I found the home of Iskander Saaba at last, and spent a pleasant evening there. The next morning a steady rain was falling, and the young teacher urged me to stay over, with the old saying, “To-morrow is just as good as to-day.” When I satisfied him that this was not a common saying in the Western world, he set out to show me the way through the city. On the way he stopped often to buy fruits, which he stuffed into my knapsack. When I objected, he said: “It is far to Jerusalem, and some day I will come to America.”
Since the oldest times Nablous has carried on much trade with Jerusalem; but only until very lately has the lazy Turk begun to build a road connecting the two towns. That part of the road beyond the southern gate was well built; but in this rainy season it was a river of mud, which clung to my shoes in great cakes, and made walking more difficult than it had been in the pathless mountains to the north.
The shopkeeper and traveling salesman with whom I spent two nights and a day on the lonely road to Jerusalem. Arabs are very sensitive to cold, except on their feet and ankles.
About noon I came to the end of the highway. I had been warned that the road was not finished. “It is all complete,” Shukry had said, “except over the mountain, the highest mountain of Palestine, and over that it runs not.” And it was true. Before me rose a high mountain almost as steep as a wall. A path was cut diagonally to the top, but I had to crawl up on my hands and knees with the greatest care, in the fear of losing my footing. At the top I came again upon the road. It was wide and well built, yet as it stood, it must have been utterly useless: for no carriage or other wheeled vehicle could ever have been dragged up that wall-like hillside; and the sure-footed ass which still carries merchandise between the two cities would make the journey exactly as well had the new road never been thought of.
Long after nightfall I stumbled upon a lonely shop. Inside were the keeper and a traveling salesman of tobacco. The building was no more than a wooden frame covered over with sheet-iron; and soon after I had gone to bed on one of the shelves that served as bunks, the rain began to thunder on the roof near my head. This continued all through the night. Sleep was as impossible as it would have been inside a bass drum at a concert. In the morning a downpour more violent than I had ever known held us prisoners; and, as the weather was bitterly cold, I stayed on my shelf and listened to the roaring of the tin shack through the longest day that ever rained or blew itself into the past tense.
The next day the storm was not so bad; so I set out again. In all the dreary country round I came across only one stone village. It was the ancient Bethel, lying among the sharp hills. Beyond it the highway side-stepped to the eastward. The air of Palestine was filled with moisture that morning. The hills ahead were somewhat veiled by the mist; in the valleys lay a thick gray fog; while overhead the sky was dull and lead-colored.
The Palestine beast of burden carrying an iron beam to a building in construction.
Before me, well above the sky-line, hung a long, dark cloud. As I looked at this cloud it began to take on the shape of a distant line of buildings; yes, it was a city in the sky that I saw, with a wide strip of sky beneath it. It grew plainer and plainer, until there appeared in the heavens a dull gray city, a long city, bounded at one end by a great tower, at the other shading off into nothing. Then suddenly it disappeared. Black clouds, scurrying westward from across the Jordan River, erased the image from the sky as if it had been a lightly penciled line.