Ardashir Morad Khan dropped his rosary and looked up, listening. Sheykh Eissa coughed as if to clear his gorge, and cried—
“My manuscript on the Bedouins is lost; the precious volume has been stolen! For the last seventeen years, as I told you yesterday, I have wandered from tribe to tribe as a talisman-monger in order that I might study the customs and the character of the Bedouins, and give to the world a faithful history of my experiences. I had promised to show you the result of my labour, and now I am constrained by fate to re-shape my impressions. Youm-ul-Tarvih? Wáh! How can my soul repose?”
I handed the rebellious little man a cup of tea. Having taken a sip, he reached out for the sugar. “Your tea is as bitter as mortality,” he said, and straightway converted it into syrup. I recalled a pretty Persian story. “Perhaps,” I replied, “the clay from which the cup was made was once man.” The fancy, though borrowed, restored the Sheykh’s good humour. “It is the burned clay of my thief’s grandfather,” he declared, with a quaint uplifting of his shaggy eyebrows, “or I am an infidel. My precious manuscript—how can to-day be Youm-ul-Tarvih? Assuredly it is the Day of Sacrifice.” Seyyid ’Alí now entered the room. He said: “I have engaged a moghavem, what we Persians call a hamlehdar; he will be here with his mules and camels at midday; and our tents are even now on their way to the Hill of Arafat, where an aristocratic position has been reserved for them.”
“Surely you mean the Valley of Mina?” I asked. “No, no,” broke in our host, Ardashir Morad Khan; “the custom of sleeping at Mina on the outward journey was abolished long ago on account of the delay its observance occasioned, and that for no purpose that would warrant——”
Sheykh Eissa leaped to his feet. “I ask pardon of God,” he cried. “Why, the Prophet himself was accustomed to halt at Mina from six hours after sunrise on Youm-ul-Tarvih until sunrise next morning, and there he used to say the five prescribed prayers. Surely that fact alone would warrant our observance of the law?”
“Well,” I replied, “I must confess that I am delighted to know that we shall have more roomy quarters for the night. The Valley of Mina is a mere gully. According to my calculation there must be scarcely less than three hundred thousand pilgrims in this city.”
“Say four hundred thousand and you will not exaggerate the number,” interrupted our host. “What is your opinion, Sheykh Eissa?”
“The pilgrims are innumerable this year, your Excellency. It is not possible to count them. The angels in heaven are not more numerous. Nine years ago the pilgrims outnumbered the present calculation of our distinguished friend. This year Youm-ul-Nahre falls on a Friday, and I am sure there never was before a concourse so great in the City of God.”
“I admire the beauty of your flight, Sheykh Eissa,” I said, dryly. “But let us deal with facts. I came here by the last pilgrim boat. Some two hundred thousand passports had then been handed in at Jiddah by the seafaring pilgrims. Do you mean to say that the number of Hájís who have crossed the desert are equal to the number of those who have crossed the seas from every corner of the Muslim world? I will never believe it. The advantages are all in favour of the oversea route. It is cheaper, it is quicker, it is safer, and it is perhaps less tedious. For a fare of a few dollars any starveling can go by steamer from Suez to Jiddah. The result is that the old caravan routes with the one exception of the Syrian are, comparatively speaking, deserted. For instance, the Muslims of Morocco and North Africa are now conveyed to Mecca by sea. The contingent sent by Persia down the Gulf outnumbers that which journeys across Arabia. True, the Syrian caravan still maintains not a little of its ancient glory. This year it is unusually gigantic, containing as it does, in my opinion, not less than seventeen thousand camels. The Bedouins are also, I admit, in force; so let us say there are two hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims in Mecca all told. We shall have a better opportunity of testing the accuracy of the figures when we are encamped on the Plain of Arafat. But be the number what it may, it is, at the lowest estimate, far too great for me not to congratulate myself that the custom of sleeping overnight in that death-trap of Mina has been done away with.”
Sheykh Eissa smiled. “It would be impossible to extol its charms as a camping-ground. But I, for one, remember that, though the halt on the outward journey has been abolished, there we must stay for three or at the least for two days after slaying the sacrifices. For the rest, I am far from sharing your love of the oversea route from the outlying dominions of the Prophet. In my youth I travelled by caravan from Morocco to Medina and thence to this holy city. Along the northern coast of Africa, through Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, to the Land of Pyramids, we wandered, halting for one day in every six days in order that our camels might gather strength to sustain the hardships of the road; and in Cairo we joined the Egyptian caravan, whence we proceeded together on our way—an endless string of pilgrims, glorying in our liberty, praising God for His gifts of heaven and earth, burying our dead where they fell—now in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and now in the desert to the south, until we reached at last the sepulchre of the Prophet and the place of his birth. I deny not that God created the sea as well as the desert. Nay, nay, spare your eloquence. My stomach at sea is as inconstant as the waters. I am a Bedouin at heart. However, you must stay at Mina for three or for two days after the Day of Sacrifice.”