Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 7

"Wouldn't you like," said M., "to be away from this nightmare of a life and in a peaceful country like Egypt?"

"I guess yes, my dear," said George. "But I desire to quit the East and live among English."

"Well," said C., "I could find you a comfortable job in Australia."

"Very obliged. I take your address and write when war shall finish."

"That's no good. None of us may be alive when the war is over. How would you like to take the job now?"

"What can you desire to say, my dear?"

There was an awkward pause. We were shy of carrying the matter further; for chance-met Levantines, like politicians, do not as a rule inspire confidence.

Yet it had to be done. I continued the conversation in French, George's weird English not being a good medium for the discussion of secrets.

"If," I promised, "you help us to escape and come with us, we will give you not only money, but a job for life in Australia."

George's face whitened suddenly, and for the rest of that evening his hands shook with excitement.

"There is nothing I wish so much, _mon cher_" he said, "as to escape to the British. But it is very difficult and would need much money. Also I have so little courage."

George went into the corridor to see if the guard showed suspicions.

But the sentry--a black Sudanese--was sitting on the floor, gazing at and thinking of nothing, after his usual stupid fashion.

George returned, and for half an hour we discussed and rediscussed possibilities. He p.r.o.nounced the scheme of walking to the coast in a series of night marches, and then stealing a boat, to be impossible.

The idea of joining a caravan to Akaba he judged more hopeful, but that would mean hiding in Damascus until the next party was ready to start.

Hiding in Damascus would be not only highly dangerous but highly expensive. Anyhow, the Armenians who organized the secret caravans must be shy of adding immensely to their risks by taking British officers, and if they did take such risks they would expect to receive more ready money than we possessed.

George was silent for several moments, and then announced that he would try to find an Arab, from among his acquaintances, who would lead us to Deraa, and thence through the mountains to the Dead Sea regions. For this also, he pointed out, money would be necessary--and gold, not paper. We could change our paper notes only at the rate of four and a half paper pounds for one in gold; and the sum obtained by this means would be too little.

"But," I pointed out, "if we go below the Dead Sea to the country occupied by the Hedjaz army, we can get gold enough. Haven't you heard of the gold at 'X', of a certain Arab emir and of certain British officers?"

"_Mon cher_, I have heard a lot of this gold, and so have many of the Bedouins around here. But perhaps I shall not be able to convince my friend that you could obtain money from it."

I gave George arguments enough to convince his friend, and made him swear by his professed Christianity that he would keep secret our conversation. Soon afterward he left us, still trembling with excitement.

Full of renewed hope, I looked out of the window into the Eastern evening, and speculated on what the G.o.d of chance might do for us. To be effective he would have to do a lot. There was, for example, the Austrian sentry whom I could see below, leaning against a motor lorry.

If he were about, on whatever night we fixed for our escape, how could we climb down to the ground un.o.bserved? The window itself offered no difficulties, for it was above the street and on the first floor, so that a few bedclothes tied together would suffice to lower a man out of the barracks.

Then, while I was still watching the sentry, a different G.o.d intervened. A hooded girl sidled up to him, and after looking around to see that n.o.body was watching, he crossed the road, and disappeared with her into the meadow to the left of the camp. An omen, I thought. If, on escape-night, chance spirited away obstacles as easily as that, all would be well.

Meanwhile the flat, gray houses whitened in the light of the young moon, and the river Abana radiated soft shimmerings. In this respect, also, chance should favour us. About a week later, when we hoped to leave, the moon would not rise until after midnight; so that darkness would help us to slip from the barracks, and moonlight would help us as we moved across open country. Just then my meditations were chased away by a fantastic, far-away sound. Somewhere in the maze of streets a wheezy barrel organ was playing--playing _Funicul, Funicula_! How a barrel organ found itself in Damascus, and in war-time Damascus, I did not try to guess. All I knew, or wanted to know, was that across the warm, sensitive night air there floated the lively old tune: and if you are away from Europe take it from me that nothing will bring you to the back streets of London, of Paris, of Naples as quickly as a barrel organ playing _Funicul, Funicula_. For long after the barrel organ had become silent, and only the moonlight and the stillness remained, I was back in England.

Late next morning George burst into the room, with a beaming face and a palpable desire for news telling.

"_Mon cher_," he said to me, "I have found a Druse who will guide you.

He knows about the gold, and although not quite sure, he thinks he can trust you, as British officers, to see that he gets paid. He demands two hundred pounds in gold when you reach 'X', and fifty pounds in paper now, for the hire of horses."

I was overjoyed at this new prospect of a road to liberty; but when I had translated George's French for the benefit of the Australians, M.

counselled caution.

"I don't like the sound of that fifty pounds down," he said. "Tell him we won't pay anything until we're outside Damascus and have the horses."

We decided that unless we conformed to the custom of always beating down a bargain-adversary, the Druse would think we could be blackmailed for any amount of money. He might even regard too ready an acceptance of his terms as evidence that we did not mean to pay on arrival at "X."

Finally, we told George to place the following terms before the Druse--one hundred pounds in gold on arrival, and fifty pounds paper when we were on horse-back and away from Damascus. For the present, nothing. As for George himself, he should receive fifty English pounds when we reached safety and his job in Australia.

Next day George returned from the bazaar with the reply that the Druse would be satisfied with one hundred and twenty-five pounds in gold at "X," and agreed to leave the question of ready money for the horses until we were out of Damascus. He demanded another twenty pounds, paper, however, for the man who was to bring back the horses after we had ridden to the mountains at Deraa. To these terms we agreed, as the withdrawal of the demand for money in advance evidenced the genuine intentions of the Druse.

"The Druse desires to spot you," said George, breaking into English.

"To-morrow an officer will lead you to public baths. When I say to make attention, observe a man who carry yellow _burnous_ and robe."

And so it happened. We had our bath, and, escorted by a Greek doctor in the Turkish army, with several guards and George the inevitable, we walked through the hot streets toward the bazaar.

"Honest to G.o.d!" said George suddenly--for it had been agreed that this phrase should signal the presence of the Druse.

I searched the crowd of Arabs gathered in the road at the corner of a narrow turning, and had no difficulty in picking out, right in the foreground, a tall, fierce-moustached man, with yellow robe and yellow head-dress. One hand rested on the bone b.u.t.t of a long pistol stuck through his sash, and with the other he fingered the two rings round his _burnous_. He looked at us long and intently, especially at H., with his six feet four inches of magnificent physique; then backed into the growing crowd and disappeared.

"Don't look to behind you, my dear," said George, whose inability to control himself had again blanched his face, "or my officer observe."

That walk to and from the big _hammam_ in the centre of Damascus is perhaps the most vivid of my memories of the city. Wherever we pa.s.sed, a ma.s.s of Arabs and nondescripts surged around us, until the road was blocked and our guards had to clear the way forcibly. Bargaining at the stalls was suspended as we moved through the long, covered-in bazaar, with its carpets and prayer rugs, its blood-sausages, its necklaces in amber, turquoise, and jade, its beautiful silks and tawdry cottons, its copper work, its old swords and pistols, its dirty, second-hand clothes--all laid out haphazard for inspection. Once, when we entered a shop, the crowd that collected before it was so large that the guards took us outside by a back door.

Yet one sensed that this interest was for the most part friendly. The Arabs expected the British army sooner or later, and wanted the British army. Meanwhile, they were anxious to see what manner of men were the British officers. We were not a very impressive group, with our dirty, much-creased uniforms. What saved us, from the point of view of display, was the tall, upright figure and striking features of H., at whom everyone gazed in admiration.

As we pa.s.sed through the gardens on the way home an _imam_, from the ground before a mosque, was chanting something to a small gathering. On investigation we found a large map of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles marked out in the soil, with hills and trenches and guns and battleships shown on it. The _imam_ was telling the Faithful just how the unbelievers had been driven off the peninsula by the invincible Turkish army. This he did each afternoon, we were a.s.sured.

Everywhere was evidence of dest.i.tution, starvation, and squalor. The streets were utterly filthy, as if they had not been cleaned for months or years--which was probably the case. The disused tram-lines reared up two or three feet above the worn road, so that camels, donkeys, and pedestrians constantly tripped over them. Along the princ.i.p.al streets one had to turn aside, every dozen yards or so, to avoid enormous holes. Half-crumbled walls, huts, and houses were everywhere apparent.

The magnificent old mosque which is one of the beauties of Damascus was decaying into decrepitude, without any attempt at support or restoration.

As for the population, most were in rags, very few had boots, about one half wore sandals, and the remainder went about barefooted. Yet even the dest.i.tute Arabs were more attractive than the well-to-do Levantines with their frock coats and brown boots and straw hats.

All the poorer Arabs and Syrians looked half starved, and we must have pa.s.sed hundreds of gaunt beggars--men, women, and children. Worst of all were the little babies, huddled against the walls and doorways.

Ribs and bones showed through their wasted bodies, which were indescribably thin except where the stomach, swollen out by the moistened grain which had been their only sustenance, seemed abnormally fat by contrast. So weak were they that they could scarcely cry their hunger or hold out a hand in supplication. Arab mothers, themselves on the verge of starvation, had left them, in the vain hope that Allah would provide. And neither Allah nor anybody else took the least notice, until they were dead. The police then removed their small bodies for burial; and more starving mothers left more starving babies by the roadside. The Greek doctor told me that forty such babies died in Damascus each day.

The next few days were buoyant with expectancy. We collected raisins and other foodstuffs, while George went backward and forward into the city to communicate with the Druse. We now hoped to leave the barracks without especial difficulty. The Austrian sentry below, we discovered, remained inside the doorway after midnight, so that it would be possible to slip down from the window without being seen or heard by him. One night we half-hitched our blankets together as a test, and found that they would be fully strong enough to bear even the weight of H., if tied to an iron bedpost.

A more difficult problem was that of the guard outside our room. There were three blacks who performed this sentry duty in turn, two Sudanese and one Senegalese--Sambo, Jumbo, and Hobo, as we called them. Jumbo and Hobo were intensely stupid and lazy. They spent their night watches in dozing on the floor of the corridor. Our door being closed each night, conditions would be ideal if either of them were there on escape-evening.

Sambo was more alert. He had been a postal messenger at Khartoum, and as such spoke a certain amount of English. When Turkey entered the war, he told us, he had been travelling to Mecca on a pilgrimage, and the Turks conscripted him. Twice he had been in prison, once because he attempted to desert, and once because an Arab prisoner whom he was guarding, escaped. Apparently he had learned a lesson from this latter misfortune, for he never slept when on sentry duty. Obviously, if he were outside our door on _the_ evening, we should have to find some means of dealing with him. We sent George to buy chloroform, but he returned with the news that none could be found in Damascus. Thereupon we made a gag with a piece of pants and a chunk of rubber, to be used on Sambo if necessary.

Then, with these preliminary arrangements settled, they tumbled down like a house of cards. We were moved to a room on the north side of the building, so that a number of arrested Turkish officers might be put into our larger apartment. Our first thought, on entering the new quarters, was for the window. Ten thousand curses! It looked on to an open courtyard. Two sentries promenaded the yard, which was surrounded by a brick wall.

"My dear," said George when he next visited us, "the business is lost.

It is by all means impossible to quit window without observation from Turks."

For hours the Australians and I sought a way out of the new difficulty, and sought vainly, for it was George whose cunning rescued our plan from the blind alley into which it had been driven. He would leave his rifle at the top of the back stairway, he said, then come to our room and usher us along the corridor, after telling the black guard that he was taking us to an officer's room (as often happened in the evening).

Next he would recover his rifle, slip down the stairway to the Austrian section of the barracks and, with bayonet fixed, lead us out of the side door guarded by an Austrian sentry. The advantage of the Austrian door was that the sentry, seeing a Turkish soldier walking out with prisoners, would think he was taking them to the railway station, or not think about the matter at all; whereas the Turkish guard at the main door would have recognized George and known that something was wrong.