A Well in the Konia Plains.
Then, outside the town, the railway appears; modern European houses spring up round it—offices for the Company and an hotel. A whiff of stir and bustle brought in along with the iron fangs of the Monster brings a sense of fresh life to these people, whose existence seemed one long decay of better things, like that of the ruins amongst which they spend their days.
And everywhere there was a whisper of yet closer touch with civilisation. The Anatolian Railway stops at Konia, but its continuation under the name of the Baghdad Railway was everywhere in the air.[ [2] No one spoke openly about it; its coming seemed enveloped in such a shroud of mystery that one felt there was a sort of halo around its birth. At first one mentioned it baldly by name; and at once the official would put on his most discreet and impressive manner and refer to the will of Allah; the merchant would nod mysteriously and then wink with evident satisfaction. "It comes! oh yes, it comes! but it is better not to talk of it yet." And the Zaptieh would sigh heavily, thinking of his unpaid wages, and say, "Please God, it comes," and then look hastily round to see who had overheard him.
And so at last we also learnt to speak of the Coming of the Monster with bated breath and lowered tones, and were duly infected with the impressiveness of his arrival—the arrival of the Being whose touch was to bring new life into this dead land.
II
It was on the morning of the third day after our arrival at Konia that we made the plunge into the great plain from the spot where the Monster had left us. We collected in the square in front of the Konak. There were two covered arabas to convey the baggage, and in one of these Constantin and Hassan also rode; X and I rode horses, and had saddle-bags slung under our saddles. Our escort consisted of three Zaptiehs, a Lieutenant, Rejeb, and an ancient Sergeant, Mustapha.
The head of the police accompanied us a few miles out of the town.
Slowly, riding at a foot's pace, we left it all behind, the squalid streets, the modern houses, the scraggy little trees; the lumpy road became a deeply rutted track bordering stubble fields; lumbering carts passed us, squeaking terribly as the wheels lurched out of the ruts to make way for us. The track became an ill-defined path, along which heavily laden pack-animals slowly toiled, raising clouds of dust. Turning in our saddles, all we could see of Konia was the minarets of its mosques standing above a confused blur on the horizon line.
There is a strange fascination in watching the slow disappearance of any object on the horizon, when that horizon is visible at every point round you. The exact moment never comes when you can state the actual disappearance of the object. You think it is still there, and then you slowly realise that it is not. And when you have realised this, you turn round again in the saddle once for all, and set your face steadily towards the horizon in front of you, which for so many hours on end has nothing to show and nothing to tell you, and yet whose very emptiness is so full of secret possibilities and hidden wonder.