Where the plain ended the highway wound upward through a narrow, rocky defile. Marauding Bedouins could not have chosen a better spot to lie in wait for their victims. I started in alarm when a shout rang out at the summit of the pass. The summons came from no highwayman, however. Before a ruined hut on the hill above, stood a man in khaki uniform, the reins of a saddle 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, tethered his horse, and invited me into the hut. Its only furnishings were a mat-covered bench that served the guardian 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 pantomime. 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.
While we sat grinning speechlessly at each other, the tinkle of a bell sounded up the pass. The officer sprang to his feet and hurried down the hill. Not once before had I been called upon to produce the teskereh which the American consul had assured me was indispensable, and a suspicion that one-half the amount it had cost would have sufficed to blind the officers of the Porte to its absence grew to conviction at this Thermopylæ of the Lebanon. A war of words sounded from the highway. I stepped to the door. The soldier and the driver of an overburdened ass were screaming at each other in the center of the route. When the quarrel had reached its height, the traveler dropped something into the guardsman’s hand and continued on his way. The officer climbed the hill, smiling broadly, “Teskereh, ma feesh!” he cried, “Etnane bishleek!” (he had no teskereh! Two bishleeks); and he dropped the coins with a rattle into a stocking-like purse that was by no means empty. I drew him out of the hut and, once in the sunshine, opened my kodak. He gave one wild shriek and stumbled over himself in his haste to regain the hovel; nor could any amount of wheedling induce him to venture forth again until I had closed the apparatus. Accepting a bribe was a mere matter of business; to have his picture taken was a sure way to future perdition.
The lonely, Bedouin-infected road over the Lebanon. “Few corners of the globe offer more utter solitude than Syria and Palestine”
The Palestine beast of burden loaded with stone
Beyond the pass stretched mile after mile of desolation absolute, hills upon hills sank down behind each other, barren and drear, except for an occasional olive tree, a sturdy form of vegetation that, in itself, added to the general loneliness. Few corners of the globe can equal in fearful stretches of utter solitude this land so aptly termed, in Biblical phraseology, “the waste places of the earth.” All through the day I tramped on, with never a sight nor sound of an animate object, save once in mid-afternoon, when I broke my fast on bread-sheets and cakes of ground sugar-cane at an isolated shop. Darkness fell over the same haggard wilderness. The wind, howling across the solitary waste, filled my ears. 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 species of human whose native footwear had rendered his approach as noiseless as my own. Three startled male voices rang out in guttural shrieks of “Allah”—Arabic invocations, evidently, against evil spirits—as the trio sprang back in terror.
Before I could pass on, one of them—plainly a materialist—struck a match. The howling wind blew it out instantly, but in that brief flicker I caught sight of three ugly faces under a headdress that belongs to the roving Bedouin. With a simultaneous scream of “Faranchee!” the nomads flung themselves upon the particular corner of the darkness where the match had shown me standing. The motive of their attack, perhaps, was Oriental hospitality. In the excitement of the moment I credited them with a desire to increase their capital in the kingdom of black-eyed houris, and evacuated the spot by a bit of side stepping that would have won me fame in the roped arena. In my haste to execute the manœuvre, however, I fell off the highway, and the rattling of stones under my feet precipitated another charge. A dozen times during the ensuing game of hide-and-seek I felt the breath of one of the flea-bitten rascals in my face. The Arabic rules of the game, fortunately, required the players to keep up a continual howling for mutual encouragement, while I moved silently, after the fashion of the West. Aided by this unfair advantage, I eluded their welcoming embraces until they stopped for a consultation, and, creeping noiselessly on hands and knees, I lay hold on the highway and sped silently away, by no means certain whether I was headed towards Damascus or the coast.
An hour later the howling of dogs heralded my approach to some hamlet. Once in it, I halted to listen for sounds of human life. Its inhabitants, apparently, were lost in slumber, for what Syrian could be awake and silent? The lights that shone from every hovel proved nothing, for the Arab nations are unaccountably fearful of the evil spirits that lurk in the darkness. I beat off the snapping curs and started on again. Suddenly muffled peals of laughter and the excited voices of male and female sounded from the depths of a building before me. I hurried towards it and knocked loudly on the iron-studded door. The festivities ceased as suddenly as if I had touched an electric button controlling them. For several moments the silence was absolute. Then there came the slapping of slippered feet along the passageway inside, and a woman’s voice called out to me. I summoned up my limited Arabic: “M’abarafshee arabee! Faranchee! Fee wahed locanda? Bnam!” (I don’t speak Arabic! Foreigner! Is there an inn? Sleep!). Without a word the unknown lady slapped back along the corridor. A good five minutes elapsed. I knocked once more and again there came the patter of feet. This time a man’s gruff voice greeted me. I repeated my Arabic vocabulary. There sounded the sliding of innumerable bolts and bars, the massive door opened ever so slightly, and the muzzle of a matchlock was thrust out into my face.
The eyes that appeared above it were evidently satisfied with their inspection. The door was thrown wide open, and a very Hercules of a native, with a mustache that would have put the Kaiser to shame, stepped out, holding his clumsy gun ready for instant use. I could not but laugh at his frightened aspect. He smiled sheepishly and, retreating into the house, returned in a moment unarmed, and carrying a lamp and a rush mat. At one end of the building he pushed open a door that hung by one hinge and lighted me into a room with earth floor and one window, from which five of the six panes were missing. A heap of dried branches at one end stamped it as a wood shed.