CHAPTER VI

ABOUT LIFE IN THE DESERT

Mon coeur plein de douceur et plein d'étonnement
Cessez de vous mêler à la foule des hommes.

Leurs cris passent vos sens et votre entendement
Demeurons l'être simple et tendre que nous sommes.

GEORGE ADAM SMITH, if he knew the inhabitants of Palestine
less than, or at least differently from, such men as Burton and
Doughty, who made themselves one with the people of the land,
had at least the kind of sympathetic perception necessary to
understand the life which they lead, and the reason why they
have, in a certain sense, chosen that life and no other, for it is
not mere fatalism, mental inactivity, conservatism, which
separates them from civilisation as it is known in the West. The
western world has received from the East most of the moral
teaching which it possesses, and which it has assimilated and
adapted to its own uses. The East asks in return that such
adaptation and assimilation shall remain where it belongs, and
not be superimposed upon countries where those religious teach-
ings originated, and to which, in the estimation of those who
received them, their original form is that best adapted. "In
the deserts of Arabia," writes G. A. Smith, "life is wonderfully
tempered. Nature is monotonous, the distractions are few. The
influence of things seen is as weak as it may be in this universe;
the long fasts necessary every year purge the body of its grosser
elements; the soul easily detaches itself, and hunger lends the
mind a curious passion, mixed of resignation and hot anger. The
only talents are those of war and speech, the latter cultivated to
a singular augustness of style by the silence of nature, and the
long leisure of life. It is the atmosphere in which seers, martyrs,
and fanatics are bred."

It is, of course, among the bedu that we find most reminders of Bible times. The description given by Mukaddasi (b. 946 A.D.) shows that their dress has not changed since the tenth century, although other changes of every possible sort have passed over

the land of Palestine since then, and probably domestic life was just as changeless for a thousand years and more before that.

When Isaac married he brought his bride home to his father's tent, and when he became richer he provided her with a separate home (Gen. xxiv., 67) exactly as the desert Shech does now. His under-garment is white, the fighting man still bares his arm to battle (Isa. lii, 10) by tying his long pointed sleeves round his neck, as the Bethlehem woman also does when she goes about her household tasks. A coat of distinction is still given to the younger son if he is counted more worthy than the elder. The same low estimate of the value of human life exists as when Deborah, the inspired prophetess, sang of blood and of vengeance; dam butlud dam, blood calls for blood as in the time of Cain and in the covenant of Noah (Gen. ix, 5). The mark of blood is still hidden by covering it with dust (Job xvi, 8). The desert tribes wander about as did the Patriarchs of old, having no fixed home. Surely nowhere on earth is man so picturesque as is the bedu shech, the lineal descendant of Abraham, with small head, upright carriage, lofty bearing; living as and where the Patriarchs lived, in a tent of camel's hair; when possible, under a tree like Abraham under the oak of Mamre; with wealth of cattle, with armed followers, moving when water and herbage become scarce, lying as Abraham did to Abimelech, bargaining as he did with Ephrom for Macpelah; meanly cheating, as did Jacob for his heritage; killing a sheep or calf on the arrival of an honoured guest; baking bread as needed, in flat cakes upon an improvised hearth, not in ovens like the settled population; fighting with the shechs of other tribes; hating well and loving well; ready to bless or to curse like any Bible saint, cultivating, above all other virtues, those of stoicism and hospitality, with none of the fanaticism of the townspeople; broad, open-hearted, and humane as one who dwells in the sunshine and under the innumerable stars.

It is related of the great emir Shech Ibn Tufeil that his heralds used to announce, "Anyone needing protection will find safety with him. Anyone needing a beast of burden will find it with the Emir. Anyone hungry may come to him." One of the Baldensperger family, a friend of the Arabs as were they all for three generations, told me a story which he vouched for at first hand.

A young girl went to a noble shech and laying her hand upon his tent rope, cried, 66 0 my young life! O my young life! " As he looked at her he saw that she had been guilty of the

only sin which finds no forgiveness with Arabs except such as have been in contact with the culture of the West, the sin for which a horrible death is the inevitable consequence. Nevertheless he raised her to her feet, and assured her that she should not lack the protection she had claimed. He then went to her father and asked for the girl in marriage. As this was a great honour from one in his position assent was at once given, and they were married immediately. The wife lived apart until her child was born. He treated it as his own, and brought it up in his own family.

Later he found the young wife with one of his own slaves. He did not divorce her, though she was forbidden to come into his presence. He told our friend that the father died knowing nothing of his daughter's infamy, otherwise it would have been his duty, as a parent, to put her to death. The shech added philosophically, "It is of no use to fight with nature. What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh," or whatever proverb in Arabic corresponds with this of the West.

Be he Christian, Muslim, or Jew (for, even apart from the Yemenite Jews, said to be of the tribe of Gad, there are many Jews among the Arabs-their own Hertzl has said that they are Asiatics) the Semites of all creeds have a devoted attachment to the soil of their native land, a fact which adds to their suffering under an alien rule. "Resigned Muslims under the Musulman rule," writes Clermont Ganneau, "bad Christians under the Christian rule, after having been fervent pagans and mediocre Jews, the land-tilling mountaineers of Judea, sons of the soil and the rock, are ready to become afresh whatever their masters of to-morrow may demand, if only they are allowed to remain on the land." According to present appearance this is sanguine on the part of M. Ganneau, but if any part of the Arab race should ever become content to accept present conditions it will certainly not be the bedu, but the fellaheen to whom, if they should be undisturbed in their possession of their lands, the nationality of those to whom they pay taxes and sell produce, makes little difference.

The

It is only in the desert that the true Arab is to be found. Christian element in the towns has been taught of late to call itself Syrian, on the supposition that they belong to the original inhabitants; the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, and though they do not look it, the Anakims and all the others who preceded the earlier Hebrew invasion, the Arab, Greek, Roman, again Arab, and now again the

Hebrew invasion, though why it should be taken for granted that these pagans accepted Christianity, which was a Jewish religion in its origin, is not explained.

Just as coins are stamped and restamped, as the same stories are told of Phineas, Perseus, el Khudr, and S. George, so we find in this country that history is confused, anthropology at a loss, and chronology out of perspective, as must inevitably be the case in countries such as Palestine or, shall we say, Britain, which have been so long under the rule of the alien that the indigenous races have lost most of their privileges, racial and territorial. In Palestine, however, it is useless to claim that the present inhabitants are other than Semitic, and have Abraham to their father.

"

The fellaheen have a saying, "the medany (townsman) is the Sultan of the world," that is, because he pays money for what the fellah produces. "The fellah is the donkey of the world ” because he is the porter, the owner of beasts of burden, " and the bedawee is the dog of the world, because he wanders about and gets his living where he finds it."

The bedu replies. "The townsman is the table of the world," that is, he is the provider. (As far as the bedu are concerned it has been mainly of guns and ammunition.) The peasant is the donkey of the world, but it is the bedawee who is the Sultan of the world for he exacts taxes from all who come in his way." As a means of living such conduct is not to be commended, but it is still the custom of many nations en gros, as it was that of our ancestors en détail, and at least it has brought out in the bedu certain heroic qualities which at present are out of date elsewhere, and has preserved him from others less heroic, which appear to be inseparable from commercial pursuits.

Nevertheless there remain to him the faults of his race. Doughty, with characteristically picturesque exaggeration, has said that the Semite of the desert is" like a man sitting in a cloaca to the eyes, whose brows touch heaven." He regards them as "ungenerous enemies, not even faithful to each other. They are never of one assent, save in blind dogma of religion." History has shown that to this fact the race owes its continued existence, whether as Muslims or Jews. The fact that the Arabs cannot combine-or so history would seem to show-has saved them from much futile resistance to governments.

To their suspiciousness of each other, Doughty attributes his own safety in many critical moments. In small matters it is brought to the notice of all who employ them, but the bedawy

escapes many of the worst Arab characteristics, such as are the result of a shallow and superficial imitation of European methods imperfectly understood; of the money-spending, question asking, bargaining traveller who has his personal ends to serve, and of others who find amusement in drawing out what is most objectionable in the native mind and manners.

The habit of observation, to be found everywhere among those little given to books, accounts partly for the facility with which the Arab reads character. I have watched them many a time handling a tourist and knowing exactly how far they might go in each case. I have heard dragomans and hotel servants commenting on new arrivals, and never have I known them to make a mistake. I had occasion to remark on something of the sort to Alia, who at once, as is her wont, began to tell me a story.

There was once a desert shech who fell on evil times, and had to leave his tribe, for he had killed one of a powerful tribe near by, and his own tribe was therefore threatened with bloodvengeance. So he ran away, and came to a town to seek his fortune. He found work in the stable of the Sultan-probably the Governor of some town in Syria-and soon showed that he was clever and capable.

When people came with things to sell, and all the servants gathered round and gave their opinions, while the Sultan was making his bargain, it was always the bedawy's advice that was the most useful, so that the Sultan got into the habit of asking what he thought about many matters before coming to any decision. One day a fellah brought a falcon and the Sultan, before offering a price, asked the bedawy to look at it." There is something wrong," said he. "It looks a good bird enough, but a falcon should turn its eyes up to heaven and not look down, like a hen picking up grain." "That is very true," said the Sultan." I never thought of that; we must find out where it has been trained."

The fellah swore by his eyes and by his father's beard that he had taken it in the mountains, and that it had never so much as seen a hen. It turned out, however, that it was from an egg which a boy had found and had put under a hen, which had brought it up with her own family, and so it had learnt to pick grains from the ground with the chickens.

The Sultan was greatly astonished, and said that such ability should certainly be rewarded. How much did the man earn in a day? He was told that every day he had so much money and