Moving the Palace Page 13

  *

  Meanwhile, at the foot of a small stony hill, Kays has pitched a tent where Samuel invites the passengers to take their rest. After exchanging glances, trading imperceptible queries with eyes and lips, the officers make for the tent, their pleasure—concealed, or laced with apprehension—all the greater since the wagons have by now become veritable ovens. Samuel says the women, too, are welcome to join them in the shade, and so pleasant is his declaration that the three ladies are sent for while, for their part, the Turkish soldiers have ventured from the second car and, despite everything, remain on their guard. Inside the tent, the Bedouins have readied coffee; the coffeepots with their graceful curves mingle with the folded parasols, the silken cords from Kays’s keffiyeh with the ladies’ veils, the Arab chieftain’s caftans with the dresses, epaulettes, and braids on chests. Samuel is sorry no Orientalist painter is on hand to capture this incredible scene, but he is proud to have composed it himself. He has also kissed the hands of the three women—one of whom he finds quite pretty—so perfectly when they entered the tent that the atmosphere has suddenly relaxed. Pleasantries and general information are exchanged. Samuel explains that he is heading for Damascus and hopes to reach Beirut; his guests say that they are on their way from Medina, that they are a logistical support battalion, and their little train was specially chartered for them in Ma’an. And so they chatter on until the officers ask Samuel about his cargo, whereupon he invites everyone on a small guided tour of his Arab palace and his museum of deities. The mirrors, the ornate wooden ceilings, and the silent gods are all unswaddled as if before prestigious bidders at an auction. The Austrians stop taking Samuel for a madman or an eccentric, and now see him as a kind of Sinbad or Marco Polo of the deserts, with his goods from another era. Somberly, the officers brush the frescoed panels with their fingers, as if experts; the women look the gods in the eye then turn away, overwhelmed by their expressions; one of the officers, upon discovering the Roman helmet, observes that German armies still use crests, and Samuel is unable to tell if this is irony or a sign of pride. After which all return to the refuge of the tent, for the soles of their feet are beginning to burn, and there, as they sip the coffee that makes the rounds of those gathered in two small glasses passed from hand to hand, they trade tales of houses put up, taken down, or lugged about over hill and dale. Samuel tells the story of that man who had himself a mansion built on the outskirts of Beirut in the posh style of residences in town, but when it was done, he found it not to his liking, because among other things it wasn’t facing the way he wanted, so he had it demolished and rebuilt with the façade oriented as desired. Kays, whose sumptuous attire of watered silk and brocaded keffiyeh brings out his dark eyes, keeps catching the women’s glances, and speaking next, he tells more for their sake than anyone else’s an anecdote he heard one day from a Syrian merchant, while Samuel translates. It is the story of a Druze prince who fell in love with a rococo marble parlor in a Damascus villa, bought it, had it dismantled and transported to his home in the mountains of Lebanon, where he ordered that an entire palace be built to serve as its setting. When he is done, it is one of the Austrian officers’ turn to tell the story of a Salzburg aristocrat who fell in love not with a palace but the echo that arose from a footfall on the terrace of a mansion outside Florence, and so it was that the man bought the mansion, had it carefully dismantled and moved to his home near Salzburg, where he had it rebuilt. But the officer continues in almost unaccented French, which Samuel translates for Kays and the other Arabs, to the aristocrat’s utter amazement, the terrace no longer produced the same musical echo that was more beautiful to his ears than a Mozart opera. And so he had the scenery around his home redone to match the environs of Florence; he had soil brought in from Tuscany, Tuscan pines, Tuscan pebbles—but, the officer concludes, it was no good, the echo had remained in Italy.

  Toward evening, fires are lit and a meal prepared, and that is when a track inspection car announces itself with a whistle from the south. It brings engineers from Hasa with spare parts for the locomotive. This does not stop the Arabs and the Austrians from feasting. Then the Austrians discreetly invite Samuel to pop over for a drink in their car, if the liqueurs have managed to withstand the heat. And withstand it they have; toasts are made and cigars savored while from outside rings the sound of iron and workers hammering on the locomotive by firelight. “These caravans on rails are inferior to the good old caravans on legs,” one of the officers proclaims, which makes everyone laugh. They drink to the health of caravans on legs soon to go the way of the dodo, after which, and before retiring, Samuel asks, like a schoolboy at the end of summer camp, if the members of this merry company will each jot him a little something on some old sheet of paper to remember them by, since he can’t commemorate them all with a photo. The women find the idea charming, the men deem it a bit too romantic, but since all are excessively merry from drink, they play along. On a large sheet of paper with the letterhead of the Fourth Turkish Army, each of them writes a little comment, laughing all the while, about showers in the desert and moving palaces, followed by a handsome signature. In the enthusiasm born of too many glasses of liqueur, some add their names and addresses in Damascus, even Vienna; the pretty young woman adds her address in Salzburg like a mischievous wink beside the address in Damascus her husband has written with slightly wobbly downstrokes, and the next morning Samuel parades this piece of paper about when they strike camp. He shows it to Mawlud, to the caravaners, to the Bani Suheila and their chieftain, declaring that this is a letter of safe passage; with it, they can go anywhere they want. Naturally he feels remorse at telling tales and deceiving his men, but at the same time reflects that, after all, these handsome-sounding names of ranking officers and imposing signatures might absolutely impress a Turkish patrol tempted by the idea of commandeering their camels. But they do not run into any such patrols, and for four days, this little ploy helps everyone push on without fear. Mawlud remains quiet, as do his companions, and they finish skirting Palestine, where the frontlines of the war have moved; they head up deserts with stony hills, then across broad lands with scattered crops around Daraa, until they reach the heart of the Hauran, sixty miles south of Damascus.

  11

  IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT DURING THE FIRST World War, almost all Arab officers in Ottoman armies were more or less won over to Prince Faisal’s cause, with the result that many were confined to routine and minor postings far from the front. As the war went on, a number of them, Syrians and Mesopotamians, took the plunge and deserted in order to join up with the Hashemite forces. But some never had the chance, or kept wavering till the end, or waited in vain for an occasion that never presented itself. This must have been the case with the officer who commanded the small fortress of Khirbat al-Harik, north of Daraa in the Hauran, on the route Samuel Ayyad was taking in his journey toward Lebanon. To call Khirbat al-Harik a fortress is, moreover, an exaggeration; it had doubtless been a large farm long ago, built amidst cultivated fields on the ruins of some edifice erected in the time of Emperor Philip the Arab, like the temples in Al-Sanamayn and the nearby town of Bosra. And so it is that in early autumn 1917, as Samuel Ayyad draws near, the officer in charge of this fortress is calmly awaiting Faisal’s armies, a bit as others awaited the Tartars, though he does so in hopes of joining them. And to while away the time, he maintains law and order in his district, where, in truth, not much happens. The local peasants are a quiet sort, seeing to their fruit trees, growing their watermelons, and harvesting their wheat without fuss, such that Colonel Ghaleb Jabri has nothing to do. The lands around him run flat to infinity, and are on all sides bounded by the desert, from which he hopes one day to see the Arab armies emerge. And so, this descendant of an old aristocratic Damascene family often goes hunting and receives chieftains from neighboring villages, with whom he discusses the war, harvests, and military requisitioning over endless games of chess or checkers. He also receives, but in secret, certain swaggering abadays from Jabal al-
Druze, braggart outlaws wanted by Ottoman justice for their actions against the Sultan’s army, such as the infamous Talal Harethedin, with whom he has a good time laughing at anecdotes about life among the mountain folk, or listening to updates more credible than those of official reports on the state of the war and its fronts, afterward showing his visitor out an ancient, condemned door that he has secretly restored to working order. And then, when there are no hunts, or town worthies or abadays to receive, nor mail from Daraa or Damascus to read, Ghaleb Jabri himself leads routine patrols along the paths between the villages, and in the desert to the south. And it is while leading such a patrol one morning that he comes upon Samuel Ayyad’s endless caravan, endless because in his eyes, so many camels trotting so nonchalantly along can only be an illusion—or else these are the armies of Faisal. But of course, Ghaleb Jabri knows that it is neither one nor the other, and with his patrol of ten horsemen, he rides to the front of this singular apparition.

  Samuel, for his part, has spotted him. For three days, he has been advancing according to his men’s intuitions and his own, or else the often vague directions of shepherds they run across in the hollows of the wadis. When he sees the Turkish patrol approaching, he waves at his companions to settle down, and here, already, is Ghaleb Jabri. He is a man serene of face, almost blond, with a mole just above his light-colored mustache. More from the color of his skin than his uniform and his kalpak, Samuel takes him for a Turk, but the officer speaks first, in the beautiful Arabic of the Damascus area. He demands an explanation for what he sees; Samuel replies in Arabic that is no less beautiful, and between Jabri and Samuel, it is hard to tell who is more surprised. Nevertheless, Samuel explains his presence here, telling the same story: that he is a merchant transporting goods from far-flung corners of the desert, and he hopes to reach Damascus with his cargo, then Beirut. Meanwhile, the caravan has slowly bunched up; they are in the middle of lands that bear traces of very ancient plowing. Kays and the other chieftains form a handsome guard around Samuel. Behind them, the warriors stand like a long hedge encroaching on the fields and the old, hardened furrows. Their rifles are out in plain sight, and the ends of their line edge forward imperceptibly, and slowly they surround the Turks. But Jabri cares not a whit, he asks Samuel how he plans on reaching Damascus, and Samuel replies that he thinks he will continue north, that in truth he has no maps and is feeling his way along a bit blindly. Jabri remains silent for a moment. Samuel senses trouble, and seeks an alternative—the Austrian autographs, perhaps, but he knows that will never work with a colonel—and it takes him a moment to realize the officer has started speaking again, and what he is saying is that he has maps back at the fort, and they can consult them there. Then he adds that he will also, of course, proceed to check on the contents of what the animals are carrying.

  *

  In these early autumn days, the sky is vast, cleansed of summer’s whiteness, the earth exults, and the long line of camels, with its horseback Turkish escort, makes it way among orchards of plum and apricot trees that shine like mirrors, along low walls bordering these gardens at the desert’s edge. Then come more fields where the wheat has been mown and gathered, and finally the fortress of Khirbat appears. While the soldiers rummage idly through the caravan’s load in the courtyard and in front of the main gates, Samuel is Jabri’s guest. He has taken off his keffiyeh, slipped on his boots, and is sitting in a wicker armchair in the colonel’s company on a terrace of the singular fortress-farm, and the two men are talking about the war. Jabri tells of how the Arabs led by Lawrence and Sherif Nasir took Aqaba. Then he brings over a military map which he unfolds between himself and Samuel, who soon realizes Jabri needs some entertainment. Moreover, the colonel offers to let Samuel sleep in the fortress instead of camping out with the Arabs. The proposition surprises Samuel, but Jabri’s gaze is honest and generous, if admittedly a bit languid, like his entire bearing, which demonstrates in all things a cordial, disinterested, and uninsistent friendliness; one feels obliged to accept his offers, made though they are as if from a distance and an understated word or a wave of the hand with which the colonel seems to leave the choice entirely up to his guest. But when Samuel agrees to stay, Jabri seems happy, has a dinner of meat, vegetables, and fruit served that delights Samuel, who hasn’t tasted any fruit but dates for months. That entire evening, as they eat, then each smoke a cigar, settled in comfortable armchairs, and even as they stroll about the terraces of the fortified farm, the soldier and the adventurer chat away, their conversation wholly based upon a deliberately maintained case of mistaken identity. Jabri, who has discreetly studied Samuel’s military attire, is soon convinced he is dealing not only with a Lebanese merchant but perhaps one of the Arab officers in the British Army serving Faisal. But he makes no allusion to this. As for Samuel, he has indeed noticed how little enthusiasm the colonel has for his duties and his barely disguised jubilation while recounting the conquest of Aqaba. And so, for him, Jabri’s sympathy for the Arab Revolt is undeniable. But he says nothing either, and for part of the night, the two men build their exchange around the politely unspoken, which spares them mutual embarrassment even as it allows them to speak freely. They discuss the towns where they were born, the situation in Syria, and also, inevitably, the remainder of Samuel’s voyage, the route he has picked. Jabri advises him to avoid Damascus and head west, toward Mount Hermon, and to cross it at its lowest point, emerging into the Bekaa not far from the town of Rashaya. Samuel finds this a capital idea, but brings up commandeering and his companions’ reluctance. Jabri tells him they are right, so many animals traveling under armed Arab escort is an unusual sight in the region right now; he himself can cover their journey up till the edges of his district, but after that it will be harder, and at any rate, the best thing to do would be to travel by night. After some quick calculations, Jabri concludes that three nights will be enough to reach Mount Hermon.

  Though Samuel is perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, his caravaners and the Bani Suheila, on the other hand, will hear none of it. When Samuel explains his plans for the nights to come, it is mutiny all over again. If a letter of safe passage from the Austrian Army and the friendship of a Turkish colonel are not enough to guarantee safe passage by day, Mawlud observes, then it is proof that the journey is considerably dangerous. Samuel has no rejoinder to this: he calls on their courage, solidarity, the lure of gold—but all in vain. Mawlud orders his people to prepare to turn back south, and they obey, for they are starting to fear for their lives. The Bani Suheila reach the same decision. At noon, over another meal in the warm autumn light, the colonel advises Samuel to let his people go, and promises to look into finding a replacement for the caravan himself. Samuel pictures his massive cargo on mules or Ottoman army wagons, and the idea doesn’t please him much, but Jabri, who notices the sudden distance in his guest’s eyes, reassures him.

  “There are many pack animals in the region,” he says. “They remain unseen because they are well hidden.”

  “And you’re going to commandeer them for me?” Samuel asks laughingly.

  “I could,” Jabri says, amused, giving in for a moment to the mannered protraction of his Damascus accent. “But the people around here are friends. If you have the wherewithal to pay them generously, they may agree to come out with their creatures and undertake the risk. They know the land. They will not fear traveling by night.”

  *

  First thing the next day, after Mawlud and the Bani Suheila have left for their deserts, and only Kays and his men remain, Samuel and Jabri set out on horseback for an exploratory tour of the surrounding villages. They cross through fields toward farms, or head down roads from one village to the next. They are welcomed into bare interiors, sit cross-legged on mats, and Jabri outlines the request to each owner of a packhorse or mule. Then Samuel makes his offer, and eyes widen in astonishment. When a deal has been struck, all drink coffee or blackberry syrup, after which Samuel pays the villagers an advance, and they look puzzled and embar
rassed, for what the Lebanese hands out under the consenting gaze of the Ottoman officer are British gold pieces. “Aren’t you afraid of traitors and informers, Ghaleb bey?” Samuel asks as they leave the house of an old peasant who seems ambivalent. Jabri shrugs. “There’s no one an informer can squeal to about but me,” he replies, laughing. From this moment on, each accomplice understands that the other can read him like an open book, and the chivalrous ceremony with which they have been treating each other becomes pointless. This nonetheless gives way to heated discussions, notably at noon, during a lunch where Samuel and Colonel Jabri work systematically from the basic premise that the Ottoman empire will soon be defeated. Arab independence is thus their favorite subject, but they have doubts and fears. Jabri says the Lebanese Christians desire an independent state and will refuse to hear out Faisal. Samuel retorts by demanding if the people of Damascus, who so fiercely want an independent Arab state, will manage to hear out the prince’s unruly Bedouins. Jabri sighs, the mole above his mustache, which the star and crescent on his shirt collar quite stylishly echo, shivers for a moment. He looks out at the horizon, where he no doubt expects to see those famous Bedouins arriving at last, not suspecting that in under three months he will have abandoned his post and joined up with Lawrence and Sherif Ali in Azraq, one hundred and twenty miles south of Khirbat al-Harik. A long silence sets in, a silence that is like a gift of the desert the desert spreads over the orchards of plum and apricot trees, the fields of melons and watermelons, a silence that only the click-clack of waterwheels on the canal that crosses the fields has marked with its placid, endless cadence for centuries, for millennia, from the time of the Byzantine empire, the kingdom of the Nabataeans, and the biblical prophets. Then a corporal comes offering coffee, Jabri takes out his cigars, and lights his own, declaring that only the Almighty knows the future, and they shall see.