With these thoughts in my mind, I leaped to my feet and at once wandered out in the camp. To me it seemed one vast place of sepulture; for, go where I might, there I happened upon the victims of the cholera fiend or its terrible ally, fear. I saw them writhing on the ground, with limbs hideously contorted and faces blackened like charcoal; I heard the sick groaning from within the tents as I hurried by to the more convivial surroundings of the market-place; and I stumbled over the graves in which the dead had been shovelled with unseemly haste by their terror-stricken friends. The custom was to bury the dead outside their tents (or wherever they might happen to fall, if away from the camp), but to this custom the neighbours sometimes objected in a craven regard for their own safety; for my part, the longing to recreate my mind amid more companionable scenes, caused me to run all the way to the meidán. And there, carousing with the ragtag and bobtail of the loiterers and stragglers of the encampment, I counted private soldiers, our guardians of the peace, by the score. They filled the front benches of almost every coffee-booth, making the night merry with their hearty laughter, while their companions, not behindhand in conviviality, burst out singing love-songs to the accompaniment of the clapping of hands.
The Bedouin Sheykhs, virile, dignified, and exclusive, did not deign to take part in these revels, but spent the vigil of the night on the Mountain of Mercy or in the cafés that they kept for their private use. They were not dressed in the pilgrim’s garb; they were arrayed in all the warlike trappings of their tribal splendour; and being impressed by this silent declaration of their independence, I came at length to the conclusion that they, regarding themselves as the chosen people of the Faith and the holy places as their inheritance, deemed it right that the winding-sheet of humility should be worn not by themselves, but by those who visited the Holy Land of Islám from beyond the seas. Another characteristic of theirs, a characteristic that runs on parallel lines with the first, is the attitude of the Sheykhs to their clansmen, and vice versâ, as it reveals itself in the expression of their faces. As every one knows who has studied the laws of this free and irresistible people, despotism, as it exists in the Muhammadan monarchies, is a thing impossible amongst them; and the consciousness of this inalienable grace, why, upon my word, their faces positively shone with it! Every Sheykh’s face is as free as is that of his clansman from that meek and submissive servility which is the mark of the Persian or (in a less degree) the Turkish dependent in the company of his master. A Sheykh, on the other hand, being first amongst equals, bears himself towards his followers with a dignity and charm commingled out of paternal pride and childlike modesty, nor does such an one consider his position to be threatened because his tribesmen never cringe. They, too, are freeborn men and carry their heads high even in the presence of the Sheríf of Mecca, who holds his race too dear to exact an obsequious homage. Indeed, his face never wears a frown; his voice is never raised in anger; and yet for all who come near him the consciousness of his power lies not in themselves, but in the man himself: in a word, it lies in his complete self-forgetfulness and his freedom from all arrogance and pretence.
THE SHERÍF OF MECCA IN HIS UNIFORM.
Well, as I walked along in the direction of the Holy Mountain, I found a great many pilgrims engaged in calling out the names of such of their absent friends as had begged to be remembered on the night of Arafat. The Prophet recommended his followers to perform this act of remembrance, and said that whosoever among them should thus create seventy pilgrims by proxy would be rewarded with seventy palaces in the world to come and the praises of seventy thousand angels. Imagine, then, with what zeal and devotion my fellow-pilgrims lifted up their voices! After each name, loud cries of “Here I am, O Allah! here am I!” were raised by one and all, the Maghrebis singling themselves out, to my amusement, by the number of women’s names that came tripping off their tongues; it seemed for all the world as though they were resolved to win the praise of none save female angels!
Tickled not a little by this delicious trait of character, I wandered on, falling the while into a vein of pleasant memories on the friends I had left behind me, until I was suddenly recalled to myself by a mighty hue and cry. And this is what had happened. A Bedouin thief, breaking through the tent of a pilgrim whom he knew to be engaged in calling out names on the plain, saw in a corner a round bundle in a white cloth. With greedy hands he made to possess himself of its contents when, to his intense amazement, a woman burst from its folds, shrieking! She had wrapped herself up in the cloth ere she went to sleep, as the custom is among Orientals of the lower class, so that not even her head was visible to the nefarious Bedouin, who, on now perceiving his mistake, threw himself on the floor, with the intention of slipping headforemost under the tent. He had certainly got away at once, had not the husband returned, and, in the belief that the thief had it in the mind to take advantage of his dearest treasure, laid hold of the intruder by the leg, giving the alarm that had startled me from my day-dream. The woman swooned away, while the Bedouin tugged himself free and made good his escape. A few minutes later, a sergeant and his men shouldered their way through the crowd that had collected round the entrance—too late for once.
I hesitated a moment before I ventured to put my fate to the test of further experience. I knew well that I risked robbery, if not death, in continuing my ramble; for, as I had noticed from the moment of my setting out, the camp was haunted by paupers with the most evil and desperate faces I ever beheld. They lay in wait for the unwary pilgrim wherever the gloom was densest, and at best the lanterns and torches about each tent shed but a dismal glimmer on its purlieus; but the desire to scale the Hill of Arafat and to say my prayers on its summit, at last overcame the whispers of alarm. My only weapon was a stout cudgel, which I had picked up as a protection against the pariah dogs that barked at every passer-by; however, as only a couple of dollars were left in the little bag round my neck, I felt that I could plod along in the teeth of danger with no load of uneasy wealth on my mind. And so, with a fresh glow of courage, I sallied forth.
It was by this time about half-past three in the morning, and a lull seemed to fall on the camp, or perhaps this was merely a fancy of mine, a testimony to my jangled nerves. Be this as it may, I had not taken a hundred paces before I had the evidence of my senses to testify to the fact that my recent misgivings had been something more than the suggestions of timidity or nervousness. For, on reaching a secluded and storm-rent tent, I was suddenly surrounded by a gang of paupers, who sprang out upon me, clamouring for alms in a tone so threatening, that my pride rebelled and would not allow me to purchase my safety at its expense. Enough, I thought, if I seek refuge in yonder tent. A hail of stones about my head increased my determination to gain the place of shelter, about fifty yards away, and thither I cudgelled me a path with a desperate expenditure of strength. The surly rascals trod close upon my heels, stoning “the devil of a Jew” with surly illwill; but inside the tent they dared not follow me. For all that, if they had committed the blunder of counting the booty before the battle was won, I had soon the discomfiture to discover that innocence in distress may be less fortunate in its destiny than villainy in disguise. To the injuries I had received at the hands of the robbers were now added the insults of the inmates of the tent. They stood on the defensive, taking me to be a thief; I called heaven to witness that I had come near to being his victim; whereupon they assumed the offensive, and, catching me by the nape of the neck, dragged me outside and gave me in charge of a sentinel who, as ill-luck would have it, happened to be on his beat. Without saying a word, I disbursed myself of half the money I had about me, which was a proof of the innocence of my intentions so convincing to the sentinel, that he let me loose and fell to upbraiding my unwilling hosts for their unjustifiable suspicions. His eloquence took the sting out of the reception they had given me, and I went on my way blithely enough.
When I at last reached the Hill of Arafat, it was to find that the Bedouins and the Sheykhs of the tribe of Kuraish had already taken possession of the best places around the enclosure whence the sermon would be preached on the following afternoon; for it was there, about half-way up the Hill, that Muhammud was wont to address his followers, sitting on a dromedary. This place, as well as the summit beyond, is reached by means of a broad flight of steps, which, winding up the southern slope of the Mount, gets gradually more precipitate and narrow. No attempt to keep order was made by anybody in authority, with the result that the pilgrims going up would meet the pilgrims coming down, and be locked tight in one another’s arms, each party fighting its hardest to force a passage through. On the crest the pressure of the crowd was even greater: I mean more especially in the neighbourhood of the Makam, or prayer-niche of Adam, with its white-washed platform and central obelisk, where pious wayfarers from every quarter of Islam were pouring out their thanks to God from the innermost tabernacle of the heart.
Having said a two-prostration prayer—a duty that I had not neglected on passing the sermon enclosure below—I turned to the north where, in the valley separating the Hill from the surrounding mountains, a band of Bedouin shepherds had lighted huge roaring bonfires, by the light of which I could see their flocks (so soon to be slaughtered as a sacrifice to the Omnipotent) peacefully nibbling the sparse green herbage of the lowlands.