A Woman in Arabia (16 page)

But these are matters outside the scope of the present book, and my
apologia
had best end where every Oriental writer would have begun: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!”

Early in
The Desert and the Sown
, Gertrude describes to her parents the advantages of an Arab tent, where she would so often go at night to eat mutton and curds, drink coffee, and exchange information with the sheikhs.

We did not go straight back to my tents. I had been invited out to dine that evening by Sheikh
of the Beni
, he who had spent the previous night in Namrüd's cave; and after consultation it had been decided that the invitation was one which a person of my exalted dignity would not be compromised by accepting.

“But in general,” added Namrüd, “you should go nowhere but to a great sheikh's tent, or you will fall into the hands of those who invite you only for the sake of the present you will give.
—well, he is an honest man, though he be
,” a word that covers all forms of mild contempt, from that which is extended to honest poverty, through imbecility to the first stages of feeble vice.

The
received me with the dignity of a prince, and motioned me to the place of honour on the ragged carpet between the square hole in the ground that serves as hearth and the partition that separates the women's quarters from the men's. We had tethered our horses to the long tent ropes that give such wonderful solidity to the frail dwelling, and our eyes wandered out from where we sat over the eastward sweep of the landscape—swell and fall, fall and swell, as though the desert breathed quietly under the gathering night.

The lee side of an Arab tent is always open to the air; if the wind shifts the women take down the tent wall and set it up against another quarter, and in a moment your house has changed
its outlook and faces gaily to the most favourable prospect. It is so small and so light and yet so strongly anchored that the storms can do little to it; the coarse meshes of the goat's hair cloth swell and close together in the wet so that it needs continuous rain carried on a high wind before a cold stream leaks into the dwelling-place.

Amurath to Amurath
*
is the account of Gertrude's extensive journey along the banks of the Euphrates, surveying and photographing innumerable archaeological sites along the way. She wrote in 1910, “The five months of journeying which are recounted in this book were months of suspense and even of terror. . . . The banks of the Euphrates echo with ghostly alarums.” Here she tells of two near escapes in this dangerous territory and of one comical encounter with unpleasant insects.

On the leg of the journey from Hit to Karbala, Gertrude and her crew set out for Shetateh.

We were jogging along between hummocks of thorn and scrub,
as usual singing, when suddenly he broke off at the end of a couplet and said: “I see a horseman riding in haste.”

I looked up and saw a man galloping towards us along the top of a ridge; he was followed closely by another and yet another, and all three disappeared as they dipped down from the high ground. In the desert every newcomer is an enemy till you know him to be a friend.
slipped a cartridge into his rifle,
extracted his riding-stick from the barrel, where it commonly travelled, and I took a revolver out of my holster. This done,
galloped forward to the top of a mound; I followed, and we watched together the advance of the three who were rapidly diminishing the space that lay between us.
jumped to the ground and threw me his bridle.

“Dismount,” said he, “and hold my mare.”

I took the two mares in one hand and the revolver in the other.
had lined up beside me, and we two stood perfectly still
while
advanced, rifle in hand, his body bent forward in an attitude of strained watchfulness. He walked slowly, alert and cautious, like a prowling animal. The three were armed and our thoughts ran out to a possible encounter with the Benî Hassan, who were the blood enemies of our companion. If, when they reached the top of the ridge in front of us, they lifted their rifles,
and I would have time to shoot first while they steadied their mares. The three riders topped the ridge, and as soon as we could see their faces
gave the salaam; they returned it, and with one accord we all stood at ease. For if men give and take the salaam when they are near enough to see each other's faces, there cannot, according to the custom of the desert, be any danger of attack. The authors of this picturesque episode turned out to be the three men from
. One of them had lent a rifle to the boy who had guided us and, repenting of his confidence, had come after him to make sure that he did not make off with it. We pointed out the direction in which he had gone and turned our horses' heads once more in the direction of Shetâteh.