CHAPTER IX
Jeddah had pleased us, on our way to the Consulate: so after lunch,
when it was a little cooler, or at least when the sun was not so high,
we wandered out to see the sights under the guidance of Young, Wilson's
a**istant, a man who found good in many old things, but little good in
things now being made.
It was indeed a remarkable town. The streets were alleys, wood roofed
in the main bazaar, but elsewhere open to the sky in the little gap
between the tops of the lofty white-walled houses. These were built
four or five stories high, of coral rag tied with square beams and
decorated by wide bow-windows running from ground to roof in grey
wooden panels. There was no gla** in Jidda, but a profusion of good
lattices, and some very delicate shallow chiselling on the panels of
window casings. The doors were heavy two-leaved slabs of teak-wood,
deeply carved, often with wickets in them; and they had rich hinges and
ring-knockers of hammered iron. There was much moulded or cut
plastering, and on the older houses fine stone heads and jambs to the
windows looking on the inner courts.
The style of architecture was like crazy Elizabethan half-timber work,
in the elaborate Cheshire fashion, but gone gimcrack to an incredible
degree. House-fronts were fretted, pierced and pargetted till they
looked as though cut out of cardboard for a romantic stage-setting.
Every storey jutted, every window leaned one way or other; often the
very walls sloped. It was like a dead city, so clean underfoot, and so
quiet. Its winding, even streets were floored with damp sand solidified
by time and as silent to the tread as any carpet. The lattices and
wall-returns deadened all reverberation of voice. There were no carts,
nor any streets wide enough for carts, no shod animals, no bustle
anywhere. Everything was hushed, strained, even furtive. The doors of
houses shut softly as we pa**ed. There were no loud dogs, no crying
children: indeed, except in the bazaar, still half asleep, there were
few wayfarers of any kind; and the rare people we did meet, all thin,
and as it were wasted by disease, with scarred, hairless faces and
screwed-up eyes, slipped past us quickly and cautiously, not looking at
us. Their skimp, white robes, shaven polls with little skull-caps, red
cotton shoulder-shawls, and bare feet were so same as to be almost a
uniform.
The atmosphere was oppressive, deadly. There seemed no life in it. It
was not burning hot, but held a moisture and sense of great age and
exhaustion such as seemed to belong to no other place: not a pa**ion of
smells like Smyrna, Naples or Marseilles, but a feeling of long use, of
the exhalations of many people, of continued bath-heat and sweat. One
would say that for years Jidda had not been swept through by a firm
breeze: that its streets kept their air from year's end to year's end,
from the day they were built for so long as the houses should endure.
There was nothing in the bazaars to buy.
In the evening the telephone rang; and the Sherif called Storrs to the
instrument. He asked if we would not like to listen to his band.
Storrs, in astonishment, asked What band? and congratulated his
holiness on having advanced so far towards urbanity. The Sherif
explained that the headquarters of the Hejaz Command under the Turks
had had a bra** band, which played each night to the Governor General;
and when the Governor General was captured by Abdulla at Taif his band
was captured with him. The other prisoners were sent to Egypt for
internment; but the band was excepted. It was held in Mecca to give
music to the victors. Sherif Hussein laid his receiver on the table of
his reception hall, and we, called solemnly one by one to the
telephone, heard the band in the Palace at Mecca forty-five miles away.
Storrs expressed the general gratification; and the Sherif, increasing
his bounty replied that the band should be sent down by forced march to
Jidda, to play in our courtyard also, 'And,' said he, 'you may then do
me the pleasure of ringing me up from your end, that I may share your
satisfaction.'
Next day Storrs visited Abdulla in his tent out by Eve's Tomb; and
together they inspected the hospital, the barracks, the town offices,
and partook of the hospitality of the Mayor and the Governor. In the
intervals of duty they talked about money, and the Sherif's tide, and
his relations with the other Princes of Arabia, and the general course
of the war: all the commonplaces that should pa** between envoys of two
Governments. It was tedious, and for the most part I held myself
excused, as after a conversation in the morning I had made up my mind
that Abdulla was not the necessary leader. We had asked him to sketch
the genesis of the Arab movement: and his reply illuminated his
character. He had begun by a long description of Talaat, the first Turk
to speak to him with concern of the restlessness of Hejaz. He wanted it
properly subdued, and military service, as elsewhere in the Empire,
introduced.
Abdulla, to forestall him, had made a plan of peaceful insurrection for
Hejaz, and, after sounding Kitchener without profit, had dated it
provisionally for 1915. He had meant to call out the tribes during the
feast, and lay hold of the pilgrims. They would have included many of
the chief men of Turkey besides leading Moslems of Egypt, India, Java,
Eritrea, and Algiers. With these thousands of hostages in his hands he
had expected to win the notice of the Great Powers concerned. He
thought they would bring pressure on the Porte to secure the release of
their nationals. The Porte, powerless to deal with Hejaz militarily,
would either have made concessions to the Sherif or have confessed its
powerlessness to the foreign States. In the latter event, Abdulla would
have approached them direct, ready to meet their demands in return for
a guarantee of immunity from Turkey. I did not like his scheme, and was
glad when he said with almost a sneer that Feisal in fear had begged
his father not to follow it. This sounded good for Feisal, towards whom
my hopes of a great leader were now slowly turning.
In the evening Abdulla came to dine with Colonel Wilson. We received
him in the courtyard on the house steps. Behind him were his brilliant
household servants and slaves, and behind them a pale crew of bearded,
emaciated men with woe-begone faces, wearing tatters of military
uniform, and carrying tarnished bra** instruments of music. Abdulla
waved his hand towards them and crowed with delight, 'My Band'. We sat
them on benches in the forecourt, and Wilson sent them cigarettes,
while we went up to the dining room, where the shuttered balcony was
opened right out, hungrily, for a sea breeze. As we sat down, the band,
under the guns and swords of Abdulla's retainers, began, each
instrument apart, to play heartbroken Turkish airs. Our ears ached with
noise; but Abdulla beamed.
Curious the party was. Abdulla himself, Vice-President IN PARTIBUS of
the Turkish Chamber and now Foreign Minister of the rebel Arab State;
Wilson, Governor of the Red Sea Province of the Sudan, and His
Majesty's Minister with the Sherif of Mecca; Storrs, Oriental Secretary
successively to Gorst, Kitchener and McMahon in Cairo; Young, Cochrane,
and myself, hangers-on of the staff; Sayed Ali, a general in the
Egyptian Army, commander of the detachment sent over by the Sirdar to
help the first efforts of the Arabs; Aziz el Masri, now Chief of Staff
of the Arab regular army, but in old days Enver's rival, leader of the
Turkish and Senussi forces against the Italians, chief conspirator of
the Arab officers in the Turkish army against the Committee of Union
and Progress, a man condemned to d**h by the Turks for obeying the
Treaty of Lausanne, and saved by THE TIMES and Lord Kitchener.
We got tired of Turkish music, and asked for German. Aziz stepped out
on the balcony and called down to the bandsmen in Turkish to play us
something foreign. They struck shakily into 'Deutschland uber Alles'
just as the Sherif came to his telephone in Mecca to listen to the
music of our feast. We asked for more German music; and they played
'Eine feste Burg'. Then in the midst they died away into flabby
discords of drums. The parchment had stretched in the damp air of
Jidda. They cried for fire; and Wilson's servants and Abdulla's
bodyguard brought them piles of straw and packing cases. They warmed
the drums, turning them round and round before the blaze, and then
broke into what they said was the Hymn of Hate, though no one could
recognize a European progression in it all. Sayed Ali turned to Abdulla
and said, 'It is a d**h march'. Abdulla's eyes widened; but Storrs who
spoke in quickly to the rescue turned the moment to laughter; and we
sent out rewards with the leavings of the feast to the sorrowful
musicians, who could take no pleasure in our praises, but begged to be
sent home. Next morning I left Jidda by ship for Rabegh.