“How do I cross the Dead Sea?”
“That’s ben Nasir’s business. There’s another point I’ll ask you to bear in mind. When you see me at El-Kerak, be sure not to make the slightest sign of recognition, unless and until you get word from me. Act as if you’d never seen me in your life before.”
I felt like an arch-conspirator, and there is no other sensation half so thrilling. The flattery of being let in, as it were, through a secret door was like strong wine.
“Is your memory good?” Grim asked me. “If you make notes, be sure you let everybody see them; you’ll find more than one of them can read English. If you should see or overhear anything that you’d particularly like to remember because it might prove useful to me, note it down by making faint dots under the letters of words you’ve already written; or—better yet—take along a pocket Bible; they’re all religious and respect the Bible. Make faint pencil lines underneath words or letters, and they’ll think you’re more than extra devout. There’s nothing special to watch out for; just keep your ears and eyes open. Well, here’s your hotel. See you again soon. So long.”
I got out of the car and went to get ready for a Christian dinner served by Moslems, feeling like a person out of the Arabian Nights, who had just met the owner of a magic carpet on which one only had to sit in order to be wafted by invisible forces into unimaginable realms of mystery.
CHAPTER THREE.
“DO WHATEVER THE LEADER OF THE ESCORT TELLS YOU.”
I never learned exactly how Jim Grim got word to ben Nasir. My suspicion is that he took the simple course of getting the American Colony to send one of their men; but as they never referred to it afterwards, and might have their own reasons for keeping silence, I took care not to ask them. We have most of us seen harm done by noisy gratitude for kindness, better covered up.
I kept close to the hotel for three days, studying Arabic. By the fourth afternoon discouragement set in. I began to believe that the whole affair had petered out; perhaps on reflection the Administrator had decided I was not a proper person to be turned loose out of bounds, and nobody could have blamed him for that, for he knew next to nothing about me. Or Grim might have been called off for some other important business. The chances seemed all against my going after all.
But on the fourth evening, just at sunset, when the sandwiches I had ordered in advance were all thoroughly stale and I had almost decided to unpack the small hand-grip and try to forget the whole affair, I noticed an Arab standing in the door of the hotel scrutinizing every one who passed him. I watched him for five minutes. He paid no attention to officers in uniform. I left my chair in the lobby and walked past him twice.
He had one eye, like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with it in the dark.
I started to pass him a third time. He held his hand out and thrust a small, soiled piece of paper into mine. The writing on it was in Arabic, so I went back to the seat in the far corner, to puzzle it out, he standing meanwhile in the doorway and continuing to quiz people as if I had meant nothing in his life. The message was short enough:
Bearer will accompany you to a place where the escort will be in readiness. God give your honour a good journey. Mustapha Ben Nasir.
I went to the Governorate and phoned for the car to come and pick me up outside the Jaffa Gate. The Arab followed me, and he and I were both searched at the gate for weapons, by a Sikh who knew nothing and cared less about Near East politics. His orders were to search thoroughly. He did it. The man whose turn was next ahead of mine was a Russian priest, whose long black cloak did not save him from painstaking suspicion. He was still indignantly refusing to take down his pants and prove that the hard lump on his thigh was really an amulet against sciatica, when the car came for me.
It was an ordinary Ford car, and the driver was not in uniform. He, too, had only one eye in full commission, for the other was bruised and father swollen. I got in beside him and let the Arab have the rear seat to himself, reflecting that I would be able to smell all the Arab sweat I cared to in the days to come.
We are governed much more by our noses than we are often aware of, and I believe that many people—in the East especially—use scent because intuition warns them that their true smell would arouse unconscious antagonism. Dogs, as well as most wild animals, fight at the suggestion of a smell. Humans only differ from the animals, much, when they are being self-consciously human. Then they forget what they really know and tumble headlong into trouble.
The driver seemed to know which road to take, and to be in no particular hurry, perhaps on account of his injured eye. He was an ex-soldier, of course: one of those under-sized Cockneys with the Whitechapel pallor overlying a pugnacious instinct, who make such astonishing fighting-men in the intervals between sulking and a sort of half-affectionate abuse of everything in sight. Being impatient to begin the adventure, I suggested more speed.
“Oh!” he answered. “So you’re another o’ these people in an ’urry to get to Jericho! It’s strynge. The last one was a Harab. Tyke it from me, gov’nor, I’ve driven the very last Harab as gets more than twenty-five miles an hour out o’ me, so ’elp me—”
He tooled the car out on to the road toward Bethany, and down the steep hill that passes under the Garden of Gethsemane, before vouchsafing another word. Then, as we started to climb the hill ahead, he jerked his chin in the direction of the sharp turn we had just passed in the bottom of the valley. “Took that corner las’ time on one wheel!”
“For the Arab?”
“Aye. Taught me a lesson. Never agayn! I ain’t no Arabian Night. Nor yet no self-immolatin’ ‘Indoo invitin’ no juggernauts to make no pancykes out o’ me. ’Enceforth, I drives reasonable. All Harabs may go to ‘ell for all o’ me.”
He was itching to tell his story. He was likely to tell it quicker for not being questioned; your Cockney dislikes anything he can construe into inquisition. I remarked that the road didn’t seem made for speed—too narrow and too rough—and let it go at that.
He said no more until we reached the village of Bethany, and drew abreast of Lazarus’ reputed tomb, where a pack of scavenger-dogs awoke and yelped around the wheels. He did his best to run over one of them, but missed. Then he could not hold his story any longer.
“Two nights ago,” he said, “they gives me orders to take a Harab to a point near Jericho. After dark, I starts off, ’im on the back seat; engine ain’t warm yet, so we goes slow. He leans forward after a couple o’ minutes, an says ’Yalla kawam’!”[5] So I thinks to myself I’ll show the blighter a thing or two, me not bein’ used to takin’ orders from no Harabs. Soon as the engine’s ‘ot I lets rip, an’ you know now what the road’s like. When we gets to the top o’ that ’ill above Gethsemane I lets extry special rip. Thinks I, if you can stand what I can, my son, you’ve guts.
“Well, we ’its all the ‘igh places, and lands on a bit o’ level road just often enough to pick up more speed—comes round that sharp bend on ’alf a wheel, syme as I told you—kills three pye-dogs for sure, an’ maybe others, but I don’t dare look round— misses a camel in the dark that close that the ’air on my arms an’ legs fair crawled up an’ down me—’it’s a lump o’ rock that comes near tippin’ us into the ditch—an’ carries on faster an’ ever. By the time we gets ’ere to Bethany, thinks I, it’s time to take a look an’ see if my passenger’s still in the bloomin’ car. So I slows down.
“The