The Brides of Solomon (5 page)

She claimed the right of wife and children to go with me, if I must confess and escape. But that was impossible. She had no conception of the life of an outlaw. To cross, all of us, into Turkey
or Iraq was easy. And what then? A man accompanied by his family must have open dealings with strangers and foreign police. I was a French deserter. I could not account for myself—unless I
gave my identity as Nadim Nassar of Ferjeyn. And if I did that, we should never have an hour when we could feel safe.

No. Alone I could vanish and perhaps remake a life. Meanwhile she would be living in comfort on her own land with her father to protect her.

Then I explained to her how I meant to save the children from blood feud. She was wise in the ways of her country, and she agreed that my scheme was possible. But not in one single detail must
it fail. Raving and clowning, she said, would not be enough. To convince my public I must commit some horror that no Arab—if he were only pretending to be mad—would ever dream of. And
that was to shoot her.

We were a model couple. The wives of Ferjeyn would hold me up to their husbands as a paragon. That was easier for them than to try to imitate Helena. If I could have brought myself to do so, I
would have beaten her once or twice just to make the lives of my friends more peaceful. Even the Moslems spoke of Nadim Nassar and his wife. And so, if I were seen to aim at her and shoot, there
would be no doubt that I was mad.

She insisted. She had no fear. She thought that a soldier such as I could pick his target, and even in a moment of emotion separate one toe from the rest. But she knew her people. There does not
exist an Arab—unless trained by Europeans—who could aim at his wife and be sure of not hitting her. For them it would be an act of homicidal lunacy impossible to feign.

It was only the four notables of Ferjeyn whom I let into the secret. The rest of my fellow-townsmen continued to be left in ignorance. John Douaihy was certain that they too would be convinced I
was mad. He had no fear for his daughter. It is extraordinary how the Arabs, who are always letting off firearms, never trouble to find out what is practical and what is not.

We sent messengers to the headmen of the villages in the plain. Nothing was said of peace-making and compensation. We hinted—in a courteous tone of regret for old times—that the
government would not allow us to take the initiative. All we wanted was an informal meeting to settle up our business affairs with old Moslem friends. We said, too—to tempt their
avarice—that we might be selling some land and stock before the exchange of population.

The notables of the plain sent us back an answer which was reasonably cordial, for none of them wanted us to be removed from our mountain. An interest would be gone from their empty lives.
Besides, they preferred people they knew to people they did not, whatever their religion.

The day fixed for the meeting was very hot. That’s understood, of course. But it was an afternoon when even the rock lizards sought the shade. The plain was indistinguishable from a
desert, and on the mountain the dust rose in eddies from our terraces and reddened the leaves of the orchards. Eight of the notables came, with their principal relations and retainers. After talks
(which had no content but politeness) the cushions and carpets were spread under the pillars of the square, and some thirty of us, who were the most important, sat down to eat. The women served us.
Helena had put on her native costume. She was like the girls of the Crusaders, flowing in robes and embroidery. There was certainly plenty to hit without touching flesh.

It was more dignified than gay, our feast. Naturally there was still some reserve. But manners were effortless since our customs were the same. Sometimes it seems to me a pity that Arabs ever
divided themselves into Christians and Moslems. They should have remained idolaters like the Hindus.

I had hidden my rifle on a roof-top across the square. None of us carried arms beyond those for pure decoration. Between John and me was sitting an old fool of a Sheikh, a man of the utmost
stupidity and kindliness. He resembled French generals I have known. He was so harmless that it was incredible anyone should outrage his feelings. A great dish of rice was placed in front of him.
At that moment I seized him by the back of the neck and plunged his face and beard in it. For good measure I emptied the cream salad over my father-in-law. Then shouting and laughing I leaped over
the heads of those who sat opposite me on the ground, and lost myself in the alleys on the other side of the square.

When I reappeared upon the roof they had not recovered from their surprise. John Douaihy was screaming apologies, and swearing that I was more Frenchman than Syrian and that I had lost my wits
in the sun like any dog of a European. Bareheaded and clothes torn, I capered upon the roof-top firing shots. The Moslems were in panic. It was an unmistakable echo of the night of the raid. I
think it had occurred to them, minutes before my friends took oath on it, that I might have been their only serious enemy.

I began to curse Ferjeyn and the wife who had brought me there, and I shot in the general direction of Helena. It was not difficult to miss her, but to appear mad and to miss all the other women
too—well, I doubt if that scene alone would have been convincing. But Helena acted magnificently. She ran like a terrified chicken. And then, according to our arrangement, she stood still in
the middle of the square and raised her arms to me for mercy.

It was a moment more tense than any crisis of war. I forced myself to concentrate. I found afterwards that my teeth had bitten deep into my tongue. I fired. She fell like a dead woman. I shall
never forget how the cries of the people in the square were all at once silenced. I watched her face, which they could not see, and she made me a little smile of congratulation. Another second, and
I should have blown my brains out.

She told me, when I saw her again, that the bullet had passed through the great wings of her arms as she lifted them, and close to the body. And then what did she do, my well-beloved? She passed
her left hand under her robe and ripped the flesh from a rib with the nail of her middle finger so that it would appear she had been grazed. That will seem to you barbarous, M. le Consul, but it
was for her children.

They chased me, but not too close—for John and Boulos deliberately led the pursuit up the wrong alley. Meanwhile, I dropped to the ground in front of the saddler’s shop. He had left
his stable open, as if by accident, and his horse saddled. A pretty price he charged for it, too. But he had the right, and one must not ask too much of one’s friends.

I rode through the olives and up across my own land by a little path, where no one who did not know every stone of it would dare to follow at the gallop. There were several shots fired after
me—perhaps by our guests, perhaps by men of Ferjeyn who were horrified as much by the breach of hospitality as by my treatment of Helena. I passed my house and waved to my boys. Their dear
faces were full of conflict as those of men. They were wildly excited by my speed, but they could not help knowing that the bullets which cut the leaves and whined were meant for me.

By God, when it was all over, I think my four friends themselves were mystified. There had been, I must admit, a certain gusto in my acting—in all, that is, that did not concern Helena. It
was a relief, for once, to be permitted to have the manners of an apache and push a venerable beard into the eternal rice. There is no doubt, M. le Consul, that in the long run it is a strain for
us to behave as formally as Arabs. I am ashamed of it, but I cannot deny it.

All the night I rode east towards the frontier, skirting the foot-hills of the Jebel Sinjar. The western end of the range is in Syria, and at the tip of it is the isolated mountain on which
stands Ferjeyn; the eastern end is in Iraq. I had no idea what would happen or what pursuit there would be. The only certainty was that the notables of Ferjeyn would inform the authorities, and
that the gendarmerie would be on the look-out for a madman with a rifle. I laid a trail that they could follow into Iraq.

On the second night I travelled north along the frontier and crossed back again into Syria. Then I rode north for a third night and forded the Tigris. Once over the river, a fugitive has only to
follow the tangle of tributaries up into the hills. He is in country as green and wild as the Auvergne, but far less inhabited. And there is nothing but the uniform of the frontier patrols to tell
him whether he is in Iraq or Turkey.

The little money that I had was enough for my necessities. I slept on the ground—which is no hardship in August—and I bought my bread in the villages, telling lies to account for
myself. Up there one does not ask questions of a man with a rifle if he can pay his way.

But a rifle is more valuable than any gold. If you are to keep it, you must sleep on it. When I was in Weygand’s Army of the Orient, I remember that at night we chained our rifles to the
tent-pole. Well, there were eight weary men sleeping in a tent. A clever Arab thief loosened the guy ropes and lifted the pole without waking one of them. In the morning there was not a rifle among
the lot.

I tell you this story, M. le Consul, that you may not think too hardly of me, a sergeant-major, for nearly losing my own. I was sleeping under the trees at the bend of a stream. Unlike the fast
water on my land, it made a noise, that stream. It was impatient for the Tigris and the Persian Gulf. I surrendered myself utterly to the grass that was my bed. I was not over-weary, but I longed
for Ferjeyn and Helena and my boys. When one is unhappy one takes refuge in sleep as in a drug.

He had taken my rifle from under my body without waking me, but at the last moment the trigger guard caught on the buckle of my bandolier. I was festooned with cartridges like some damned
Russian dancer in a cabaret. He pulled and ran for it, but I, I was only five yards behind. When he stopped to fire at me from the hip I dived under the barrel and drove home my knife in his
stomach.

I am no Good Samaritan, I assure you. But it grieved me to kill an honest man who was only stealing a rifle. I might have done the same, if I had had the skill.

‘When did you eat last?’ I asked him.

My interest was technical. If there was anything in his stomach, he was a dead man.

‘The day before yesterday,’ he answered.

‘God is Great, brother!’ I said to him, and put him on my horse with his head-cloth wrapped round his guts.

We were, I think, in Turkey, but the nearest town where there would be a doctor was Zakho in Iraq. It was not far—about thirty kilometres. And I knew the track. He was all skin and muscle
like a dried herring. The stomach of the very poor is tough. I told him that if he would oblige me by keeping alive till morning we might save him yet.

We talked a little on the way. He was a Yezidi from the eastern end of the Jebel Sinjar, and he knew Ferjeyn. The Moslems hate the Yezidis even more than Christians, but have no fear of them.
They are few, and do not put up any competition. Devil-worshippers they are called, because they think it tactful to be just as polite to the powers of evil as those of good. That seems to me very
reasonable.

Times were hard in the Jebel Sinjar. The Iraqi end of the range is not so fertile as our little Syrian tip. So my Yezidi was going to live with his brother, who had a permit to cut and sell
timber on the frontier. He had not wished to arrive empty-handed.

M. le Consul, I must apologise for all these details. You cannot be interested in the banal stories of criminals, which are not in essence very different whether they take place at the Porte de
Vincennes or the head waters of the Tigris. But I wish to show you the sort of people among whom I lived. They being what they are and I being an outlaw, my conduct becomes explicable.

There was a sort of doctor in Zakho, for the English had established a clinic there. The idea, I think, was public hygiene. But the people of Zakho are far more concerned with the cure of
wounds. It’s experience that counts. Me, if I had a hole in my belly, I’d rather be patched up at the regimental aid post than the finest hospital in Paris.

Well, whether it was the Iraqi doctor or a grateful devil, my Yezidi did not die. I remained in the neighbourhood. I had nothing to do, and to visit the sick-bed became an occupation. I met
Merjan, the timber cutter. He was a man of magnificent moustaches, dressed in rags but well-armed. He told me that if his brother did not recover, he would send me to hell to be the dead
man’s servant; and if he lived, then all of his clan would be my friends for ever. It was hardly logical, but those chaps are composed of nothing but emotion.

When the man was up, with no more entrances to his stomach than the good Lord provided, I went to work with the brothers. As I had suspected from Merjan’s heroics, timber-cutting was not
his only occupation. It is incredible, the life between Lake Van and the frontiers. Into those remote hills the law penetrates so seldom that the tribesmen in their spare time are amateur cattle
thieves and smugglers, and even professional criminals can sow and gather a crop before they have to move on. Merjan, under cover of his wood-cutting, was a sort of Thomas Cook for brigands. He was
guide, intermediary and warehouseman.

I had little to do with all that. It was I who cut the wood, with two half-wit Turks to help me. I was allowed to make a living. I sold my horse to buy better tools, and often I had more cash in
my belt than Merjan and his brother. The district is so poor and so wild that even by breaking the law there is little money to be gained.

M. le Consul, I am not naturally an outlaw. I cannot live away from my fellows; perhaps it is because my father was so long mayor of his town. I began to make the disastrous habit of going down
to Zakho once or twice a week when the day’s work was over. It was not so handsome a village as Ferjeyn, but more European, with shops of a sort and good paved streets. The landscape was not
that of Syria and Iraq. There were willows and poplars everywhere, and meadows by the river that were green even in September. I dreamed of bringing Helena and my boys to Zakho, for I had begun to
feel at ease across the Tigris. I had forgotten that to Arabs a line drawn on the map is of no importance. For us, to cross a frontier is to be safe; for them, a frontier is merely a god-sent
convenience for making money.