1 was about to tear it up when Dorian grabbed my hand and jokingly exclaimed:
'Don't! If you present this card at the office of the High Commissioner, you will receive a few days later an invitation to lunch at Government House... Journalists are very desirable creatures in this country.'
Although I did tear up the useless card, Dorian's joke struck a response in my mind. I was, of course, not interested in a luncheon invitation from Government House -but why should I not utilize the rare opportunity of being in the Near East at a time when so few journalists from Central Europe could travel there? Why should I not resume my journalistic work -and not with the United Telegraph but with one of the great dailies? And as suddenly as I had always been wont to make important decisions, I now decided to break into real journalism.
Despite my year's work at the United Telegraph, I had no direct connection with any important newspaper, and as I had never yet published anything in my own name, it was entirely unknown to the daily press. This, however, did not discourage me. I wrote an article on some of my impressions in Palestine and sent copies of it to no less than ten German newspapers with a proposal to write a series of articles on the Near East.
This was in the last months of 1922 -a time of the most catastrophic inflation in Germany. The German press was hard-put to survive, and only a very few newspapers could afford to pay foreign correspondents in hard currency. And so it was not in the least surprising that one after another of the ten newspapers to which I had sent the sample article replied in 'more or less polite terms of refusal. Only one of the ten accepted my suggestion and, apparently impressed by what I had written, appointed me it's roving special correspondent in the Near East, enclosing, in addition; a contract for a book to be written on my return. That one newspaper was the Frankfurter Zeitung. I was almost bowled over when I saw that I had not merely succeeded in establishing a connection with a newspaper -and what a newspaper! -but had at the first stroke achieved a status that might be envied by many an old journalist.
There was, of course, a snag in it. Owing to the inflation, the Frankfurter Zeitung could not pay me in hard currency. The remuneration which they apologetically offered me was in terms of German marks; and I knew as well as they did that it would hardly suffice to pay for the stamps on the envelopes which would contain my articles. But to be special correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung was a distinction that by far outweighed the temporary handicap of not being paid for it. I began to write articles on Palestine, hoping that sooner or later some lucky twist of fortune would enable me to travel all over the Near East.
I now had many friends in Palestine, both Jews and Arabs. The Zionists, it is true, looked upon me with some sort of puzzled suspicion because of the sympathy for the Arabs which was so apparent in my dispatches to the Frankfurter Zeitung, Evidently they could not make up their minds whether I had been 'bought' by the Arabs (for in Zionist Palestine people had become accustomed to explain almost every happening in terms of money) or whether I was simply a freakish intellectual in love with the exotic. But not all Jews living in Palestine at that time were Zionists. Some of them had come there not in pursuit of a political aim, but out of a religious longing for the Holy Land and its Biblical associations.
To this group belonged my Dutch friend Jacob de Haan, a small, plump, blond-bearded man in his early forties, who had formerly taught law at one of the leading universities in Holland and was now special correspondent of the Amsterdam Handelsblad and the London Daily Express. A man of deep religious convictions -as 'orthodox' as any Jew of Eastern Europe -he did not approve of the idea of Zionism, for he believed that the return of his people to the Promised Land had to await the coming of the Messiah.
'We Jews,' he said to me on more than one occasion, 'were driven away from the Holy Land and scattered all over the world because we had fallen short of the task God had conferred upon us. We had been chosen by Him to preach His Word, but in our stubborn pride we began to believe that He had made us a "chosen nation" for our own sakes -and thus we betrayed Him. Now nothing remains for us but to repent and to cleanse our hearts; and when we become worthy once again to be the hearers of His Message, He will send a Messiah to lead His servants back to the Promised Land ...'
'But,' I asked, 'does not this Messianic idea underlie the Zionist movement as well? You know that I do not approve of it: but is it not a natural desire of every people to have a national home of its own?
Dr. de Haan looked at me quizzically: 'Do you think that history is but a series of accidents? I don't. It was not without a purpose that God made us lose our land and dispersed us; but the Zionists do not want to admit this to themselves. They suffer from the same spiritual blindness that caused our downfall. The two thousand years of Jewish exile and unhappiness have taught them nothing. Instead of making an attempt to understand the innermost causes of our unhappiness, they now try to circumvent it, as it were, by building a "national home" on foundations provided by Western power politics; and in the process of building a national home, they are committing the crime of depriving another people of its home.'
Jacob de Haan's political views naturally made him most unpopular with the Zionists (indeed, a short time after I left Palestine, I was shocked to learn that he had been shot down one night by terrorists). When I knew him, his social intercourse was limited to a very few Jews of his own way of thought, some Europeans, and Arabs. For the Arabs he seemed to have a great affection, and they, on their part, thought highly of him and frequently invited him to their houses. As a matter of fact, at that period they were not yet universally prejudiced against Jews as such. It was only subsequent to the Balfour Declaration -that is, after centuries of good-neighborly relations and a consciousness of racial kinship -that the Arabs had begun to look upon the Jews as political enemies; but even in the changed circumstances of the early Twenties, they still clearly differentiated between Zionists and Jews who were friendly toward them like Dr. de Haan.
Those fateful months of my first sojourn among the Arabs set in motion a whole train of impressions and reflections: some inarticulate hopes of a personal nature demanded to be admitted to my consciousness.
I had come face to face with a life-sense that was entirely new to me. A warm, human breath seemed to flow out of these people's blood into their thoughts and gestures, with none of those painful cleavages of the spirit, those phantoms of fear, greed and inhibition that made European life so ugly and of little promise. In the Arabs I began to find something I had always unwittingly' been looking for: an emotional lightness of approach to all questions of life - a supreme common sense of feeling, if one might call it so.
In time it became most important to me to grasp the spirit of these Muslim people: not because their religion attracted me (for at that time I knew very little about it), but because I recognized in them that organic coherence of the mind and the senses which we Europeans had lost. Might it not be possible, perhaps, by better understanding the life of the Arabs to discover the hidden link between our Western suffering -the corroding lack of inner integration -and the roots of that suffering? To find out, perhaps, what it was that had made us Westerners run away from that solemn freedom of life which the Arabs seemed to possess, even in their social and political decay, and which we also must have possessed at some earlier time? -or else how could we have produced the great art of our past, the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the exuberant joy of the Renaissance, Rembrandt's chiaroscuro, the fugues of Bach and the serene dreams of Mozart, the pride of the peacock's tail in the art of our peasants, and Beethoven's roaring, longing ascent toward the misty, hardly perceptible peaks on which man could say, 'I and my destiny are one...'
Being unaware of their true nature, we could no longer rightly use our spiritual powers; never again would a Beethoven or a Rembrandt arise among us. Instead, we now knew only that desperate groping after 'new forms of expression' in art, sociology, politics, and that bitter struggle between opposing slogans and meticulously devised principles; and all our machines and skyscrapers could do nothing to restore the broken wholeness of our souls... And yet -was that lost spiritual glory of Europe's past really lost forever? Was it not possible to recover something of it by finding out what was wrong with us?
And what at first had been hardly more than a sympathy for the political aims of the Arabs, the outward appearance of Arabian life and the emotional security I perceived in its people, imperceptibly changed into something resembling a personal quest. I became increasingly aware of an absorbing desire to know what it was that lay at the root of this emotional security and made Arab life so different from the European: and that desire seemed to be mysteriously bound up with my own innermost problems. I began to look for openings that would give me a better insight into the character of the Arabs, into the ideas that had shaped them and made them spiritually so different from the Europeans. I began to read intensively about their history, culture and religion. And in the urge I felt to discover what it was that moved their hearts and filled their minds and gave them direction, I seemed to sense an urge to discover some hidden forces that moved myself, and filled me, and promised to give me direction...
IV
VOICES -1
We ride, the mountains of Jabal Shammar.
I ask myself with almost a physical start, will Zayd, and Zayd's people, be able to keep their souls together in the face of the danger that is so insidiously, so relentlessly closing in on them? We are living in a time in which the East can no longer remain passive in the face of the advancing west. A thousand forces -political, social and economic -are hammering at the doors of the Muslim world. Will this world succumb to the pressure of the Western twentieth century and in the process lose not only its own traditional forms but its spiritual roots as well?
Throughout the years I have spent in the Middle East -as a sympathetic outsider from 1922 to 1926, and as a Muslim sharing the aims and hopes of the Islamic community ever since I have witnessed the steady European encroachment on Muslim cultural life and political independence; and wherever Muslim peoples try to defend themselves against this encroachment, European public opinion invariably labels their resistance, with an air of hurt innocence, as 'xenophobia'.
Europe has long been accustomed to simplify in this crude way all that is happening in the Middle East and to view its current history under the aspect of Western 'spheres of interest' alone. While everywhere in the West (outside of Britain) public opinion has shown much sympathy for the Irish struggle for independence or (outside of Russia and Germany) for Poland's dream of national resurrection, no such sympathy is ever extended to similar aspirations among the Muslims. The West's main argument is always the political disruption and economic backwardness of the Middle East, and every active Western intervention is sanctimoniously described by its authors as aiming not merely at a protection of 'legitimate' Western interests but also at securing progress for the indigenous peoples themselves.
In 1922, when I observed the equivocal role of the British administration with regard to the conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists; and it became fully obvious to me early in 1923, when after months of wandering all over Palestine I came to Egypt, which at that time was in almost continual upheaval against the British 'protectorate'. Bombs were often being thrown at public places frequented by British soldiers, to be answered by various repressive measures -martial law, political arrests, deportations of leaders, prohibitions of newspapers. But none of these measures, however severe, could deaden the people's desire for freedom. Through the entire Egyptian nation went something like a wave of passionate sobbing. Not in despair: it was rather the sobbing of enthusiasm at having discovered the roots of its own potential strength.
My coming to Egypt in those days had been due to my wish to extend the scope of my work for the Frankfurter Zeitung to other countries besides Palestine. Dorian's circumstances did not permit him to finance such a tour; but when he saw how strongly I desired it, he advanced me a small sum sufficient for the railway journey from Jerusalem to Cairo and a fortnight's stay there.
In Cairo I found lodgings in a narrow alley in a quarter inhabited mainly by Arab artisans and small Greek shopkeepers.
After a week or so, my cash was approaching its end. As I did not want to return so soon to Palestine and the safety of my uncle's house, I began to look around for some other means of subsistence.
My Jerusalem friend, Dr. de Haan, had given me a letter of introduction to a business man in Cairo; and to him I went in search of advice. He proved to be a large, genial Hollander with intellectual interests far exceeding his own sphere of activities. From Jacob de Haan's letter he learned that I was a correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung; and when, at his request, I showed him some of my recent articles! He raised his eyebrows in astonishment:
'Tell me, how old are you?'
'Twenty-two'.
'Then tell me something else, please: who has helped you with these articles -de Haan?' I laughed. 'Of course not. I wrote them myself. I always do my work myself. But why do you doubt it?'
He shook his head, as if puzzled: 'But it's astonishing... Where did you get the maturity to write such stuff? How do you manage to convey in a half-sentence an almost mystical significance to things that are apparently so commonplace?'
I was flattered beyond words at the implied compliment, and my self-esteem rose accordingly. In the course of our conversation, it transpired that my new found acquaintance had no opening in his own business, but he thought he might be able to place me in an Egyptian firm with which he had dealings.
The office to which he directed me lay in one of the older quarters of Cairo, not far from my lodgings: a dingy, narrow lane bordered by once-patrician houses now converted into offices and cheap apartments. My prospective employer, an elderly, bald-headed Egyptian with the face of a time-mellowed vulture, happened to be in need of a part-time clerk to take charge of his French correspondence; and I was able to satisfy him that I could fill the role in spite of my utter lack of business experience. We quickly struck a bargain. I would have to work only three hours a day; the salary was correspondingly low, but it would be enough to pay for my rent and to keep me indefinitely in bread, milk and olives.
Opposite my house, so close that you could almost touch it, stood a little mosque with a tiny minaret from which five times a day the call to prayer was sounded. A white-turbaned man would appear on the gallery, raise his hands, and begin to chant: 'Allahu akbar -God is the Greatest! And I bear witness that Muhammad is God's Messenger ...' As he slowly turned toward the four points of the compass, the ring of his voice climbed upward, grew into the clear air, rocking on the deep, throaty sounds of the Arabic language, swaying, advancing and retreating. You could perceive that it was fervor and not art that made it so beautiful.
This chant of the mu'azzin was the theme song of my days and evenings in Cairo -just as it had been the theme song in the Old City of Jerusalem and was destined to remain in all my later wanderings through Muslim lands. It sounded the same everywhere in spite of the differences of dialect and intonation which might be evident in the people's daily speech: a unity of sound which made me realize in those days at Cairo how deep was the inner unity of all Muslims, and how artificial and insignificant were the dividing lines between them. They were one in their way of thinking and judging between right and wrong, and one in their perception of what constitutes the good life.
It seemed to me that for the first time I had come across a community in which kinship between man and man was not due to accidents of common racial or economic interests but to something far deeper and far more stable: a kinship of-common outlook which lifted all barriers of loneliness between man and man.
In the summer of 1923, enriched by a better understanding of Middle Eastern life and politics, I returned to Jerusalem.
Through my good friend Jacob de Haan I became acquainted with Amir Abdullah of neighboring Transjordan, who invited me to visit his country. There I saw for the first time a true beduin land. The capital, Amman -built on the ruins of Philadelphia, the Greek colony of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus -was at that time a little town of hardly more than six thousand inhabitants. Its streets were filled with beduins, the real beduins of the open steppe whom one rarely saw in Palestine, free warriors and camel breeders. Wonderful horses galloped through the streets; every man was armed, carried a dagger in his sash and a rifle on his back. Circassian oxcarts (for the town had been originally settled by Circassians who had migrated there after the Russian conquest of their homeland in the nineteenth century) plodded heavily through the bazaar, which in spite of its smallness was full of a bustle and commotion worthy of a much larger city.
As there were no adequate buildings in the town, Amir Abdullah lived in those days in a tent camp on a hill overlooking Amman. His own tent was somewhat larger than the others and consisted of several rooms formed by canvas partitions and distinguished by utmost simplicity. In one of them, a black bearskin made a bed on the ground in a corner; in the reception room, a couple of beautiful camel-saddles with silver-inlaid pommels served as armrests when one sat on the carpet.
Except for a Negro servant richly dressed in brocade, with a golden dagger in his belt, there was nobody in the tent when I entered it in the company of Dr. Riza Tawfiq Bey, the amir's chief adviser. He was a Turk, formerly a university professor, and had been for three years, before Kemal Ataturk, Minister of Education in the Turkish cabinet. Amir Abdullah, he told me, would be back in a few minutes; just now he was conferring with some beduin chieftains about the latest Najdi raid into southern Transjordan. Those Najdi 'Wahhabis', Dr. Riza explained to me, played within Islam a role not unlike that of the Puritan reformers in the Christian world, inasmuch as they were bitterly opposed to all saint worship and the many mystical superstitions that had crept into Islam over the centuries; they were also irreconcilable enemies of the Sharman family, whose head was the amir's father, King Husayn of the Hijaz. According to Riza Tawfiq Bey, the religious views of the Wahhabis could not be rejected out of hand; they did, in fact, come closer to the spirit of the Koran than the views prevalent among the masses in most of the other Muslim countries, and might thus in time exert a beneficial influence on the cultural development of Islam. The extreme fanaticism of these people, however, made it somewhat difficult for other Muslims to appreciate the Wahhabi movement fully; and this drawback, he suggested, might not be unwelcome to 'certain quarters', to whom a possible reunification of the Arab peoples was a dreadful prospect.
A little later the amir came in -a man of about forty years, of middle size, with a short, blond beard -stepping softly on small, black patent-leather slippers, clad in loose Arab garments of swishing white silk with an almost transparent white woollen abaya over them. He said:
'Ahlan wa-sahlan' -'Family and plain' -and that was the first time 1 heard this graceful Arabian greeting.
There was something attractive and almost captivating in the personality of Amir Abdullah, a strong sense of humor, a warmth of expression and a ready wit. It was not difficult to see why he was so popular in those days with his people. Although many Arabs were not happy about the role he had played in the British-inspired Sharifian revolt against the Turks and regarded it as a betrayal of Muslims by Muslims, he had gained a certain prestige by his championship of the Arab cause against Zionism; and the day was yet to come when the twists and turns of his politics would make his name odious throughout the Arab world.
Sipping coffee from minute cups that were handed round by the black retainer, we talked -occasionally assisted by Dr. Riza, who spoke fluent French -of the administrative difficulties in this new country of Transjordan, where everyone was accustomed to carry arms and to obey only the laws of his own clan, -but,' said the amlr, 'the Arabs have plenty of common sense; even the beduins are now beginning to realize that they .must abandon their old lawless ways if they want to be free from foreign domination. The intertribal feuds of which thou must have heard so often are now gradually subsiding.'
And he went on describing the unruly, uneasy beduin tribes which used to fight with one another on the slightest pretext. Their blood feuds often lasted for generations and sometimes, handed down from father to son, even for centuries, leading to ever new bloodshed and new bitterness after the original cause had almost been forgotten. There was only one way to bring about a peaceful end: if a young man from the tribe and clan of the last victim abducted a virgin of the tribe and clan of the culprit and made her his wife, the blood of the bridal night -blood of the killer's tribe -symbolically, and finally, avenged the blood that had been spilled in homicide. Occasionally it happened that two tribes had grown weary of a vendetta which had been going on for generations, sapping the strength of both parties; and in such a case, an 'abduction' was not infrequently arranged through a middleman from a third tribe.
'I have done even better than that,' Amir Abdullah told me. 'I have established proper "blood feud commissions" composed of trustworthy men who travel around the country and arrange the symbolic kidnappings and marriages between hostile tribes. But' -and here his eyes twinkled -'I always impress upon the members of these commissions to be very careful in the choice of the virgins, for I would not like to see internal family feuds arise on the grounds of the bridegroom's possible disappointment. . .'
I did not intend to remain indefinitely in Palestine; and it was again Jacob de Haan who helped me. Himself a journalist of established reputation, he had many connections all over Europe. His recommendation secured for me contracts with two small newspapers, one in Holland and the other in Switzerland, for a series of articles to be paid in Dutch guilders and Swiss francs. As these were provincial newspapers of no great standing, they could not afford to pay a large remuneration; but to me, whose habits were simple, the money I received from them appeared ample to finance my planned journey through the Near East. I wanted to go to Syria first; but the French authorities, so recently established there in the midst of a hostile population, were unwilling to give a visa to an Austrian 'ex-enemy alien'. This was a bitter blow, but there was nothing I could do about it; and so I decided to go to Haifa and there to board a ship for Istanbul, which in any case was included in my programme.
On the train journey from Jerusalem to Haifa a calamity befell me: I lost a coat containing my wallet and passport. All that I had left were the few silver coins in my trousers pocket. A voyage to Istanbul was, for the time being, out of the question: no passport, no money. Nothing remained but to return by bus to Jerusalem; the fare would have to be paid on arrival with money borrowed, as usual, from Dorian. In Jerusalem I would have to wait for weeks for another passport from the Austrian consulate in Cairo (for at that time there was none in Palestine) and for further driblets of money from Holland and Switzerland.
And so it came about that on the next morning I found myself before a bus office on the outskirts of Haifa. The negotiations about the fare were completed. There was, one hour until the departure of the bus, and to while away the time I paced up and down the road, deeply disgusted with myself and with the fate that had forced me into so ignominious a retreat. Waiting is always an evil thing; and the thought of returning to Jerusalem defeated, with my tail between my legs, was most galling -the more so as Dorian had always been skeptical about my ability to realize my plans on the basis of such meagre funds. Moreover, I would not see Syria now, and God alone knew if I would ever come back to this part of the world. It was, of course, always possible that at some later date the Frankfurter Zeitung would finance another journey to the Middle East, and that one day the French might lift the embargo on ex-enemy aliens; but that was not certain, and in the meantime I would not see Damascus... Why, I asked myself bitterly, was Damascus denied to me?
But -was it really? Of course -no passport, no money. But was it absolutely necessary to have a passport and money?
And, having come so far in my thoughts, I suddenly stopped in my tracks. One could, if one had grit enough, travel on foot, availing oneself of the hospitality of Arab villagers; and one could, perhaps, somehow smuggle oneself across the frontier " without bothering about passports and visas...
And before I was quite aware of it, my mind was made Up: I was going to Damascus.
A couple of minutes sufficed to explain to the bus people that I had changed my mind and was not going to Jerusalem after all. It took me a few more to change into a pair of blue overalls and an Arab kufiyya (the best possible protection against the Arabian sun); to stuff a few necessities into a knapsack, and to arrange for my suitcase to be dispatched to Dorian, C.O.D. And then I set out on my long trek to Damascus.
The overwhelming sense of freedom that filled me was indistinguishable from happiness. I had only a few coins in my pocket; I was embarking on an illegal deed that might land me in prison; the problem of crossing the frontier lay ahead in a vague uncertainty; I was staking everything on my wits alone: but the consciousness of having placed all on a single stake made me happy.
I walked on the road to Galilee. In the afternoon the Plain of Esdrelon lay on the right below me, flecked with rags of light and shadow. I passed through Nazareth and before nightfall reached an Arab village shaded by pepper trees and cypresses. At the door of the first house sat three or four men and women. I stopped, asked whether this was Ar-Rayna, and after a Yes was about to move on -when one of the women called after me: Ya sidi, wilt thou not refresh thyself?' -and, as if divining my thirst, stretched a pitcher of cold water toward me. When I had drunk my fill, one of the men -obviously her husband asked me:
'Wilt thou not eat bread with us, and remain in our house overnight? They did not ask me who I was, where I was going or what my business was. And I stayed overnight as their guest.
To be a guest of an Arab: even schoolchildren hear about it in Europe. To be a guest of an Arab means to enter for a few hours, for a time, truly and fully, into the lives of people who want to be your brothers and sisters. It is not a mere noble tradition which enables the Arabs to be hospitable in so effusive a way: it is their inner freedom. They are so free of distrust of themselves that they can easily open their lives to another man. They need none of the specious security of the walls which in the West each person builds between himself and his neighbor.
We supped together, men and women, sitting cross-legged on a mat around a huge dish filled with a porridge of coarsely crushed wheat and milk. My hosts tore small pieces from large, paper-thin loaves of bread with which they deftly scooped up the porridge without ever touching it with their fingers. To me they had given a spoon; but I refused it and attempted, not without success, and to the evident pleasure of my friends, to emulate their simple and nevertheless dainty manner of eating. When we lay down to sleep -about a dozen people in one and the same room -I gazed at the wooden beams above me from which strings of dried peppers and eggplant were hanging, at the many niches in the walls filled with brass and stoneware utensils, at the bodies of sleeping men and women, and asked myself whether at home I could ever have felt more at home. In the days that followed, the rust-brown of the Judean hills with their bluish-grey and violet shadows gradually gave way to the gayer and mellow hills of Galilee. Springs and little streams unexpectedly made their appearance. Vegetation became more luxuriant. In groups stood thickly leafed olive trees and tall, dark cypresses; the last summer flowers could still be seen on the hill-sides. Sometimes I walked part of the way with-camel drivers and enjoyed for a while their simple warmth; we drank water from my canteen, smoked a cigarette together; then I walked on alone. I spent the nights in Arab houses and ate their bread with them. I tramped for days through the hot depression along the Lake of Galilee and through the soft coolness around Lake Hule, which was like a mirror of metal, with silvery mists, slightly reddened by the last rays of the evening sun that hovered over the water. Near the shore lived Arab fishermen in huts built of straw mats loosely slung around a framework of branches. They were very poor -but they did not seem to need more than these airy huts, the few faded garments on their backs, a handful of wheat to make bread and the fish they caught themselves: and always they seemed to have enough to ask the wanderer to step in and eat with them.
THE NORTHERNMOST POINT in Palestine was the Jewish colony of Metulla, which, I had learned earlier, was a kind of gap between British-administered Palestine and French Syria. On the basis of an agreement between the two governments, this and two neighboring colonies were shortly to be incorporated into Palestine. During those few weeks of transition Metulla was not effectively supervised by either of the two governments, and thus appeared to be an ideal place from which to slip into Syria. It was, I understood, only later, on the highways, that identification papers would be demanded of the traveler. The Syrian control was said to be very strict; it was practically impossible to go far without being stopped by gendarmes. As Metulla was officially still considered part of Syria, every one of its adult inhabitants held, like elsewhere in the country, an identity certificate issued by the French authorities. To secure such a paper for myself became my most pressing task.
I made some discreet enquiries and was finally guided to the house of a man who might be prepared to part with his certificate for a consideration. He was a large person in his late thirties and was described as such in the crumpled and greasy document which he pulled out of his breast pocket; but as the paper bore no photograph, the problem was not insoluble. 'How much do you want for it?' I asked. 'Three pounds.'
I took from my pocket all the coins I possessed and counted them: they came to fifty-five piasters, that is, a little over half a pound.
'This is all I have,' I said, 'As I must keep something for the rest of my journey, I can give you no more than twenty piasters' (which was exactly one-fifteenth of what he had demanded).
After some minutes of haggling we settled on thirty-five piasters, and the document was mine. It consisted of a printed sheet with two columns -one French and the other Arabic -the relevant data having been inserted in ink on the dotted lines. The 'personal description' did not bother me much, for, as is usual with such descriptions, it was wonderfully vague. But the age mentioned was thirty-nine -while I was twenty-three, and looked twenty. Even a very careless police officer would immediately notice the discrepancy; and so it became necessary to change the age entry. Now if it had been mentioned in one place only, the change would not have been so difficult, but unfortunately it was given in French as well as in Arabic. Despite my careful penning, I achieved what could only be described as an unconvincing forgery; to anybody with eyes in his head it would be obvious that the figures had been altered in both columns. But that could not be helped. I would have to rely on my luck and the negligence of-the gendarmes.
Early in the morning my business friend led me to a gully behind the village, pointed to some rocks about half a mile beyond, and said, 'There is Syria.'
I made my way across the gulley. Although the hour was early, it was very hot. It must also have been hot to the old Arab woman who sat under a tree near the rocks beyond which was Syria; for she called out to me in a husky, brittle voice:
'Wouldst thou give a drink of water to an old woman, son?' I unslung my freshly filled canteen and gave it to her. She drank avidly and then handed it back to me, saying: 'May God bless thee, may He keep thee secure and lead thee to thy heart's goal.'
'Thanks, mother, I do not want more than that.' And when I turned around and looked back at her, I saw the old woman's lips move as if in prayer and felt a strange elation.
I reached the rocks and passed them: and now I was in Syria. A wide, barren plain lay before me; far away on the horizon I saw the outlines of trees and something that looked like houses; it must be the town of Baniyas. I did not like the look of this plain that offered no tree or bush behind which to take cover which, so near the frontier, might well become necessary. But there was no other way. I felt as one sometimes feels in a dream in which one has to walk naked down a crowded street...
It was nearly noon when I reached a small streamlet bisecting the plain. As I sat down to take off my shoes and socks, I saw in the distance four horsemen moving in my direction. With their rifles held across the saddle, they looked ominously like gendarmes. They were gendarmes. There would have been no sense in my trying to run away; and so I comforted myself that whatever W«S to happen would happen. If I were caught now, I would pr9bably receive no more than a few blows with a rifle butt and be escorted back to Metulla. I waded through the stream, sat down on the opposite bank and started leisurely to dry my feet, waiting for the gendarmes to come closer. They came, and stared down at me with suspicion: for although I was wearing Arab headdress, I was obviously a European.
'From where?' one of them asked me sharply in Arabic.
'From Metulla.'
'And where to?'
'To Damascus.'
'What for?'
'Oh, well, just a pleasure trip.'
'Any papers?'
'Of course ...'
And out came 'my' identity certificate and up came my heart to my mouth. The gendarme unfolded the paper and looked at it -and my heart slipped back to its proper place and started to beat again: for I saw that he held the document upside-down, obviously unable to read ... The two or three big government seals apparently satisfied him, for he ponderously folded and handed it back to me:
'Yes, it is in order, Go.'
For a second I had the impulse to shake his hand, but then thought it better to let our relations remain strictly official. The four men wheeled their horses around and trotted away, while I continued on my march.
Near Baniyas I lost my way. What had been described on my map as a 'road fit for wheeled traffic' proved to be a hardly visible path which meandered over steppe land, swampy ground and across little streams, and in the end petered out entirely near some boulder-strewn hillocks. I wandered over these hills for several hours, up and down, until, in the afternoon, I came upon two Arabs with donkeys that were carrying grapes and cheese to Baniyas. We walked the last stretch together; they gave me grapes to eat; and we separated on reaching the gardens before the town. A clear, narrow, rapidly flowing stream was bubbling by the roadside. I lay down on my belly, thrust my head up to the ears in the icy water and drank and drank...
Although I was very tired, I had no intention of staying at Baniyas, which, being the first town on the Syrian side, was bound to have a police post. My encounter with the gendarmes had set me at rest as regards ordinary Syrian troopers, for most of them could be presumed to be illiterate and therefore not in a position to detect my forgery: but a police post, with an officer in it, would be a different story. I therefore set out at a quick pace through narrow lanes and byways, avoiding the main bazaar street where such a post would most likely be located. In one of the lanes I heard the sound of a lute and a man's voice singing to the accompaniment of clapping. Drawn to it, I rounded the corner -and stood quite still: for just opposite me, at a distance of perhaps ten paces, was a door inscribed Poste de Police, with several Syrian policemen, an officer among them, sitting on stools in the afternoon sun and enjoying the music of one of their comrades. It was too late to retreat, for they had already seen me, and the officer-apparently also a Syrian -called out to me: 'Hey, come here!'
There was nothing to it but to obey. I advanced slowly -and then a brain-wave struck me. Taking out my camera, I politely greeted the officer in French and continued, without waiting for his questions:
'I am coming from Metulla on a short visit to this town, but would not like to go back without taking a photo of you and your friend here, whose song has so enchanted me.'
Arabs like to be flattered, and in addition they delight in being photographed; and so the officer consented with a smile and requested me to send him the photograph after it was developed and printed (which I later did, with my compliments). It no longer occurred to him to ask me for my identification papers. Instead, he treated me to a cup of sweet tea and wished me bon voyage when I finally rose to 'go back to Metulla'. I retreated the way I had come, made a circuit around the town, and proceeded on my way to Damascus.
Exactly two weeks after I had left Haifa I arrived at the big village -almost a town -of Majdal ash-Shams, which was inhabited mainly by Druzes and a few Christians. I chose a house which looked fairly prosperous and told the young man who opened the door to my knock that I would be grateful for shelter for the night. With the usual ahlan wa-sahlan the door was opened wide, and within a few minutes I found myself accepted into the small household. As 1 was now deep in Syria, with several possible ways leading to Damascus, I decided to take my Druze host into my confidence and ask his advice. Knowing that no Arab would ever betray his guest, I placed all the facts squarely before him, including the fact that I was travelling on a false identity certificate. I was told that it would be extremely risky for me to travel on the highway because from here onward it was patrolled by French gendarmes, who would not let me pass as easily as the Syrians had done.
'I think I will send my son with thee,' said my host, pointing toward the young man who had opened the door to me, 'and he will guide thee across the mountains and help thee to avoid the roads.'
After the evening meal we sat down on the open terrace before the house and discussed the route we should take next morning. On my knees was spread the small-scale German map of Palestine and Syria which I had brought with me from Jerusalem, and I was trying to follow on it the course indicated by my Druze friend. While we were thus occupied, a man in the uniform of a police officer-evidently a Syrian -came strolling along the village street. He had appeared so suddenly from around a comer that I had hardly time enough to fold the map, let alone hide it from his view. The officer seemed to recognize a stranger in me, for after passing our terrace with a nod to my host, he turned back at the next corner and slowly walked toward us.
'Who are you?' he asked in French in a not unkind voice.
I repeated my usual rigmarole about being a colonist from Metulla on a pleasure trip; and when he demanded to see my identity certificate, I had to give it to him. He looked at the paper attentively, and his lips twisted in a grin.
'And what is it that you have in your hand?' he continued, pointing to the folded German map. 1 said that it was nothing of importance; but he insisted on seeing it, unfolded it with the deft fingers of a man accustomed to handling maps, looked at it for a few seconds, folded it carefully and handed it back to me with a smile. Then he said in broken German:
'During the war I served in the Turkish army side by side with the Germans.' And he saluted in the military fashion, grinned once again and walked away.
'He has understood that thou art an Alemani. He likes them, and hates the French. He won't bother thee.' Next morning, accompanied by the young Druze, I set out on what must have been the hardest march of my life. We walked for over eleven hours, with only one break at noon for about twenty minutes, over rocky hills, down deep gorges, through dry river beds, up hills again, between boulders, over sharp pebbles, uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, until I felt that I could walk no more. When in the afternoon we reached the town of AlKatana in the plains of Damascus, I was entirely worn out, my shoes were torn and my feet swollen. I wanted to stop overnight at the place, but my young friend advised strongly against it: there were too many French police around, and as it was a town and not a village, I would not so easily find shelter without attracting attention. The only alternative was to secure a ride in one of the automobiles that plied for hire between here and Damascus. I had still my twenty piasters (during the entire journey from Haifa I had had no need to spend a single penny): and twenty piasters happened to be the fare for a car ride to Damascus.
In the ramshackle office of the transport contractor, in the main square of the town, I was informed that I would have to wait for about half an hour until the next car left. I parted from my friendly guide, who embraced me like a brother and set out immediately on the first stage of his way home. Sitting with my knapsack by my side near the door of the booking office, I dozed off under the rays of the late afternoon sun -only to be rudely awakened by someone shaking me by the shoulder: a Syrian gendarme. The usual questions came, followed by the usual answers. But the man was apparently not quite satisfied and told me:
'Come with me to the police station and talk there to the officer in charge.' I was so tired that it no longer mattered to me whether I was discovered or not.
The 'officer' in the station room proved to be a big, burly French sergeant, completely, angrily, drunk and glared with bloodshot eyes at the policeman who had brought me in. 'What is it now?'
The policeman explained in Arabic that he had seen me, a stranger, sitting in the main square; and I explained in French that I was not a stranger, but a law-abiding citizen. 'Law-abiding citizen!' the sergeant shouted. 'You people are scamps, vagabonds who walk up and down the country only to annoy us. Where are your papers?' As I was fumbling with stiff fingers for the identity certificate in my pocket, he banged his fist on the table, and bellowed: 'Never mind, get out of here!' -and as I was closing the door behind me I saw him reach for his glass and bottle. After the long, long march, what a relief, what an ease to ride no, almost glide,-in a car from Al-Katana over the broad highway into the orchard-covered plain of Damascus! On the horizon lay my goal: an endless sea of treetops, with a few shining domes and minarets faintly visible against the sky. Far away, 'somewhat to the right, stood a solitary naked hill, its crest still lighted by the sun, while soft shadows were already creeping up its base. Above the hill, a single cloud, narrow, long, glittering dusk; steep, distant pale blue sky; over the plain, a dove grey golden against the mountains to our right and to our left; a light air.
Then: tall fruit gardens enclosed by mud walls; riders, carts, carriages, soldiers (French soldiers). The dusk became green like water. An officer roared by on a motorcycle, with his huge goggles resembling a deep-sea fish. Then: the first house. Then: Damascus, a surf of noise after the silence of the open plain. The first lights were leaping up in windows and streets. I felt a gladness such as I could not remember.
But my gladness came to an abrupt end as the car stopped beyond the poste de police on the outskirts of the city. 'What is the matter?' I asked the driver by my side. 'Oh, nothing. All cars coming from outside must report to the police on arrival...'
A Syrian policeman emerged from the station and asked: 'From where are you coming?'
'Only from Al-Katana,' replied the driver. 'Oh, well, in that case go on' (for this was obviously only local traffic). The driver let in his clutch with a grind. We moved on and I breathed freely once more. But at that moment someone called out from the street, 'The top is loose!' -and a few paces beyond the poste de police the driver stopped the aged car to attend to the open top that had flopped down on one side. While he was thus engaged, the policeman approached us idly once again, apparently interested in no more than the driver's mechanical problem. Then, however, his glance alighted on me and I saw, with a stiffening of my whole body, that his eyes became alert. He was looking me up and down, came closer, and squinted at the floor of the car where my knapsack lay.
'Who art thou?' he asked suspiciously.
I began, 'From Metulla…" but the policeman was shaking his head unbelievingly. Then he whispered something to the driver; I could make out the words, 'English soldier, and deserter.' And for the first time it dawned upon me that my blue overalls, my brown kufiyya with its gold-threaded igal and my military type knapsack (which I had bought in a junk shop in Jerusalem) closely resembled the outfit of the Irish constabulary employed in those days by the government of Palestine; and I also remembered that there was an agreement between the French and British authorities to extradite their respective deserters...
In my broken Arabic I tried to explain to the policeman that I was no deserter; but he waved aside my explanations: 'Explain all this to the inspector.'
And so I was obliged to go into the police station, while the driver, with a muttered apology for not being able to wait for me started the car and disappeared from view... The inspector was out for the time being but, I was told, would be back any moment. I had to wait in a room which contained only a bench and, apart from the main entry, two other doors. Over one of them was inscribed Gardien de Prison arid over the other simply Prison. Amid these very unpropitious surroundings I waited for over half an hour, each minute more and more convinced that this was my journey's end: for 'inspector' sounded much more ominous than simply 'officer'. If I were now discovered, I would have to spend some time, perhaps weeks, in goal as under-trial prisoner; then I would receive the customary sentence of three months: after serving it I would have to march on foot -accompanied by a mounted gendarme": ' back to the frontier of Palestine; and, to top it all, I might expect an eviction from Palestine as well for breaking passport regulations. The gloom in the waiting room was nothing compared with the gloom within me. Suddenly I heard the whirr of a motor car. It stopped before the station gate. A moment later a man in civilian dress with a red tarbush on his head entered the room with a quick step, followed by the policeman who was excitedly trying to report something to him. The inspector was quite obviously in a great hurry.
I do not know exactly how it happened, but I presume that what I did at that crucial moment was the outcome of one of those rare flashes of genius which in different circumstances and perhaps in different men-produce events that change history. With a single bound, I came close to the inspector and, without waiting for his questions, hurled at him a torrent of complaints in French against the insulting clumsiness of the policeman who had taken me, an innocent citizen, for a deserter and caused me to lose my ride into the city. The inspector tried several times to interrupt me, but I never gave him a chance and engulfed him in a flow of words of which, I suppose, he was hardly able to gather one-tenth -probably only the names "Metulla' and 'Damascus,' which I repeated an endless number of times. He was evidently distressed at being kept away from something he had to do in a hurry; but I did not let him speak and continued, without stopping for breath, with my wordy barrage. Ultimately he threw up his hands in despair and cried: 'Stop, for God's sake! Have you any papers?'
My hand went automatically into my breast pocket and, still pouring out sentence after sentence in an unceasing stream, I thrust the false identity certificate into his hands. The poor man must have felt as if he were drowning, for he only quickly turned over a corner of the folded sheet, saw the government stamp, and threw it back at me:
'All right, all right, go, only go!' -and I did not wait for him to repeat his request.
A few months earlier, in Jerusalem, I had met a Damascene teacher who had invited me to be his guest whenever I came to Damascus, and it was after his house that I now enquired. A little boy offered himself as my guide and took me by the hand.
Deep evening. The Old City. Narrow lanes which the overhanging oriel windows made more nightly than the night itself could make them. Here and there I could see, in the yellow light of a kerosene lantern, a fruiterer's shop with a mound of watermelons and baskets of grapes outside it. People like shadows. Sometimes behind the latticed windows a woman's shrill voice. And then the little boy said, 'Here'. I knocked at a door. Somebody answered from inside and I lifted the latch and entered a paved courtyard. In the darkness I could discern grapefruit trees heavy with green fruit and a stone basin with a fountain. Someone called out from above:
'Taffadal, ya sidi' -and I ascended a narrow staircase along one of the outer walls and walked through an open loggia and into the arms of my friend.
I was dead-tired, entirely exhausted, and let myself fall unresistingly on to the bed that was offered me.
One Friday I went with my friend and host into the Umayyad Mosque. The many marble columns which supported the domed ceiling shone under the sun rays that fell through the lintel windows. There was a scent of musk in the air, red and blue carpets covered the floor. In long, even rows stood many hundreds of men behind the imam who led the prayer; they bowed, knelt, touched the ground with their foreheads, and rose again: all in disciplined unison, like soldiers. It was very quiet; while the congregation was standing, one could hear the voice of the old imam from the distant depths of the huge hall, reciting verses from the Koran; and when he bowed or prostrated himself, the entire congregation followed him as one man, bowing and prostrating themselves before God as if He were present before their eyes...
It was at this moment that I became aware how near their God and their faith were to these people. Their prayer did not seem to be divorced from their working day; it was part of it -not meant to help them forget life, but to remember it better by remembering God.
'How strange and wonderful,' I said to my friend as we were leaving the mosque, 'that you people feel God to be so close to you. I wish I could feel so myself.'
'How else could it be, O my brother? Is not God, as our Holy Book says, nearer to thee than the vein in thy neck?'
Spurred by my new awareness, I spent much of my time at Damascus reading all manner of books on Islam on which I could lay my hands. My Arabic, although sufficient for the purposes of conversation, was as yet too weak for reading the Koran in the original, and so I had to take recourse to two translations -one French and the other German -which I borrowed from a library. For the rest, I had to rely on European orientalist works and on my friend's explanations.
However fragmentary, these studies and talks were like the lifting of a curtain. I began to discern a world of ideas of which hitherto I had been entirely ignorant.
Islam did not seem to be so much a religion in the popular sense of the word as, rather, a way of life; not so much a system of theology as a programme of personal and social behavior based on the consciousness of God. Nowhere in the Koran could I find any reference to a need for 'salvation'. No original, inherited sin stood between the individual and his destiny -for, nothing shall be attributed to man but what he himself has striven for. No asceticism was required to open a hidden gate to purity: for purity was man's birthright, and sin meant no more than a lapse from the innate, positive qualities with which God was said to have endowed every human being. There was no trace of any dualism in the consideration of man's nature: body and soul seemed to be taken as one integral whole.
At first I was somewhat startled by the Koran's concern not only with matters spiritual but also with many seemingly trivial. mundane aspects of life; but in time I began to understand that if man were indeed an integral unity of body and soul -as Islam insisted he was -no aspect of his life could be too 'trivial' to come within the purview of religion. With all this, the Koran never let its followers forget that the life of this world was only one stage of man's way to a higher existence, and that his ultimate goal was of a spiritual nature. Material prosperity, it said, is desirable but not an end in itself: and therefore man's appetites, though justified in themselves, must be restrained and controlled by moral consciousness. This consciousness ought to relate not merely to man's relation with God but also to his relations with men; not only to the spiritual perfection of the individual but also to the creation of such social conditions as might be conducive to the spiritual development of all, so that all might live in fullness ...
All this was intellectually and ethically far more 'respectable' than anything I had previously heard or read about Islam. Its approach to the problems of the spirit seemed to be deeper than that of the Old Testament and had, moreover, none of the latter's predilection for one particular nation; and its approach to the problems of the flesh was, unlike the New Testament, strongly affirmative. Spirit and flesh stood, each in its own right, as the twin aspects of man's God-created life.
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