RUSSIAN COUNTESS IN THE ARABIAN DESERT
Adventures of Countess Molitor as Told in Her Diary
I—ON THE GREAT ARABIAN DESERT
One of the most striking of all the numberless enterprises of one kind and another which have been brought to naught by the war was the plan of a young, rich and beautiful Russian countess to unveil the secrets of one of the earth's last unexplored and admittedly most dangerous regions—the great Desert of Arabia, called by the tribesmen who live on its fringe "The Dwelling of the Void," a region that is three times as large as Great Britain, and upon which no European foot is yet known to have been set.
The young widow of a wealthy Russian nobleman, whose estates were in the neighborhood of Moscow, Countess Molitor's life had been full of thrilling experiences even before she made her plan to go, without any European companion, and conquer the unexplored Ruba-el-Khali.
Previously she had wandered, with only a small escort of native bearers, through savage Southwest Africa, and had been captured there and held for ransom by native torturers. She had adventured, too, among the savage Tuaregs of the Saharan Desert, known as the most bloodthirsty tribe on earth; had crossed the Alps in a balloon, made between sixty and seventy flights in aero and water planes, been attacked and kept prisoner by Apaches in Paris, had nursed in the hospitals of Europe and taken part in rescue work in the slums of London.
Of the remarkable experiences that have befallen the plucky countess since then I am now able to tell as the result of having, to begin with, received several lengthy letters from her at Cartagena, in Spain, where she has been living for some months, and, more recently, having been privileged to read the mightily interesting and vividly written journal that she kept from the moment of her arrival at Port Said.
Had it not been for the war, it is extremely probable that the countess would have accomplished her project, which would have pushed her into the front rank of successful explorers. She carried out, it seems, her original intention, a venturesome one, indeed, for a white woman, of joining a Bedouin tribe and traveling with them, and had covered over nine hundred miles of her journey when she was caught in the Turkish mobilization and arrested, on suspicion of being a Russian spy, by the Moslems, who, from the beginning had frowned on her project and attempted to prevent it. Bitterly disappointed at being thus defeated just when the chance of success seemed rosiest, the countess was brought back as a prisoner to Damascus. There she had the narrowest escape of being shot for supposed espionage, and it was only after months of surveillance and affronts that she finally was permitted to return to Europe.
II—GUEST OF A BEDOUIN SULTAN
Though she failed to get across the Arabian Desert, the countess, previous to her arrest, had some of the strangest and most picturesque experiences that ever have befallen a white woman. Probably no other European woman has traveled, as she did, for weeks on end as the honored guest of a Bedouin Sultan (who insisted on believing her to be a sister of the Czar of Russia), living the nomadic life of the tribe and riding on camel-back, nor lived, as did the countess, all by herself, in the heart of old-world Damascus, an experiment that does not commend itself even to the foreign consuls. What she saw of the brutalities of the Turkish mobilization alone makes as thrilling a tale as any that has been told since the war began.
Meanwhile the countess has been the victim of an astonishing accident, as a result of which she is still chary about using her right arm.
"One day here at Cartagena," she writes, "while swimming some distance out at sea, I was followed and attacked by a big dolphin. Luckily an officer at the fortress had seen it, and he fired on the dolphin. But before killing him, one bullet went through my right arm! I must say in fairness to the dolphin that it really was not he who first attacked me. I saw him following me, and I thought I could have a little ride on his back, knowing that dolphins are good-natured, as a rule. But he misunderstood my attentions and turned on me, and, had not the second shot been fired an instant later, I should have been lost."
The countess made the journey to Beyrout via Port Said.
From Beyrout she went by train to Damascus (a day's journey), where she had planned to live for a time and improve her knowledge of Arabic, which is one of the six languages which she speaks, before setting out for the desert. To begin with, she put up at the only European hotel in this famous city of the East, and found its proprietor to be a strange character, indeed. Untidy of person and appallingly rude in manner, "he reigned there," writes the countess, "with absolute despotism. This his monopoly of the European hotel business in Damascus enabled him to do, as the Arab hostelries are impossible for foreigners.
"Here is a little example of his delightful ways. One day an English visitor asked for a bath and, as answer, was told to get his luggage ready and leave the hotel in two hours' time, as his hotel had no room for people who were dirty enough to need a bath! It seemed to be a special passion and sport of his to turn people out of his hotel, and any one to whom he took the smallest dislike was ejected without the slightest consideration. Those who won his favor, however, he entertained with jokes and stories worthy of an old pirate!"
She met both the English and Russian consuls, who placed themselves at her service and introduced her to other Europeans likely to advise her wisely in the matter of engaging her caravan and getting acquainted with friendly Arab chiefs, who would be able to give her a certain amount of protection at the outset of her journey, and eventually she found an old Syrian woman willing to let her house and act as cook and general factotum.
III—UNDER ESPIONAGE IN DAMASCUS
And so she settled down, and from this time, the early days of May, until when in June she began her journey the countess, with no other protector than old Sitt Trusim, as her bent and shriveled landlady, who proved to be the most capable of spies, was called, lived the life of a Syrian woman of the upper class, wearing the native dress, smoking the nargileh, studying Arabic diligently and always dreaming of what would happen when she was alone with her camels and the Arabs under the desert stars.
The pages of the journal she kept during those months are reminiscent of "Kismet" and the "Thousand and One Nights," for where the countess willed to go she went, regardless of whether it was precisely safe to do so or not. And adventures she had in plenty. For while keeping nominally in touch with her European acquaintances on the hill of Sahiye, outside Damascus, she found her chief delight in wandering through the bazaars and the quaint streets of this enchanted city of minarets and in riding on horseback through the surrounding country in the cool of the evening. Once while thus doing she was attacked, as she had been warned she would be, by a couple of robbers, who possessed themselves of all the money she had, but missed her small Browning pistol, which, Bedouin fashion, she carried in her riding boot, and with this she eventually cowed them and made her escape.
It was soon made plain to the countess that all her movements were painstakingly reported to the Turkish authorities, though the Vali, or Governor, consistently posed as her friend. She had by no means agreeable experiences, too, owing to the jealousy of certain Syrian families, whose pressing invitations to various ceremonials she had been obliged to decline, while accepting those of others and immensely enjoying the impressive and occasionally screamingly funny rites which she witnessed as their guest. One of these hosts of hers, by the way, was the proud possessor of the only bath in Damascus. More than one attempt was made to lure Countess Molitor to places where it was undoubtedly intended to ill-treat if not actually to make away with her. I will let her tell of one of these plots.
"To-day Sitt Trusim brought me a letter addressed in unknown handwriting. Before opening it I asked her who brought it. She tells me that a man delivered it, whom, after questioning him, she found out to be deaf and dumb. I read the letter, which was an invitation from a lady asking me to visit her and her daughters this afternoon. She complained that I had given preference to her friends by visiting them, and said that she would send her man-servant to bring me at 5 o'clock. I don't know why this letter aroused my suspicions. Perhaps on account of the mysterious deaf and dumb messenger.
"I sent for Vadra Meshaak (a friend's dragoman) to come to me, and showed him the letter quite carelessly, without mentioning my suspicions. He at once declared that it was written by a man and not by a woman and became very serious and angry, feeling sure that there was some treason behind it. At 5 o'clock the man was to come and fetch me. Well, he (Vadra) would dress up in my Arab costume, which in its largeness covers the whole figure, and go with the man and find out who the writer of the letter was. If it really was a woman he could explain his disguise as a joke. But he absolutely feared foul play! So in the afternoon we sent Sitt Trusim on an errand to the farthest end of the town, and I arranged Vadra Meshaak to look like a Syrian lady.
"Punctually at 5 o'clock the mysterious deaf-and-dumb man knocked at the door, and Vadra Meshaak opened it and went away with him. I had not been alone a quarter of an hour till he was back again, all fury and excitement. After he had calmed down a little I heard his story! He had followed the man to a house in the inner court where three Turks, very well known to Vadra Meshaak, were getting up to pounce upon him. He did not leave them any time to talk, but gave each of them a heavy blow in the face, and before they could realize what had happened he had disappeared again.
"They must have thought me a very fine pugilist! What their intrigue against me had been we shall never know. Vadra thinks that they probably meant to keep me in their house by force over night and then afterward report that I was a woman of no character and thus get me expelled."
At the outset of the arrangements for the journey she was fortunate in getting acquainted with an old Arab Sheik, Mahmoud Bassaam, who had previously traveled with the Arabian lady explorer, Miss Bell, and was known to be entirely trustworthy. He had spent virtually all his life with the Bedouin and, as a camel dealer, had accumulated what was regarded in the East as a large fortune; yet he consented to accompany the countess (whose personal charm generally prevails, not only with men, but with her own sex, too), and took charge of all the arrangements for her journey, including the buying of camels and outfit.
"My idea," the countess writes in her diary, "is to join the Roalla tribe at Palmyra and make friends with their Sultan, as they are one of the greatest and richest tribes in all Arabia. Once friends with the Roalla I intend to travel with them, move with them through the inner deserts southward and, arrived south, I hope to be able to interest the Sultan and induce him to cross the Ruba-el-Khali with me. Because I think this is only possible for a great tribe, with all their herds of camels and sheep. On my journey with him I shall try my utmost to fire his imagination and to rouse his enthusiasm for the exploration of the great desert."
As her dragoman, the countess had an American university graduate, one Doctor Kahl, a Syrian, "well educated, serious and clever," who also had spent many years with the tribes of Arabia, but who, when introduced to the countess by Sheik Mahmoud Bassaam, had a lucrative practice as a dentist in Damascus.
IV—ACROSS DESERT ON CAMEL CARAVAN
It was on the fifth of June that she set out, secretly, for fear that the Turkish authorities at Damascus would oppose her if they knew of her intentions. Allowing it to be supposed that she was merely going for a ride on horseback, she met her American-taught dragoman on the outskirts of Damascus, and rode with him to Adra, on the fringe of the desert, where Mahmoud Bassaam and her caravan (eight camels and camel men, an Arabian cook and a guide) were awaiting her.
It was in September, after they had traveled for more than 900 miles through the desert in company with the Sultan Al Tayar and his followers that the first echoes of the European war reached these travelers.
In the meanwhile the Countess who, from first to last, was treated as a guest of the highest distinction by the Sultan (to whom she had been presented by Mahmoud Bassaam) had been able to revel to the full in the dreamy "dolce far niente" existence which she had so often pictured to herself. She had become familiar with all the customs and observances of the Bedouins—she had even witnessed a pitched battle between her hosts and an enemy tribe—and had learned to eat with her fingers as they did without discomfort. By some means the impression that she was a sister of the Czar of Russia had become fixed in the minds of these tribesmen, and when the Countess wished to disabuse them of it, the Sultan dissuaded her, hinting that it was all to the good.
It was while crossing the Dahma Desert and heading for the wells of Wadi-al-Mustarri that a small Arab tribe brought them the tidings that Turkish soldiers were scouting the country, and that at Hail great demonstrations and assemblies of Turks and Arabs had taken place. And, on arriving at Jilfi, a small trading town, a few days later they learned that a European war had broken out, though between whom nobody knew.
At Jilfi the countess was arrested, a paralyzing blow for her, considering that she had covered more than half the distance to the Ruba-el-Khali, and that another two months would have found her on its borders, and that she had succeeded in winning the Sultan to the venture of attempting to cross it. He and his chiefs, who first wished to resist, parted from their guest with keen sorrow, and the Sultan presented her, as his parting gift, with a magnificent emerald, of which, however, she was robbed while being brought back as a prisoner and ill with fever to Damascus. There the Turkish authorities greeted her with soft words, declaring that they had acted only for her safety, but, though she was allowed to go free and to live in her own house, she was aware all the time that she was carefully watched.
V—HELD PRISONER—ESCAPE TO EGYPT
The account which she gives of the Turkish mobilization in the days that immediately followed is graphic enough: "Soldiers armed to the teeth pass," she writes, "driving before them villagers to be enlisted. The boys all look terrified. Patriotism means nothing to them; they loathe their Government and are frightened to death at the thought of becoming Turkish soldiers, who are treated like dogs. Those who can, fly and hide themselves in the mountains. At present the Lebanon is full of such fugitives, and, being very desperate and nearly mad with fright and hunger, they are quite dangerous to meet. I am told they hide like animals in the grass and bushes and live on wild cucumbers. Poor things."
Then German officers arrived on the scene and things grew rapidly worse. "The commandeering in town," writes the countess, "is rapidly bringing about the utter financial ruin of many families. To-day every house was ordered to provide a hundred blankets or to pay a sum equivalent to their value. Those who cannot comply are thrown into prison. From the store at which I buy my provisions they have taken $2,500 worth of rice, sugar and coffee, the poor man's entire stock, without paying him a penny or even giving him a receipt. He is ruined. From another store they have taken carpets and rugs valued at $1,000 which are, I am told, destined for the private households of the officers! The same is, no doubt, the destination of $1,500 worth of ladies' silk stockings, linen and dresses, which were also commandeered!
"A commission visited the manager of a firm of automatic pistols and took away 800 without paying for them, leaving the rest. Two days later the manager was arrested, under the pretext that he had purposely hidden the arms which the commission had not taken. They put him into prison, and only after a week's incarceration, his family having paid £50 to the Government, was released. Meanwhile he has not had a receipt for his guns."
Eventually the countess managed to escape from Damascus to Bayreuth, where she had hoped to find a friend in the Vali, or Governor, there, who had treated her with great consideration at the time of her arrival in Syria. Upon instructions from Damascus, however, he kept her a virtual prisoner, and when later her trunks were examined and the photographs and notes she had made while on her expedition discovered she was in imminent danger of being shot as a Russian secret agent. The Russian consul, who was himself in danger and had made one fruitless effort to escape, was unable to assist her.
She found her best friends, then, in the officers of the American men-of-war North Carolina and Tennessee, which were lying off the town. They gave her good counsel and helped to keep her spirits up. After some weeks of agonizing uncertainty it was decided that the countess should merely be expelled from the country, and she was given an hour to get aboard of a vessel which was sailing for Egypt.