Most of the way was lonely. At one time I met a line of proud and scornful-looking camels plodding westward. Some time later a company of villagers on horseback appeared, and a long moment afterward I came upon a straggling band of evil-eyed Bedouins astride lean asses. Never a human being alone, never a man on foot, and never a traveler without a long gun slung across his shoulders. The villagers stared at me open-mouthed; the camel-drivers leered wickedly; and the scowling Bedouins halted to watch me, as I went on, as if they were trying to decide whether I was worth the robbing.
The highway wound upward through a narrow rocky passage between tall hills. As I went on I noticed how lonely the pass was. I began to think that wandering Bedouins could not choose a better spot in which to lie in wait for the victims they meant to rob. Suddenly a shot rang out at the top of the pass. I started in alarm.
Beyond the pass stretched mile after mile of rocky country, the loneliest I had ever seen.
The command came from no highwayman, however. Before a ruined hut on the hill above stood a man in khaki uniform, the reins of a saddled horse that grazed at his feet over one arm. “Teskereh!” he bawled.
I climbed the hillside, and handed over my Turkish passport. The officer grew friendly at once, and invited me into his hut. Its only furnishings were a mat-covered bench that served as a bed, and a pan of coals. I drew out a few coins and ate an imaginary breakfast. The officer could not or would not understand my acting. He motioned me to a seat, offered a cigarette, and poured out a cup of muddy coffee from a pot over the coals; but food he would not bring forth.
After we had sat grinning speechlessly at each other for a while, I drew him out of the hut, and, once in the sunshine, opened my camera. He gave one wild shriek, and stumbled over himself in his haste to get back into the hovel. Nor could any amount of coaxing lead him to come out again until I had closed the camera.
Beyond the pass stretched mile after mile of rocky country, the loneliest that I had ever seen. Hills upon hills sank down behind each other, rocky and drear. Here and there a single olive tree added to the loneliness of the surroundings. It was truly a “waste place of the earth.”
All through the day I tramped on, with never a sight or sound of any living thing. Darkness fell over the same bare and rocky wilderness. The wind howled across the lonely waste. On this blackest of nights I could not have made out a ghost a yard away, and the unknown highway led me into many a pitfall. Long hours after sunset I was plodding blindly on, my cloth slippers making not a sound, when I ran squarely into the arms of some kind of person whose native footwear had made his approach as noiseless as my own. Three startled male voices rang out in hoarse shrieks of “Allah!” as the trio sprang back in terror.
Before I could pass on, one of them struck a match. The howling wind blew it out instantly, but in that brief flicker I caught sight of three ugly faces under the headdress that belongs to the roving Bedouin. “Faranchee!” they screamed, and flung themselves upon the particular corner of the darkness where the match had shown me standing.