Small articles like water-pots or samovars are tied on outside at various points, and there exist till broken or squashed, their almost inevitable fate. Commissariat has also to be arranged, for the supply en route is sometimes uncertain. Travelling light as I was, we only carried flaps of bread, some dates and onions. Fruit was unfortunately not in season in this month of March.
My coachman for some reason took me for a Haji returning from Mecca, and I found this such an excellent disguise, ensuring such civility on the road, that I was content to let it stand, till too late to change, and forthwith wound about my fez the white handkerchief which is a sign of the pilgrim homeward bound. We left Aleppo in our carriage thus one noonday, and a few minutes outside the town and over the ridge, one looked round and saw nothing but the yellow Syrian desert devoid of hills, the surface only occasionally disturbed by Arab villages, like clusters of anthills, the style of architecture as far as the Euphrates being all of the sugar-loaf pattern. For some hours our two ponies took us along the level track—there is no made road—till nearly sunset, when among a few mounds we suddenly came upon a village the natives call Bāb. Doubtless proximity to Aleppo may account for the excellent little bazaar, cleanly and good caravanserai, in one of whose upper rooms, overlooking the courtyard full of mules, donkeys, camels, horses, and sheep, I found a resting-place. Built of white stone, this caravanserai in point of comfort was one of the best I have seen in many years’ wanderings. Design it had none—one block of rooms, some nine feet above ground, formed one side. Opposite were large stables, on the roof of which was the row of rooms of which I occupied one. The entrance to the caravanserai was the usual kind of deep porch with small chambers on either side, and above the archway of the entrance the enterprising architect had constructed two excellent rooms with glass windows, for the wives of wealthy travellers, opening on to a little fenced space of roof where they might promenade. The “khanchi” or keeper of the serai pointed to this with pride. The rooms, he informed us, were special accommodation for travelling pashas and such great game, and the chicken-run of a promenade was considered to be absolutely the last word in the progress of architecture.
BAB
The first experiences of travelling in native guise reveal many little things one never thought of before, when, as Europeans, we arrived at a stage, had our room quickly swept and carpeted, camp tables and chairs set out, and steaming tea swiftly produced. Certainly I did not have to sweep my room on this occasion, though subsequently I learned to wield the three blades of grass they call a broom in these parts. Water, too, the khanchi fetched. But my small belongings, which it was not safe to leave in the carriage, I had to bring up, and made several journeys up and down the narrow steps from courtyard to roof, laden with mattress, quilt, blanket, and the bags and bundles without which one finds it impossible to travel in the East.
Then I discovered that I needed tea very badly, so I had to go downstairs with my tin samovar, draw water from a well, fill it, and beg the lighted coal from a coachman whom I saw smoking a hubble-bubble. This done, I retired to my heights again, and after some time enjoyed a glass of tea and some dry bread.
At this juncture my coachman appeared, and expressed his astonishment that I had not followed the custom of travellers arriving in a strange place—to visit the bazaar.
This I had omitted to do, in fact had not thought of it. Now it was just sunset, I had no dinner to eat, the bazaar was closing; and worse, there was nothing, not even bread, in my bags for to-morrow’s twelve hours in the desert. By this time I could get on fairly well with Turkish, but suddenly my coachman exclaimed, in a fit of geniality, “Az kurmānjī dazānam” (“I know Kurdish”!), and I found in a moment a new means of communication, for though I did not know the Kermanji dialect well, it is sufficiently near some others I did know, to be intelligible. I found afterwards that from the fact of my hailing Kurdish as an old friend, my coachman, who had been at some pains to find out my native place, a point always to be settled with one’s travelling companion in the East, had at once registered me as a native of Persian Kurdistan. So with status as a Haji of Kurdistan conferred on me, I was introduced as such by my friend the coachman to all and sundry.
Here he proved a real friend, for he offered to show me the bazaar and try to get bread and some dinner before closing time. The bazaar was a small one, but fortunately there was a tiny cookshop, where exactly three kinds of very greasy pilau were on sale. From these I selected the least uninviting, and arranged for the proprietor to send a couple of plates of it to the caravanserai. We went into the village baker’s, and there I found the great advantage of being, first, a Haji, and next, a strange Haji. At first the man, who was closing his shop, was very loth to serve us; but my guide, in tones of pained remonstrance, mentioned that I was a Haji, and the man hesitated, and finally began to throw bread into his scales. As a means to get full weight, Muhammad, the coachman, threw in the remark that I was a stranger from far away, knowing neither tongue, nor country, nor custom. The worthy baker, with a sententious remark upon the virtue of honouring the stranger and the acquisition of merit, threw in an extra piece and looked to me for the pious expression that was his due, and which I was fortunately able to supply in Arabic, much to his gratification. When we asked him the price, he actually told us the right amount without any haggling, and remarked upon the wickedness of harassing the stranger. This excellent attitude I found in many places, that is, wherever there were Kurds or Arabs. Turks are another race in manner and custom. I found my dinner waiting at the caravanserai, and invited my coachman to partake, for I knew that the humble station I occupied in the social scale was only equal to, if not lower than, that of a coachman.
A JUST MAN
With frank gratitude he squatted opposite me, and with our fingers we finished the mess. Previous experience in Persia had taught me how to negotiate semi-liquid dishes with a piece of bread and two fingers, or consume piles of rice without feeding one’s surroundings. Also I knew the style of ablution necessary, and the formulæ of thanksgiving after eating. This latter was not called for on the road, for religious observance falls into considerable desuetude among the slaves of the desert track. Dinner finished—it took about three minutes—we shared each other’s cigarettes, and as he departed to attend to his horses and I retired under a fold of my coat in a corner of the room, I felt that once more I was back in that generous and genial East that I had known before, so many hundreds of miles nearer the rising sun.