THE TEMPLE, KHUREIBET ES SŪḲ
MAUSOLEUM, KHUREIBET ES SŪḲ
When I returned to my tents a little before sunset, I learnt that the boy we had despatched in the morning had lingered by the way and, alarmed by the lateness of the hour, had returned without fulfilling his mission. This was sufficiently annoying, but it was nothing compared with the behaviour of the weather next day. I woke to find the great plain blotted out by mist and rain. All day the south wind drove against us, and the storm beat upon our canvas walls. In the evening Namrūd brought news that his cave had been invaded by guests. There were a few tents of the Ṣukhūr a mile or two away from us (the main body of the tribe was still far to the east, where the winter climate is less rigorous), and the day's rain had been too much for the male inhabitants. They had mounted their mares and ridden in to Ṭneib, leaving their women and children to shift for themselves during the night. An hour's society presented attractions after the long wet day, and I joined the company.
ARABS OF THE BELḲA
Namrūd's cave runs far into the ground, so far that it must penetrate to the very centre of the hill of Ṭneib. The first large chamber is obviously natural, except for the low sleeping places and mangers for cattle that have been quarried out round the walls. A narrow passage carved in the rock leads into a smaller room, and there are yet others behind which I took on trust, the hot stuffy air and the innumerable swarms of flies discouraging me from further exploration. That evening the cave presented a scene primitive and wild enough to satisfy the most adventurous spirit. The Arabs, some ten or a dozen men clothed in red leather boots and striped cloaks soaked with rain, were sitting in the centre round a fire of scrub, in the ashes of which stood the three coffee-pots essential to desert sociability. Behind them a woman cooked rice over a brighter fire that cast a flickering light into the recesses of the cave, and showed Namrūd's cattle munching chopped straw from the rock-hewn mangers. A place comparatively free from mud was cleared for me in the circle, a cup of coffee prepared, and the talk went forward while a man might smoke an Arab pipe five times. It was chiefly of the iniquities of the government. The arm of the law, or rather the mailed fist of misrule, is a constant menace upon the edges of the desert. This year it had been quickened to baleful activity by the necessities of war. Camels and mares had been commandeered wholesale along the borders without hope of compensation in money or in kind. The Arabs had gathered together such live stock as was left to them and sent them away five or six days to the east, where the soldiery dared not penetrate, and Namrūd had followed their example, keeping only such cattle as he needed for the plough. One after another of my fellow guests took up the tale: the guttural strong speech rumbled round the cave. By God and Muḥammad the Prophet of God we called down such curses upon the Circassian cavalry as should make those powerful horsemen reel in their saddles. From time to time a draped head, with black elf locks matted round the cheeks under the striped kerchief, bent forward towards the glow of the ashes to pick up a hot ember for the pipe bowl, a hand was stretched out to the coffee cups, or the cooking fire flashed up under a pile of thorn, the sudden light making the flies buzz and the cows move uneasily. Namrūd was not best pleased to see his hardly gathered store of fire-wood melt away and his coffee beans disappear by handfuls into the mortar. ("Wāllah! they eat little when they feed themselves, but when they are guests much, they and their horses; and the corn is low at this late season.") But the word "guest" is sacred from Jordan to Euphrates and Namrūd knew well that he owed a great part of his position and of his security to a hospitality which was extended to all comers, no matter how inopportune. I added my quota to the conviviality of the party by distributing a box of cigarettes, and before I left a friendly feeling had been established between me and the men of the Beni Ṣakhr.