In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

There was no lingering in Ammân next morning. From sheer habit of historic reference we speculated as to whether it were Ptolemy Philadelphus who, having rebuilt the ancient city of Rabbath Ammân, and bequeathed to it the name of Philadelphia, still used among the Arabs, may have endowed it, moreover, so far as our locanda was concerned, with one of the most offensive of the ten plagues of his native land, after which we did our best to forget our recent experiences. We may remark in passing, however, that traces, painful traces, lingered till later in the day, when they were finally removed by a dip in the strong current of the Jabbok, for it had been in very mournful Gregorian cadence that some of us had chanted "Moab is my washpot" while a little water was poured on to our hands out of a bottle by way of morning ablution. However, it was a privilege worth paying for to be able to sing the Psalms in Moab under any conditions; and whatever else may have failed the party, it was never the spirit of cheerful resignation.

We have not yet sung the praise of the early start! One must come to the East to learn to the full the beauty of the morning and of the night, as well as, inter alia, of life without fogs and coal fires and bad cooking; of life where houses are spacious and servants serve, and a napoleon goes further than a sovereign, and the post comes but once a week or so, and newspapers are not.

There is here none of the discomfort of the early start at home—no shivering over ice-cold water, no closed shutters, no bolted front door, no makeshift breakfast brought by the wrong servant in incomplete toilet. No matter how early you rise the world is up before you; you can have as much at five o'clock as at nine. Your horse is a little stable stiff; but he is as pleased with the early start as you, and he snuffs the dewy air with æsthetic enjoyment. In the hollows of the mountains a mist wreath is lying; here and there a few clouds even may hang low to the west—but you know they are only dew, and that even now in October we are perfectly certain of a fine day, with at least another thirty to follow. You are invigorated, encouraged in mind and body for the whole day, even when, as in our case, you know that the day will last for ten or twelve hours.

Almost immediately on leaving the village we began to climb—for, although Ammân is 2747 feet above sea-level, the town itself is in a hollow—and soon found ourselves on an excellent Roman road. The particular pleasure which the Professor had promised us for this day's journey was that we should do homage at the tomb of Abdel Azziz en-Nimr Shech Adwân, more often spoken of as Nimr, a great poet, of the Bedu tribe of the Adwân, who addressed a great number of poems to Watka, his twenty-fourth wife. We had heard one of his poems recited by our Bedawy escort, and we were willing to take the Professor's word for the rest; for the poet's works have been collected by but one editor, who has not yet published them, and the two or three writers who mention the spot at all do so mainly in connection with a certain Shech Goblan, who, before Jerash and Ammân were given over to the Circassians, was much feared throughout the district.

About two hours after leaving Ammân we reached the Wady el-Hammam, and, a little later, Yajûz, a large Bedu cemetery on the side of a hill, strewn with columns, capitals, and hewn stones, obviously the remains of a Roman town. Some great stone troughs, which may have been sarcophagi, attracted the attention of our horses on account of the water they contained, and we gladly dismounted, and left them to such refreshment as was provided by the very muddy spring, while we climbed the hill a short distance to the tomb of our laureate, who may certainly be regarded as having an experimental knowledge of what characteristics were most acceptable in a wife, and whose eulogy of Watka should at least have the merit of discrimination.

The whole hillside was covered with graves, and some curious combinations presented themselves. There the tomb of some landowner was marked by a plough, the inconceivably primitive instrument with which the fellah scratches the surface of the fertile soil; there a fragment of the blue cotton, which is the inevitable dress of the Bedu, twisted round a stick, shows where some woman has been laid to rest; farther again, a stone, roughly sculptured with the instruments of coffee-making, celebrates the hospitality of some unnamed shech; and, in strange contrast with the savagery of to-day, we step over a sculptured capital or carven pillar, memorial of the art and culture of nigh two thousand years ago; while, reminder that "extremes meet," our thoughts are carried back yet another thousand years at sight of the welys—tombs of Moslem saints—standing apart on mounds, shadowed with ancient oaks, where the pious come to worship to-day, to the Israelites who did so of old time, "upon every high hill and under every green tree."

Around the spring were groups of women, with the tattooed faces, hanging veils, and curious long, narrow dresses of the East Jordan Bedu, barely wide enough to stride in, but lying at least a yard upon the ground, front and back, so that when they walk the skirt has to be kilted, often to the entire violation of such ideas of modesty as may have originally dictated its design. They had taken much interest in the Lady, and, as usual, had speculated as to which of her companions might be her proprietor—always the first point to ascertain—the remaining matters of curiosity in regard to a woman being: What did she cost? and How many boys has she?—after which they frankly discuss her "points," and express surprise at the smallness of her waist.

Suddenly there was an instant's silence; all eyes were turned southward, where a procession had just come into sight winding up the valley. A weird, melancholy song broke out, the women pressed forward, and we realised that a funeral was advancing. We had already observed a newly-made grave; but the procession passed it by, and halted beside the nearest wely, under a group of trees. The four men who carried the bier laid it gently down, and the women, with loud cries, gathered about it on the ground. The body was that of a woman, so closely wrapped in her dress and veil that we could only perceive that she was slender. All joined in the loud wailing, led, apparently, by a professional mourner, who sat beside the corpse, beating her breast, and throwing dust upon her head. It was a pathetic evidence of the homogeneousness of humankind, despite differences of custom, that those who really wept, silently and apart, were, we understood, the mother and mother-in-law of the dead, while a young man who leant alone against a tree trunk was the newly-married husband of a three days' bride. She had died, they said, of a sudden illness, the description of which suggested measles or small-pox. We could not but think of the little home made desolate, of plans and hopes never to be realised, of the bereaved husband—for here, among the Bedu, marriage is a matter of choice and not of compulsion, as among the Arabs of the towns—of the poor girl herself, who, having reached what is the main object of existence among the Orientals, had been called away just as life was opening. Our point of view may have been a little too Occidental, or it may have been another case of "extremes meet," the mean being represented by the higher civilisation of Khalil, a true Jerusalemite, for his one remark was: "It was a pity the bridegroom had had no use out of his bargain when he had paid so much for her!"

The young man was presented to the Professor, who expressed our respectful sympathy, and we turned away after a last glance at the loud-wailing group of the indifferent, the silent sadness of those most concerned. Whatever the age or race, "Light sorrows speak, great grief is dumb."

When we left the wady we climbed a precipitous hill, and found ourselves overlooking a deep gorge to our left—the Wady er-Rumman—where abundant verdure showed the presence of water—a rare sight to our eyes, habituated to the aridity of Jerusalem, where running water is so utterly unknown that if for a few hours once a year, after exceptionally heavy rain, it is reported that the Kedron flows, the whole population turns out to witness so extraordinary a phenomenon. As a matter of fact, moreover, the Kedron does not flow, unless far underground, and only a spring—the well of Job or Joab—overflows into the Kedron bed, but the fact is always thus described. Further, we crossed a small tributary stream, where we found a number of shepherds and herdsmen, with camels and sheep and goats. By this time our horses were hot with the climb, and we were forced to deny them the desired refreshment, and hastened on, already somewhat occupied with thoughts of the luncheon promised to us at the fords of Jabbok. When we came—some of us riding in advance with the officer—to a pleasant stream shaded by oleanders we thought he must be mistaken in riding resolutely forward, for we were not yet used to a district in which two streams might be passed in a single day, and were half inclined to wait for those behind. However, we pressed on, and, as no shouts followed us, were glad to have made so much way that it was possible to dismount and rest our horses for a few moments, for the Jabbok, it appeared, was still distant—"over two hills," declared Khalil, when he at last overtook us. They were somewhat stiff hills both to climb and to descend, and not Jacob himself, with his two wives and two women-servants and eleven sons, and all his other anxieties, could have been more glad than we, when, from our last ascent, we saw beneath us a wide expanse of fresh green, showing that we had reached the fords of Jabbok. The river, rising from streams in the hills above Ammân, and sweeping round by the north-west before taking a sudden turn towards the Jordan, accomplishes a journey of sixty miles, not counting its windings, to reach the point which, at starting, was only eighteen miles away. In its descent of some three thousand feet its current gains great swiftness, and it rushes with considerable violence over its rocky bed, as the widely-scattered pebbles—white and water-worn—abundantly testify. Two roads follow its course; and though but a couple of distant villages were in sight, the cultivated land all along its banks showed the near presence of active humanity: a deserted mill among the bushes, and a few fellahin watering their cattle, were, however, our only reminder of human life. We were free to picture any chapter in its history which might strike our imagination—Jacob, occupied with all his family cares and apprehensions, suddenly called upon in the darkness to remember the world of the Unseen; Gideon pursuing the Midianites; the hosts of Chosroes marching from Damascus to the Nile; the Roman legionaries constructing the very road which we have followed to-day; Galilean pilgrims coming up to the Jerusalem feasts by way of Peræa; the propagandists of the Prophet hastening to the north; and lastly, and more enduring than all, the fellahin, with their elementary agriculture, seeking their daily bread like the swallows that are darting overhead or the rat that splashes into the stream, oblivious and indifferent to all other life, and, therefore, permanent and persistent in their own.