Syria, the land of Lebanon

by Lewis Gaston Leary

The citizens enjoyed us fully as much as we did them. Everywhere we went we were followed by a train of a dozen or two, and when we stopped to look at anything the crowd threatened to interfere with traffic—not that this would have seemed a serious offense to the Oriental mind! They were so interested in our every movement that I could never get room to use my camera until my friend would walk a little way off with an intense expression on his face and draw the cortège after him. Yet these people were not in the least noisy or rude and—I almost hesitate to make such a startling statement about a Syrian city—I do not remember being once asked for bakhsheesh.

The inhabitants of Hama bear the reputation of being very proud and fanatical; but we did not find them so. We stayed with a young physician, a recent graduate of the college at Beirut; and in the evening a number of his friends dropped in to see us. As our own supply of Arabic was not at that time equal to the demands of a long conversation, we essayed one or two gymnastic tricks, only to be immediately outdone by our Syrian acquaintances. Then the ice was broken, and we settled down to a long evening of rough games, which always ended in somebody having his hand slapped with a knotted handkerchief. These strangely garbed men with their brown, wrinkled faces, entered into it all with such a childlike enjoyment that we were soon laughing and shouting as we had not done since the Christmas days of boyhood; and the little brazier, with its bright bed of charcoal that sent fearsome shadows of turbaned heads and long mustachios dancing on the white walls overhead, seemed a natural substitute for the Yule log which that very night was burning in the home across the seas.

As the Christians form a quite insignificant minority of the population of Hama, they receive a degree of consideration from their Moslem neighbors such as is not granted in cities where the two religions are more nearly balanced and where jealousy and hatred consequently lead to frequent reprisals. Our host, Dr. Taufik, told us that some of his warmest friends were young Moslems. He has a large practice among the harems of the city, and has performed heroic operations upon their inmates. One afternoon he guided us through a narrow, winding lane filled with evil-smelling garbage, to a rude door not over five feet high. This was the entrance to the finest house in Hama, the residence of one of the doctor’s Moslem patients. Indeed, Dr. Taufik told us, with perhaps more of civic pride than strict accuracy, that it was the most magnificent dwelling in all Syria. The great central hall was decorated in mosaics of colored marble and overlaid with gold-leaf in intricate patterns of sumptuous beauty. Yet, as is so often the case in the East, the only approach to this splendid residence was through filth and odors which would hardly have been tolerated in the worst slums of an American city.

We later visited the home of another wealthy Moslem, also a patient of the doctor. This time we found the master of the house seated in the middle of the state drawing-room—being shaved. He is the only man I have ever seen who looked dignified while in the hands of a barber. Even with lather all over his face, he sat with the bearing of a prince of the blood giving audience to his favorites. His attitude toward us was marked by the most kindly courtesy. He allowed us to indulge in the untidy American habit of wearing shoes in the house, and, although it was the fast-month of Ramadan and he himself could eat nothing until sunset, delicious sweetmeats were served us in delicate cut-glass dishes set on a heavy silver tray. After we had watched our host put on his furs and drive off behind his two beautiful Arab stallions, we asked Dr. Taufik how much wealth was necessary for one to live in such luxury, and what was the business of his Moslem friend. “Oh, he does not work at all,” was the answer. “He does not need to, for he has property which brings him an income of forty thousand piasters a year”—which equals a little over fourteen hundred dollars!

Hama has an acropolis somewhat larger than that of Homs, but it is less symmetrical in shape and is not so well preserved. From the summit is seen the same far-reaching historic plain; but the attention is soon drawn back to the city which lies just below. If the visitor has resided in Syria, it is not the twenty-four minarets which hold his gaze, not even the Great Mosque, which is one of many shrines that claim to guard the bones of John the Baptist; but beautiful and interesting above all is the river which winds its slender cord of blue through the heart of the city. Rising on the eastern slopes of Lebanon, then passing northward through Hollow Syria and the Entering In of Hamath, dammed up by the old Hittites to form the Holy Lake by Homs, growing slowly as it flows through the “Land of Hama” until at Antioch it is almost deep enough for modern shipping—the Orontes fathered three of the great cities of the ancient world.

There are few real rivers in this land. Although they make Damascus so fertile, Abana and Pharpar are hardly more than noisy creeks. It is true that parts of Lebanon fairly sweat with springs, but hardly half a dozen of these reach the coast except as winter torrents whose stony beds dry up completely when the summer comes. The Jordan in the far south, the Leontes, which flows into the Mediterranean between Tyre and Sidon, and the Orontes in the north—these complete the tale of Syrian rivers, and Hama is the only city in the country whose stream appears as a prominent feature in the landscape. It winds and twists so that you meet it at almost every turn of the street. Along one bank, a line of closely latticed windows mark the harems of the wealthier citizens; farther on, a little group of women are washing clothes under the shade of the cypress trees; yonder a weary train of mules are standing knee-deep in the cool water, while a crowd of naked boys are sporting in the shallow stream with as much energy and enjoyment as any truant brothers of the West.

It is perhaps because the Orontes goes to the northward instead of flowing south, as do the other important Syrian rivers, that it is now known as el-ʿAsi, “the Rebel”; or the name may have been given, as some old Moslem writers suggest, because its channel is so low that the stream cannot be used for irrigation unless its water is artificially raised.

There is a noise so loud and constant that you have almost ceased to hear it—a dull, grave diapason, fuller and deeper than the heaviest organ-stop. Now, slowly and painfully, it forces up a few tones of the scale, then drops sullenly to its key-note. “Do mi sol, do do do. Do sol la, DO DO DO”—on through the day and the night and the century. It is the music of the naʿûra, the water-wheels of the Orontes. You see them now and then in southern villages, but as other cataracts are to Niagara, so are all other water-wheels to the water-wheels of Hama. Great wooden frames revolving painfully upon wooden axles as, by means of buckets along the circumference, the river lifts itself up to the level of the terraces above—these wheels approach very near to perpetual motion. We stand amazed before one that is forty feet high, until the eye travels down the river to another wheel of sixty feet; and our guide takes us out to the edge of the city where a monster ninety feet in diameter is playing its slow, solemn tune.

It is impossible to shut out the sound of their creaking. I know of travelers who have been so distracted by the incessant, inescapable noise that they could not sleep in Hama; but we found the music of the wheels very soothing, like the distant roar of the ocean or a slow fugue played on some cyclopean organ. Now they are in unison, now repeating the theme one after another, now for a brief moment in a sublime harmony never to be forgotten, then once more together in the unison of a tremendous chorus. As we drift to sleep, the song of the river calls us back, back, back to the Beginning of Things.

“Do mi fa, do do do.” What care the wheels whether Saracen or Crusader conquer in the fight below! “Do fa sol, do do do.” The chariots of Zenobia are rattling across the plain—or is it the fleeing cohorts of the Assyrian host? “Do sol la, do do do.” The dark regiments of Pharaoh are coming up from the south, and the Hittite city rushes to arms. “Do mi sol, DO do do do.” And old Orontes is slowly pushing around the great wheels of the dream city, while the Iliad is unsung, and Cheops is unquarried, and the fathers of Abram still dwell in Ur of the Chaldees.