In The Levant 36

In The Levant 36

These princesses of Turkish diamonds all wore dresses with the classic

short waist, which is the most womanly and becoming, and perhaps their

apparel imparted a graciousness to their manner. We were everywhere

cordially received, and usually offered coffee, or sherbet and

confections.

 

H. H. the Emir Abd-el-Kader lives in a house suitable to a wealthy

Moslem who has a harem. The old chieftain had expressed his willingness

to receive us, and N. Meshaka, the American consular agent, sent his

_kawass_ to accompany us to his residence at the appointed hour. The old

gentleman met us at the door of his reception-room, which is at one end

of the fountained court. He wore the plain Arab costume, with a

white turban. I had heard so much of the striking, venerable, and

even magnificent appearance of this formidable desert hero, that I

experienced a little disappointment in the reality, and learned anew

that the hero should be seen in action, or through the lenses of

imaginative description which can clothe the body with all the

attributes of the soul. The demigods so seldom come up to their

reputation! Abd-el-Kader may have appeared a gigantic man when on

horseback in the smoke and whirl of an Algerine combat; but he is a man

of medium size and scarcely medium height; his head, if not large, is

finely shaped and intellectual, and his face is open and pleasing. He

wore a beard, trimmed, which I suspect ought to be white, but which

was black, and I fear dyed. You would judge him to be, at least,

seventy-five, and his age begins to show by a little pallor, by a

visible want of bodily force, and by a lack of lustre in those once

fiery and untamable eyes.

 

His manner was very gracious, and had a simple dignity, nor did our

interview mainly consist in the usual strained compliments of such

occasions. In reply to a question, he said that he had lived over twenty

years in Damascus, but it was evident that his long exile had not dulled

his interest in the progress of the world, and that he watched with

intense feeling all movements of peoples in the direction of freedom.

There is no such teacher of democracy as misfortune, but I fancy that

Abd-el-Kader sincerely desires for others the liberty he covets for

himself. He certainly has the courage of his opinions; while he is a

very strict Moslem, he is neither bigoted nor intolerant, as he showed

by his conduct during the massacre of the Christians here, in 1860. His

face lighted up with pleasure when I told him that Americans remembered

with much gratitude his interference in behalf of the Christians at that

time.

 

The talk drifting to the state of France and Italy, he expressed his

full sympathy with the liberal movement of the Italian government, but

as to France he had no hope of a republic at present, he did not think

the people capable of it.

 

"But America," he said with sudden enthusiasm, "that is the country,

in all the world that is the _only_ country, that is the land of real

freedom. I hope," he added, "that you will have no more trouble among

yourselves."

 

We asked him what he thought of the probability of another outburst

of the Druses, which was getting to be so loudly whispered. Nobody, he

said, could tell what the Druses were thinking or doing; he had no doubt

that in the former rising and massacre they were abetted by the Turkish

government. This led him to speak of the condition of Syria; the people

were fearfully ground down, and oppressed with taxation and exactions of

all sorts; in comparison he did not think Egypt was any better off, but

much the same.

 

In all our conversation we were greatly impressed by the calm and

comprehensive views of the old hero, his philosophical temper, and

his serenity; although it was easy to see that he chafed under the

banishment which kept so eager a soul from participation in the

great movements which he weighed so well and so longed to aid. When

refreshments had been served, we took our leave; but the emir insisted

upon accompanying us through the court and the dirty alleys, even to the

public street where our donkeys awaited us, and bade us farewell with a

profusion of Oriental salutations.

 

 

 

 

XVI.--SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELLERS.

 

|IT is to be regretted that some one has not the leisure and the genius

for it would require both--to study and to sketch the more peculiar of

the travellers who journey during a season in the Orient, to photograph

_their_ impressions, and to unravel the motives that have set them

wandering. There was at our hotel a countryman whose observations on

the East pleased me mightily. I inferred, correctly, from his slow

and deliberate manner of speech, that he was from the great West. A

gentleman spare in figure and sallow in complexion, you might have

mistaken him for a "member" from Tennessee or Illinois. What

you specially admired in him was his entire sincerity, and his

imperviousness to all the glamour, historical or romantic, which

interested parties, like poets and historians, have sought to throw over

the Orient. A heap of refuse in the street or an improvident dependant

on Allah, in rags, was just as offensive to him in Damascus as it would

be in Big Lickopolis. He carried his scales with him; he put into

one balance his county-seat and into the other the entire Eastern

civilization, and the Orient kicked the beam,--and it was with a mighty,

though secret joy that you saw it.

 

It was not indeed for his own pleasure that he had left the familiar

cronies of his own town and come into foreign and uncomfortable

parts; you could see that he would much prefer to be again among the

"directors" and "stockholders" and operators, exchanging the dry chips

of gossip about stocks and rates; but, being a man of "means," he had

yielded to the imperious pressure of our modern society which, insists

on travel, and to the natural desire of his family to see the world.

Europe had not pleased him, although it was interesting for an old

country, and there were a few places, the Grand Hotel in Paris for

instance, where one feels a little at home. Buildings, cathedrals? Yes,

some of them were very fine, but there was nothing in Europe to equal or

approach the Capitol in Washington. And galleries; my wife likes them,

and my daughter,--I suppose I have walked through miles and miles of

them. It may have been in the nature of a confidential confession,

that he was dragged into the East, though he made no concealment of his

repugnance to being here. But when he had crossed the Mediterranean,

Europe had attractions for him which he had never imagined while he was

in it. If he had been left to himself he would have fled back from Cairo

as if it were infested with plague; he had gone no farther up the Nile;

that miserable hole, Cairo, was sufficient for him.

 

"They talk," he was saying, speaking with that deliberate pause and

emphasis upon every word which characterizes the conversation of his

section of the country,--"they talk about the climate of Egypt; it is

all a humbug. Cairo is the most disagreeable city in the world, no

sun, nothing but dust and wind. I give you my word that we had only one

pleasant day in a week; cold,--you can't get warm in the hotel; the only

decent day we had in Egypt was at Suez. Fruit? What do you get? Some

pretend to like those dry dates. The oranges are so sour you can't eat

them, except the Jaffa, which are all peel. Yes, the pyramids are big

piles of stone, but when you come to architecture, what is there in

Cairo to compare to the Tuileries? The mosque of Mohammed Ali _is_ a

fine building; it suits me better than the mosque at Jerusalem. But what

a city to live in!"

 

The farther our friend journeyed in the Orient, the deeper became his

disgust. It was extreme in Jerusalem; but it had a pathetic tone of

resignation in Damascus; hope was dead within him. The day after we had

visited the private houses, some one asked him at table if he was not

pleased with Damascus.

 

"Damascus!" he repeated, "Damascus is the most God-forsaken place I have

ever been in. There is nothing to _eat_, and nothing to _see_. I had

heard about the bazaars of Damascus; my daughter must see the bazaars of

Damascus. There is nothing in them; I have been from one end of them to

the other,--it is a mess of rubbish. I suppose you were hauled through

what they call the private houses? There is a good deal of marble and

a good deal of show, but there is n't a house in Damascus that a

respectable American would _live_ in; there is n't one he could be

comfortable in. The old mosque is an interesting place: I like the

mosque, and I have been there a couple of times, and should n't mind

going again; but I've had enough of Damascus, I don't intend to go out

doors again until my family are ready to leave."

 

All these intense dislikes of the Western observer were warmly combated

by the ladies present, who found Damascus almost a paradise, and were

glowing with enthusiasm over every place and incident of their journey.

Having delivered his opinion, our friend let the conversation run

on without interference, as it ranged all over Palestine. He sat in

silence, as if he were patiently enduring anew the martyrdom of his

pleasure-trip, until at length, obeying a seeming necessity of relieving

his feelings, he leaned forward and addressed the lady next but one to

him, measuring every word with judicial slowness,--

 

"Madame--I--hate--the--_name_--of Palestine--and Judæa--and--the

Jordan--and--Damascus--and--Jeru-sa_lem_."

 

It is always refreshing in travel to meet a candid man who is not

hindered by any weight of historic consciousness from expressing his

opinions; and without exactly knowing why I felt under great obligations

to this gentleman,--for gentleman he certainly was, even to an

old-fashioned courtesy that shamed the best breeding of the Arabs. And

after this wholesale sweep of the Oriental board, I experienced a new

pleasure in going about and picking up the fragments of romance and

sentiment that one might still admire.

 

There was another pilgrim at Damascus to whom Palestine was larger than

all the world besides, and who magnified its relation to the rest of

the earth as much as our more widely travelled friend belittled it. In a

waste but damp spot outside the Bab-el-Hadid an incongruous Cook's

Party had pitched its tents,--a camp which swarmed during the day with

itinerant merchants and beggars, and at night was the favorite resort

of the most dissolute dogs of Damascus. In knowing this party one had an

opportunity to observe the various motives that bring people to the Holy

Land; there were a divinity student, a college professor, a well-known

publisher, some indomitable English ladies, some London cockneys, and

a group of young men who made a lark of the pilgrimage, and saw no

more significance in the tour than in a jaunt to the Derby or a sail to

Margate. I was told that the guide-book most read and disputed over by

this party was the graphic itinerary of Mark Twain. The pilgrim to whom

I refer, however, scarcely needed any guide in the Holy Land. He was,