“What!” shouted the Syrian, “You got metleek? Thees man bring you here because you sit in the market-place like you have no money.”
Some time later, as I emerged from an eating shop, a native sprang forward with a wild shout and grasped me by the hand. Grinning with self-complacency at his knowledge of the faranchee mode of greeting, he fell to working my arm like a pump handle, yelping at the same time an unbroken string of Arabic that rapidly brought down upon us every lounger in the market-place. He was dressed in the blanket-like cloak and the flowing headdress of the countryman. His weather-beaten visage, at best reminiscent of a blue-ribbon bulldog, was rendered hideous by a broken nose that had been driven entirely out of its normal position and halfway into his left cheek. Certainly he was no new acquaintance. For some moments I struggled to recall where I had seen that wreck of a face before. From the jumble that fell from his lips I caught a few words:—“locanda, bnam, Beirut.” Then I remembered. He of the pump-handle movement had occupied a bed beside my own during my first days in Beirut and had turned the nights into purgatory by wailing a native song in a never-changing monotone, while he rolled and puffed at innumerable cigarettes.
When I had disengaged my aching arm I enquired for an inn. My long-lost roommate nodded his head and led the way to the one large building abutting on the street, a blank wall of sun-baked bricks some forty feet in length, unbroken except for a door through which the Arab pushed me before him. We found ourselves in a vast, gloomy room, its walls the seamy side of the sun-baked bricks, its floor trampled earth, and its flat roof supported by massive beams of such wood as Hiram sent to Solomon for the temple on Mt. Moriah. Save for a bit of space near the door, the room was crowded with camels, donkeys, dogs, and men, and heaps of bundled merchandise. It was the Sidon khan, a station for the caravan trains that make their way up and down the coast. Across the room, above the door, ran a wooden gallery, some ten feet wide. My companion pushed me up the ladder before him, took two blankets—evidently his own property—from a heap in the corner, and, spreading them out in a space unoccupied by prostrate muleteers or camel drivers, invited me to lie down.
The scene below us was a very pandemonium. Donkeys, large and small, lying, standing, kicking, braying, broke away, now and then, to lead their owners a merry chase in and out of the throng. Reclining camels chewed their cud, and gazed at the chaos about them with scornful dignity. Others of these phlegmatic beasts, newly arrived, shrilly protested against kneeling until their cursing masters could relieve them of their loads. Men and dogs were everywhere. Gaunt curs glared about them like famished wolves. Men in coarse cloaks, that resembled grain-sacks split up the front, were cudgeling their beasts, quarreling over the sharing of a blanket, or shrieking at the keeper who collected the khan dues. Among them, less excited mortals squatted, singly or in groups, on blankets spread between a camel and an ass, rolled out the stocking-like rags swinging over their shoulders, and fell to munching their meager suppers. Here and there a man stood barefooted on his cloak, deaf to every sound about him, salaaming his reverences towards the south wall, beyond which lay Mecca.
Before the first grey of dawn appeared, the mingling sounds that had made an incessant murmur during the night increased to a roar. There came the tinkling of bells on ass and dromedary, the braying and cursing of the denizens of the desert. Men wrestled with unwieldy cargoes, or cudgeled animals reluctant to take up their burdens. At frequent intervals the door beneath our gallery creaked, and one by one the caravans filed out into the breaking day.
The khan was almost empty when I descended the ladder. Late risers were hurrying through their prayers or loading the few animals that remained. The keeper, sitting crosslegged near the door, rolled me a cigarette and demanded a bishleek for my lodging. I knew as well as he that such a price was preposterous, and he was fully aware of my knowledge. He had merely begun the skirmish that is the preliminary of every financial transaction in the East. A little experience with Oriental merchants imbues the faranchee traveler with the spirit of haggling; when he learns, as soon he will, that every tradesman who gets the better of him laughs at him for a fool, self-respect comes to the rescue. For who would not spend a half-hour of sluggish Eastern time to prove that the men of his nation are no inferiors in astuteness to these suave followers of “Maghmoód,” however small may be the amount under discussion?
By the time my cigarette was half finished I had reduced the price to four metleeks. Before I tossed it away, the keeper of the khan had accepted a mouth-organ that had somehow found its way into my pack and about three reeds of which responded to the most powerful pair of lungs; and he bade me good-bye with a much more respectful opinion of faranchees than he would have done had I paid the first amount demanded.
The wail of a leather-lunged muezzin echoed across the wilderness as I set off again to the southward. A road that sallied forth from the city stopped short at the edge of an inundated morass and left me to lay my own course, guided by the booming of the Mediterranean. The cheering prospect of a night out of doors lay before me; for, if the map was to be trusted, the next village was fully two days distant. Mile after mile the way led over slippery spurs of the mountain chain and across marshes in which I sank halfway to my knees, with here and there a muddy stream to be forded. Only an occasional sea gull, circling over the waves, gave life to the dreary landscape. A few isolated patches showed signs of cultivation, but the cold, incessant downpour kept even the hardy peasants cooped up in their villages among the hills to the eastward.
The utter solitude was broken but once by a human being, a ragged muleteer splashing northward as fast as the clinging mud permitted. On his face was the utter dejection of one who had been denied admittance at St. Peter’s gate. At sight of me he struggled to increase his pace and, pointing away through the storm, bawled plaintively, “Homar, efendee? Shoof! Fee homar henak?” (Ass, sir? Look! Is there an ass beyond?) When I shook my head he lifted up his voice and wept in true Biblical fashion, and stumbled on across the morass.
The gloomy day was waning when I plunged into a valley of rank vegetation, where several massive stone ruins and a crumbling stone bridge that humped its back over a wandering stream, suggested an ancient center of civilization. I scanned the debris for a hole in which to sleep. Shelter there was none, and a gnawing hunger protested against a halt. From the top of the bridge an unhoped-for sight caught my eye. Miles away, at the end of a low cape that ran far out into the sea, rose a slender minaret, surrounded by a jumble of flat buildings. I tore my way through the undergrowth with hope renewed and struck out towards the unknown, perhaps unpeopled, hamlet.