"Raki?" (Whisky) he added, the note of inquiry tinged with apologetic scorn.
The hotel was built, like all the better modern houses, along the banks of the river, with overhanging balconies. I escaped from the further evidences of Western vulgarity, and, leaning over the rail of the balcony, let the passing river wash them away from the disturbed crevices of my brain. Just beneath, on one side, the narrow street which led to the hotel was continued past it down to the shore; and here came an incessant stream of natives; women with waterskins to fill and men with mules carrying baskets of town refuse to empty; the same spot served admirably for both purposes. The Eastern has an overwhelming love for "taze su" (fresh water); he drinks it, he sings to it, he worships it, he makes an emblem of it, and yet—with his extraordinarily consistent inconsistency—he makes the town midden and the town watering-place one and the same spot.
A nearly naked child sprawled about amongst the dirt and rubbish, unearthing hidden treasures in the form of bright tin lids. The mules strayed about at the water's muddy edge, putting in a drink on their own account whilst their masters, having emptied the loads, filled waterskins for the return journey.
A big, lumbering sailing boat was being unloaded just below me; the men swung themselves to and fro together as they pitched heavy bales overboard.
"Allāh, Allāh, Allāh," they sang out as they swung. Round their heads circled and swooped white gulls talking of the sea.
And now, through the distant broken bridge, clumsily floating down the current, came our raft, square and stubborn amongst the twirling, swiftly paddled goufas. Like a great, uncertain, bewildered animal, turning now this way and now that, guided by the unwieldy poplar poles, it lurched up the watering-place and stuck on the midden.
From every corner of the narrow, winding street sprang out half-clothed, jabbering Arab forms; gesticulating, fighting, jostling, they proffered their services in the task of unloading.
In a few moments all our belongings were removed; the cooking-pots, the rugs, the beds, all the personal requirements which had made it into our home for so many weeks. Stripped and deserted, looking almost ashamed of itself, it lay there in all its naked clumsiness. By to-morrow even this vestige of our journey will have disappeared for ever from the realms of historic evidence. The felt strips, the walls which have sheltered us through so many stormy nights, will be sold to the highest bidder; they will serve henceforth as carpets in some native hovel, on which the Mahomedan will kneel to say his prayers or squat to smoke his pipe. The poles and oars will go as firewood; and the skins, deflated, will return to the country we have left. Nothing will remain but the memory of it to a few human minds. We are glad that it is to be so; as it has been exclusively ours in the past, so will it remain ours only in the future. We made it what it was, and without us it will cease to be.
The waters gave it a farewell lap as they passed on. We had stopped; but they went hurrying on, taking with them all those mixed memories of peace and danger, of contemplation and exertion, of idleness and hurry which they, and they only, had shared with us. They had borne us from the wilds and fastnesses of the unconquered East to the gateway of the Western invasion; through the dreariness and desolation of desert lands, through the magnificent isolation of gorgeous mountain scenery, past the ruined evidences of ancient Western civilisations still mocked by the persistence of squalid tribal huts; and now, having deposited us to draw our own conclusions in this decayed city of the Khalifs, they hurried on, lapping scornfully in their course at the rocking pleasure-boat of Messrs. Sassoon's representatives and the white steam launch of H.M. British Vice-Consulate.
Impartially, as they had borne us up, so down here they bore up alike the brass trinkets shipped in their thousands from Manchester, the emissary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the golf clubs and society papers for the English Club; and with an indescribable roar, as of grim laughter, rushed headlong into the salt blue waters of the Persian Gulf, where, surrendering irretrievably their own bounded individuality, they merged themselves in the larger life of the untrammelled Eastern seas.