[CHAPTER XII]
All my leisure moments during the two days in Aleppo were occupied in changing muleteers. It seemed a necessary, if a regrettable measure. At Antioch we should reach the limits of the Arabic speaking population. Ḥabīb and his father had no word of Turkish, Mikhāil owned to a few substantives such as egg, milk and piastre, while I was scarcely more accomplished. I shrank from plunging with my small party into lands where we should be unable to do more than proclaim our most pressing needs or ask the way. The remarkable aptitude of north Syrian muleteers had been much vaunted to me—the title of muleteer is really a misnomer, for as a fact the beast of burden in these parts is a sorry nag, kadish, as it is called in Arabic; from Alexandretta to Konia I doubt if we ever saw a mule, certainly we never saw a caravan of mules. I had heard, then, that I should not begin to know what it was to travel in comfort, without worry or responsibility, and with punctuality and speed, until I had reorganised my service, and that when I reached Konia I should be able to break up my caravan if I pleased, and as I pleased, and the Aleppo men would find their way home with another load. So I said good-bye to my Beyroutīs—and to peace.
The system on which the journey was henceforth conducted was the sweating system. The sweater was a toothless old wretch, Fāris by name, who shared with his brother one of the largest teams of baggage animals in Aleppo. Owing to his lack of teeth he spoke Arabic and Turkish equally incomprehensibly; he supplied me with four baggage-horses and rode himself on a fifth, for his own convenience and at his own expense, though he tried vainly to make me pay for his mount when we reached Konia; he hired two boys, at a starvation wage, to do all the work of the camp and the march, and fed them on starvation fare. This unhappy couple went on foot (the independent men of the Lebanon had provided themselves with donkeys), and it was a part of their contract with Fāris that he should give them shoes, but he refused to do so until I interfered and threatened to dock his wages of the price of the shoes and buy them myself. I was obliged also to look into the commissariat and see that the pair had at least enough food to keep them in working condition; but in spite of all my efforts the hired boys deserted at every stage, and I suffered continual annoyance from the delays caused by the difficulty of finding others, and, still more, from the necessity of teaching each new couple the details of their work—where the tent pegs were to be placed, how the loads were to be divided, and a hundred other small but important matters. I had also to goad Fāris, who was furnished with a greater number of excuses for shirking labour than any man in Aleppo, into doing some share of his duty, and to superintend night and morning the feeding of my horses, which would otherwise have escaped starvation as narrowly as the hired boys. Finally, when we came to Konia, I found that Fāris had turned the last of his slaves on to the street, and had refused categorically to take them back to their home at Adana, saying that when he escaped from my eye he could get cheaper men than they; and since I would not abandon two boys who had, according to their stupid best, done what they could to serve me, I was obliged to help them to return to their native place. To sum up the evidence, I should say that those who recommend the muleteers of Aleppo and their abominable system can never have directed a well-trained and well-organised camp, where the work goes as regularly as Big Ben, and the men have cheerful faces and willing hands, nor can they have experience of real businesslike travel, for that is possible only with servants who show courage in difficulties, enterprise and resource. I admit that my experience is small, and I confidently assert that it will never be larger, for I would bring muleteers from Baghdad rather than engage Fāris or his like a second time.
It was just when the difficulties of the journey multiplied that Mikhāil's virtue collapsed. Two days spent in drinking the health of his departing companions, with whom he was on excellent terms, as the members of a good camp should be, were enough to shatter the effects of two months' sobriety. From that time forward the 'arak bottle bulked large in his saddle-bags, and though an 'arak bottle can be searched for and found in saddle-bags and broken on a stone, no amount of vigilance could keep Mikhāil out of the wine shop when we reached a town. Adversity teaches many lessons; I look back with mingled feelings upon the uneasy four weeks between our departure from Aleppo and the time when Providence sent me another and a better man and I hardened my heart to dismiss Mikhāil, but I do not regret the schooling that was forced on me.
Ḥājj Maḥmūd reached at Aleppo the term of his commission, and from him also I took a most reluctant farewell. The Vāli provided me with a zaptieh whose name was Ḥājj Najīb, a Kurd of unprepossessing appearance, who proved on acquaintance a useful and obliging man, familiar with the district through which we travelled together, and with the people inhabiting it. We were late in starting, Mikhāil being sodden with 'arak and the muleteers unhandy with the loads. The day (it was March 30) was cloudless, and for the first time the sun was unpleasantly hot. When we rode away at ten o'clock it was already blazing fiercely upon us, and the whole day long there was not a scrap of shade in all the barren track. We followed for a mile or so the Alexandretta high road, passing a café with a few trees about it, soon after which we struck away to the left and entered a path that led us into the bare rocky hills, and speedily became as rocky as they. Our course was east with a touch of north. At half-past twelve we stopped to lunch, and waited a full hour for the baggage, during which, time I had leisure to reflect upon the relative marching speed of the new servants and the old, and on the burning heat of the sun that had not been so noticeable when we were ridings Half an hour further we passed a hovel, Yaḳit 'Ades, where Najīb suggested that we might camp. But I decided that it was too early, and after we had given strict injunctions to Fāris concerning the route he was to follow and the exact spot where we should camp, the zaptieh and I bettered our pace, and without going beyond a walk were soon out of sight of the others. We rode along the bottom of a bare winding valley, past several places that were marked on the map though they were no more than the smallest heaps of ruins, and at four o'clock turned up the northern slope of the valley and reached a hamlet, unknown to Kiepert, which Najīb informed me to be Kbeshīn. Here amid a few old walls and many modern refuse heaps we found a Kurdish camp, one of the spring-time camps in which half nomadic people dwell with their flocks at the season of fresh grass. The walls of the tents, if tents they may be called, were roughly built of stone to a height of about five feet, but the roofs were of goats' hair cloth, raised in the centre by tent poles. The Kurdish shepherds crowded round us and conversed with Najīb in their own tongue, which sounded vaguely familiar on account of its likeness to Persian. They spoke Arabic also, a queer jargon full of Turkish words. We sat for some time on the rubbish-heap watching for the baggage animals till I became convinced, in spite of Najīb's assurances, that some hitch must have occurred and that we might watch for ever in vain. At this point the Kurdish sheikh announced that it was dinner time, and invited us to share the meal. One of the advantages of out-door life on short commons being that there is no moment of the day when you are not willing and ready to eat, we fell in joyfully with the suggestion.
ḲAL'AT SIM'ĀN