Of the journey from Damascus to Aleppo I am pleased to say I remember absolutely nothing. We made a particularly bad start, as I have said, being crowded at night with from thirty to forty nondescript human beings into a dirty cattle truck, so that I have no doubt it was as unpleasant as the rest. At Aleppo the Tommies and I were marched through the town to a big white stone fort or barracks which stands on a hill above it. Here we were separated, and it was not till some months afterwards when one of them came as my orderly at Afion that I heard of those good fellows again. They had had an awful time, but I believe survived to the end, being strong men. Of the fate of the wounded man they knew nothing. I was brought up to the Commandant's private room. After the polite formalities of introduction, together with cigarettes and coffee, I was given a seat on a divan whilst the Commandant submitted himself to be shaved. When this operation was concluded, he politely offered me the services of his barber, which I gratefully accepted. Feeling much refreshed, I was led away and deposited in a very bare and unpleasant cell. Just as I was preparing to kick up a fearful row and give my celebrated imitation of an indignant demi-god by kicking at the door and cursing the sentry, the only method I found to be of the slightest use in getting food or washing materials out of the Turks, an officer appeared who conducted me back into the town. After sundry intensely irritating vicissitudes, and after losing my temper intentionally and unintentionally a number of times, I slept that night in a passable imitation of a hotel, and in a bed which was the cleanest thing I had seen for weeks.
CHAPTER III
TO AFION VIA CONSTANTINOPLE
From this point onwards I don't intend to attempt to give a day-to-day account of my sojourn in Turkey. I will try to recall only those few events which seem to me of special interest, and confine myself, as I have done with few exceptions throughout this book, to those events of which I was an eye-witness. For there never was such a country for rumors and stories as Turkey, where few can read and news is passed from mouth to mouth.
I stayed for two or three nights in the hotel at Aleppo, and while there was visited by a representative of an embassy—Dutch, I think—which had charge of British interests in those parts. I asked for shoes, socks, vest, pants, and a bath—particularly for a bath. He sent me some nondescript but most welcome articles of clothing, together with bright red Turkish slippers of the genuine Aleppo brand, which I still treasure.
The bath was a much more difficult business. He advised me most strongly against the public baths, in which, he said, one was much more likely to catch typhoid than get clean, and as for a bath in the hotel, such a thing simply wasn't done. He was a Greek, I think, and seemed to find it difficult to sympathize with my desire. I stuck to my point, however, with obstinacy, although I knew I was already beyond the stage when a bath could cleanse me. When he left me he gave instructions in the hotel that I was to have a tub of warm water. What a request! The hotel was shocked, and most properly refused to countenance such an outrage on its premises. I waited for an hour or two in my dormitory, for there were half a dozen beds in the room, and Turkish officers used to drop in at odd hours for a sleep; but as no bath appeared, I started to forage for one. There was no sentry to be seen, and I made my way into the backyard, commandeered a bucket, and amidst universal protest went back with a pail of water to my room. Then, in the middle of the floor, watched the while through the half-open door by the outraged members of the hotel staff, I proceeded to wash myself section by section. It was as I had suspected. A bath in cold water was precious little use to me. But how could it be otherwise, since for the last fortnight I had been in close contact with people who live year in and year out covered with lice? It is disgusting to have to refer to these things, but it is not possible to appreciate life in Turkey unless one realizes that ninety-nine out of every hundred people one meets are crawling with these loathsome vermin. I was told one very good tip, which is to "keep them on the move." The louse lives and multiplies inside the shirt or vest and next the skin. The scheme is to put on your shirt inside out. Then he has to make his way back again to the inside, and just before he has got comfortably settled down you turn your shirt back again and "keep him on the move." Of course it is considered rather eccentric to change your shirt inside out every day or two instead of every month or two, but I disregarded this and, I must own, found the method most efficacious. They were lean, owing to too much exercise and too little nourishment, and it certainly interfered to some extent with breeding. I apologize for the foregoing, and will try to keep off the subject in future. When one is condemned to be unclean with these pests, one can either shudder with disgust and shame, or try to laugh.
The journey from Aleppo to Constantinople lasted a fortnight or more, and I traveled the whole way in company with Jews. Just before this, orders had been issued for the arrest of all the Jews in Palestine, whatever position they might hold. This was a result, I believe, of our declaration that after the war Palestine should once more be the national home of the Jewish race. Very many of the best doctors in the Turkish army are Jews; many of these posts in the censor's office and in the commissariat department where efficiency is necessary, but the hope of honor small, were held by Jews. They were all arrested, on no charge whatsoever, and dispatched under armed guards to Constantinople, being treated, in some cases, on the same footing as prisoners-of-war—in other cases as spies or rebels. There was one officer who traveled part of the way with me. He was filled with shame and bitterness at his treatment. He had fought at Gallipoli and most of the battles in Palestine. He had been twice wounded, twice decorated by the Turks, and once by the Germans with the Iron Cross, and now he was returning as a suspect, with a sentry with a fixed bayonet at his heels whenever he moved. They had made a rebel of an efficient servant, for he prayed night and day for the downfall of the Turks.
The Jew with whom I traveled most of the time had been for some years in the censor's office at Haifa on the Palestine coast. He was an inoffensive, clever, and kind little fellow, and I last caught sight of him in the most unpleasant section of the Constantinople jail. Poor fellow! I am afraid he found me a bad traveling companion. He was all for conciliation, and advocated judicious bribery to increase our comforts, while I was as irritable and unreasonable as only a tired, ill, and disappointed man can be.