems, and many of them are of the most fanatical character. We halt at the Mohammedan cemetery of Bab-es-Saghir, an area of undulating ground, covered with a forest of tombstones, and little whitewashed mounds of brick, in shape resembling a house roof.
These are the graves, and each has a head stone with an inscription in Arabic, and beside it, is a cavity for water, generally containing a green branch of myrtle. Had we been there on a Friday we should have seen crowds of Moslem women weeping over the graves of relatives or friends, and after the ceremony had ended they would have fallen to chatting pleasantly, as if their visit were not a matter of grief. We saw the tombs of three of Mohammed’s wives, and of Fatimah, his grand daughter, and we were shown other graves, and tombs containing the remains of Moslem warriors, statesmen, and historians.
The “Doubter” did not believe that Mohammed’s wives were buried there, and refused to dismount and enter the cemetery. When we returned to the gate we found him prostrate in the dirt, and just rising with the help of the donkey drivers. It seemed that his beast resented the notion of standing patiently for a man to sit on him, and after making a remonstrance in donkey fashion, he ended by turning a somersault that unseated the “Doubter.” The latter jackass described a sort of cruciform parabola and at the end of his gyrations found himself sitting down lengthwise, and with his back uppermost. Several new constellations and solar systems were flying around his excited skull and his doubts as to the character of this planet were stronger than ever.
“I don’t believe,” said he, as soon as his mouth was cleared of the dust that encumbered it, “I don’t believe that there is anything around here worth seeing. We had better go back to the hotel and stay there.”
“Nonsense,” replied one of us, “Damascus is the most interesting city of the East, within our reach; one of the oldest cities and one that has undergone very little change in two thousand years.”
“I know better than that,” said the “Doubter,” “nobody believes this city is two thousand, or even one thousand years old.”
I came to his help just then and told him he was right; that the city was founded in 1811 by a colony of Arabs from New Jersey, and was never heard of by the civilized world until December, 1847, when it was discovered by an Englishman named Smith. Somehow my information did not please him, and he was sullen all the rest of the day.
Later on I found what it was to be dropped from a donkey. I was dismounting, and the beast evidently wanted me to be quick about it. Just as I leaned forward to swing my right leg over, the donkey dropped his head and shoulders and gave me a most beautiful fall. I went down among other donkeys and in the dust of the street, but I flatter myself that I did it gracefully. A dozen Arabs were standing around but not one of them smiled while all my companions let themselves out into laughter. I told them it was not polite to laugh at the unfortunate, but that didn’t appear to check them.
We visited the house of Ananias, the High Priest, all the points connected with St. Paul’s stay in Damascus, and then we went to the Mosques.
Before doing this it was necessary to visit the American Consul or Vice Consul, and obtain a permit. The Consul is a native of the country, a polite, affable gentleman, speaking English quite well, and showing a desire to serve the citizens and the interests of the country he represents. He lives in a fine house of recent construction; his house was burned in the massacre of 1860, and he narrowly escaped assassination. He received us in the style of the Orient, with coffee and pipes, and made us welcome to Damascus. He sent at once for the desired permit and sent his janissary to accompany us in our visit to the mosque.
Before going to the mosque we went to the site of the house of Naaman, the leper; a leper-hospital now occupies the spot. And speaking of lepers, we afterwards went to the leper-hospital and saw half a dozen of the victims of this dreadful disease. Some were blind, some had the face, some the arms, and some the legs, much swollen, and the face and hands of one were covered with scales. Under the edges of these scales the flesh was raw and inflamed, and we were told that some of the patients in the hospital were masses of sores.
The Great Mosque occupies a quadrangle one hundred and sixty-three yards long by one hundred and eight wide. Part of this quadrangle is a court surrounded by cloisters resting on stone pillars; the rest of the space is occupied by the mosque, which is four hundred and thirty-one feet by one hundred and eight. We removed our boots and put on our slippers before entering the building. The interior is divided into three aisles by two ranges of Corinthian pillars, which support round arches. In the centre is a dome one hundred and twenty feet high by fifty feet in diameter, and standing on four massive pillars. The floor is of stone and covered with soft carpets, and here and there on the carpets, were the Moslems at their prayers. Our attention was particularly attracted by one devout old Jew, who wore a phylactery upon his forehead and who appeared to be utterly unconscious of what was going on around him. On the eastern side of the mosque there is an elaborately carved Keebbek, or shrine, and below it is a cave, in which the head of John the Baptist is said to be preserved in a casket of gold.
There are three minarets to the mosque; the most important is the minaret of Jesus, at the south-eastern angle, and two hundred and fifty feet high.
There is a Moslem tradition that when Jesus comes to judge the world, He will descend on this minaret, enter the mosque, and call before him men of every sect and nationality. We climbed to the top of one of the minarets, and obtained from it a fine view of the city.
Mosques, bazaars, houses, mud walls and flat roofs, remains of Roman and Saracenic columns, streets and court-yards, formed the scene before us. Further off were the gardens, the olive and orange groves of Damascus; the Abana sparkled in the sunlight like a band or thread of silver; the barren hills beyond formed a sharp contrast to the fertile plain; and away in the distance we could distinguish a belt of desert. Another mosque, whose minaret is covered with blue encaustic tiles, attracted our attention, and we longed to visit it. To our disappointment we learned that admission was then impossible.
A visitor to Damascus should take advantage of the first clear afternoon, to proceed at a late hour to the Salahiyeh hills, so as to look upon the city at sunset. The road is pleasant and picturesque, and leads gently upward beyond a village that lies between the hill and the city. An hour’s ride brings one to a point where the whole plain is spread out like a map at the spectator’s feet.
Embowered in gardens and tinted by the lights that varied every moment, Damascus looked to us as much like an earthly paradise as anything in the Orient. Away to the east was the range of Anti-Lebanon; to the north was the plain, with a strip of desert, and to the south the plain stretched away and broke into the hills in the distance. We could trace out the shape of the city, and follow with the eye the direction of its principal streets; the tall minarets and bright domes of the mosques formed salient features of the landscapes, and altogether the scene was thoroughly Oriental. It was from this hill that Mohammed looked and pronounced Damascus the most beautiful city of the world, and promised the most dutiful of his attendants, that they should be appointed to dwell there.
Thus we looked upon the city which is doubtless the oldest in the world. More than three thousand years it has flourished; more than thirty centuries it has stood there a city—the beautiful city of the plain. Nations have appeared and vanished. Kingdoms and empires and republics have risen and fallen, but Damascus has stood unchanged. Thrones have crumbled, dynasties have come and gone. Statesmen and poets and scholars have lived their brief period of existence, brief and insignificant. In the centuries that have rolled over Damascus Saracen, Roman, Moslem, and Christian have besieged the city; twice it has been the center of empires, and many times it has been the seat of power that was felt far away. Though never formally occupied by Christians, it was one of the early centers of Christianity, and for nearly three centuries this was the predominant religion. And later in its history the armies of the Mohammedan empire went forth from Damascus, spreading the religion of the Prophet to Spain on the one hand, and to Hindos-tan on the other. Damascus was then the seat of an empire the greatest on the globe, extending from the Himalayas to the Atlantic. Wealth was poured into her coffers, and she became the richest as well as the mightiest capital. Though she has declined she has not fallen, and presents to-day a picture of serene and well-deserved prosperity.
Damascus without the bazaars would be Hamlet without Hamlet. Here you see the Orient in its perfection. Instead of shops scattered through the city, as in the West, all trades, or rather all the persons in one trade, are brought together. The bazaars of Damascus have had a world-wide celebrity for centuries, and there are none in the East better than they. You can buy there anything you want, from a. slave to a cigarette, and from a sewing needle to a parure of diamonds. You can wander for hours and days in the bazaars; in the slipper bazaar, the tobacco bazaar, the seed bazaar, the mercers’ bazaar, the tailors’ bazaar, the clog bazaar, the silversmiths’ bazaar, the spice bazaar, the book bazaar, the old clo’ bazaar, the iron bazaar, the pipe bazaar, and other bazaars to the number of a dozen or more.
There is a general similarity in the bazaars, so far as the externals are concerned; the shops are little pens, from four or six to ten feet square, where the merchant sits or squats on the floor, and the customer sits on the little bench in front. The front of the shop is entirely open during the day; it can be shut at night, but the locks by which it is held are of a very primitive and very flimsy pattern. If the owner wishes to go away in the day time he spreads a net in front during his absence, and this is his card to say he is “out.” The merchant does not press you to buy, and he generally seems not to care whether you buy or not.
In the slipper bazaar you pass shop after shop where Oriental slippers of all patterns and values are sold; in the tailors’ bazaar you find shop after shop where tailors are at work upon Oriental garments, and so you go on through one bazaar after another.
A few articles for sale, such as ear and nose drops, rings and brooches, generally contained in a locked show-case, a foot square, and the same in height; the shop-keepers exhibited their goods, but did not press them for sale; many of them stopped work to stare at us, while others stuck to their business with Oriental indifference. A small anvil, a few hammers, pliers and rollers, and a small fire of charcoal, kept in flame by a bellows of goat-skin comprise the whole outfit of a workman. The entire arrangement could be stowed in a good-sized hat.Part of the street called Straight is occupied by bazaars, and there is a network of them on both sides of it.
In the silversmith’s bazaar each man occupies a space about six feet square, in a sort of large hall, with low roof and many supporting pillars; this space contains both work-room and salesroom.
In the arms bazaar there are all sorts of odds and ends of cimetars, matchlocks, sabres, pistols, lances, and the like. The famous Damascus blades were offered to us, but they were not of that fine temper that permits you to tie one of them into a knot, and so we did not buy. An antiquarian would be at home in this bazaar, and find many things to suit his fancy.
We went to the silk bazaar, as one of our party wanted to buy some kerchiefs, and after looking around we went out of the bazaar into a Khan, or caravansary. This was a court, with a fountain in the center. A double story of little rooms opened into this court, and on the upper floor was a silk merchant we wished to find.
The bargaining was conducted a l’Orient. We had coffee and cigarettes, and then the silks were shown.
The merchant wanted twenty francs, the buyer would give six.
Neither could do better, but they slowly unbent so that at the end of half an hour the prices were fifteen selling and ten buying. Then we bade the merchant good-bye, and departed.
We returned in an hour, and then the negotiations went on; the seller stuck at thirteen, and the buyer at eleven and a half, and finally, after at least an hour of talk and the assurance of the merchant that the kerchiefs cost him more than that, a bargain was closed at twelve.
The coup de grace was given when the buyer showed the money in bright Napoleons, and rattled them before the other’s eyes.
The silk merchant wanted to sell something more, and sent his partner or attendant to bring a piece of goods from another room. The piece came, the wrapping was removed, and behold! there appeared on the end of the roll a ticket with the name of a French factory at Lyons.
Much of the silk sold in Constantinople, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and Bagdad, as Oriental, is from French looms. I have been repeatedly told so by the merchants, and also by an agent of one of the houses especially devoted to Oriental fabrics. It requires an expert to distinguish the native silks from the French ones.
CHAPTER XXI—SYRIAN LIFE—DEALERS IN HUMAN FLESH—WE TRY “ZE LUXURIES OF ZE BATH.”
In the Slave-Market—A Dealer in Human Flesh—A Stealthy Trade—Examining Female Slaves—Serfdom in Syria—Inside Views of a Syrian Household—Jewish Houses—An Oriental Song—Smoking with the Ladies—Syrian Customs—A famous Arab Chief—Visiting Abd-el-Kader’s house—The City of the Caliphs—Taking a Bath—Mohammed and his Trowsers—A new Species of Cushion—The Bath-house—Disrobing—Securing our Valuables—Moslem Honesty—Sitting down in a Hot Place—Gustave’s Misadventure—Undergoing a Shampoo—Rubbed to a Jelly—The Couch of Repose—A Delicious Sensation—“All ze luxuries.”
WHILE we were walking through the bazaars, the guide casually pointed out the slave-market, and of course we entered. Our way led into a court yard, with a fountain in the center and a mosque at our side; off at one corner was the entrance to the slave-dealers’ apartments.
The merchant, a mild-mannered Moslem, was in the court yard, and had with him a black boy, a eunuch, for which he wanted thirty pounds. We followed the dealer up a narrow staircase to a locked room which he opened.
Four negro women were there, two sitting and two lying upon the floor, which was spread with rugs and blankets; the youngest may have been sixteen and the oldest thirty. The dealer said something in Arabic, whereupon the women rose and stood in a row facing us, where they were joined by the boy. All kept their heads turned away, but now and then darted furtive glances at us. We did not buy, and after giving the dealer a couple of francs as “backsheesh,” we returned to the street. In Damascus the slave trade is open. In Cairo and Constantinople it flourishes by stealth. In neither of the last two cities are strangers permitted to see it, but in Damascus there is no such concealment. The trade is not extensive, and is mainly confined to supplying servants for private houses. The traffic in beautiful women for the harems is nearly a thing of the past, and so is the general trade in slaves for heavy labor in large numbers.
As far as I can learn, there was never a slave trade and slave employment half as extensive in the Orient as that which flourished in the United States less than twenty years ago.
Slaves in the East are a family possession, and are not reckoned as a specific item of wealth.
We had been told not to fail to see some of the private houses of Damascus, as they are specially famous for their elegance. To wander about the city you would not suppose that it has many rich interiors, but you find on investigation that mud walls frequently lead to something rich inside. Judge not by appearances in Damascus. We entered some of the Moslem court yards, but were not allowed to see the inside of the houses. We saw some Christian houses richly adorned and decorated, but they will all come within the general description at the beginning of the preceding chapter. There were many luxurious houses of Christian natives destroyed in 1860, and few of these have been built. The Christian quarter still bears the marks of Moslem hate, in the large areas that lie in ruins. The whole Christian quarter was burned, and about two thousand five hundred Christians were massacred.
Despite the protection now extended to them by foreign powers, the Christians of Damascus do not feel safe, and are constantly dreading a fresh outbreak of hostilities.
Two Jewish houses that we visited had evidently cost a great deal of money; the dining room of one is finished in marble carving around the entire wall, and the cost of this one apartment was said to be ten thousand pounds.
In one of the Jewish houses, the hostess invited us to seats in the room where herself, the ladies of her household, and a couple of visitors were squatted on divans and smoking nargilehs. They were much surprised that the lady of our party didn’t smoke, and they wanted to stain her nails with henna and paint her eye-lashes.
One of the lady visitors was a cantatrice, the Patti or Nilsson of Damascus, and at the request of the hostess we were favored with a song. Her voice was a sort of rough falsetto, and there was little melody or rhythm about the song when considered from a European point of view. How tastes differ! Such a song would not be listened to in Europe or America, except from curiosity; and the song of Patti would, doubtless, be of no consequence in Damascus. Our guide told us that this lady has sung herself rich, and that she frequently receives twenty or thirty pounds for an evening’s entertainment.
We passed a very pleasant hour in this house, and shall long hold it in remembrance. I don’t believe we should have enjoyed it half as well if the master had been at home, as I have a strong suspicion that we should not have been invited to drink coffee and smoke with the ladies.
We wished to visit the house of the famous Abd-el-Kader, but found it impossible. Twenty years ago, this man filled a prominent place in history, but he is now nearly forgotten. He was born in 1807 in Algeria; he was descended from a long line of Emirs; his father was noted for the wisdom and liberality of his rule over the Algerian province of Oran. When the French occupied Algiers, Abd-el-Kader was one of their fiercest opponents, and from 1831 to 1847 he maintained an active warfare, interrupted by a few brief truces. In the last mentioned year he was captured and taken to France, but was soon released, on condition that he should not return to Algiers, nor take arms in any way against the French. The terms of the contract have been faithfully kept, and he has ever since been on the best terms with France.
He resided for some years in Constantinople, and then moved to Damascus, where he spends the greater part of his time. He continues to wear the Algerian dress, and his dark hair and beard make a striking contrast to his snow-white garments.
Those who have met him say that he is a thoroughly courteous and highly polished gentleman, and in looks and bearing he is “every inch a king.”
Damascus is the most thoroughly Oriental in character of all the cities now in easy reach of the traveler. Constantinople and Cairo have each a large foreign population, and can number their Franks by thousands, but Damascus has less than a hundred of them, including missionaries, merchants, and nondescript Occidentals, who have wandered there by chance. The houses, bazaars, mosques and baths are to-day what they were five hundred years ago, and the Moslem is so averse to progress, that there is no great probability of any important change for five hundred years to come.
As you wander through the streets of Damascus or stand in its crowded market places, you are carried back to the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, and gaze upon the pictures that became familiar to you in your boyhood perusal of the Arabian Nights. You forget the Present, you are living in the Past, and, full of bewilderment, you scan the title page of your note-book to make sure that you really tread the earth in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
I had missed the Turkish bath in Constantinople; I could have taken one any morning and therefore postponed it until too late. In Damascus I determined not to be so negligent, and accordingly arranged to try the Oriental bath on the second day of my stay. Gustave agreed to go with me, and we consulted our guide about the time and place. Imagine our astonishment when Mohammed informed us:
“You must get up at five o’clock in ze morning and I takes you to ze bestest bath in Damas. Ze bath shut up at seven o’clock, and you get no bath then afterwards.”
This was early rising for us, but when you are in Damascus you must follow the custom of the Damascus blades. If, as the proverb says, the early child has the worms, there must be an immense demand in Damascus for vermifuge and that sort of thing. We couldn’t do any sight-seeing in the evening, for the reason that there was no sight-seeing to see. Shops, cafés, and all other public establishments, were closed at sunset or a little later; there were no street lamps, and the facilities for getting about were very limited. We stayed in the hotel in the evening, and went to bed at an hour we would have been ashamed to acknowledge at home. The people that went to bed at such an inhumanly early hour must rise in good season. They do this not from any expectation of health or wealth, as promised by the old couplet, but simply for the reason that they couldn’t endure to be in bed more than eight or nine hours at a stretch; besides an Arab couch is not the most comfortable thing in the world, and doubtless has something to do with the matutinal habits of the people.
It is said that the eastern shore of the Mediterranean is called the Levant, for the reason that the sun rises there. The natives rise before the sun, and to them rather than to the glorious orb of day is due the name by which the region is known. Promptly at five in the morning Mohammed was at our door and we rose. Day was just beginning to dawn when we emerged from the hotel and started along the narrow streets that led to the bath-house. We kept close to Mohammed’s heels, and narrowly missed stepping on the seat of his trowsers whenever he slackened his pace. The fellow’s “breeks” were about the baggiest pair it was ever my lot to gaze upon; he must have bought them when cloth was cheap and the merchant willing to measure him with a fox-skin without counting the tail as anything. When he stood up, the ample part of his trowsers just missed the ground by an inch or so, and when he walked the depending mass of cloth swung unsteadily like a pendulum that has been on a spree. When he went over any little inequality the garment dragged, and sometimes it caught and held the wearer fast. When he sat down he gathered the trowsers under him and formed a sort of cushion that was comfortable to rest upon. It was then that we realized the design of the artist, and admitted that the inventor of the Turkish trowsers knew what he was about.
A good many people were astir, and more than once we caromed against the plodding Orientals and caused them to utter what sounded like imprecations on the Christian dogs that had ventured to affront them. At length Mohammed brought himself to a halt and said:
“Here, gentlemen, is ze bath; ze best good bath in Damas. You bathe here so good as never was afterward before.”
The building was a low one, of stone, with a roof in which two or three domes were set like enormous kettles inverted. Light was admitted through circular windows, or bull’s-eyes, like the cabin windows of an ocean steamer, let into the dome at intervals none too frequent. In the vestibule we encountered a sort of door-keeper, to whom Mohammed said something in the language of the country, and then passed on to the first room of the bath.
“Here is ze bain beautiful. You shall know soon how he is good.”
With that Mohammed selected a couple of attendants whose entire wardrobe was not worth fifty cents each. It consisted of a small tuft of hair on the crown of the head, the rest of the skull being closely shaven, and of a piece of cloth about the loins.
I fell to the lot of a dark-skinned gentleman any way from twenty-five to forty years old, and with a muscular development about the arms that would have done honor to a pugilist.
He assisted me to disrobe, but was not very expert about it, being unfamiliar with the wardrobe of the Occident.
“You will have ze bain avec all ze luxuries,—ze café, ze chibook, ze everyting,” said Mohammed in a tone of inquiry. “Certainly, mon cher descendant of the Prophet,” I replied, “and you will do us the honor to go through the moulin with us. Order baths for three, and you yourself disencumber your corporosity of those habiliments and show us how to Orientalize.”
“Pardon, gentlemens, but I no speak German; only English, French, Italian, Greek, Turk, and Arab. I no understand what you says. Speak ze English, please.”
“Well then; peel—strip off your clothes and go in.”
“Ah! zat is bono,” replied Mohammed, and beckoning to a third attendant, he was soon in the costume of the Apollo Belvidere. My attendant, as soon as he had stripped me, folded my clothes into a bundle, tied them up in a small sheet, and laid the package away on a divan at the side of the room.
“You will have all ze luxuries.”
I asked Mohammed if everything was safe, as we had our watches and some, though not much, money.
We had given our letters of credit and the most of our coin to our friends before retiring the night previous, as we thought some accident might happen if we left things around loose in the bath-house.
“All tings is safe here,” explained our guide. “Zare is no Christians but you in ze house. All ze rest is Moslem, and all tings is safe.”
Thus reassured, we submitted to the situation.
When they had removed our clothing they dressed us in towels around the loins and wrapped wet cloths about our heads. Then they mounted us on wooden clogs that were difficult to keep in place, and which I kicked off in the next room whither my attendant led me. The place was gloomy and full of steam, and the temperature anything but agreeable. It was heated by a furnace under the floor, and the heat was carried around and made even by means of pipes and flues in the wall. While we stood uncertain what to do, two or three buckets of water were dashed over us. I was not expecting it, and the shock of the water striking me in the breast was sufficient to knock me down, I fell against Mohammed and he against his attendant, and we all went into a heap. Mohammed was fat and rather flabby, so that he broke my fall in the most satisfactory manner.
It hurt him somewhat, but that made no difference, as we hired him by the day and paid his expenses.
In one corner a lot of fellows were sitting on the floor and softening the asperities of the bath by singing an Arab air. Mohammed said they were soldiers, but there wasn’t one of them with any more uniform than we wore, and certainly ours was very scanty. We looked and listened, perspired and waited, and just as the place began to seem comfortable the attendants led us into another room compared to which the first was a refrigerator. It was frightfully hot and took away the breath, and if I had considered myself a free moral agent I would have backed out.
Gustave thought he would sit down, and seeing a block of marble through the steamy atmosphere, he went for it. Before the attendant knew what he was about Gustave had taken a seat.
My duty to the moral and religious public requires the omission of the remarks of my friend immediately subsequent to his assumption of the sitting posture. They were made in German, English, and French, and were brief and emphatic. What he supposed to be a block of stone proved to be a marble tub filled with water. The temperature was sufficiently elevated to cause him to howl with pain, but it did no real damage.
We squatted in a group on the floor after lifting Gustave from his tub, and there we sat puffing and perspiring for some ten minutes or more. Then my attendant laid me on a stone bench and put me through what is called the “shampoo.” He squeezed, and rubbed and pulled and pounded till I was as limp as a boned turkey and possessed as much consistency as a jelly fish. I expected to spread out and run over the sides of the bench and I took a glance downward to see if there was danger of running off through the waste pipes. I called faintly to Mohammed, and heard a husky “Monsieur” in response.
“Have the goodness,” I said, “to ask this gentleman to put me in a sack if he wants to rub me any more. Any sack with small meshes will do, but I want it tight enough to keep me together.
“And Mohammed,” I added, “if there is a rolling mill or a wire-drawing establishment handy he could facilitate matters by running me through it, and then”—
A bucket of hot water was poured over me, and some of it entering my mouth put an end to my appeals for mercy. I was soon let off and taken into the first room, where several buckets of water each cooler than its predecessor were thrown over me. Then I was wiped dry, and a cool dry turban was wrapped around my head, and I was clothed in a white garment, and laid away on a divan. Blankets were wrapped around me, and coffee and a chibook were brought. Gustave was similarly mummified and placed near me, and Mohammed was stowed away on the opposite side of the room. We reclined there smoking and sipping coffee, sipping coffee and smoking, talking and drowsing, drowsing and talking, for nearly an hour. Coffee was never more delicious than then, and I solemnly aver that I never had more enjoyment of a pipe. The long stem of the chibook allows the smoke to cool before it reaches the mouth, and there was a delicate flavor to the tobacco that adapted it to the listless condition of mind and limp condition of body which follows the bath.
We dressed, paid our “backsheesh,” and departed happy in mind and body over “ze bestest good bath in Damas.”
