Syria, the Desert & the Sown

by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

ḤĀRIM

I soon found that I had fallen into the hands of the wealthiest inhabitant of the town. Muḥammad 'Ali Agha is son to Rustum Agha, who is by birth a Circassian and was servant in the great Circassian family of Kakhya Zādeh of Ḥamādan—that is their Arabic name, the Persians call them Kat Khuda Zādeh. The Kakhya Zādehs migrated to Aleppo two centuries back; by such transactions as are familiar to Circassians, they grew exceedingly rich and are now one of the most powerful families in Aleppo. Their servants shared in their prosperity, and Rustum Agha, being a careful man, laid by enough money to buy land at Salḳīn near his master's large estate in the Orontes valley. Fortune favoured him so well that the hand of a daughter of the Kakhya house was accorded to his son. I did not learn all these details at once, and was astonished while I sat in Muḥammad 'Ali's harem to observe the deference with which he treated his wife, wondering why the sharp-featured, bright-eyed little lady who had borne him no sons should be addressed by her husband with such respect, for I did not then know that she was sister to Reshīd Agha Kakhya Zādeh. Muḥammad 'Ali's only child, a girl of six years old, what though she were of so useless a sex, was evidently the apple of her father's eye. He talked to me long of her education and prospects, while I ate the superlatively good olives and cherry jam that his maid servants set before me. The Khānum was so gracious as to prepare the coffee with her own hands, and to express admiration of the battered felt hat that lay, partly concealed by its purple and silver kerchief, on the divan beside me.

"Oh, the beautiful European hat!" said she. "Why do you wear a mendīl over it when it is so pretty?"

And with that she stripped it of the silk scarf and camel's hair rope, and placing it in all its naked disreputableness on her daughter's black curls, she declared that it was the most becoming head-dress in the world.

At six o'clock news was brought that my baggage animals had arrived, but before I could be allowed to return to my tents Rustum Agha had to be visited. He was lying on a couch heaped with wadded silken coverlets in an upper chamber overlooking the beautiful rushing stream and the two great cypresses that add much to the picturesqueness of Salḳīn. These trees stand like tall black sentinels before the gate of the house, which is the first and the largest in the winding village street. Rustum Agha was very old and very sick. His face lay like the face of a corpse upon the pale primrose silk of the bedclothes. He seemed to be gratified by my visit, though when he opened his lips to greet me he was seized with such an intolerable fit of coughing that his soul was almost shaken out of his body. As soon as he recovered he asked for the latest tidings of Russia and Japan, and I marvelled that he, who seemed so near his end, had the patience to ask anything of us, but whether we could see the lagging garnerer with the scythe hobbling up between the cypresses at the door.

SALḲĪN

As I sat down to dinner in my tent two of Muḥammad 'Ali's servants staggered into camp bearing a large jar of olives grown in the gardens of Salḳīn and preserved in their own oil. They brought too a request from their master that he might come and spend an hour with me, and I sent back a message praying that he would honour me. He appeared later, with one or two people in attendance to carry his hubble-bubble, and settled himself for a comfortable chat to the gurgling accompaniment of the water pipe, a soothing and an amicable sound conducive to conversation. He told me that Salḳīn was one of the many Seleucias, and that it had been founded by Seleucus I. himself as a summer resort for the inhabitants of Antioch. The spot on which I was camped, said he, and the graveyard beyond it, formed the site of the Seleucid town, "and whenever we dig a grave we turn up carved stones and sometimes writing." It seems not unnatural that the fertile foothills should have been selected by the people of Antioch for their country houses, but I have no further evidence to support the statement. He said also that his brother-in-law, Reshīd Agha, was staying with him, and he expressed a hope that I would call on him before I left next day.

If Reshīd Agha Kakhya Zādeh is the chief magnate of the district he is also the chief villain. I found him sitting in the early morning under the cypresses by the foaming stream, and a more evil face in a sweeter setting and lighted by a fairer sun it would have been hard to picture. He was a tall man with an overbearing manner; his narrow forehead sheltered a world of vicious thoughts, his eyes squinted horribly, his thick sensuous lips spluttered as they enunciated the vain boastings and the harsh commands that formed the staple of his conversation. He was wrapped in a pale silk robe, and he smoked a hubble-bubble with a jewelled mouthpiece. By his side lay a bunch of Spring flowers, which he lifted and smelt at as he talked, finally offering the best of them to me. It is one of the privileges of the irresponsible traveller that he is not called upon to eschew the company of rogues, and when I found that my friend Muḥammad 'Ali was about to accompany Reshīd Agha to the latter's house at Alāni and that this lay upon my path, I agreed to their suggestion that we should start together. The animals were brought out, we mounted under the cypresses and trotted off through olive groves towards the Orontes valley. Reshīd Agha rode a splendid Arab mare; her black livery shone with the grooming she had received, she was lightly bitted, her headstall was a silver chain, her bridle was studded with silver ornaments, her every movement was a pleasure to behold. Her master appealed repeatedly to Muḥammad 'Ali, who jogged along by his side on a fine mule, for admiration of his mount, and when the latter had replied obsequiously with the required praise, his words were taken up and reinforced by an old fat man who rode with us upon a lean pony. He was jester and flatterer in ordinary to the Kakhya Zādeh, and, if his countenance spoke truly, panderer to his employer's vices and conniver at his crimes—among such strange company I had fallen that April morning. Ḥājj Najīb trotted along contentedly enough behind us; but Mikhāil, whose sense of the proprieties was strong, could barely conceal his disapproval, and answered in monosyllables when the jester or Reshīd Agha addressed him, though he unbent to Muḥammad 'Ali, whom he judged (and rightly) to be of another clay. We rode for an hour over soft springy ground, Reshīd pointing out the beauties of his property as we went.