Of Suleymân in his capacity of dragoman I saw little but heard much both from himself and others. The English residents in Palestine and Syria—those who knew of him—regarded him as but a doubtful character, if one may judge from their repeated warnings to me not to trust him out of sight. His wisdom and his independent way of airing it did not please everybody as they did me; and reverence in dealing with a fellow-man was not his strong point. By travellers, I gather from innumerable testimonials which he showed me, he was either much beloved or the reverse, though none could say he did not know his business.
His English, though voluminous and comprehensive, was sometimes strange to native English ears. He had read the Bible in a German mission school, and spoke of 'Billiam's donkey' and 'the mighty Simson' where we should speak of Balaam's ass and Samson. He called the goatskins used for carrying water 'beastly skins,' and sometimes strengthened a mild sentence with an expletive.
I do not think he ever went so far in this way as another dragoman who, riding out from Haifa one fine morning with an English lady, pointed to Mount Carmel and observed:
'Bloody fine hill, madam!'
He knew how to adapt his language to his audience. But it is curious that a man whose speech in Arabic was highly mannered, in English should have cultivated solecisms. That he did cultivate them as an asset of his stock-in-trade I can affirm, for he would invent absurd mistakes and then rehearse them to me, with the question: 'Is that funny? Will that make the English laugh?'
For clergymen he kept a special manner and a special store of jokes. When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and preach a sermon on the subject of the next day's journey. This he would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen, he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter of a certain kind.
One English parson he bedevilled utterly by telling him the truth—or the accepted legend—in such a form that it seemed false or mad to him.
As they were riding out from Jaffa towards Jerusalem, he pointed to the mud-built village of Latrûn and said:
'That, sir, is the place where Simpson catch the foxes.'
'Ah?' said the clergyman. 'And who was Simpson?'