In The Levant 34

In The Levant 34

XIV.--OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS.

 

|DAY after day we continued, like the mourners, to go about the streets,

in the tangle of the bazaars, under the dark roofs, endeavoring to see

Damascus. When we emerged from the city gate, the view was not much

less limited. I made the circuit of the wall on the north, in lanes, by

running streams, canals, enclosed gardens, seeing everywhere hundreds

of patient, summer-loving men and women squatting on the brink of every

rivulet, by every damp spot, in idle and perfect repose.

 

We stumbled about also on the south side of the town, and saw the

reputed place of St. Paul's escape, which has been lately changed. It is

a ruined Saracenic tower in the wall, under which is Bab Kisan, a gate

that has been walled up for seven hundred years. The window does not any

more exist from which the apostle was let down in a basket, but it used

to be pointed out with confidence, and I am told that the basket is

still shown, but we did not see it. There are still some houses on

this south wall, and a few of them have projecting windows from which a

person might easily be lowered. It was in such a house that the harlot

of Jericho lived, who contrived the escape of the spies of Joshua. And

we see how thick and substantial the town walls of that city must have

been to support human habitations. But they were blown down.

 

Turning southward into the country, we came to the tomb of the porter

who assisted Paul's escape, and who now sleeps here under the weight of

the sobriquet of St. George. A little farther out on the same road is

located the spot of Said's conversion.

 

Near it is the English cemetery, a small high-walled enclosure,

containing a domed building surmounted by a cross; and in this

historical spot, whose mutations of race, religion, and government would

forbid the most superficial to construct for it any cast-iron scheme

of growth or decay, amid these almost melancholy patches of vegetation

which still hover in the Oriental imagination as the gardens of all

delights, sleeps undisturbed by ambition or by criticism, having at

last, let us hope, solved the theory of "averages," the brilliant Henry

T. Buckle.

 

Not far off is the Christian cemetery. "Who is buried here?" I asked our

thick-witted guide.

 

"O, anybody," he replied, cheerfully, "Greeks, French, Italians, anybody

you like"; as if I could please myself by interring here any one I

chose.

 

Among the graves was a group of women, hair dishevelled and garments

loosened in the _abandon_ of mourning, seated about a rough coffin

open its entire length. In it lay the body of a young man who had been

drowned, and recovered from the water after three days. The women lifted

up his dead hands, let them drop heavily, and then wailed and howled,

throwing themselves into attitudes of the most passionate grief. It

was a piteous sight, there under the open sky, in the presence of an

unsympathizing crowd of spectators.

 

Returning, we went round by the large Moslem cemetery, situated at the

southwest corner of the city. It is, like all Moslem burying-grounds,

a melancholy spectacle,--a mass of small whitewashed mounds of mud or

brick, with an inscribed headstone,--but here rest some of the most

famous men and women of Moslem history. Here is the grave of Ibn'

Asâker, the historian of Damascus; here rests the fierce Moawyeh, the

founder of the dynasty of the Omeiyades; and here are buried three of

the wives of Mohammed, and Fatimeh, his granddaughter, the child of

Ali, whose place of sepulture no man knows. Upon nearly every tomb is a

hollow for water, and in it is a sprig of myrtle, which is renewed every

Friday by the women who come here to mourn and to gossip.

 

Much of the traveller's time, and perhaps the most enjoyable part of it,

in Damascus, is spent in the bazaars, cheapening scarfs and rugs and the

various silken products of Syrian and Persian looms, picking over dishes

of antique coins, taking impressions of intaglios, hunting for curious

amulets, and searching for the quaintest and most brilliant

Saracenic tiles. The quest of the antique is always exciting, and the

inexperienced is ever hopeful that he will find a gem of value in a heap

of rubbish; this hope never abandons the most _blase_ tourist, though

in time he comes to understand that the sharp-nosed Jew, or the oily

Armenian, or the respectable Turk, who spreads his delusive wares

before him, knows quite as well as the Seeker the value of any bit

of antiquity, not only in Damascus, but in Constantinople, Paris, and

London, and is an adept in all the counterfeits and impositions of the

Orient.

 

The bazaars of the antique, of old armor, ancient brasses, and of

curiosities generally, and even of the silver and gold smiths, are

disappointing after Cairo; they are generally full of rubbish from

which the choice things seem to have been culled; indeed, the rage for

antiquities is now so great that sharp buyers from Europe range all the

Orient and leave little for the innocent and hopeful tourist, who is

aghast at the prices demanded, and usually finds himself a victim of his

own cleverness when he pays for any article only a fourth of the price

at first asked.

 

The silk bazaars of Damascus still preserve, however, a sort of

pre-eminence of opportunity, although they are largely supplied by the

fabrics manufactured at Beyrout and in other Syrian towns. Certainly no

place is more tempting than one of the silk khans,--gloomy old courts,

in the galleries of which you find little apartments stuffed full of the

seductions of Eastern looms. For myself, I confess to the fascination of

those stuffs of brilliant dyes, shot with threads of gold and of silver.

I know a tall, oily-tongued Armenian, who has a little chamber full of

shelves, from which he takes down one rich scarf after another, unfolds

it, shakes out its shining hues, and throws it on the heap, until

the room is littered with gorgeous stuffs. He himself is clad in silk

attire, he is tall, suave, insinuating, grave, and overwhelmingly

condescending. I can see him now, when I question the value put upon

a certain article which I hold in my hand and no doubt betray my

admiration of in my eyes,--I can see him now throw back his head, half

close his Eastern eyes, and exclaim, as if he had hot pudding in his

mouth, "Thot is ther larster price."

 

I can see Abd-el-Atti now, when we had made up a package of scarfs, and

offered a certain sum for the lot, which the sleek and polite trader

refused, with his eternal, "Thot is ther larster price," sling the

articles about the room, and depart in rage. And I can see the Armenian

bow us into the corridor with the same sweet courtesy, knowing very

well that the trade is only just begun; that it is, in fact, under good

headway; that the Arab will return, that he will yield a little from

the "larster price," and that we shall go away loaded with his wares,

leaving him ruined by the transaction, but proud to be our friend.

 

Our experience in purchasing old Saracenic and Persian tiles is perhaps

worth relating as an illustration of the character of the traders of

Damascus. Tiles were plenty enough, for several ancient houses had

recently been torn down, and the dealers continually acquire them from

ruined mosques or those that are undergoing repairs. The dragoman found

several lots in private houses, and made a bargain for a certain number

at two francs and a half each; and when the bargain was made, I spent

half a day in selecting the specimens we desired.

 

The next morning, before breakfast, we went to make sure that the lots

we had bought would be at once packed and shipped. But a change had

taken place in twelve hours. There was an Englishman in town who was

also buying tiles; this produced a fever in the market; an impression

went abroad that there was a fortune to be made in tiles, and we found

that our bargain was entirely ignored. The owners supposed that the

tiles we had selected must have some special value; and they demanded

for the thirty-eight which we had chosen--agreeing to pay for them two

francs and a half apiece--thirty pounds. In the house where we had

laid aside seventy-three others at the same price, not a tile was to be

discovered; the old woman who showed us the vacant chamber said she knew

not what had become of them, but she believed they had been sold to an

Englishman.

 

We returned to the house first mentioned, resolved to devote the day if

necessary to the extraction of the desired tiles from the grip of their

owners. The contest began about eight o'clock in the morning; it was not

finished till three in the afternoon, and it was maintained on our side

with some disadvantage, the only nutriment that sustained us being a

cup of tea which we drank very early in the morning. The scene of the

bargain was the paved court of the house, in which there was a fountain

and a lemon-tree, and some rose-trees trained on espaliers along the

walls. The tempting enamelled tiles were piled up at one side of the

court and spread out in rows in the _lewân_,--the open recess

where guests are usually received. The owners were two Greeks,

brothers-in-law, polite, cunning, sharp, the one inflexible, the other

yielding,--a combination against which it is almost impossible to trade

with safety, for the yielding one constantly allures you into the

grip of the inflexible. The women of the establishment, comely Greeks,

clattered about the court on their high wooden pattens for a time, and

at length settled down, in an adjoining apartment, to their regular work

of embroidering silken purses and tobacco-pouches, taking time, however,

for an occasional cigarette or a pull at a narghileh, and, in a constant

chatter, keeping a lively eye upon the trade going on in the court. The

handsome children added not a little to the liveliness of the scene, and

their pranks served to soften the asperities of the encounter; although

I could not discover, after repeated experiments, that any affection

lavished upon the children lowered the price of the tiles. The Greek

does not let sentiment interfere with business, and he is much more

difficult to deal with than an Arab, who occasionally has impulses.

 

Each tile was the subject of a separate bargain and conflict. The dicker

went on in Arabic, Greek, broken English, and dislocated French, and was

participated in not only by the parties most concerned, but by the

young Greek guide and by the donkey-boys. Abd-el-Atti exhibited all the

qualities of his generalship. He was humorous, engaging, astonished,

indignant, serious, playful, threatening, indifferent. Beaten on one

grouping of specimens, he made instantly a new combination; more than

once the transaction was abruptly broken off in mutual rage, obstinacy,

and recriminations; and it was set going again by a timely jocularity or

a seeming concession. I can see now the soft Greek take up a tile which

had painted on it some quaint figure or some lovely flower, dip it in

the fountain to bring out its brilliant color, and then put it in the

sun for our admiration; and I can see the dragoman shake his head in

slow depreciation, and push it one side, when that tile was the one we

had resolved to possess of all others, and was the undeclared centre of

contest in all the combinations for an hour thereafter.