Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!
They caught the refrain and throat after throat took it up, beginning to sway a little in time to it and ceasing from the cattle-thrust all in one direction that was pinning them choked and helpless between walls. The man who wanted my blood laughed and began to sing too.
Hither came Er-Rahman (Abraham), hither across deserts, hither to make friendship with the men of El-Kalil!
Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!
None else had befriended him. None had housed the stranger. Wondering he wandered to the tents of El-Kalil!
Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!
Now the whole street was thundering the refrain and a rival singer took up the story of Abraham, for rivalry is keen among the bards of that place and no “sweet singer” lets a new man hold attention long if he can help it. And because the men of El-Kalil, like those of other cities, have their own moods and their own expressions of emotion they began to form groups and face inward, little by little easing the forward pressure as the men in the rear made room to sway and swing in time to the improvised ballad.
Grim did not waste time then. He grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into a doorway, kicked on the door until a woman opened and then without a word of explanation rushed past her up a rickety old stair-way to the roof. We were followed by a dozen men before she could get the door closed again and whether Grim knew the way or not they showed it to us—up over roof after roof —flat ones, domed ones,—along copings—jumping here and there across dark ditches that were Hebron “streets” and frequently scaring women off the roofs in front of us—pursued all the way by the thunder of the song Grim started.
Allah watches them! Oh! Allah watches them!
You could have recognized the Ghetto by the change of smells. But there was a glow of light there too, and rival music snarling from somewhere out of sight, tinny and thin but carrying its theme through endless bars instead of pausing to repeat, as Arab music does.
We lay at the end of a roof and looked over—down on a sight so weird that the modern world and all that belonged to it became a dream forthwith. Not that this looked real; there was nothing real any longer. Life was a myth. We were dreamers, peering down into the vale of dreams.
Have you ever seen the ancient Jewish costume? Purple and apricot-color —ancient Jews in turbans, with their long, curled earlocks, and the gestures that signify race-consciousness refusing not to be expressed? And the Jewish boys, togged out like their sires, gawky and awkward in the ancient costume, full of all the fiery zeal of their race and not yet trained to self-suppression?
It was a courtyard below us, connected to the street by that dark passage we had entered the evening before. The passage was still as black as pitch, but open windows facing on the court bathed that in golden-yellow light. Framed in the windows there were Jewesses—Esthers, Rachels, Rebeccas— crowding for a front view, bejeweled with long gold ear-rings, open-mouthed, afraid—gleaming-eyed women.
There was a committee of Arabs, thirty or forty strong, armed to the teeth, standing back to the wall around two sides of the court, eying the whole scene with owlish attention to detail. Back to the entrance of the passageway stood Ali Baba, with his sixteen sons behind him in a semi-circle; and behind them again, dimly discernible in shadow was an old muballir chanting nasally from a copy of the Koran held with both hands on his lap. The Jewish music, out of the darkness in the corner opposite was, presumably by way of opposition to that heresy.
The most striking figure of them all was Cohen, standing in the midst, facing Ali Baba, with the Chief Rabbi on his right hand and another on his left. He wore a turban, to which false ringlets had been pinned, and was nearly naked to the waist, his skin gleaming in the mellow light.
They had togged him out like an Orthodox Jew, but there was a girdle about his waist and all the upper part of his clothing hung down from that, so that he looked like a butcher about to slay according to ancient ritual.
The armed Arabs began to grow impatient and two or three of them called out, but I could not catch what was said. The cry was taken up by the younger Jews behind, and without waiting for the muballir to finish chanting Ali Baba stepped up to Cohen and breathed fire on him.
Instantly the whole of Cohen’s torso seemed to leap into flame —blue flame, of the sort that dances on a Christmas pudding— flame that crawled snake-fashion, changing shape to disappear in one place and appear in another. The Arabs roared delight; the women shrilled in the windows, and the young Jews at the rear set up a dogfight din that might have meant anything.
Cohen took something in his hands—a sponge it might have been —pressed it to his breast, and that, too, caught fire. The flame died down on his body and flickered out, but the thing in his hands burned on. Ali Baba bowed to the ground in front of it, all his sons following suit; then the sons made way down their midst for him and turned behind him four abreast as he started for the street. The band of Jewish musicians struck up a lively air with cymbals, and Cohen started after them, followed by two Rabbis and at least two hundred other Jews, all chanting, while the Arabs waited to come last, flashing their swords in air and yelling in praise of Allah.
The last I saw of the procession just then was a ball of fire in the black passage that rose and fell as Cohen tossed it and the weird sheen on his arms and breast as the blue light flashed on them.
“Let’s go!” said Grim and we crossed by an arch above a dark street that was all one voice of roaring men, who milled and mobbed to get out of the way of the fire-gift, urged to it by men on wiry gray ponies who pricked at them with spear-tips and cursed in the name of the Most High. The Jewish music penetrated through and above the din like the wail of forgotten ages; but every minute or so every other sound was suddenly drowned beneath the Moslem roar that answers all arguments, confounds all doubters, satisfies all requirements.
”Allahu akbar! La illahah il-allah! God is great. There is no god but God!”
We got down into a side street by a wall and set of steps and ran in a circuit to head off the crowd. But it was useless to try to reach the mosque by the south entrance, for every available inch of footing along the route was crammed with men, who sang in groups, each group with a soloist making up songs for them and all thundering the refrains, so that the winding, dark street-canyons were one interminable roar. And there was a reek of human sweat you could have leaned against.
But there was an old minaret, disused because unsafe, that overlooked the whole of the Haram court, and whose good, stout olive-wood door, hinged like a treasure-chest, was only fastened by a cheap brass Brummagem padlock.
Grim broke that with the first rock handy and we climbed the stone stairs that rocked now and then in their setting, scaring out bats that like to haunt disused buildings. We emerged on a rickety platform, whose broken iron railing hung loose above a sea of heads.
The whole Haram court was chock-a-block with men. You could see de Crespigny’s horse nodding and champing nervously outside in the street, where one of the policemen held him. The rest of the police were up beside de Crespigny on the mosque steps behind the Sheikh, whose gaunt, Old Testament face was a picture of mingled dignity and nervousness.
On the steps below the Sheikh, but leaving a narrow gangway for him, were about twenty notables; and there was a narrow cleared space, two men wide perhaps, leading all the way from them to the South Gate. There was plenty of light on the scene; for, besides the great iron bracket-lanterns, many of the men had kerosene lanterns, swung on sticks to keep them safe above the struggling crowd.
We were none too soon. The circuit we had made had used up time. We could hear the cymbals already, and the chanting penetrating through the roar from Moslem throats. In another minute I caught sight of a dancing ball of blue fire; and then, through a wide gap between two roofs, I saw Cohen.
He said afterwards that he was in deadly fear all the while, but I believe he was enjoying himself. At intervals between tossing the fire