I was recommended by a Syrian who spoke French—like everyone else in Beyrouth—to put up in a small hotel on the quay, and was given a room overlooking the harbour, with a little verandah in front, where one must sit warily, for dirty locomotives shunting in the street had a way of stopping just underneath and firing with a particularly poisonous kind of coal, the while they blew off steam from remarkably noisy safety-valves. This was the terminus of the Lebanon Tramway, which crawls up the hills to a point called Rayak.
The hotel, kept by a Turk, was clean and cool, but to feed one had to go round the corner to a kind of restaurant, “à la ferang,” where an incongruous party of pilgrims of every race returning from Mecca sat uneasily on small chairs, and regarded with distrust the array of knives and forks a Greek waiter set before them.
AT BEYROUTH
Beyrouth—once one of the greatest maritime cities of the Phœnicians, when Tyre sent out her ships to the Tin Islands—has grown since then, and is now a flourishing and picturesque city, built upon the slopes of the hills that separate Syria from the Mediterranean. The population is, I should think, mostly Christian, and only in the alleys of a small bazaar does one see the real signs of an Oriental city. For the rest, there are broad and dusty roads, a large public square and gardens, and electric tramways everywhere. The language of the place is more French than Arabic, and English receives good attention at the American college there. Like Haifa and Tripoli on the same coast, it is on a little point of land and faces north, protecting its harbour by a strong sea-wall, enclosing a deep basin.
In the East one looks out as the first preparation for any journey, what the Turk calls a “youldāsh,” and the Persian a “hamrāh,” or travelling companion. On this occasion and without looking for him, he appeared, in the person of a Konia Turk, who was staying in the same hotel. We were to leave at sunset for Aleppo by the train, and my fortunate meeting with him, though our conversation was perforce limited owing to my ignorance of Turkish, enlightened me to the fact that we should be twenty-four hours en route, and must take pretty well whatever we wanted to eat with us. So we made an excursion to the native bazaar, and from the sellers of comestibles in baskets, procured a large quantity of excellent oranges and some bread and various kinds of sweet cakes.
At six o’clock we hired porters and carried our goods to the station, a shed on the quay a few yards away, and having registered our luggage at exorbitant rates, apparently solely by the overwhelming condescension of a military-looking effendi of abominable manners, we took tickets—second class to Aleppo. So well do the French control their employees, that my companion found afterwards that he had been charged two medjidies excess on the luggage and one on the ticket, which the effendi and the booking-clerk doubtless appropriated. I escaped these impositions apparently owing to the attentions of a young Arab porter, who for some inexplicable reason took me under his protection, as he refused all “bakhshīsh” when the train started.
The carriage in which we found ourselves face to face, with our knees knocking together, filled up with ten other persons. As the rolling-stock of this masterpiece of French railway engineering is barely six feet high, and narrow gauge, the temperature rose swiftly with the odour of the occupants. The seats or benches, which I surreptitiously measured, are exactly fifteen inches broad, and in this vehicle we were to—and did somehow—pass the night. Our fellow-passengers were four terribly frowsy Italian employees of the railway, and six uniformed individuals. Turks away from the towns whose inhabitants are Turkish seem always to be uniformed, and it is hopeless to guess at their standing and importance, which is always to be assumed in one’s intercourse with the officials of this eminently officious race. These individuals were of course all “effendis,” and three of them wore swords, which may have meant anything, as from subsequent observations it seems even a Customs clerk has that right. Fortunately, they were too taken up with their own affairs to notice us, and we consequently escaped for a time the merciless curiosity which emanates from a Turk, private or official.
About four in the morning, after uneasy and very shaken sleep, we were turned out in darkness and desert on the metals. This was Rayak, where the broadgauge line for Aleppo branches. Fortunately our new train, somewhat more commodious, was ready, and we made a rush, our new quarters being less crowded. Having taken our places, and while we were yet waiting, a sound as of flustered people, just arrived, and fearing to miss the train, broke the stillness. The first train had departed and every one was seated, and we apparently were stopping to allow passengers a nap in perfect quietness. The noisy knot of people thus naturally attracted attention, but what was my surprise to see in this Turco-Arabian land the face of an Isfahāni, of Persia, look into our window, glance away at companions following, and shout in the Persian of his native town that there was room.
PERSIANS INSULTED
A small crowd of very worried Isfahānis clad in their national dress came running, and doubtless would have left some of their number in our carriage, but that several effendis pursued them and headed them off wherever they attempted to gain entrance. Most of them knew no Arabic nor Turkish, but were obviously bent on getting to Aleppo. Puzzled at the inexplicable attitude of the omnipotent effendis, refusing place to these poor strangers, who emphatically announced that they had paid their fare, I leant out and asked one in Persian what was the trouble. For a moment he seemed to be dazed, hearing his own language spoken by a fezzed Turk, but his ears at last convinced him, and he poured out his woes.