“Bah! la’nat ullah ’alaihim” (“God’s curse upon them!”) he shouted. “From Damascus we had second-class tickets. They put us and our women in a cattle-truck, these sons of Sunni dogs; offspring of Turkish prostitutes, and now they refuse us even that;” and even as he spoke I heard a raucous voice shouting in Arabic, “La makān ul ’Ajam” (“There is no place for Persians”), and in the hated Turkish, “Get desharda! keupek oghlu!” (“Get outside, son of a dog!”)
The unfortunate men—pilgrims returning from Mecca they were—were hustled from door to door, cursed and reviled for heretics and Shi’ahs, refused room anywhere. No insult was bad enough for these unfortunates, no jibe too cutting.
Suddenly from somewhere a French official appeared, who had as little sympathy with Sunni as with Shi’ah Musulman, and he solved the question by tacking an extra coach on, wherein the Persians were accommodated, and kept separate, their quarters infinitely more roomy and comfortable than those of their oppressors; and so we started and fell asleep, to wake in the early sunlight at Baalbak, a place great with memories of the past, but all too quickly left behind in the present, when the train, that cares nothing for the worship of Baal, pauses but a few moments, and continues its way over rolling plains with low hills in the distance to Homs and Hama, two Arab towns, whose Christian population saves them from the decay inseparable from Turkish rule and Musulman subjectivity.
Within some hours of Aleppo, two uniformed officials boarded the train, and shoving aside a passenger—not uniformed—installed themselves. After a few minutes, one, a fat, squinting person, produced a dirty and ragged little note-book and commenced making marks in it, the while looking at the passengers as one who sketches. Having completed this mysterious operation, he passed it to his companion, who, after reading it, passed it back with a “Pekī ’alā” (“Excellent!”), and both commenced eating oranges, dropping the peel carefully under their neighbours’ feet. For half an hour or so they were thus engaged, when one, looking at his watch, remarked that it was late, and departed swiftly out of the door and along the foot-board. Some time after, he reappeared by the same way, and seating himself, reproduced his note-book and revealed his identity. He was a police officer; his duty was to ascertain whether all the passengers in the train might be allowed to enter Aleppo without danger of their inciting political riots or committing crimes of all sorts. This was four months after the inauguration of the Parliament, four months after we had been told that the old restrictions on travel instituted by the Sultan and his spies were absolutely abolished as being an abomination and a relic of despotism and darker ages.
However, this particular effendi was apparently far above such laws, as I found out everybody else to be later on, and insisted on full information. There was an unfortunate German mechanic travelling to Aleppo for the factory of a merchant there; and because he was a European, I suppose, the effendi subjected him to every annoyance possible, affecting to disbelieve his statements, practically accusing him of being a criminal. His profession worried the policeman, too, and I think, probably, exposed ignorance caused the petty revenge he took, for when he asked the European’s profession, he was told “Muhandis,” an engineer, and did not know the meaning of the word. My turn at length came, and I was in some fear of uncomfortable queries; for to state that I was an Englishman would have been utterly disbelieved in a land where our countrymen travel only in first-class reserved carriages, wear “solar topee” hats, and are attended by servants. To call myself a Persian would probably have satisfied the man, but there was always that damning passport, and of course I did not know but it might be examined in Aleppo side by side with this creature’s notes.
CONVENIENT IGNORANCE
So, knowing but little of his Arabi and Turkish, I feigned total ignorance, indicating by signs that I was going to Persia, pointing to myself, the eastern distance, and repeating “B’il ’Ajam” (“to Persia”). He asked me innumerable questions, which had I answered would have tied me up in a terrible confusion of contradictions, but at last, failing to get any reply from me he suddenly desisted, finding no amusement in the sport, I suppose, and passed on to a more intelligible victim.
About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Aleppo, or rather at Aleppo station, terminus of that creeping railway, rejoicing in the extraordinary name of “Chemin de Fer de Damas Prolongement Homs et Hama.”
To my surprise, no one asked for passports, the only annoyance was that second-class passengers’ registered luggage would not be distributed for another hour. While receiving this information I was furiously attacked by a kind of hotel tout, fortunately the last I was to see, for I left both hotels and touts behind with Aleppo. However, I submitted to be thrust into a carriage and found myself careering along a straight, broad road towards the town, whose chief feature is the castle upon its flat-topped mound. Modern Aleppo is obviously an Arab city, the language is Arabic, French has not yet displaced it as at Beyrouth, while it possesses a few broad streets, where the badly written French signs of Greek, Armenian, and Syrian shopkeepers, photographers and hotel-keepers hang. The majority of its ways are stone-paved alleys between high walls, with the lattice-windows always associated in the Western mind with Aleppo. Beyond that it possesses a splendid bazaar, rows and rows of booths in the ordinary Oriental style, whose owners squat within, selling the European and native articles to be met with in all bazaars from Constantinople to Afghanistan. To him who has dwelt in the farther East, it comes like the first step towards the old country again. With joy I roamed through these busy alleys of shops, and purchased my road apparatus, candles, sugar, tea, tin and glass tea utensils, knobs of cheese, fruit, etc., of Arabs sitting behind rows of pendant sugar loaves and tin cans, entrenched among masses of heterogeneous wares.
In point of view of the antiquity of Aleppo, only excelled in Western Asia by Damascus (which after 3500 years of importance, still maintains its premier position), some note of its history is due.