A DRUZE PLOUGHBOY
Presently Nasīb fell behind and engaged in a whispered conversation with an old man who was his chief adviser, while the others crowded round me and told me tales of the desert and of great ruins to the south, which they were prepared to show me if I would stay with them. At the foot of the tell we met a group of horsemen waiting to impart to Nasīb some important news about the Arabs. Mikhāil and I stood aside, having seen our host look doubtfully at us out of the comers of his eyes. That the tidings were not good was all we heard, and no one could have learnt even that from Nasīb's crafty unmoved face and eyes concealed beneath the lids as if he wished to make sure that they should not reveal a single flash of his thoughts. Here we left him, to his evident relief, and rode up the tell. Now there is never a prominent hill in the Jebel Druze but it bears a sanctuary on its summit, and the building is always one of those early monuments of the land that date back to the times before Druze or Turk came into it. What is their history? Were they erected to Nabatæan gods of rock and hill, to Drusāra and Allāt and the pantheon of the Semitic inscriptions whom the desert worshipped with sacrifice at the Ka'abah and on many a solitary mound? If this be so the old divinities still bear sway under changed names, still smell the blood of goats and sheep sprinkled on the black doorposts of their dwellings, still hear the prayers of pilgrims carrying green boughs and swathes of flowers. As at the Well of El Khuḍr, there is always in the interior of the sanctuary an erection like a sarcophagus, covered with shreds of coloured rags, and when you lift the rags and peer beneath you find some queer block of tufa, worn smooth with libations and own brother to the Black Stone at Mecca. Near at hand there is a stone basin for water—the water was iced over that day, and the snow had drifted in through the stone doors and was melting through the roof, so that it lay in muddy pools on the floor.
The next day was exceedingly cold, with a leaden sky and a bitter wind, the forerunner of snow. Milḥēm Iliān came down to invite me to lodge with him, but I refused, fearing that I should feel the temperature of my tent too icy after his heated room. He stayed some time and I took the opportunity of discussing with him my plan of riding out into the Ṣafa, the volcanic waste east of the Jebel Druze. He was not at all encouraging, indeed he thought the project impossible under existing conditions, for it seemed that the Ghiāth, the tribe that inhabits the Ṣāfa, were up in arms against the Government. They had waylaid and robbed the desert post that goes between Damascus and Baghdad, and were expecting retribution at the hands of the Vāli. I f therefore a small escort of zaptiehs were to be sent in with me they would assuredly be cut to pieces. Milḥēm agreed, however, that it might be possible to go in alone with the Druzes though anything short of an army of soldiers would be useless, and he promised to give me a letter to Muḥammad en Naṣṣār, Sheikh of Ṣāleh, whom he described as a good friend of his and a man of influence and judgment. The Ghiāth are in the same position with regard to the Druzes as are the Jebeliyyeh; they cannot afford not to be on good terms with the Mountain, since they are dependent on the high pasturages during the summer.
Towards sunset I returned Milḥēm's visit. His room was full of people, including Nasīb newly returned from his expedition. They made me tell them of my recent experiences in the desert, and I found that all my friends were counted as foes by the Druzes and that they have no allies save the Ghiāth and the Jebeliyyeh—the Sherarāt, the Da'ja, the Beni Ḥassan, there was a score of blood against them all. In the desert the word gōm, foe, is second to none save only that of daif, guest, but in the Mountain it comes easily first. I said:
BOṢRA ESKI SHĀM