The Eye of Zeitoon | Page 3

foot-passengers, and when we spoke of it as kahveh to the obadashi--
the elderly youth who corresponds to porter, bell-boy and chambermaid
in one--he was visibly annoyed.
Truly the place was a khan--a great bleak building of four high outer
walls, surrounding a courtyard that was a yard deep with the dung of
countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses; crowded with arabas, the
four-wheeled vehicles of all the Near East, and smelly with centuries of
human journeys' ends.
Khans provide nothing except room, heat and water (and the heat costs

extra); there is no sanitation for any one at any price; every guest
dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into the courtyard,
to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help build the aroma. But the
guests provide a picture without price that with the very first glimpse
drives discomfort out of mind.
In that place there were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and all the rest
of the list. There was even a Chinaman. Two Hindus were unpacking
bundles out of a creaking araba, watched scornfully by an unmistakable
Pathan. A fat swarthy-faced Greek in black frock coat and trousers, fez,
and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handle
while he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixed
of Armenians, Italians, Maltese, Syrians and a Turk or two, who
labored with his bales of cotton goods below. (The Italians eyed
everybody sidewise, for there were rumors in those days of impending
trouble, and when the Turk begins hostilities he likes his first
opponents easy and ready to hand.)
There were Kurds, long-nosed, lean-lipped and suspicious, who said
very little, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forth among
the swarming strangers. They said nothing at all, those Kurds, but
listened a very great deal.
Tall, mustached Circassians, with eighteen-inch Erzerum daggers at
their waists, swaggered about as if they, and only they, were history's
heirs. It was expedient to get out of their path alertly, but they cringed
into second place before the Turks, who, without any swagger at all,
lorded it over every one. For the Turk is a conqueror, whatever else he
ought to be. The poorest Turkish servant is race-conscious, and
unshakably convinced of his own superiority to the princes of the
conquered. One has to bear that fact in mind when dealing with the
Turk; it colors all his views of life, and accounts for some of his
famous unexpectedness.
Will and I fell in love with the crowd, and engaged a room over the
great arched entrance. We were aware from the first of the dull red
marks on the walls of the room, where bed-bugs had been slain with
slipper heels by angry owners of the blood; but we were not in search
of luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane brought
down from the hotel at once. The fact that stallions squealed and fought
in the stalls across the courtyard scarcely promised us uninterrupted

sleep; but sleep is not to be weighed in the balance against the news of
eastern nights.
We went down to the common room close beside the main entrance,
and pushed the door open a little way; the men who sat within with
their backs against it would only yield enough to pass one person in
gingerly at a time. We saw a sea of heads and hats and faces. It looked
impossible to squeeze another human being in among those already
seated on the floor, nor to make another voice heard amid all that babel.
But the babel ceased, and they did make room for us--places of honor
against the far wall, because of our clean clothes and nationality. We
sat wedged between a Georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket, and a
man who looked Persian but talked for the most part French. There
were other Persians beyond him, for I caught the word poul--money,
the perennial song and shibboleth of that folk.
The day was fine enough, but consensus of opinion had it that snow
was likely falling in the Taurus Mountains, and rain would fall the next
day between the mountains and the sea, making roads and fords
impassable and the mountain passes risky. So men from the ends of
earth sat still contentedly, to pass earth's gossip to and fro--an
astonishing lot of it. There was none of it quite true, and some of it not
nearly true, but all of it was based on fact of some sort.
Men who know the khans well are agreed that with experience one
learns to guess the truth from listening to the ever-changing lies. We
could not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of an old-time
theater, watching