“You know him?” he asked.
“By sight. He was at Sheikh ben Nazir’s house yesterday.”
“That is Suliman ben Saoud, a stranger from Arabia, but a man of great influence because of his connection with the Ichwan movement. If you are interested in our types that man will repay study.”
“Good. I’ll try to study him,” said I.
It was all I could do to keep a straight face. So Jimgrim was the source of Abdul Ali’s inspirations! I wondered what subtle argument he could have used to make the sheikh so keen on baiting his hook with the school proposal. His nerve, in waiting behind that curtain until he knew his scheme had succeeded, and then walking out bold as brass to let me know that he had overheard everything, was what amused me. But I managed not to smile.
“What time is the mejlis?” I asked.
“At noon.”
“Then I’ll go and hunt up my interpreter.”
Ben Nazir came out with me, in a blazing bad temper. He was as jealous as a pet dog, and inclined to visit the result on me.
“Very polite, I am sure! Most refined! Most courteous! In your country, sir, does a guest reward his host for hospitality by talking in a language that his host can’t understand? Perhaps you would rather transfer your presence to Abdul Ali’s house? Pray do not consider yourself beholden to me, in case you would prefer his hospitality!”
I tried in vain to pacify him. I explained that the choice of language had been Abdul Ali’s, and offered to tell him now in French every word that had passed. But he would not listen.
“It would not be difficult for a man of your intelligence to make up a story,” he said rudely.
“Abdul Ali can talk French. If it had been intended that I should know the truth that conversation would have been in French. Shall I send your bag to Abdul Ali’s house?”
“No,” I said. “Give it to Anazeh. He is answerable for my safety until I reach Palestine again. Thank you for a night’s lodging.”
He walked away in a great huff, and I set out for the house of Abu Shamah, using my scant store of Arabic to ask the way. Mahommed ben Hamza was lolling on the stone veranda, gossiping with half-a-dozen men. He came the minute I beckoned him.
“I’ve seen Jimgrim,” I said. “You’re to come with me at noon to the mejlis as my interpreter.”
He grinned delightedly.
“And see here, you smelly devil: Here’s money. Buy yourself a clean shirt, a new coat, and some soap. Wash yourself from head to foot, and put the new clothes on, before you meet me at the castle gate ten minutes before noon. Those are Jimgrim’s orders, do you understand?”
“Taht il-amr! (Yours to command)” he answered laughing.
I went and bought myself an awful meal at the house of a man who rolled Kabobs between his filthy fingers.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
“WHO GIVES ORDERS TO ME?”
The wonderful thing about Moab is that everything happens in a story-book setting, with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish and Wyeth and Joe Coll, and all the rest of them, whichever way you look.
Imagine a blue sky—so clear-blue and pure that you can see against it the very feathers in the tails of wheeling kites, and know that they are brown, not black. Imagine all the houses, and the shacks between them, and the poles on which the burlap awnings hang, painted on flat canvas and stood up against that infinite blue. Stick some vultures in a row along a roof-top— purplish—bronze they’ll look between the tiles and sky. Add yellow camels, gray horses, striped robes, long rifles, and a searching sun-dried smell. And there you have El-Kerak, from the inside.
From any point along the broken walls or the castle roof you can see for fifty miles over scenery invented by the Master-Artist, with the Jordan like a blue worm in the midst of yellow-and-green hills twiggling into a turquoise sea.
The villains stalk on-stage and off again sublimely aware of their setting. The horses prance, the camels saunter, the very street-dogs compose themselves for a nap in the golden sun, all in perfect harmony with the piece. A woman walking with a stone jar on her head (or, just as likely, a kerosene can) looks as if she had just stepped out of eternity for the sake of the picture. And not all the kings and kaisers, cardinals and courtezans rolled into one great swaggering splurge of majesty could hold a candle to a ragged Bedouin chief on a flea-bitten pony, on the way to a small-town mejlis.
So it was worth a little inconvenience, and quite a little risk to see those chiefs arrive at the castle gate, toss their reins to a brother cut-throat, and swagger in, the poorest and least important timing their arrival, when they could, just in advance of an important man so as to take precedence of him and delay his entrance.
Mindful of my charge to keep Anazeh sober, and more deadly afraid of it than of all the other risks, I hung about waiting for him, hoping he would arrive before Abdul Ali or ben Nazir. I wanted to go inside and be seated before either of those gentry came. But not a bit of it. I saw Anazeh ride up at the head of his twenty men, halt at a corner, and ask a question. His men were in military order, and looked not only ready but anxious to charge the crowd and establish their old chief’s importance.
Mahommed ben Hamza, not quite so smelly in his new clothes, was standing at my elbow.
“Sheikh Anazeh beckons you,” he said.
So the two of us worked our way leisurely through the crowd toward the side-street down which Anazeh had led his party. We found them looking very spruce and savage, four abreast, drawn up in the throat of an alley, old Anazeh sitting his horse at their head like a symbol of the ancient order waiting to assault the new. My horse was close beside him, held by Ahmed, acting servitor on foot.
The old man let loose the vials of his wrath on me the minute I drew near, and Mahommed ben Hamza took delicious pleasure in translating word for word.
“Is that the way an effendi in my care should be seen at such a time—on foot? Am I a maskin[8] that you do not ride? Is the horse not good enough?”
I made ben Hamza explain that I was to attend the mejlis as Sheikh Abdul Ali’s guest. But that only increased his wrath.
“So said ben Nazir! Shall a lousy Damascene trick me out of keeping my oath? You are in my safekeeping until you tread on British soil again, and my honour is concerned in it! No doubt that effeminate schemer of schemes would like to display you at the mejlis as his booty, but you are mine! Did you think you are not under obligation to me?”
I answered pretty tactfully. I said that Allah had undoubtedly created him to be a protector of helpless wayfarers and the very guardian of honour. Mahommed ben Hamza added to the compliments while rendering mine into Arabic. But though Anazeh’s wrath was somewhat mollified, he was not satisfied by any means.
“Am I a dog,” he demanded, “that I should be slighted for the sake of that Damascene?”
It looked to me like the proper moment to try out Grim’s magic formula.
“You are the father of lions. And a lion knows a lion in the dark!” said I.
The effect was instantaneous. He puffed his cheeks out in astonishment, and sucked them in again. The overbearing anger vanished as he leaned forward in the saddle to scrutinize my face. It was clear that he thought my use of that phrase might just possibly have been an accident.
“Jimgrim says—”
“Ah! What says Jimgrim? Who are you that know where