Louisa Jebb Wilkins

“ But when you lie on your back on a sandy desert with nothing within measurable distance of you, and the rain beats mercilessly down or the wind howls through the crevices of your garments, you are conscious of battling against great primeval forces akin to the unknown elements of your own being; you cannot escape from them, for there is no shelter round the corner: you are brought up face to face with something fundamental; all the little accessories with which we have learnt to shield ourselves fall away, and you are just there, stripped yourself, and in the middle of naked realities. ”

“ If there is a link between anything in you and this grim stretch of barren sand and impassive depth of distant sky, it is the response of its silence to the silence in you. It is the material aspect of silence in its crudest form appealing to and recognising in you the unspeakable realms of silence which exist in the region you are dimly conscious of beyond your senses. As we pray to the sea for its depth and calm, to the wind for its freedom, to the sun for its light, so we pray to the desert for its silence. ”

“ It was our first night in camp; little mysterious hillocks shut us into a world of our own; we had it all to ourselves and only the stars overhead knew, and they seemed to be congratulating us on our escape; they twinkled and winked and beckoned. Constantin had lit a fire, and this at once became the centre of our world; the door of our tent looked out on it, the muleteers, the Zaptiehs, and our men sat round it, our supper was cooking on it, and we all thought about that; the horses and mules, tethered in a semicircle, turned that way and blinked at it; far away a jackal saw it and barked. ”

“ The silence of night is the moon's heritage, and it exercises its autocratic sway to the full; it admits no disturbing rush or unseemly hurry beneath its gaze. What do they know of you who pull down blinds and light up the gas and dwell in curtained rooms? Accident may cause a benighted traveller to look at you with a passing sense of rest, a casual tossing sleeper may be half conscious of your charm, the weary toiler at the end of a long day may momentarily bless your soothing light, and in so far as they take hold of you they make themselves akin with us out there. ”

“ Now a solitary horseman would stand motionless on the cliff above, his coloured cloak flowing over his horse's back, barely concealing the brilliant hues of his embroidered saddle; he would watch us out of sight and then turn and pursue his lonely road. Now a shepherd boy would be driving in the flocks of sheep and goats at sundown; and his weird calls, and the answering bleat of the animals, would echo and re-echo right away across the distant hills. Men and women on the bank hailed us as we passed; we could only cast one look at them and wave back a hurried and kindly greeting ”

“ We were in the middle of a bare, largely uninhabited, desert land known only to a few wandering Arab tribes. Outside, the mysterious open vault of the dark sky with its many hundred points of light; inside, the mysterious recess of the dark tent with the fifty-three pairs of gleaming eyes, every one fixed upon ourselves. Now and then, as a flash of lightning in the sky at night will expose the immediate surroundings to view, so a sudden spark from the fire revealed the setting of the eyes—the solemn, dusky, Arab faces. ”

“ To-night the sunset passed all unheeded and we gaze, as we retire from the busy rush of the trivial day, at a never-ending, twisting, twirling pattern on the four walls that imprison us, oppressed by the confining ceiling of our room in the Damascus Palace Hotel.
We are no longer princesses whose hands and feet are kissed, whose word is law, sharing the simple hospitality of proud and dignified wayfarers in desert kingdoms. Our word is law according to the depth of our purses, our hands and feet are kissed according to the height of our floor in the hotel. ”

“ It burst upon us all at once, Palmyra, in the desert—a chaos of golden pillars in the glow of the setting sun. We had been riding all day towards an indefinite shape on the horizon; slowly it had resolved itself into a barrier of yellow rock with dark lines becoming distinguishable against it. We had passed through the patches of rising corn, making green holes in the brown desert; we had wound through the gardens of pomegranate and plantations of palm trees and turned the corner of the ugly konak which barred the ruins from our view ”

“ Fresh coils unwound themselves ahead as we toiled after new yet familiar spots on a never-changing horizon. Now and then the raftsmen dipped their oars quietly into the water, and with a few strokes twisted the raft into the straightest part of the river; otherwise, we were helpless, in the hands of an arbitrary current which made us bide its time as it slunk pensively round unsuggesting corners, or sped us faster when it gurgled impatiently over a long reach, where grey rock vied momentarily with the endless grey mud. ”

“ Allāh!" the native cries when he exerts himself in any way. "Aha, aha!" he cries with equal ardour, mingled with satisfaction, when his task is accomplished.
And now the last knot has been tied, the last cloak laid across the saddle; the last ember of the dying charcoal fire has been carefully raked out to light the cigarette, and we straggle slowly out into the gloom, leaving one charred spot and a sardine tin in the sandy waste.
There had been a suggestion of redness in the gathering light for the last few moments; streaks of silver and bars of gold lined the dusky sky. ”

“ The murmur of the men's voices gradually dies away as, one by one, they doze off; a jackal cries in the distance; a star falls down to earth. The day is over, and in this land of the Oriental there is no thought of the morrow.
The passive silence of sleep; the active silence of communing souls; the silence of night—all fitful expressions of the one great Silence brooding over all, be one asleep or awake, by night and by day, in desert places and in busy haunts of men. ”

“ But you are not a part of them, as you are a part of us; you do not enter into the very heart of their existence and carry their minds up, night after night, to the realms where you live serene and calm, making us forget the saddle rubs, the parching thirst, the driven sand, the fire that would not light, the kettle that would not boil—all the little near things, the things which matter so much in the day, and which you remind us do not matter at night. ”

“ It is disconcerting to be travelling westwards when one wishes to be aware of a rising sun. I twisted myself round in the saddle and, leaving my horse to pick his way, advanced backwards. The whole scene was soon a vast glow of colour, the yellow sand of the desert holding and reflecting the brilliant reds and yellows; and now the sun appeared on the horizon line and slowly rose, until the whole disc of fire stood out in glowing magnificence and then gradually grew paler as he shared his substance with the surrounding sky. ”

“ The stillness for a few moments was so great, and the concentration of all so centred on the bubbling coffee-pot, that one felt as if all the meaning of life, the past, the present, and the future, was being distilled in the black liquid, and that an incantation was only necessary for the future to take shape and, rising out of the pot, become visible to us all in this mysterious darkness. ”

“ The pots and pans were speedily tumbled out of Constantin's saddle-bags and Ibrahim had our tents up with European alacrity; but it was dark before the smell of roasted snipe pervaded the night air. We ate our supper by the light of a lantern hung on a forked stick. The fear of brigands departed and the sleep of the just fell upon the camp. Owls hooted in the green-covered walls of ruined Nicæa, and away in the distance the still mountains kept guard over the dark waters of the lake as they lapped mournfully on the ruins of Roman baths on its stony shore. ”

“ But why should our souls be vexed over the words of learned men? for, whether it be that Terah stayed at this Harran, even the Harran we are approaching, or whether he journeyed on day by day over the plains to the city of Damascus, for us, as our noiseless steeds trod the soft earth, these silent plains yet echoed with the tinkling of his camel bells, the bleating of his innumerable herds, and the cries of his men-servants and his maid-servants. ”

“ As the shades of night draw in, quiet reigns once more; the men collect round the blazing camp-fire, and in its light we see the outline of their dark forms seated cross-legged, as they eat out of the common bowl or take turns at the bubbling narghile; to one side the mules are tethered in two lines forming a half square; a muleteer is grooming them, and one hears the rattle of his scraper and the ever tinkling bell. The cook is stirring our evening meal in a pot on the fire outside our tent. Hassan fetches our rugs and spreads them on the ground ”

“ On the horizon in front we see a black line; it is formed, we are told, by the rows of palm-trees which border the Euphrates. We are now soberly trotting towards a great mound which, rising abruptly out of the level plain, appears in the distance like a sudden thought of Nature's, tired of the monotony of her own handiwork. But as we approach, its symmetrical sides and flat table-top proclaim it to be the work of man. Our native escort tell us, in subdued tones of awe, how Marut and Harut, the fallen angels, are suspended by their heels in the centre awaiting the Day of Judgment. ”

“ Silence reigned again—only the splash of the oars was heard and the beating of the water against the skins. Nothing broke the monotony; the river wound its way slowly in and out round mud banks; the country as far as one could see was unbroken, endless mud; the water one drank and washed in and floated on was diluted mud; the occasional village on the banks was built of mud, the inhabitants were mud colour; the very sky gave one a feeling of mud. ”

“ A sudden furious gust shakes the whole tent, and a Zaptieh's rifle, leant against the side, tumbles across and upsets the steaming soup. We pick our belongings ruefully out of the little trickling streams of thick liquid, and make a meagre meal by soaking bits of native bread in what remains. Then we get to bed as best we can, and all night long the wind howls and the tent flaps, and dogs sniff stealthily on the other side of the canvas.
A hard, broad, high-road runs ostentatiously some miles out of Urfa on the side which we were approaching. ”

“ The men cease quarrelling, the animals' heads sink lower, the donkey looks more resigned, the mule more dogged, the camel more superior, the silent Arab more stern and forbidding; the soldier hums where he sang before. Then at last the walls of a solitary guard-house heave in sight. The men hail it with joyful cries, the soldiers dash ahead, the pack-animals prick their ears and quicken their steps to an amble. There is a general rush and tumble, culminating in a dead halt on the ground which has formed the place for caravans since caravans crossed the desert. All is noise and confusion. ”

“ There is something very weird and uncanny in the terminus of a railway in the middle of a wild and desolate country such as this. The Monster runs his iron fangs into the heart of its desolation and shoots you into it like a ball out of a cannon's mouth. Roaring and hissing and sending out jets of flame, he comes racing through the darkness to a certain definite spot; here he discharges you in the blackness of night and subsides. Next morning when you awake he is gone, and you are left to shift for yourself as best you can. ”