Syria from the saddle

Front matter

ShelfXlL

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

BY

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. First Impressions — Gehenen — Some Arab Horses . 13 II. Cafe's Chantants in Beirut — A Professional Story-teller and his Story 23

III. Pictured Rocks at Dog River — By Diligence to

Chapter I. First Impressions — Gehenen — Some Arab Horses

LL the day before our ship had lain off Jaffa. I was safe to see enough of Palestine during the next few months ; so I had resisted the pleadings of a swarm of boatmen, guides, and hotel porters who wished to show me the wonders of their city ; and had contented myself with watching from deck the line of low, bleak hills, the gray town of Jaffa clinging to the mountain -side, and the crazy breakwater alive with boats. We had started on again at nightfall, passing the Carmel light-house before midnight, and reaching Beirut about six in the morning.

The town, more picturesque and modern than Jaffa, rises from the shore to the hill summit, the white and

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yellow houses brightened by gardens and palm trees. It is capped by the American College buildings. To the left the Lebanon range, running out to sea, forms an arm of the harbor.

A crowd of gaudily dressed natives surrounded the steamer, clambering over our bulwarks, or shouting to us from their boats in half a dozen languages and a hundred different keys.

Long lines of men carried goods from the hold, and became hopelessly entangled with a horde of venders who were trying to sell "genuine Syrian antiquities," — probably fresh from Birmingham, — and these venders in turn were jostled by the army of boatmen and guides who had come on board to pick up victims — or customers, as they would call them. The result of the conflicting crowds was a modern edition of Babel ; and I had begun to wonder if it would ever end and let us go ashore, when a man stepped out of the struggling mass and came toward me. He was of middle height, broad, and powerfully built, and had an air of grave dignity oddly out of place in that throng. I knew him already by reputation, and had seen his photograph, so there was little question in my greeting :

" You are David Jamal ? "

He had been engaged to meet me at Beirut and act as my dragoman through the country. As I shall often mention him, a few words of description may not be amiss.

I had experiences with many dragomans during my sojourn in the East, and found in all the number but three who were really worth their hire. The rest were phonographic machines (frequently out of order) with

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truly civilized proficiency in the arts of laziness and petty theft. The three exceptions I found to this rule were Abraham Ayoub of Damascus, Demetrius Domian of Jerusalem, and — head and shoulders above all others — David J amal.

Jamal is descended from an excellent Christian family of Jerusalem, but owing to his father's heavy losses, he was forced in youth to take up the trade of dragoman. Studying the Bible in connection with the geography of his own country, he not only familiarized himself with every mile of ground, but learned every historical or sacred episode connected with it ; sifting away the thousand traditions that surround each fact, and becoming a veritable walking guide-book. Then, turning to the task of lessening the discomforts of cross-country travel, he reduced them to a minimum. The fellaheen (peasants) and even troublesome Bedouin tribes have learned to know and respect him, so that his travelers pass in security through places that are anything but safe to the average tourist. His descent from a good family has freed him from the ill-breeding common to most dragomans. Throughout our whole trip I never once saw him ruffled, disrespectful, or out of temper ; which, as I crossed the country during the exasperating rainy season, is not a little to say.

With this dragoman it was my lot to travel, and by his efforts I was enabled to see much that usually passes unnoticed by travelers through Syria.

I pointed out my luggage, and, as soon as it could be carried into David's boat, we rowed for the custom house. Five minutes later found me in the midst of a scene that cast the shipboard turmoil far into the

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shade. It fairly took my breath away, and I no longer wondered that the Arab word for the custom house is gehenen (hell). I was forced — a fin de siecle Dante, with David for my Virgil — to watch the workings of this gehenen for half an hour until my own turn came.

A band of Syrians had just come back from the World's Fair ; and their less fortunate fellow-countrymen, the officials, who had been forced to stay at home and work, seized this occasion to prove to their wandering brethren that a traveler's life is not one of unalloyed bliss. They set about this proof by opening all boxes and bags, declaring some things contraband, and strewing the floor with others. Some returned pilgrims whose passports were not properly vised, opened a screaming controversy with officials ; while some stumbled hard over their luggage, and then talked about it. Attendants constantly charged through the crowd, hauling boxes, or ejecting troublesome natives. One rule was observed by all — to howl long and often. At the height of all this, my luggage was examined, found harmless, and carried out. We followed it ; the noisy street outside seeming almost silent after the din we had left.

David sent the luggage ahead to the Hotel D'Orient ; then he and I took a carriage to follow. Before we could start, however, a mob of beggars surrounded us, with the cry one so often reads of : " Backsheesh ! howaji, backsheesh ! "

The Oriental beggar is unlike any Western specimen of his class that I have ever seen. Loathsome, diseased, and unwashed at best, disgusting means are taken to make the Eastern mendicant's plight even worse than

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nature intended. Cripples came around us, with dirty rags wrapped about their injured arms and legs ; blind men with festering sockets for eyes; and, most repul-

Oriental Beggars.

sive of all, to me, men, well-built throughout most of their bodies, but with a bare hand and arm, or foot, as the case may be, of the size and shape of a new-born baby's, — dangling limply, or thrust into the face of some posc

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sible almsgiver. Whether these unfortunates are born thus, or whether in infancy the arm or leg is swathed to keep it from growing, I could never learn. I know that people so afflicted are proud of their deformity, and are the envy of other beggars who have no such drawing-card to help them make money.

I soon forgot these unfortunates in looking at the people and houses we passed; and in noting the contrast between such sights and one of our American streets. With us, we see red brick and brown stone buildings, and men in hideously cut suits of black, gray, and brown. Here, in Beirut, fashions are lenient and lasting. The brilliant tarbusch (fez), the brown and white abieh, or outer mantle, falling in long folds from shoulder to knee, — doubtless the identical style of mantle thrown back by Elijah on his journey to Heaven,

— the colored robe and belt beneath it, or the vest and bagging trousers, according to the wearer's taste ; the odd foot-gear ; the swords and flashy dress of dragomans, and multi-colored costumes of the townsfolk, varied by the white, veiled, and shapeless forms of native women

— all swayed and mingled like the moving colors of a kaleidoscope.

Strings of mangy camels went by ; donkeys and horses blocked the road; and ugly stray curs, usually yellow, with pointed noses and mean faces, sneaked under carts, or slept in patches of sunlight. These dogs are ownerless (no native owns a dog in the East) and act as city scavengers, eating all offal and carrion ; thus saving people the trouble of cleaning their streets or burying dead animals.

The lower streets are narrow, tortuous, and, of course,

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dirty. Each side of the way is lined with low built shops, cafSs, and bazaars ; almost all of these open on the street. Men sit on the narrow sidewalk, — when there is a sidewalk, — playing chess or drinking coffee. Climbing the hill, we came to wider white roads, with separate yellow and white houses, red-roofed, and surrounded by palms and cactus hedges. Mosque domes and white minarets rise here and there, standing out against the blue sky.

Almost all cities have some distinctive color. A dingy gray characterizes London ; our American cities reflect the red and brown of their houses ; but the prevailing tint in the East is white. However dirty the interior may be, the city, from a bird's-eye view, is almost sure to look white, and the glare of the sun makes it seem even whiter. Beirut is quite European when compared with many Syrian towns, but to a traveler who makes his first Eastern stop there, it seems like a new world.

I noticed on the forelock or reins of many horses and donkeys a blue bead, and asked David its use. He told me it was a charm against the evil eye. The evil-eye superstition in the East is somewhat different from that in Italy. In Syria, the natives fear the " evil eye of envy," and believe that if some possession of theirs is coveted, it will sicken and die. Hence they fasten the blue bead on all their best horses, and even about their children's necks. I have seen native children whom their parents thought beautiful, dressed in rags that they might not attract the eye of envy.

My first few days were taken up in wandering through out-of-the-way native places ; studying a myr-

X iad new phases of life ; and in trying and choosing horses for the journey to Jerusalem. This last occupation was most pleasant of all. The average Syrian horse is not the Arab steed whose portrait we see in tea-chromos. That style of horse, when he does exist, is found in the Land of Moab, or the desert, and then in a very modified form. For a long, rough journey, such as we were to take, he would be worse than useless. The horses chosen for such a journey are little larger than our own bronchos. They are full of spirit, practically tireless, and as sure-footed as mountain goats.

This sure-footedness is decidedly necessary in traveling through Syria, where one is constantly obliged to ride over steep, pathless mountains or down rocky river-beds. Through all my rough riding, I never saw one of these horses fall. If they ever stumble, it is more likely to be on some smooth, safe road.

I once had to ride up a flight of slippery, mossgrown steps, and then down the other side ; and my horse took it as quietly and safely as an American horse would travel his mile in a park bridle-path.

The Arabs and Syrians use saddles that look more like flattened meal-bags than anything else. Their stirrups are shovel-like in shape, and the stirrupleathers are drawn so short that the rider's knee is on a level with his saddle.

Thus, instead of grasping the horse with the knee, they use the calf of the leg, — their sharp-cornered stirrups serving as spurs. This fashion of riding is most awkward for beginners ; and though I soon learned it, I think our American method is not only

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far more graceful, but gives the rider more control over his mount. The horses guide by the neck, and have few gaits, — the walk, canter, and run being most common. Stallions are ridden almost universally. Being fed on barley instead of oats, they are usually quite gentle.

I tried several mounts, but at last settled on two; one for steady riding, and one in case my regular horse became lame or ill.

I chose for everyday use a little white horse named Massoud. He had a meek and lowly air, and gentleness seemed to hang on him like a garment. I was afraid he would not suit me, as he seemed too quiet for any one but a lady to ride. But I mounted him for a trial-ride, and striking him with the sharp stirrups, slapped him on the shoulder by way of rousing him. I succeeded : I have never seen a horse more thoroughly aroused. He started at a dead run ; then, jumping high in the air, bucked, kicked, whirled half-way around, and set off once more on a series of canters and gallops, interspersed with bucks and sudden turns. Had I used an Arab saddle at the time, I must certainly have been thrown. As it was, we kept up the performance for nearly half an hour, — until he sobered down for the time ; then I rode back with the conviction that, on such a horse, — no matter how monotonous the route, — I need never suffer from ennui. When other attractions failed, he could always be relied on to create a diversion.

We grew to be great friends, Massoud and I. But he never let friendship interfere with business. Each morning I used to give him a lump of sugar and pat

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him. He was always grateful, and would lay his head most affectionately against my coat. But as soon as I mounted, amicable relations were suspended and the business of the day begun. My part of it was to reach my destination ; and his was, by dint of every trick his Oriental brain could devise, to kill me before I got there.

I selected him for my first mount, and took for a substitute a little terra cotta beast with a Roman nose.

Chapter II. Cafes Chantants In Beirut A Professional

STORY-TELLER AND HIS STORY.

edly interesting. David piloted me to one of these the evening after my arrival.

The place consisted of a single room, one side open on the street; a low bench running about the three other sides ; above, a shelf covered with nargilehs and bottles ; while in one corner burned a brazier where fresh coffee was constantly made. Beside it stood a tray of small coffee cups.

The room, like most Eastern places of amusement, was utterly without decoration. Such resorts are, per-

]EIRUT, as the largest and most European town in Syria, holds more places of amusement than j Jerusalem or Damascus.

Open-air cafes, where liquor and nargilehs are served on marbletopped tables, are plentiful, and look like colorless reflections of the Parisian boulevard cafes. These civilized resorts offer little inducement to foreigners, but the regular coffee-house patronized by middle and lower class natives is decicl-

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force, rigidly plain. The Mohammedan religion forbids pictures, and hangings would be ruined by the smoke. When we reached the cafe, at least forty men were seated on the long bench, or on stools and mats drawn around the one chair of the establishment. On this chair sat a striking figure : a tall, slender man dressed eccentrically in a hybrid suit.

Red shoes and checked European trousers covered the lower half of his body ; while a close-fitting scarlet vest embroidered with gold thread, white puff-sleeves, shaped like those worn by women in our own country, and a red tarbusch set on the back of his head among a mass of curls, completed his costume. His face, unlike the grave, immobile countenances of the crowd about him, was alight with interest, the expression changing every second ; his dark eyes rolling in anger one moment ; a look of sorrow or fear coming into them the next. He gesticulated wildly, and spoke, now in deep guttural tones, now in high falsetto. His audience regarded him with solemn interest, occasionally nodding or whispering to each other. The attendants moved about noiselessly, pausing to listen whenever the speaker's voice rose to some special climax, then, as it subsided, moving on again.

At last the orator looked about, clapped his hands over his head, and stopped speaking. He gazed into space during a silence of more than a minute, then broke the stillness with a shout, and continued his speech.

" What is going on ? Political primaries ? " I had whispered to David during the brief pause.

" What are political primaries, sir ? " he asked.

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I saw the folly of my question and did not repeat it, but asked what the speaker had been saying.

" He is a professional story-teller," answered David. " Poor people come here who cannot afford to go to one of the expensive places. They pay a penny for coffee, and then another penny apiece to this man, and he tells them stories all the evening. He has just finished one, and he will begin another in a minute."

Anxious to hear what wonderful tale could thus hold fifty grown men's attention a whole evening, I asked David to translate the next story as it went on. I had scarcely finished my request, when the narrator began to speak, David following him with a whispered translation. I give the plot as nearly as I can remember it :

There was once a prince (or sheik) who loved the daughter of a king who ruled a country across the desert. The sheik was poor, after the manner of heroes ; and the king would not give him his daughter, but said she should marry a richer prince who was in his court.

The young prince watched his chance, stole the girl from her father's palace, and rode off with her. They had ridden a day's journey when they saw the king and his followers in hot pursuit. The sheik and his little party turned and attacked the pursuers, enacting such prodigies of valor that the king's men were beaten. The lover raised his sword to kill the king, but the daughter (Pocahontas-like) threw herself between them and begged her father's life, which the prince, with true fairy-tale generosity, granted.

The king, grateful for his deliverance, forgave the &g lovers and invited them to come back to his court.

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The sheik accepted the invitation and, dismissing his followers, rode back with his father-in-law. Hardly, however, had they reached the palace when his majesty ordered the youth to be bound and buried up to the neck in earth, forbidding all people to succor him.

In this uncomfortable state the unhappy sheik remained for three days, until a friend went secretly to his brother and told him the story. The brother raised an army and engaged the king in a prolonged and circumstantially related battle, in which, as far as I could gather, every combatant killed at least twenty men. How, from a sordid mathematical standpoint, they reconciled this Oriental Kilkenny cat problem, when they came to settle up at the end of the row, I don't pretend to say. In Eastern war-stories a hero seems to be of no earthly use unless, single-handed, he can kill anywhere from fifty to a hundred opponents or put a whole troop to flight.

I left the cafe in the middle of this interesting battle so I shall never know the outcome. Whether the halfburied sheik was released by his brother, or wholly interred by the king, must ever remain a mystery.

I have repeated the story at length to show in how slight things an Eastern audience may be interested. It is impossible to imagine an American restaurant crowd listening for three hours to the tale of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves, or Bluebeard. But realism in literature has not yet reached Syria, and at coffee-house recitals the romantic school is still all-powerful. Such an audience would make the fortune of a Western theatrical manager.

We went another evening to a native theater. David

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assured me that it was his first visit to such a place, and I believe him. A respectable married dragoman's taste would scarcely run in the line of many of that evening's " specialties." Much of the performance, however, was quite proper. The theater would have seated five hundred people and was little more than half-filled. Like the cafe, it was undecorated. No women were in the audience and I was the only foreigner.

The first part of the performance was under way when we entered. On the stage (a mere platform devoid of scenery) sat three men and two women, playing on native musical instruments and singing. After one or two songs, one of the women — a beautiful Jewish girl with Greek features — came to the footlights (or where they should have been) and began to dance. I had heard much of the dreamy dances of the East and leaned back prepared to be enchanted. I was doomed to disappointment. The dance consisted of a rather awkward shuffling of the feet and infinite wavings of the hands in time to a slow, tuneless chant.

I have seen many terpsichoreans in Syria in different native dances, — dances for every occasion, from weddings to funerals, — and none of them were in the slightest degree interesting or graceful. At the World's Fair in Chicago so-called Syrian dances were introduced that caused much comment and even censure. These were merely adapted to draw crowds (as the managers themselves said), and in no way resembled their real native dances. The World's Fair Syrian dances are never danced in Syria itself.

The girl followed the dance with a song in praise of

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her lover. Many expressions in this were like passages from Solomon's Song, the similes and metaphors being sometimes almost identical with those in the " Song of Songs." Little in Eastern poetry has changed since the days of the poet-king. His great Love-Song was probably droned in this same minor key, by old-time Israelitish maidens and accompanied by some such swaying of head and arms. I quote a few lines from the Beirut girl's song, as I jotted them down at the time from Jamal's literal translation : —

" I called to my beloved, but he heard me not.

"Lo, thou art beautiful.

"Thine eyes are like the eyes of a deer; thine eyebrows are as a sword ; thy hair is like fine silk and thy mouth a scarlet band. Thou art tall and stately like the .palm-tree.

" Behold I stand knocking at thy door early in the morning, seeking to enter.

"Search my heart, and thou wilt find in it naught but love for thee."

This is not altogether unlike Solomon's lines: —

" His head is as the most fine gold . . . his eyes are as the eyes of doves . . . Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet . . . This thy stature is like a palm-tree . . . My beloved that knocketh, saying, 4 Open to me.' "

The girl went on, after this poetical flight, to say that she would " go to Beirut to buy a coat for her beloved," combining ancient poetry with modern facts. The song over, she came down through the audience, passing around a tambourine for backsheesh ; then, with the other performers, retired to dress for the play that was to follow.

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j

During the entr'acte David told me the actors were Jews from Damascus ; that they could not read or write ; and that they themselves had composed (I cannot say, written) the play we were about to see. Not only had they composed the play itself, but they had learned and remembered lines, stage-business and all, without the aid of a single written word. To have mastered in this manner the three-act play we witnessed must have involved endless work.

I shall not recount the somewhat involved plot, more than to say that it dealt with the old story of a jealous miserly husband who had married a gay young wife.

The acting was extremely good, every one entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. True, all known laws of dramatic construction were thrown aside in a complete and decisive style that rather took away the breath of a witness accustomed to our own hard-andfast rules. Stage " conventions " were more palpable than necessary, and many minor faults might be found. But none of these alter the fact that this complete and three-act comedy was composed and acted — acted well — by a troupe of uneducated, untrained Jews.

The performance, considering everything, was wonderful ; even to the touch of naturalism, where the low comedian, being dunned by an importunate creditor, leaped from the stage and, pursued by his opponent, rushed for safety in and out among the audience.

The audience showed no more surprise or amusement than if one of the attendants had passed among them.

The only time during the entire evening that they

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laughed, or even smiled, was when the stingy husband, reproached by his wife for starving her, exclaims : —

" Why, didn't I bring home a pound of meat, only six months ago ? "

Personally, I fail to see any great wit in the above remark ; but as the whole audience, hitherto impassive, roared with laughter, I suppose it was some rare gem of Arabic humor that lost luster in translation.

The pantomime following the play was interesting from the fact that, aside from the native costumes, it was precisely the same pantomime originated centuries ago in Italy ; renewed in our days as " Humpty Dumpty," and as the English Christmas " Pantomime." How it crossed to Syria I do not know. But here it was — Columbine, Harlequin, and Pantaloon being none the less recognizable because of their Syrian dress. The Clown even wore the white suit and powdered mask by which he is so well known throughout the world.

An element of Rabelaisianism, borrowed no doubt direct from the mediaeval Italian, ran through this Beirut performance, causing David to glance at me apologetically now and then, and once to repeat his former assertion that he had never before visited such places, and had had no idea what they were like.

At the end of the pantomime the entire cast came on, and closed the evening with a chant in praise of the Sultan, following — or perhaps having preceded — the American and European custom of closing a performance with the national hymn.

Chapter III. Pictured Rocks At Dog River — By Diligence To

DAMASCUS.

RIDING-PARTY, made up of the young doctors and the missionaries' daughters from the American College, was organized the day before I left Beirut. Our destination was the mountain of the Pictured Rocks, at Dog River. David had decked Massoud in gorgeous Oriental trappings, the inevitable blue bead fastened to each rein, and a saddle-cloth that might have been cut from the piece of which Joseph's coat of many colors was made.

We started directly after lunch, for the ride to Dog River and back was long. The first few miles lay along the outskirts of Beirut, past adobe and stone huts, through denies of cactus hedge and waving reeds, down to Beirut River. Then, turning to the left, we rode on the seashore, skirting St. George's Bay (one of the innumerable scenes of the worthy saint's encounter with the dragon). The native horses, being bred on the sands, started, as soon as they felt the sand of the shore under their feet, on a hard

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gallop, a sort of informal race which they continued, off and on, for several miles.

A diversion was created, midway in the race, by a train laden with quarry stones passing on the ridge above. The horses, unused to locomotives, shied violently, Massoud taking the bit between his teeth and bolting for the sea. He refused to stop until he was almost breast high in the surf. Then, as I succeeded in turning him, he tried to lie down and roll. I managed at length to bring him back to land, and, soaked through with salt water, started to overtake the others, whose horses had scattered in every direction. It was an invigorating gallop along the beach, the sea-wind strong in our faces, and the waves breaking white about the horses' feet. Leaving the shore, we went up a narrow road, lined on either side with a sort of pampasgrass, toward Dog River.

We were forced in this road to ride two and two, and here I fell from grace by my first attempt at Arabic. David had told me that the Arabic word corresponding to our " get up," or " hurry," was iella (I spell phonetically), and that the native horses understood that term better than any other. Accordingly when Massoud fell back I used this word with the desired effect. My companion promptly informed me that I had been indulging in colloquial Arabic profanity, and seemed a little shocked. I was somewhat chagrined, but, in a country where people hiss at a horse to make him stop, and call on the name of the Deity to start him once more, a stranger is prone to mistakes.

When I spoke of it afterward to David, he seemed surprised to hear that foreigners regarded the term as

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profane. And, indeed, when I had heard a few samples of genuine Arab profanity, — the most expressive and comprehensive in the world, — iella seemed to be quite mild.