Orient Express (16 page)

Fifteenth Day:
Crawled out of my cocoon a couple of hours before dawn to find the stars crackling with cold. Everything had been struck. The camping ground was a struggling confusion of camels and drivers holding their necks to the ground while the packs were being fastened on their backs. The camels were struggling and groaning and roaring, the drivers were cursing and kicking. Jassem, always quiet, crouched over the last embers of the fire, warming his long hands. He was laughing quietly to himself when I sat beside him. He handed me a last drop of coffee in one of his thimble cups and then packed up the three pots and the cups and the pestle and mortar in his red saddlebags. Malek was brought by Fahad and nakhed; she lurched to her feet with such a jump that my head almost tangled in Orion, and we were off, everything at a jog trot due north towards the Dipper. A superb ride through the dawn across grass-sheening uplands to the great canyon of the Sheib Hauran, down round the face of red sandstone cliffs, Malek leaping like a mountain goat from rock to rock, to the water bed, where remained a few muddy pools from the last week's rain. There the camels were watered quickly and we were off again, scattering up the steep paths of the north side, I riding beside the old Hadji with the umbrella who rolled his eyes and cried Alham'd'ullah in the most groaning tones every time his camel took a leap. Then when we had scrambled up the last squared cliff of the canyon rim we were off under sparkling showers across the vastest, most pancake flat desert we have yet come to. Travelled eleven hours at top speed, and made camp in the dark, wolf-hungry and dog-tired. Wow!

Sixteenth Day:
Reclining Roman fashion on my couch and looking out between the loopedup tentflaps at Fahad pottering very tired and cross among the cooking-pots from which steam rises silvery against a pistachio-green twilight. Up above the sky loosens into scrolled clouds of platinum and feathery purple. Barefoot Ali walks slowly across behind the fire, leading home a strayed camel. Ali, the most skillful of our camel drivers, is built like a beech-tree, never says anything, and walks with incredible majesty.

The journey was long and splendid. Gazelles were sighted. We rode through patches of scrub full of larks where now and then a rabbit broke cover under the camel's feet and sat watching a second with twitching nose before loping off into the blue ruetha again. White tablelands to the north that pinked to amethyst in the afternoon. And now the evening cry of
cupallyouawp, cupallyouawp
of the drivers calling the camels home from pasture.

After eight hours of the saddle my legs began to drop off.

It seems that the war in the Nejd is over. Ibn Saoud has captured Hael and ibn Raschid and all his wives and followers and is now supreme ruler of Central Arabia. There is a man in our caravan of the Shamar, a lean man with crazy eyes who gets to his feet beside his campfire after evening prayer every day and calls a challenge to any man who is enemy of his tribe to come out and fight. Every night his voice rises in a challenging cry that unfurls like a banner above the bustle and the camelnoises of the camp.

Seventeenth Day:
Still headed a little west of north, wandering through gulches and between eroded tablelands. Camped about midafternoon near a waterhole in the dry bed of a sheib. To the south of us are high mesetas like those between Madrid and Toledo. Warm sunny afternoon. People retire modestly behind rocks to wash themselves and change their clothes. Wandered off over a hill and lay on a broad stone in the sun reading Martial. I have never been so happy. In the evening sat beside Hassoon at Jassem's campfire for a long while watching the balled flames of ruetha, listening to talk I could not understand, and looking at the moon through the fragrant dark-green smoke. Drank endless little cups of coffee, the black unsweetened coffee of the desert, three times distilled, flavored with an herb that makes it bitter as quinine, as pervading as one of Wagner's great pilings up of the orchestra, as restful to the aching wind-rasped body as morning sleep. These people from the Nejd, Jassem and Hassoon and Ali, and the two little black men with the camel colts are the finest people in the world. Later I lay awake looking out at the moonlight, listening to the crunch, crunch of the camels' cud and the soft bubbling of Fahad's waterpipe. If I had any sense I'd stay with Nuwwaf in El Garrá and never go any farther. Anyhow I don't care if it takes up a thousand years to get to Damascus.

Eighteenth Day:
Nuwwaf and his friend went off today on their big white dromedaries. There had been discussion for several days as to whether the caravan should go through El Garrá or no. I suppose Nuwwaf wanted fat safety money in return for his protection. Anyway we are going northward still, probably to Aleppo instead of Damascus. They went off angry without eating bread. I might have gone with them. As I saw the two white specks growing smaller and smaller among the jagged folds of the hills I felt very bitter at my decision. It was during the noonday rest. I was eating rice out of the Sayyid's bowl with the Sayyid and Saleh, squatting in a patch of shiah. Our three hobbled camels stood above us, dripping green slavver from their mouths as they crunched and swallowed the succulent young growth of the shiah.

During the afternoon we veered more to the west into the teeth of a great wind cold as frozen razorblades. We are crossing a flat flint-strewn plain of a rusted purple color across which the camel tracks stretch straight and smooth like the path of a ship at sea. In the evening entertained myself with a touch of that damned Teheran fever. Ate quinine in great quantity for supper.

Nineteenth Day:
Chilly dawn; hoarfrost on the bare flints, followed by a warm delicious day riding sleepily through gorges and dry watercourses and over rolling flinty hills. Tremendous numbers of rabbits wherever there's a patch of vegetation, and pernickety-looking grey-crested birds; I wonder if they are hoopoes. The Hadji bit the dust this afternoon. One of those mules of Abdullah's that are always causing trouble bit his camel's tail and the camel gave a great leap and twisted himself in thirteen directions and off went saddle and Hadji and umbrella and a vast diversity of little packages and cookpots. The old gentleman lay groaning and crying Alham'd'ullah until everybody picked him up and cursed Abdullah and his mules, and the bent umbrella was straightened. Then he perked up and was set upon his beast again without seeming very much the worse.

When we made camp one of the camels that had gone hopelessly lame was killed. He seemed to know what was coming and stood tottering in the center of the camping ground, looking from side to side out of bulging eyes. Then one of the little black men from the Nejd, with his sleeves rolled up and his tunic girded high at the waist, jerked him off his feet and neatly cut his throat. Before the last twitches of life were out of the carcass it was skinned and, amid tremendous excitement and shouting, cut up. Fahad, all bloody up to the elbows, came back to our outfit staggering under the liver and several ribs. The liver was immediately grilled by being set among the embers, and the rest of the meat was stewed. I sat reading the elaborate idiocies of L'Amant Magnifique and made a noble supper at sundown off porridge and gobbets of camel meat fried with onions. Those onions are really the making of my larder. Went to sleep and dreamed of the sun-king and red heels tapping to the slow time of sarabands.

Twentieth Day:
The sunrise was straight in our backs when we started out this morning, an unbelievable firework of grey and gamboge and salmon color; and so on sleepily swaying on Malek hour after hour, under a sky so intense that you seemed to see through the blue light of the world into the black of infinite space. Camped in the evening in a flat plain full of ruetha. Walked far out away from the caravan full of its noises of cookery and tent-pitching until a roll of the hills hid even the camels scattering to graze. There was no wind. The only sound was the occasional crunch or scuttle of a pebble under my feet. Suddenly I thought of the demons that Marco Polo tells about that dwell in deserts and whisper soft in travellers' ears, coaxing them away from their tents and their caravans over another and another hill, until they lose the north and wander in the waste until they die. It was almost dark. Condor clouds hovered thicker and thicker above the bleeding west. A little wind came up and hissed, whispered soft among the flints. My name, almost, hissed soft among the flints. Hoisting the skirts of my aba about my waist, I ran and ran until against the last twilight I could see the tents and piles of bales and the ring of fires and the confused long-necked crowd of camels being nakhed for the night.

Some people compute eight, others fifteen days to Esch Scham.

Twenty-first Day:
There are two little conical mountains to the west. One of them I think is called Jebal Souab. The group of grandees riding far ahead of the caravan came suddenly across the crest of a low hill into view of a great herd of gazelles. For several minutes they did not see us. Everyone had a rifle ready. Then like surf breaking on a ledge the nearest gazelles jumped straight in the air and were off. In the click of a trigger the whole herd was out of sight. Hard luck, because my larder is quite exhausted and I'm living on rice and fried dates I get from Jassem. My cigarettes are all gone too, and the news seems to have got about the caravan because these fine people never let me stir abroad without smoking. People I've never been particularly chummy with appear with the makings on every side so that I have to smoke more than I want to keep up with their generosity. As for Hassoon, he seems to want me to smoke them two at a time. Funny sensation being hungry all the time. Am attended for hours by visions splendid of roast goose and canvasback duck and horsd'œuvre at the Bristol. When I wake up I find the air round my bed crowded with corn muffins and waffles. The descriptions of food in Mr. Martial's epigrams bring tears to my eyes.

The Golden Horn

Twenty-second Day:
Splendid morning's ride through finest country ever, prairies of dry aromatic shrubs full of rabbits and strange white softly flying birds. Skirting the two little mountains, Souab and Damlough, under a sky piled high with rose and amber-glinting cumulus clouds, I was riding ahead with the grandees. Everyone seemed a little uneasy as one of the Agail had picked out a man on horseback watching the caravan from a shoulder of the mountain. Then all at once there was a cry of Haremi, bandits, and we all rode full tilt back to the caravan with clanky rattling of saddlebags and a waving of guns. Far away towards the mountain men on white ponies were loping down the hills like rabbits. Jassem rode up to his outfit and halted it in a little ravine. The camels groaning and roaring with their loads on them were nakhed and hobbled in a flash. The dancing girls tumbled squeaking out of their litter. The other sections of the caravan nakhed as they came up, until the camels were all sitting down squeezed together tight in an uneasy square. The pebbly bed of the ravine was full of shouts and squealing of women. The two horses were mounted, one by the Sayyid who annoyed everybody very much by stopping to put on his best aba for the occasion, the other by Abdullah; and the Agail and all the other combatant members of the caravan took up positions on the little hillocks round about. The Damascus merchant and his son took firm hold of me by either arm and sat me down between them in the deepest part of the gully, whether for their protection or mine I never made out. The little Turk's fat wife lay in a heap like soiled clothes at her husband's feet and now and then let out a long curdled shriek. Fahad pottered about scowling, tightening hobbles on camels, picking up things that had fallen out of saddlebags, muttering complaints as if this were all just another whim of Jassem's. Everybody sat hunched with expectation for a long while and I began to think again of the unfortunate death of the Prince Napoleon, but nothing happened. So I managed to get loose from my Damascus friends and climbed up on to the hillock above the ravine. There I found the Sayyid riding round and round like mad with his long sleeves floating behind him in the wind and his silver-encrusted gun flashing in the sun—Baruda Ketir Ketir. Guns many many, bandits many many, Bedawi on horseback many many, he shouted when he saw me. I replied that in Frankistan I had seen guns so big that the whole caravan could ride through one. That seemed to settle him for a while. The Agail were coming back from scouting about the hills. It was a fine sight to see them gird up their loins and tie up the long sleeves behind each other's backs. Jassem was quiet and smiling as ever. With one hand he held his gun, with the other he stroked his beard. The purple and the white headcloths fluttered behind him as he walked. There was a big body of men on horseback advancing towards us; nobody knew who they were. The Agail with extra cartridge belts scattered towards the hills again, and I joined the circle of the less timorous noncombatants who sat smoking on a little mound, presided over by the Hadji, who nursed in his lap his cherished umbrella and invoked Allah at every batting of an eyelash. We must have sat that way for an hour when suddenly a rifleshot and then another rattled in the hollows of the hills. Two men on white ponies appeared on the slope in front of us, riding licketysplit and occasionally shooting. A few bullets whirred over our heads. The group of the less timorous broke up in confusion. I have a distinct impression that the Hadji raised his umbrella. Somehow I found myself engaged in a long conversation with a Turkish camel driver. What language we talked I have no idea, as he knew no more Arabic than I did, but we managed to convey the most complicated ideas to one another while the Agail fell back towards the camels and more and more men on white ponies appeared on the hills from every direction, riding round and round us, shooting as they rode like the Indians in Custer's Last Stand that used to be the last number in Buffalo Bill's great show.