Letters From Baghdad Page 8

  Sunday 25. I'm going on to Petra! What with giving out that I'm a German (for they are desperately afraid of the English), I have got permission and a soldier from the Governor and this is always difficult and often impossible, and I can't but think that the finger of Providence points southwards! I would telegraph to ask your permission, but there's no telegraph nearer than Jericho! I think a missionary and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Harding, are coming with me; they are nice people and I shall like to have them. He has gone to see about mules, etc., now, and we are off at dawn. I have Spent a pleasant day here... I photographed and came back to my tent determined to penetrate into the south-west fort which is now used as barracks for the Turkish soldiers. Dr. Johnson had told me I could not possibly get permission, so I asked for none, but took Hanna and walked calmly in, in an affable way, greeted all the soldiers politely and was shown all over! As I was walking about I came to the edge of a deep Pit and Whom should I see at the bottom of it but my poor Madeba friends! It was the prison, there were underground chambers on either side of the pit, but they were all sitting outside to enjoy the sun that straggles down at midday. We greeted each other affectionately. I then went down a long outer stair to a lower floor, so to speak, of the forts, and here again was shown great vaulted rooms cut out of the rock. These are all inhabited by soldiers and mules. I felt I had done a good morning's sight-seeing and came back to my tent where I was presently fetched by a little Turkish girl, the daughter of an Effendi, who told me her mother was sitting down in the shadow of the wall a little below my camp and invited me to come and drink coffee. We went down hand in hand and I found a lot of Turkish women sitting on the ground under a fig tree, so I sat down too and was given coffee and as they all but one talked Arabic, we had a cheerful conversation. We had a glorious view down the valley and across the Dead Sea — It is supposed to be the tomb of Noah and honoured as such. It's a glorious hot night. We bought a lamb to-day for a medijeh, . . . which seems cheap. He was a perfect love and his fate cut me to the heart. I felt if I looked at him any longer I should be like Byron and the goose, so I parted from him hastily — and there were delicious lamb cutlets for supper.

  My soldier is again a Circassian -his name is Ayoub — job. He appears to possess the complacent disposition of his namesake, but he has little of the Arabic, his native tongue being of course Turkish. We have a beautiful flowery place for our camp and I have been bathing in the stream. The men have shot partridges, and caught fish in a most ingenious way. They put a basin weighted with some stones in the stream with a little bread in it and cover it with a cloth in which there are a few holes. The fish swim in to eat the bread and can't get out. They are very small. My servants are admirable. My own camp goes like clockwork with never a hitch. Hanna is the prop and stay of it all. The two muleteers are also extremely good servants and we have vowed always to travel together... .

  We heard that we were still 6 hours from Wady Musa. One of the great difficulties of this journey is that no one knows the distances even approximately and there is no map worth a farthing. Another is that the population is so scant we can't get food! This is starvation camp tonight, we have nothing but rice and bread, a little potted meat. No charcoal and no barley for our horses.

  We have been on the Roman road all day. The men are all in good spirits and we are extremely cheerful. It is a good joke, you know... .

  Thursday 29. Wady Musa — at length we have arrived and it is worth all the long long way. We descended to the village of Wady Musa where we hoped to get provisions, but devil a hen there was, so we despatched a man post haste to the nearest Bedouin camp for a lamb, and as yet — 7 p.m. — none has appeared! However, we have got laban and barley and butter so we can support life with our own rice and bread. What the people in Wady Musa live on I can't imagine. They hadn't so much as milk. These things settled, we rode on and soon got into the entrance of the defile which leads to Petra. The Bab es Sik is a passage about half a mile long and in places not more than 8 ft. wide; the rocks rise on either side straight up 100 ft. or so, they are sandstone of the most exquisite red and sometimes almost arch overhead. The stream runs between, filling all the path, though it used to flow through conduits, and the road was paved; oleanders grew along the stream and here and there a sheaf of ivy hung down over the red rock. We went on in ecstasies until suddenly between the narrow opening of the rocks, we saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. Imagine a temple cut out of the solid rock, the charming facade supported on great Corinthian columns standing clear., soaring upwards to the very top of the cliff in the most exquisite proportions and carved with groups of figures almost as fresh as when the chisel left them all this in the rose red rock., with the sun just touching it and making it look almost transparent. As we went on the gorge widened, on either side the cliffs were cut out into rock tombs of every shape and adorned in every manner, some standing, columned, in the rock, some clear with a pointed roof, some elaborate, some simple, some capped with pointed pyramids, many adorned with a curious form of stair high up over the doorway... . The gorge opened and brought us out into a kind of square between the cliffs with a rude cut theatre in it and tombs on every side. We went on and got into a great open place the cliffs widening out far on every side and leaving this kind of amphitheatre strewn over with mounds of ruins. And here we camped under a row of the most elaborate tombs, three stories of pillars and cornices and the whole topped by a great funeral urn. They are extremely rococo, just like the kind of thing you see in a Venetian church above a seventeenth century Doge leaning on his elbow, but time has worn them and weather has stained the rock with exquisite colours — and, in short, I never liked Bernini so well!... It is like a fairy tale city, all pink and wonderful. The great paved roads stretch up to a ruined arch and vanish; a solid wall springs up some 6ft. 'A rose red city half as old as Time' — I wish the lamb had come!

  Friday, 30. I have had a busy day. An hour before dawn Ayoub and I started off riding, with a shepherd to guide us, to the top of Mount Hot — you realise that no daughter of yours could be content to sit quietly at the bottom of a mountain when there was one handy! — we rode up nearly to the top and then dismounted and climbed to the highest summit on which stands, whose tomb do you think! Aaron's! I have never seen anything like these gorges; the cliffs rise for 1000 ft. on either side, broken into the most incredible shapes and coloured! — red, yellow, blue, white, great patterns over them more lovely than any mosaic. I came back to my tents and found we had bought fifty eggs, some figs and a sheep! but unfortunately the sheep has grown rather old in his long journey to us.

  Saturday 31 — We left Petra at 7 this morning with great regret. It was looking too exquisite and I longed for another day, but the Hardings were bound to be back. I certainly underestimated the length of the entrance gorge.

  Saturday, April 1. We were Off at 7 this morning and rode two and a half hours along our former road across the wide stretching uplands. The monotony was broken by keeping a watch for the Roman milestones. We were going very slowly so as to keep in touch with the mules and we passed one every quarter of an hour the whole way. The paved road was often very well preserved. It was blazing hot. We lunched at the opening of the usual broad shallow valley where there was a very dirty pool at which the mules watered, and one tiny thorn bush under the shade of which we tried to sit, but as it was 1ft there was not much shade to be had. In all this country there is practically no water, there are a few cisterns scattered over the hills and, I should think, emptied before the middle of the summer, and where we are camping a couple of wells, and that's absolutely all! I nearly went to sleep on my horse this morning, but was wakened up by hearing Ayoub relating to me tales of Ibn Rashid. One gets so accustomed to it all that one ceases to be bored. We set off again at 12 and Ayoub sighted some Arabs on a hill top so he and I and Hanna and Tarif left the others and rode up and over the hill and found a lot of Arabs watering their flocks at a 'bit' (that's a cistern). It was a very pretty sight. The
y brought the water up in skins and poured it into the stone troughs all round and the sheep and goats drank thirstily. We followed the Roman road, which runs straight over the tops of the hills... our camping place down in the valley at 2:30. It is called Towaneh and was once a big town, the ruins of it stretch up on either side of the valley, but there is nothing now but a cluster of black tents a few hundred yards below us. I paid a call on some Arab ladies and watched them making a sort of sour cream cheese in a cauldron over their fire. They gave me some when it was done, we all ate it, with our fingers, and then they made me coffee, and we drank it out of the same cup, and it was quite good. It was very difficult to understand them for their vocabulary is perfectly different from mine; however, we got along by keeping to simple subjects! These people are gipsies, some of them have just been dancing for me, round my camp fire. It was quite dark, with a tiny new moon, the fire of dry thorns flickered upfaded and flickered again and showed the circle of men crouching on the ground, their black and white cloaks wrapped round them and the woman in the middle dancing. She looked as though she had stepped out of an Egyptian fresco. She wore a long red gown bound round her waist with a dark blue cloth, and falling open in front to show a redder petticoat below. Round her forehead was another dark blue cloth bound tightly and falling in long ends down her back, her chin was covered by a white cloth drawn up round her ears and falling in folds to her waist and her lower lips tattooed with indigo! Her feet, in red leather shoes, scarcely moved but all her body danced and she swept a red handkerchief she held in one hand, round her head, and clasped her hands together in front of her impassive face. The men played a drum and a discordant fife and sang a monotonous song and clapped their hands and gradually she came nearer and nearer to me, twisting her slender body till she dropped down on the heap of brushwood at my feet, and kneeling, her body still danced and her arms swayed and twisted round the mask like face. She got up, and retreated again slowly, with downcast eyes, invoking blessings upon me at intervals, till at last I called her and gave her a couple of besklihs. Near Damascus is their home, and they are going back there from Mecca where they have been near the Prophet (thanks be to God!) and they have seen the holy city (God made it!) and they hope to reach Damascus in safety (if God please!). They talked Arabic to me, but to each other the gipsy tongue which sounded more like Turkish than anything else.

  Monday 2. We left this morning at 7. It was very hot, a strong baking wind from the south and a heavy hot mist, most unpleasant. Through this we rode for two hours or more straight on up the side of the valley. The morning's amusement was again the milestones which are wonderfully well preserved, many of them still standing upright in groups of three or four. I have counted as many as eight in one place — I don't know why this is, unless every succeeding emperor who mended the road put up a few milestones of his own. The inscriptions are always visible, but would generally be very difficult to decipher, the letters being much worn. Besides which a mass of Arab tribe marks have been cut on top of them. Many of them, however, have been read by the learned. We went to a tiny village called Aineh where there is a lovely spring and a watermill. We were still six hours from Kerak and Ali black in the face from the heat, so that I thought he was going to have a sunstroke. The Hardings were obliged to go on, but I decided to stay here. They have been very nice. My camp is pitched half way up the hill, with the head of the spring at my door and in front, deep corn fields where the barley is standing in the ear and the storks walking solemnly up to their necks in green. There has been an immense flock of them flying and settling on the hillside, and when I took a stroll I soon found what was engaging the attention of the Father of Luck. The ground was hopping with locusts; on some of the slopes they have eaten every leaf and they are making their way down to the corn. I have just been watching my people make bread. Flour was fortunately to be got from the mill below us; they set two logs alight and when they had got enough ashes they made an immense cake, 2 ft. across and half an inch thick, of flour and water and covered it over with hot ashes. After a quarter of an hour it had to be turned and recovered and the result is most delicious eaten hot; it becomes rather wooden when it is cold. The flour is very coarse, almost like oatmeal. These are the Moments when my camp is at its best — half a dozen ragged onlookers were sitting round in the circle of flickering light and a tiny moon overhead... .

  One of my muleteers, Muhammad, is a Druze. If all his sect are like him, they must be a charming race. He is a great big handsome creature, gentle and quiet and extremely abstemious. He eats nothing but rice `and bread and figs. it makes me the more keen to go to the Hauran which is the chief centre of then, and I want very much to take these two muleteers with me: they are very capable and obliging, and Muhammad would be interesting to have in a Druze country. One mayn't know or see anything of their religious observances, but he has been telling me a great deal about their life and customs. He says nearly all the people in the Lebanon are Druzes. He himself comes from Beyrout, where he lives next door to Ali. They both talk with the pretty, soft, sing-song accent of the Lebanon. I have a good variety of accents with me for Tarif has the Bedouin and Hanna the real cockney of Jerusalem. They appeal to me sometimes to know which is right. I never was so sunburnt in my life; I'm a rich red brown, not at all becoming! in spite of the Quangle Wangle hat you sent me.

  Friday 6. (Jericho again). Madeba, in proportion to its size, must have the largest number of mosquitoes and fleas of any inhabited spot on the globe. Chiefly owing to the mosquitoes, my night was rather a restless one, it also rained a great deal and rain makes an unconscionable noise on a tent, besides the fact is I was troubled to think of my poor people outside. There was still a little rain when I got up at 5, but the clouds lifted and we had no more. I broke up my camp here, and rode myself into Jericho with Hanna. We came down the same road that we had come up-but-the Ghor had withered. In one little fortnight the sun had eaten up everything but the tall dry daisy stalks. It was almost impossible to believe that it had been so lovely so short a time ago. Jericho doesn't look at all nice, all burnt up and withered.

  Our plans are these: the Rosens and I start off on Monday fortnight, the 23rd, and go up together to the Hauran. It will take us about a fortnight. They come home and I go straight up to Damascus, a couple of days or so, and so perhaps across to Palmyra, and the rest as before, reaching Jerusalem again about the end of May.

  To her sister.

  JERUSALEM, April 9th, 1900.

  DEAREST ELSA,

  It is so amusing to have a letter with photographs in it. I quite understand your impressions of Florence and Venice. To this day I feel more inside Florence, myself, but I went to Venice knowing the East and knowing a good deal of Italy and for those reasons I think I found it easier to become a part of it. Also, I was there a month, nearly, you must remember. But it is very strange — 'unheirnlich', some silly German said and it's not as silly as it sounds at first. It's a heavenly feeling when suddenly the thing jumps at you and you know you understand. I daresay you don't, but it doesn't matter, the feeling is there. I don't think you get it out of books a bit, though books help to strengthen it, but you certainly get it out of seeing more and more, even of quite different things. The more you see, the more everything falls into a kind of rough an ready perspective, and when you come to a new thing, you haven't so much difficulty in placing it and fitting it into the rest. I'm awfully glad you love the beginnings of things — so do I, most thoroughly, and unless one does, I don't believe one can get as much pleasure out of the ends. The early Florentines are too wonderful — there's such a feeling for beauty even in the woodenest of them, and they are so earnest, bless them, that they carry one with them — well, very nearly up into Paradise and down into Hell! Now, rejoice with me! my travel photographs are all right. I've only seen the negatives, but they are lovely and you shall have a Monthly Cousin article, illustrated, on Petra. I was dreadfully nervous about them, for when it was so hot that the chocolate melted in the ca
nteen, I thought the gelatine might have melted in the camera. I have gone into summer clothes, which always feels very festive, don't you think? Tell the ditty Moll, talking of clothes, that I've got a little present for her. It's a complete Bethlehem costume, with the high hat and the veil and everything. She can wear it at the next fancy dress ball if she likes. It was made for her by a dear little Bethlehem woman who comes to the Consulate to do the washing.

  CHAPTER VI

  1900 - DESERT EXCURSIONS FROM JERUSALEM

  To H.B.