On the road between Haifa and Nazareth I meet a road-repair gang, all women but the boss
On the summit of Jebel es Sihk, back of Nazareth. From left to right: Shukry Nasr, teacher; Elias Awad, cook; and Nehmé Simán, teacher; my hosts in Nazareth
An hour later I gained the highest point of the route. Far below the highway, colored by that peculiar atmosphere of Palestine a delicate blue that undulated and trembled in the afternoon sunshine, stretched the vast plain of Esdraelon, walled by mountain ranges that seemed innumerable leagues away. The route crawled along the top of the western wall, choked here between two mountain spurs, breathing freely there on a tiny plateau, and, rounding at last a gigantic boulder, burst into Nazareth.
A mere village in the time of Christ, Nazareth covers to-day the bowl-shaped valley in which it is built to the summits of the surrounding hills and, viewed from a distance, takes on the form of an almost perfect amphitheatre. In the arena of the circus, a teeming, babbling bazaar, I endeavored in vain to find the dentist Kawar to whom my letter was addressed. When my legs grew aweary of wandering through the labyrinth and my tongue refused longer to deform itself in attempts to reproduce the peculiar sounds of the Arabic language, I sat down on a convenient and conspicuous bazaar stand, rolled a cigarette, and leaned back in the perfect contentment of knowing that I should presently be taken care of. Near me on all sides rose a whisper, in the hoarse voice of squatting shopkeepers, in the treble of passing children under heavy burdens, a whisper that seemed to grow into a thing animate and hurried away through the long rows and intricate byways of the market as no really living thing of the Orient ever does hurry, crying: “Faranchee! Fee wahed faranchee!” Before my first cigarette was well lighted an awe-struck urchin paused nearby to stare unqualifiedly, with the manner of one ready to take to terror-stricken flight at the first inkling of a hostile move on the part of this strange being, in dress so ludicrous, and whose legs were clothed in separate garments! Here, surely, was one of those dread boogiemen who are known to dine on small Arabs, and so near that—perhaps he had better edge away and take to his heels before—but no, here are a dozen men of familiar mien collecting in a semicircle back of him! And there comes his uncle, the camel driver. Perhaps the boogieman is not ferocious after all, for the men crowd close around, calling him “faranchee” and “efendee,” and appearing not in the least afraid.
The camel-driver is doubly courageous—who would not be proud to be his nephew?—for he actually addresses himself to the strange being, while the throng behind him grows and grows.
“Barhaba!” says the camel-driver, in greeting, “Lailtak saeedee! Where does the efendee hail from? Italiano, perhaps?”
“No, American.”
“Amerikhano!” The word runs from mouth to mouth and the faces of all hearers light up with interest. “America? Why, that is where Abdul el Kassab, the butcher, went, long years ago. It is said to be far away, further than “El Gkudis” (Jerusalem) or “Shaam” (Damascus).” But the camel driver has derived another bit of information. Listen! “Bahree! The faranchee is a bahree, a sailor, a man who works on the great water, the ‘bahr’ that anyone can see from the top of Jebel es Sihk above, and on the shores of which this same camel driver claims to have been. It is even rumored that to reach this America of the faranchee and of Abdul el Kassab, one must travel on the great water! Indeed, ’tis far away, and, were the faranchee not a bahree, how could he have journeyed from far-off America to this very Nazra?”
But my Arabic was soon exhausted and the simple Nazarenes, to whom a man unable to express himself in their vernacular was as much to be pitied as a deaf-mute, burst forth in sympathetic cries of “meskeen” (poor devil). The camel driver, striving to gain further information, was rapidly becoming the butt of the bystanders, when a native, in more festive dress, pushed through the throng and addressed me in English. I held up the letter.