Working my Way Around the World

by Harry Alverson Franck; Lena M. Franck

In the center of the group were three large bowls, one of lentils and another of chopped-up potatoes in oil. A third contained a delicacy made of sour milk, half soup and half pudding, that is a great favorite among the Arabs. On the floor, beside each member of the family, lay several sheets of bread, half a yard wide and as thin as cardboard. The head of the house pushed the bowls toward me, ordered a stack of bread to be placed beside my cushion, and motioned me to eat. I stared helplessly at the bowls, for there was neither knife, fork, nor spoon in sight. The girl, however, knowing the ways of faranchees from years in a mission school in Beirut, explained my difficulty to her father. He cast a scornful look at me, begged my pardon, through his daughter, for being so impolite as to eat a morsel before his guest had begun, tore a few inches from a bread-sheet, and, folding it between his fingers, picked up a pinch of lentils and ate. I lost no time in following his example.

A wonderful invention is this Arab bread. If one buys food in a native bazaar, it is wrapped in a bread-sheet, and a very good wrapper it is, for it requires a good grip and a fair pair of muscles to tear it. A bread-sheet takes the place of many dishes. It makes a splendid cover for pots and pans; it does well as a waiter’s tray. Never have I seen it used to cover roofs, nor as shaving paper; but, then, the Arab is slow and he may not have thought of making use of it in those ways yet. As an article of food, however, this bread is not an entire success. The taste is not unpleasant, but ten minutes’ chewing makes far less impression on it than on a rubber mat. The bread I ate that night must have been very old, for it would fall into pieces when I used it as a spoon. My host picked up one of my sheets, held it against the glowing stove with the flat of his hand, and returned it. It bent as easily as cloth and was much more agreeable to the taste than before.

The younger man rolled cigarettes for himself and his father. They asked me questions, which the girl repeated to me in German. She was about to tell them my answers, when there came a tap at the door and a few words in Arabic that caused the family to jump hurriedly to their feet. “Sheik! sheik!” they whispered excitedly. The children were whisked into one corner.

The door was flung open, and there entered the room an under-sized man of about sixty. Long, flowing robes enveloped his form, a turban-wound fez perched almost merrily on his head, and his feet were bare, for he had dropped his slippers at the door. His face, deeply wrinkled, with a long scar across one cheek, was browned and weather-beaten by the wild storms that sometimes rage over the Lebanon.

The sheik greeted the head of the family, took a seat near me on the divan, bowed low to each person present, bowed again when they each returned his greeting, and then with a wave of his hand invited them to be seated. The newcomer had quite plainly been attracted to the house because he had heard that a faranchee was visiting the family. He was asking questions about me, as I could tell by his gestures and the few words I understood. The family began eagerly explaining and telling him how they supposed I happened to be in that part of the world. For a time the sheik listened without showing the least surprise. He sat there puffing at a cigarette as quietly as if it were nothing new to have faranchees wander into his town on foot at night.

At the end of his story, however, the head of the house remarked that I was on my way to “Shaam” on foot. This news was as astonishing as he could have wished. The sheik fairly bounded into the air, threw his cigarette at the open stove, and burst forth excitedly. The girl explained his words. He said it was “impossible,” it “couldn’t be done”; and at the close of his speech he declared that, as village mayor or sheik, he would not permit me to continue on such a foolhardy undertaking. How many weapons did I carry? None? What—no weapon? Travel to far-off Damascus without being armed? Why, his own villagers never ventured along the highway to the nearest towns without their guns! he would not hear of it! And he was still talking excitedly when the missionary came to invite me to a second supper.

I bade farewell to the family early next morning, swung my knapsack over my shoulder and limped down to the road. But Bhamdoon was not yet done with me. In the center of the highway, in front of the little shop that he kept, stood the sheik and several of his townsmen. With great politeness he invited me to step inside. My feet were still swollen and blistered from the long tramp of the day before, for the cloth slippers of Port Said offered no more protection from the sharp stones of the highway than a sheet of paper; so I accepted the invitation. The village head placed a stool for me in front of the shop, where everybody walking up or down the road could see me.

It soon began to look as if I were on exhibition as some strange animal that had been discovered, for the sheik pointed me out with delight to every passer-by. It was plain, too, that he was making use of the moment to collect some village tax. For on the floor beside me stood an earthenware pot, and as soon as the visitors had looked me over from all sides, the sheik invited them to drop into it a bishleek (ten cents). Not a man passed without giving something; for the command of a sheik of a Syrian village is a law to all its people.

After I had sat there for some time, a villager I had not yet seen appeared and began talking to me in English. I learned that he had once lived in Maine, where he had earned money enough to live in ease in his native country, to which he had returned years before. He insisted that I visit his house near by. While I was there he fell to tucking bread-sheets, black olives, raisins, and pieces of sugar-cane into my knapsack, shouting all the while of his undying love for America and things American. Out of mere pride for his dreary country, he took care, on his way back to the shop, to point out a narrow path that wound up the steep slope of the neighboring range of mountains.

“That,” he said, “leads to the Damascus road; but no man can journey to Damascus on foot.”