We found ample time to divulge the secrets of our past before the turnkey came to release us. With the Englishman I strolled down to the harbor. Myriads of “coaling niggers,” in dirty, loose robes, as indistinguishable one from another as ants, swarmed up the sides of newly-arrived ships, or returned, jaded and begrimed, in densely packed boat-loads, from a night of toil. The custom police, big, pompous negroes beside whom the Arabs seemed light colored, strutted back and forth within the wharf enclosure. As each band of heavers arrived, the officers laid aside their brilliant fezes, slipped over their gay uniforms a bag-like garment that covered them to their gaitered shoes, and gathered the workmen, one by one, in a loving embrace.
“Affectionate fellows, these followers of the prophet,” I mused.
“Aye,” croaked my companion, “and bloody good smugglers, dressed in them dirty skys’ls.”
They live in coal, these heavers of Port Saïd. Their beds, their wives, their children, the merchants with whom they come in contact, even the little baked fish which bleary-eyed females sell them outside the gates, are covered with its dust.
The Englishman knew of but one “graft” in Port Saïd. Each day, at noon, the friars of a Catholic monastery served dinner to the penniless. A crowd overwhelmingly Oriental lined up with us under the trees of the convent garden to await the serene pleasure of the tawny Arab who dispensed the charity of the priests. Between a Tartar and a Nubian, I received, after long delay, a deep tin-plate, a pewter spoon, and a misshapen slice of bread. The entire party had lost hope of obtaining anything more edible, when the monasterial servant appeared once more, straining painfully along with a huge caldron of soup, which he deposited on the flat grave-stone of a defunct friar. As we filed by him, the Arab tossed at each of us a ladleful of the boiling concoction. Whether it landed in our plates or distributed itself generously over our nether garments depended entirely on our own dexterity, for the haughty server dumped the ladle where, in his opinion, our dishes ought to have been, utterly indifferent as to whether they were there or not.
The Englishman disappeared next day, and I joined fortunes with the seedy Austrian. With a daily dinner and a lodging, even in a cupboard, assured, I found Port Saïd a more agreeable halting-place than Marseilles. There was work to be had here, too. On this second afternoon we were stretched out on the breakwater, under the shadow of the statue of de Lesseps, watching the coming and going of the pilot-boats and the sparkle of the canal that dwindled to a thread on the far horizon of the yellow desert, when a portly Greek approached and asked, in Italian, if we wanted employment. We did, of course, and followed him back to land and off to the westward along the beach to a hovel in the native section. On the earth floor sat two massive stone mortars. The Greek motioned to us to seat ourselves before them, poured into them some species of small nut, and handed each of us a stone pestle. When we had fallen to work, he sat down on a stool, prepared his narghileh and, except for an occasional wave of the hand as a signal to us to empty the mortars of the beaten pulp and refill them, remained utterly motionless for the rest of the day.
Mechanically we pounded hour after hour. The pestles were heavy when we began, before the day was done my own weighed at least a ton. What we were beating up and what, in the name of Allah, we were beating it up for, I do not know to this day. The Austrian asserted that he knew the use of the product, but fell silent when I asked to be enlightened. Night sounds were drifting in through the door of the hovel when the Greek signed to us to stop, and with the air of one who feels himself to be over-generous but proud of his fault, handed each of us five small piastres (12½ cents). My companion at once raised his voice in vociferous protest, in which, at a nudge of his elbow, I joined. The Greek was hurt to the point of tears. The ingratitude of man, when he had, out of the kindness of his heart, given us a whole day’s wages for a half-day’s work! How could we bring ourselves to complain when he had cut his own profit in half simply because we were men of his own color for whom he felt an altruistic and unmercenary sympathy? At the end of a half-hour of noisy clamoring he consented to present us each with another piastre, and we hurried away across the beach to a native shop where spitted mutton sold cheaply.
Two days later I took a “deck-passage” for Beirut and boarded a hulk flying the British flag. By sundown we lost sight of the low-lying port and set a course northeastward. A throng of Arabs, Turks, and Syrians, Christian and Mohammedan, male and female, squatted on the half-covered deck. In one scupper were piled a half-hundred wooden gratings, the use of which remained a mystery to me until my fellow-passengers fell to pulling them down one by one and spreading their beds on them. I alone, of all the multitude, was unsupplied with bedding; even the lean, gaunt Bedouins, dressed in tattered filth, had each a roll of ragged blankets in which, their evening prayers and salaams towards Mecca ended, they rolled themselves and lay down together in a place apart. This dividing into groups was general, for caste lines are sharp drawn in the Orient and, when I stretched out on a bare grating, the entire throng was huddled in a dozen isolated bands, each barricaded by the sturdiest males.
Morning broke bright and clear. Far off to starboard rose the snow-capped range of the Lebanon; but we were bearing northward now, and several hours did not bring us perceptibly nearer the coast. The time was close at hand when I must learn something of the modes of travel in Asia Minor, though, to tell the truth, I had small hope of landing, for passports were reported indispensable in this mysterious land of the Turk. I strolled anxiously about the deck. In a group of Christian Turks I came upon two who spoke French, and engaged them in conversation with the ulterior motive of “pumping” them. A few stories of the highways of Europe amused the party greatly. Casually I announced my intention of walking to Damascus. The interpreted statement evoked loud shouts of incredulity, not unmixed with derision.
“What!” cried one of the French-speaking Turks, waving a flabby hand towards the snow banks that covered the wall-like Lebanon range, “Go to Damascus on foot! Pas possible. You would be buried in the snow. This country is not like Europe! There are thousands of murderous Bedouins between here and Damascus who would glory in cutting the throat of a dog of an unbeliever! Why, I have lived years in Beirut, and no man of my acquaintance, native or Frank, would ever undertake such a journey on foot.”