Now if the period had been two months earlier a Turkish gendarme would have taken the donkey-owner apart, and, if he failed to offer a bribe, shot his prostrate beast and hauled its carcase to the roadside. As likely as not it would have been the gendarme who stole the unfortunate one's money.
What actually happened was this. A sun-browned man in light khaki tunic, short trousers, and bare knees sauntered along, a cigarette drooping from the left-hand corner of his mouth.
"Saa-eeda, Tommy Effendi," said one of the loiterers, making way for him.
"Damned old fool of a moke," said the man in shorts; then bent down and alternately stroked, pushed, and spoke to the donkey. Somehow he persuaded it to rise and start walking. The crowd disentangled itself and its animals from each other, and dispersed. And the man in shorts, his cigarette still dangling from the left-hand corner of his mouth, passed on, as casual and unsurprised as if he had been in Brixton or Birmingham.
Both in appearance and in spirit Damascus had changed much since the days of my captivity. Destitution was yet evident, but far less flagrantly than when I had seen starving babies lying against the walls and crying their hunger. There were no more furtive looks, and many more smiles. The swaggering Germans were supplanted by companionable Tommies, the tyrannous Turkish gendarmes by the headdressed Arab police. In the long, arcaded bazaar the traders had brought out their stocks of carpets, prayer-rugs, silks, and precious stones, hoarded during the war, and were selling them at prices far below those ruling in war-time Cairo or war-time anywhere else. And everywhere the Arabian flag was prominent.
For many a day the talk in the bazaars had been of a new Arabian Empire, as a reward for the exploits of King Hussein's Arabs—exploits that had not only freed Arabia and helped to free Syria, but had involved the abolition of all blood-feuds in a thousand miles of semi-lawless country. The Emir Feisul, son of King Hussein (and thus a direct descendant of the Prophet), was on his way to the Peace Conference in Paris, accompanied by Colonel Lawrence, the young Englishman who was the soul of the Arab national revival, and of the Arabs' epic campaigns between Mecca and Damascus. And many citizens of Damascus were hoping that he would return with the realization of their dreams that the city was to be the centre of pan-Arabian greatness.
My enquiries at Baranki Barracks, and in the offices of the British Provost-Marshal and the Arab gendarmerie, failed to trace the fate of George; and I had to be content with the memory of a futile little figure standing on the steps of our railway carriage, on the morning after our betrayal, and saying, with despair in his voice: "I have so little courage. I ask pardon."
Of the other intimate characters in the story I can account for all but two. Jean Willi, the Israelite dragoman who was my benefactor at Nazareth, has not yet given me the chance to pay back in part the good deeds that I owe him; but I still have hopes. And I can only guess at what has happened to Michael Ivanovitch Titoff, now somewhere behind the screen which, since the Bolshevist reoccupation of last spring, separates Odessa from the normal world. From what I know of his character I am certain that when the Soviet troops arrived he proclaimed himself a Bolshevist, and took full advantage of the conditions whereby the unrighteous have special opportunity to flourish.
Vladimir Franzovitch—a Russian as estimable as Michael Ivanovitch was despicable—died for the country he loved and despaired of, fighting in Denikin's army.