Oriental Encounters | Page 3

and Ekron, and the luncheon
which a village headman had prepared for us, consisting of a whole sheep, roast and
stuffed with nuts and vegetables; and a day with Henri Baldensperger in the Hebron
region. The friendships of those days were made for life. Hanauer, the Baldenspergers,
Suleymân, and other natives of the country--those of them who are alive--remain my
friends to-day.
In short, I ran completely wild for months, in a manner unbecoming to an Englishman;
and when at length, upon a pressing invitation, I turned up in Jerusalem and used my
introductions, it was in semi-native garb and with a love for Arabs which, I was made to
understand, was hardly decent. My native friends were objects of suspicion. I was told
that they were undesirable, and, when I stood up for them, was soon put down by the
retort that I was very young. I could not obviously claim as much experience as my
mature advisers, whose frequent warnings to me to distrust the people of the country thus
acquired the force of moral precepts, which it is the secret joy of youth to disobey.
That is the reason why the respectable English residents in Syria figure in these pages as
censorious and hostile, with but few exceptions. They were hostile to my point of view,
which was not then avowed, but not to me. Indeed, so many of them showed me

kindness--particularly in my times of illness--that I cannot think of them without a glow
of friendliness. But the attitude of most of them was never mine, and the fact that at the
time I still admired that attitude as the correct one, and thought myself at intervals a sad
backslider, made it seem forbidding. In my Oriental life they really were, as here depicted,
a disapproving shadow in the background. With one--referred to often in these tales--I
was in full agreement. We lived together for some months in a small mountain village,
and our friendship then established has remained unbroken. But he, though not alone, was
an exception.
Owing to the general verdict on my Arab friends, I led what might be called a double life
during the months of my first sojourn in Jerusalem; until Suleymân, the tourist season
being ended, came with promise of adventure, when I flung discretion to the winds. We
hired two horses and a muleteer, and rode away into the north together. A fortnight later,
at the foot of the Ladder of Tyre, Suleymân was forced to leave me, being summoned to
his village. I still rode on towards the north, alone with one hired muleteer, a simple soul.
A notion of my subsequent adventures may, perhaps, be gathered from the following
pages, in which I have embodied fictionally some impressions still remaining clear after
the lapse of more than twenty years. A record of small things, no doubt; yet it seems
possible that something human may be learnt from such a comic sketch-book of
experience which would never be derived from more imposing works.
CHAPTER I
RASHÎD THE FAIR
The brown plain, swimming in a haze of heat, stretched far away into the distance, where
a chain of mountains trenched upon the cloudless sky. Six months of drought had
withered all the herbage. Only thistles, blue and yellow, and some thorny bushes had
survived; but after the torrential winter rains the whole expanse would blossom like the
rose. I traversed the plain afterwards in spring, when cornfields waved for miles around
its three mud villages, wild flowers in mad profusion covered its waste places, and scarlet
tulips flamed amid its wheat.
Now all was desert. After riding for four days in such a landscape, it was sweet to think
upon the journey's end, the city of perennial waters, shady gardens, and the song of birds.
I was picturing the scene of our arrival--the shade and the repose, the long, cool drinks,
the friendly hum of the bazaars--and wondering what letters I should find awaiting me,
all to the tune of 'Onward, Christian soldiers'--for the clip-clap of a horse's hoofs
invariably beats out in my brain some tune, the most incongruous, against my will--when
a sudden outcry roused me. It came from my companion, a hired muleteer, and sounded
angry. The fellow had been riding on ahead. I now saw that he had overtaken other
travellers--two men astride of one donkey--and had entered into conversation with them.
One of the two, the hindmost, was a Turkish soldier. Except the little group they made
together, and a vulture, a mere speck above them in the blue, no other living creature was
in sight. Something had happened, for the soldier seemed amused, while my poor man
was making gestures of despairing protest. He repeated the loud cry which had disturbed
my reverie,