Parade of Shadows (13 page)

“There is no need to bore you with this, Julia. I am telling you only to let you see where your friendship with Geddes might lead.” He gave me a close look. “And I trust it is no more than a casual friendship. Of course, you understand that I tell you this in the strictest confidence.”

“But Father,” I protested. “You didn't suggest when we left London that I was under some obligation to uphold the imperial interests of the British Empire—nor am I sure I want to.”

I was proud of my speech but afraid my father would be outraged. Instead he was annoyed, which made my speech
sound ridiculous. “I have been proud of you, Julia. You have managed very well on this trip, and I have seen with pleasure how you have changed from a young girl with limited interests into a young woman who takes an interest in everything; but I must warn you against doing anything that would hinder my purposes here, or it will be Geddes who must answer for the consequences.”

In the morning, seeing that Father was well enough to travel and knowing nothing of what the doctors suspected, Hakki took our little group to the train, where he shepherded us into our compartments. The compartments, though far from luxurious, were as Hakki had promised, new and comfortable. The men shared two sleeping rooms and Edith and I another.

My last image of Homs was a row of basalt minarets piercing the blue sky like black arrows. The train followed the valley of the Orontes River into the city of Hama; there the train stopped long enough for Edith to hand some money through the window for a paper of dates, which we ate hungrily with sticky fingers. Just outside Hama there were enormous waterwheels large as a Ferris wheel, emptying the river out onto the parched fields. From time to time the train crossed the wayward river, so first it would be on one side of us and then on the other,
but the Nosairiyeh Mountains stayed always on our right like a bookmark.

On the dusty plains, little villages appeared with beehive-roofed houses and always with a child or two standing in silent and forlorn attention as our train passed. For me the days on the train were welcome. Light breezes came through the windows, and at night the swaying train rocked me to sleep. While on the train I felt enclosed in a kind of protective armor that allowed me to see everything but kept anything evil from touching me or Father. I was almost sorry when we drew into Aleppo.

Aleppo was too large, the inhabitants rude and sullen, the city dusty, and the streets full of the litter of centuries. We gathered in the hotel's parlor, where we were served tea in diminutive Turkish coffee cups requiring constant refilling.

“I saw Louvois getting into a carriage,” Edith said. “He gave the address of Monsieur Arnould, who happens to be the French consul.”

Graham looked interested. “I should have thought with his rather shady trading, he would want to stay well away from the authorities.”

“I've had some rather surprising information,” Father said. “It appears that Louvois…” But before he could finish,
Hakki bore down upon us, a look of bewildered hurt on his face. The proper dark suit and slicked-back hair, the injured dignity and pouting mouth, all gave him the look of a child who has carefully dressed for a party to which he has been forbidden to go.

“One of you has been most unkind. I have had a letter from Watson and Sons telling me that there have been complaints about my service.”

“We're sorry to hear it,” Graham said, “but why blame one of us?”

“Watson and Sons tell me in their letter that someone on this tour has written to complain of me. I have done all I could do. The bad things that happened were not my fault. Please tell me how I have offended.”

“There must be some misunderstanding,” Edith said. “I shall write to Watson and Sons myself, and at once. You have done your job very well, and I've said so from the start.”

Half to himself Hakki said, “If they hear of these complaints, the government will be unhappy.”

Father asked sharply, “I thought you were a schoolmaster. What have you to do with the Turkish government?”

Hakki looked flustered. “What do you suggest? Do you accuse me of spying? I deny it absolutely.”

“Nonsense,” Edith said. “We accuse you of nothing of the kind, and I will see that it all comes right.” Hakki left, only partly mollified.

Graham said, “After all, Hakki taught in a military school, so I wouldn't be in the least surprised to find he has been working for the Turks as well as Watson and Sons. We know the Turks keep an eye on any group that travels through Syria, certainly one in which they suspect their visitors of an official connection.” Graham looked accusingly at Father.

Later, as Father and I were on our way to our rooms to dress for dinner, I asked, “What were you going to tell us about Louvois?”

“I was going to say that Louvois has a connection or two with the French government—not official, of course, but nonetheless interesting. I suppose he is acting as their eyes and ears. One of the reasons I am here is to keep France out of Syria.”

“How did you find out about Louvois?”

“When I got out of the hospital at Homs, I wired the Foreign Office to check on him; one doesn't have to be in diplomacy for very long before one senses when a Frenchman has an eye out for a little real estate.”

“Did you ask the Foreign Office about anyone else on
our tour?” I was sure he had made inquiries about Graham.

“There is nothing wrong in wanting to know about one's playmates, particularly when one is supposed to have been poisoned.”

W
E LEFT
A
LEPPO WITH
the new dragoman who had been procured by Edith; and with the dragoman came two mukaris, Daud and Mustafa. Daud was young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, eager and chatty, with melting brown eyes. Mustafa was older and more reserved, brisk and busy, a man who looked as though he did not like to be ordered about. The dragoman, Khidr, was thin and hollow cheeked and would not look at you. His hair hung in untidy ringlets, and a wisp of chin whisker decorated a sullen face. He missed very little. When Monsieur Louvois refused to trust his small leather case to the mukaris and insisted instead on handling it himself, Khidr's eyes followed the case as Louvois secured it in his saddlebag.

In Ain el Beida we were to stay in a sheikh's house rather than in tents, so the caravan was traveling lightly. We started off on a road of stone blocks. “They were laid by the
Romans two thousand years ago,” Hakki informed us. There was no enthusiasm in his voice, only duty; he could not get over his betrayal to Watson & Sons.

The Romans had tired quickly, or perhaps they had run out of slaves, for their road dwindled to nothing, leaving us to cross a dry plain where the sun punished us and a cloud of reddish dust settled angrily on our clothes and horses. When I wiped the sweat from my face, the dust left red smears. In no time we looked like a troupe of clowns. The horse that had taken Fadda's place resisted the rough ground, and my back ached from the awkward ride. After an hour or two the land grew greener. There were olive and almond orchards. Fields of barley shivered in the wind, and tangles of blackberry brambles grew along the wayside. I could almost imagine myself on a country road in England.

In the middle of the day we stopped for lunch and a rest in the small village of Tokat. I settled myself next to Graham, with the others close by, all of us grateful for the pool of shade provided by an orchard of fig trees. The animals and gear were given over to the mukaris to care for, but Khidr insisted on seeing to them himself, sending Daud and Mustafa to prepare lunch. “The horses are overly tired with the heat,
effendi
,” Khidr said to Hakki. “I will take care of them so they are rested and fresh for the afternoon.” Unlike
me, Hakki did not see the expression of helpfulness on the dragoman's face turn to hate the moment Hakki turned his back.

The mukaris poured water into basins for us so that we could wash away the red dust, then gave us a lunch of cheese and flatbread followed by dates and oranges and hot tea, which was refreshing now that we had cooled off. The setting for our meal could not have been prettier. Butterflies progressed in an orderly fashion among a sprinkling of wild crocuses that Edith was already sampling. After our lunch we lay under the trees and chatted in a lazy way, except for Edith, who covered her face with her straw hat and went immediately to sleep, her soft wheezing snores as soothing as the sound of a gentle surf. If it hadn't been for the mukaris hunched nearby, we might have been picnicking in the English countryside.

When we returned to the horses, Khidr, full of unconvincing smiles, greeted us with a new sprightliness that, for no reason I knew, alarmed me.

We descended into the wadi and had an easy ride of only a few hours to Ain el Beida. Graham explained to me that in many small villages, where no stopping places existed for travelers, it was usual for a party to stay in the home of the local sheikh. The custom had existed for thousands of years:
In a world of desert and empty distances, hospitality is a matter of life and death.

We were welcomed by Sheikh Abd el Rehman, a tall, upright man with a tangled beard, kindly eyes, fat cheeks, and a rifle slung so comfortably over his shoulder that he might have been born with it. The sheikh greeted us gracefully and, after assigning a servant, a young black man, to care for our horses, ushered us into a small house made with the sun-dried brick of the countryside. The sheikh left us for a moment to see to some detail of our accommodations and Monsieur Louvois said to no one in particular, “That black man is a slave.
Quel disgrâce
.”

“To give them their due, the Turks have outlawed slavery in most of the Ottoman Empire,” Father said. “They were bullied into allowing the Arabs to keep on with it.” He turned to Graham. “What will your idealistic Young Turks do about that?” he asked.

Graham said, “Don't preach to me. My father fought against the Boers at Ladysmith and Mafeking. He said the British were fighting the war for all the Africans. When the peace was made, England went back on its promise of a vote for the native Africans.”

“We have forbidden slavery in South Africa,” Father countered.

Graham said, “Without the black man's right to vote, slavery is merely a technical term.”

We were shown to our quarters by one of the sheikh's servants. The room to which Edith and I were assigned was small but freshly whitewashed, with a shuttered window that looked out onto a courtyard where the veiled women of the household went back and forth like black shadows. I liked this intimacy with another kind of life and wondered if we would have the opportunity of visiting the harem to meet the women of the house; and then, remembering my last visit to a harem, I shuddered.

In the late afternoon Edith pulled on her boots and shouldered her knapsack to go off in search of plants, while Father and Graham, each reluctant to leave the other alone with the sheikh, stayed behind. Monsieur Louvois and I walked the short distance into the village with Hakki, who promised us ancient tombs. Once in the village, Paul Louvois thought of an unconvincing errand he had to attend to, leaving Hakki and me to go on alone to the tombs, which were hardly more than crevices among the rocks with a few carvings and an unroofed stone stairway open to the heavens.

Hakki was in a quiet and joyless mood. He spoke not so much to me as to some gods who had disappointed him.
“Nothing good will come from this trip,” he said. “It was to be a pleasant journey, and I was to show all the things to be seen. I looked into many books in preparation for the trip. I went to much trouble in the arrangements. But it is not knowledge and pleasure that everyone desires, but an opportunity to make trouble for my country and for me.”

I tried to cheer him. “I've enjoyed myself immensely, Hakki, and so have the others. We'll all write to Watson and Sons to tell them so. And it isn't your country the others are criticizing, only the sultan.”

Hakki drew himself up. “Miss Hamilton, the sultan
is
the country.” After that we walked among the dull tombs, slapping at flies and keeping silent.

In the evening the sheikh, his tangled beard wagging amiably as he spoke, extended a gracious invitation for us to dine with him. We ate in the Arab fashion, sitting in a companionable circle on rather shabby and stained rugs, reaching with our right hands into a large communal brass dish of mutton and rice. We were joined by members of the sheikh's family—brothers, cousins, in-laws; all men of course—who had no English or no wish to speak it, but sat silently staring at us, giving the impression that here indeed was something novel. After a few awkward confrontations I learned there was a nice etiquette as to when one's turn came, so that a
bowl full of greedy hands was avoided.

The sheikh was full of questions as to where we were going and where we had been. He dismissed Aleppo and Antioch. “Cities do not interest me,” he said. “In the city the small courtesies are the first thing lost. The next thing is your money. And the thing after that is your freedom. I remain in my own village, where I can read in each man's face a familiar story.”

Edith, in a flirtatious mood we had not seen before, set out to woo the sheikh, praising everything in sight—rugs, servants, food—and lapsing frequently into Arabic. I was startled by her coquetry and would not have been surprised had she reached over and pinched the man's fat cheeks or chucked him under his double chin. For his part the sheikh appeared entranced by the stout, middle-aged woman with the mannish haircut and rumpled, baggy clothes, treating her as though she were some perfumed, dark-eyed dancing girl wrapped in silk scarfs and veiled in gauze. He picked out the best nuggets of mutton for her and filled her coffee cup himself. His relatives, observing his behavior out of the corners of their eyes, appeared to regard it as an amusing game.

“She's as good as bewitched him,” Graham muttered to me. “I wouldn't be surprised to see her moving into his harem.”

After dinner the relatives viewed the empty bowls with regret and withdrew. The sheikh invited Edith to examine a rose of unusual color in his courtyard, and Hakki went off in search of Khidr, who seemed to have disappeared.

Monsieur Louvois said, “While he's gone, I must show the three of you a most
élégant
find. It was brought to me by a man I contacted this afternoon in the village. He said they discover these things just south of here, and more things are available. It is possible I may stay another day at the sheikh's house and rejoin you in Antioch.” As Monsieur Louvois spoke, he was unwrapping a small stone statue, which he then thrust at us with the air of a magician exceeding his usual tricks. “Have you ever seen anything with more majesty? It is four, perhaps five thousand years old.”

The statue, about seven inches high, was of a man, haughty and magisterial, a king or priest whose almond-shaped eyes stared straight out with the expression of a sovereign weighed down with boredom. His chest was bare, but he wore a skirt made of carved petallike tiers. The long beard was curled into an intricate pattern suggesting unlimited vanity.

The three of us were dumb with admiration. Finally Graham said, “It's very fine, but you've no right to take it away from this place. It belongs here.”

“
Absurde
. It will be sold to the next person who comes along.”

“Apart from the ethics of the thing,” Father said, “you can get into a great deal of trouble, and so could we for being associated with you.”

Graham agreed. “I second Hamilton. You are putting all of us at risk.”

Monsieur Louvois's look went from stubborn to nasty. “You are hardly the one to speak of getting us in trouble, Geddes. I talked with Abdullah in Homs and found out what happened to Mohammed.”

“What I do, I do for a principle; what you do, you do for greed,” Graham snapped.

“You are very clever if you believe you can separate the one from the other,” Louvois told him.

I was growing to dread these squabbles among the three men, for the anger never seemed to be about the thing they were arguing over, but about some hidden disagreement that was never resolved because it was never spoken of.

Edith, flushed and grinning, returned from her tête-àtête with the sheikh and scolded, “You are as quarrelsome as schoolboys. You never tire of your scraps. Perhaps we will have something less theoretical to deal with, for there is Hakki returning without Khidr.”

Hakki, usually so neat even in the middle of the desert, appeared with his hair rumpled and his jacket unbuttoned. He had the panicky look of a man who realizes he has lost control. “This is unfortunate,” he said. “Our dragoman, Khidr, is nowhere to be found. If he doesn't return by the morning, we will have to trust ourselves to the mukaris. I don't like it, but what else can we do?”

Later, as we were getting ready for bed, Edith said to me, “Nothing seems to be going well: the plot against Mohammed, Hakki's fall from grace, your father's illness, and now Khidr sneaking away—not at all like him.” With a sigh she reached for the Koran.

“Graham once told me unbelievers were forbidden to touch the Koran.”

“‘Let none touch it but the purified'; but I am of the opinion that if one lives long enough in the desert, one is indeed purified.”

In the morning the mukaris sulked and drew circles in the dust with their sandals. “No,
effendi
,” Daud told Hakki, “we cannot leave without Khidr. He is sure to return soon.”

Mustafa supported Daud. “Khidr told us under no condition were we to leave without him.”

Hakki became even more indignant, seeing the delay as one more mark against him with Watson & Sons. “Why
should he have given you those instructions and said nothing to me about his leaving or returning? We are already an hour late in our start.” He appealed to the sheikh. “We must reach Antioch tomorrow.”

Sheikh Abd el Rehman was looking out over the plain. “I would gladly send one of my men with you, but I believe your Khidr returns.” There was a note of warning in his voice.

By now we could make out on the horizon three figures riding toward us. The figures became Khidr in the company of the
khayyál
, the Turkish mounted police, smart in khaki uniforms with red tarbooshes on their heads. At first it appeared that Khidr was in some sort of trouble and under the custody of the officers. Graham must have realized this was not the case—that the police were there for some other purpose—for I was standing close to him and felt his body tense.

The police rode up to us, but Khidr, looking rather smug, hung back. The younger officer appeared puzzled, as though he had expected dangerous brigands instead of the motley and harmless-appearing group before him, but the older of the two, a lieutenant, was prepared to do his duty and, drawing himself up, asked in heavily accented English, “Which of you is Louvois?”

Hakki bravely stepped forward. “I am the leader of this tour, and it is I who am responsible for its members. If you have anything to say, it must be said to me.”

The lieutenant, while not intimidated, recognized Hakki's courage, for his tone became less belligerent. “Very well,” he answered. “I have information that this Louvois has purchased valuable pieces of ancient art that he plans to remove from our country. Such behavior is illegal, and he must come with us to Antioch and face the authorities.”