Part 28 (1/2)
Near Shechem I reached out a fur-gloved hand and showed my pa.s.senger the approximate spot where, seven months earlier, I was shot down and awoke to find Arab nomads approaching my wrecked machine. Slightly to the west was Nazareth, perched pleasingly on high ground.
The pear-shaped Sea of Galilee flickered with iridescent twinkling in the sunlight. Just north of where the river flows into the lake I picked out the point at which a regiment of the Australian Light Horse, confronted on the far bank by a Turco-German force sent from Damascus to defend the ford, swam their horses across the Jordan and routed the enemy.
The patchwork flatness below changed to more plains of gray-brown grain-country and gray-green orchard land neighboured on the east by the desert that was a populous province in the days when armies of age-old civilizations--a.s.syrian, Babylonian, Medean, Persian, Macedonian, and Arabian--swept backward and forward in waves of conquest and counter-conquest, to and from Nineveh, Babylon, Ctesiphon, and Old Bagdad, until the Turkish hordes swarmed across from Central Asia and ruined all the lands they conquered.
Small and indistinct at first, then expanding into a vivid clearness as we flew toward it, Damascus came into sight; and of all the views from the air that I remember from flights in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, England, and America, this was incomparably the loveliest.
Far away to the west was Mount Lebanon, and from it stretched a line of mountains, growing ever bleaker as they neared the Syrian Desert. The low ground dominated by the heights was a maze of forests, wheat-fields, pasturage, and orchard land, intermingled with patches of sand. Straight ahead was the ancient city of Damascus, a straggling surface of white roofs pierced by the domes and minarets of many mosques, all in a gray whiteness, as if powdered with the dust of its four thousand years of history. Pharpar and Abana, the twin rivers of Damascus, showed up plainly as, converging and diverging, they descended from their sources on the rim of the mountain, and lost themselves in the jig-saw of crooked streets and square-topped houses.
The background is the wide, s.h.i.+mmering desert that loses itself on the eastern horizon.
Having, to the roaring accompaniment of a 1918 Hispano-Suiza aero-engine, circled over this city half as old as time, I spiralled down and landed on the aerodrome.
On horses borrowed from the Sikhs who guarded the aerodrome we cantered towards the city, three miles distant. The road was utterly vile, for apart from Turkish neglect it had for three years been dented and spoiled by German motor lorries. Every few yards we had to edge our horses round some large hole.
Inside Damascus long-disused tram-lines rose high above the roadway.
Through the narrow, winding streets there streamed a medley of camels, horses, fat men riding on thin donkeys, goats, rainbow-robed Bedouins, veiled women in black, and fezzed Syrians and Armenians. All of them--camels, donkeys, horses, and humans--wound in and around each other without any pretence at order.
Under such conditions the least mishap is enough to bring about a block in the haphazard traffic. We were held up for nearly twenty minutes when a donkey, with a huge load of wood straddled on its back, lay down near a hole in the road, and refused to budge. Men, women, and animals mingled confusedly, and exhortation and imprecations were flung at the donkey and its master. The onlookers were raining advice as we halted our horses on the rim of the crowd, but none made an attempt to help.
And the following is an approximate but far from literal translation of a few remarks:
”O thou unfortunate one! He has a donkey with a stubborn spirit. It has deposited itself on the ground and most annoyingly refuses to rise.”
”Beat it hard, I say! I have a string of camels which become unruly because they cannot proceed. Beat it, I say!”
”Nay, rather speak kindly and apply gentle pressure to the under-parts.
Then will it lift its forefeet and stand erect. Stubborn donkeys care naught for blows.”
”Cow-faced son of an exceedingly fat she-dog! Displace thy heavy hoof from my astonis.h.i.+ngly painful toes!”
”_Ah-ee! Ah-ee!_ But a moment hence I had a money-purse, and it has left me.”
”O thou unfortunate one! He had a money-purse, and it has left him. O thou unfortunate one!”
And although all knew that the purse was probably hidden in the folds of some Arab's robe, those near the unfortunate one searched and scratched the ground, probably none more a.s.siduously than the man who could have produced it.