CHAPTER XIII
Under tall arcades of palms with ribbed and groined branches, in a soft
meadow, I found the trim camp of Egyptian Army soldiers with Nafi Bey,
their Egyptian major, sent lately from the Sudan by Sir Reginald
Wingate to help the Arab rebellion. They comprised a mountain battery
and some machine-guns, and looked smarter than they felt. Nafi himself
was an amiable fellow, kind and hospitable to me in spite of weak
health and his resentment at having been sent so far away into the
desert to serve in an unnecessary and toilsome war.
Egyptians, being home-loving persons and comfortable, found strangeness
always a misery. In this bad instance they suffered hardship for a
philanthropic end, which made it harder. They were fighting the Turks,
for whom they had a sentimental regard, on behalf of the Arabs, an
alien people speaking a language kindred to their own, but appearing
therefore all the more unlike in character, and crude in life. The
Arabs seemed hostile to the material blessings of civilization rather
than appreciative of them. They met with a ribald hoot well-meaning
attempts to furnish their bareness.
Englishmen being sure of their own absolute excellence would persist in
help without grumbling overmuch; but the Egyptians lost faith. They had
neither that collective sense of duty towards their State, nor that
feeling of individual obligation to push struggling humanity up its
road. The vicarious policemanship which was the strongest emotion of
Englishmen towards another man's muddle, in their case was replaced by
the instinct to pa** by as discreetly far as possible on the other
side. So, though all was well with these soldiers, and they had
abundant rations and good health and no casualties, yet they found
fault with the handling of the universe, and hoped this unexpected
Englishman had come to set it right.
Feisal was announced with Maulud el Mukhlus, the Arab zealot of Tekrit,
who, for rampant nationalism had been twice degraded in the Turkish
Army, and had spent an exile of two years in Nejd as a secretary with
ibn Rashid. He had commanded the Turkish cavalry before Shaiba, and had
been taken by us there. As soon as he heard of the rebellion of the
Sherif he had volunteered for him, and had been the first regular
officer to join Feisal. He was now nominally his A.D.C.
Bitterly he complained that they were in every way ill-equipped. This
was the main cause of their present plight. They got thirty thousand
pounds a month from the Sherif, but little flour and rice, little
barley, few rifles, insufficient ammunition, no machine-guns, no
mountain guns, no technical help, no information.
I stopped Maulud there and said that my coming was expressly to learn
what they lacked and to report it, but that I could work with them only
if they would explain to me their general situation. Feisal agreed, and
began to sketch to me the history of their revolt from its absolute
beginning.
The first rush on Medina had been a desperate business. The Arabs were
ill-armed and short of ammunition, the Turks in great force, since
Fakhri's detachment had just arrived and the troops to escort von
Stotzingen to Yemen were still in the town. At the height of the crisis
the Beni Ali broke; and the Arabs were thrust out beyond the walls. The
Turks then opened fire on them with their artillery; and the Arabs,
unused to this new arm, became terrified. The Ageyl and Ateiba got into
safety and refused to move out again. Feisal and Ali ibn el Hussein
vainly rode about in front of their men in the open, to show them that
the bursting shells were not as fatal as they sounded. The
demoralization deepened.
Sections of Beni Ali tribesmen approached the Turkish command with an
offer to surrender, if their villages were spared. Fakhri played with
them, and in the ensuing lull of hostilities surrounded the Awali
suburb with his troops: then suddenly he ordered them to carry it by
a**ault and to ma**acre every living thing within its walls. Hundreds
of the inhabitants were raped and butchered, the houses fired, and
living and dead alike thrown back into the flames. Fakhri and his men
had served together and had learned the arts of both the slow and the
fast k** upon the Armenians in the North.
This bitter taste of the Turkish mode of war sent a shock across
Arabia; for the first rule of Arab war was that women were inviolable:
the second that the lives and honour of children too young to fight
with men were to be spared: the third, that property impossible to
carry off should be left undamaged. The Arabs with Feisal perceived
that they were opposed to new customs, and fell back out of touch to
gain time to readjust themselves. There could no longer be any question
of submission: the sack of Awali had opened blood feud upon blood feud,
and put on them the duty of fighting to the end of their force: but it
was plain now that it would be a long affair, and that with muzzle-loading
guns for sole weapons, they could hardly expect to win.
So they fell back from the level plains about Medina into the hills
across the Sultani-road, about Aar and Raha and Bir Abbas, where they
rested a little, while Ali and Feisal sent messenger after messenger
down to Rabegh, their sea-base, to learn when fresh stores and money
and arms might be expected. The revolt had begun haphazard, on their
father's explicit orders, and the old man, too independent to take his
sons into his full confidence, had not worked out with them any
arrangements for prolonging it. So the reply was only a little food.
Later some Japanese rifles, most of them broken, were received. Such
barrels as were still whole were so foul that the too-eager Arabs burst
them on the first trial. No money was sent up at all: to take its place
Feisal filled a decent chest with stones, had it locked and corded
carefully, guarded on each daily march by his own slaves, and
introduced meticulously into his tent each night. By such theatricals
the brothers tried to hold a melting force.
At last Ali went down to Rabegh to inquire what was wrong with the
organization. He found that Hussein Mabeirig, the local chief, had made
up his mind that the Turks would be victorious (he had tried
conclusions with them twice himself and had the worst of it), and
accordingly decided theirs was the best cause to follow. As the stores
for the Sherif were landed by the British he appropriated them and
stored them away secretly in his own houses. Ali made a demonstration,
and sent urgent messages for his half-brother Zeid to join him from
Jidda with reinforcements. Hussein, in fear, slipped off to the hills,
an outlaw. The two Sherifs took possession of his villages. In them
they found great stores of arms, and food enough for their armies for a
month. The temptation of a spell of leisured ease was too much for
them: they settled down in Rabegh.
This left Feisal alone up country, and he soon found himself isolated,
in a hollow situation, driven to depend upon his native resources. He
bore it for a time, but in August took advantage of the visit of
Colonel Wilson to the newly-conquered Yenbo, to come down and give a
full explanation of his urgent needs. Wilson was impressed with him and
his story, and at once promised him a battery of mountain guns and some
maxims, to be handled by men and officers of the Egyptian Army garrison
in the Sudan. This explained the presence of Nafi Bey and his units.
The Arabs rejoiced when they came, and believed they were now equals of
the Turk; but the four guns were twenty-year-old Krupps, with a range
of only three thousand yards; and their crews were not eager enough in
brain and spirit for irregular fighting. However, they went foward with
the mob and drove in the Turkish outposts, and then their supports,
until Fakhri becoming seriously alarmed, came down himself, inspected
the front, and at once reinforced the threatened detachment at Bir
Abbas to some three thousand strong. The Turks had field guns and
howitzers with them, and the added advantage of high ground for
observation. They began to worry the Arabs by indirect fire, and nearly
dropped a shell on Feisal's tent while all the head men were conferring
within. The Egyptian gunners were asked to return the fire and smother
the enemy guns. They had to plead that their weapons were useless,
since they could not carry the nine thousand yards. They were derided;
and the Arabs ran back again into the defiles.
Feisal was deeply discouraged. His men were tired. He had lost many of
them. His only effective tactics against the enemy had been to chase in
suddenly upon their rear by fast mounted charges, and many camels had
been k**ed, or wounded or worn out in these expensive measures. He
demurred to carrying the whole war upon his own neck while Abdulla
delayed in Mecca, and Ali and Zeid at Rabegh. Finally he withdrew the
bulk of his forces, leaving the Harb sub-tribes who lived by Bir Abbas
to keep up pressure on the Turkish supply columns and communications by
a repeated series of such raids as those which he himself found
impossible to maintain.
Yet he had no fear that the Turks would again come forward against him
suddenly. His failure to make any impression on them had not imbued him
with the smallest respect for them. His late retirement to Hamra was
not forced: it was a gesture of disgust because he was bored by his
obvious impotence, and was determined for a little while to have the
dignity of rest.
After all, the two sides were still untried. The armament of the Turks
made them so superior at long range that the Arabs never got to grips.
For this reason most of the hand-to-hand fighting had taken place at
night, when the guns were blinded. To my ears they sounded oddly
primitive battles, with torrents of words on both sides in a
preliminary match of wits. After the foulest insults of the languages
they knew would come the climax, when the Turks in frenzy called the
Arabs 'English', and the Arabs screamed back 'German' at them. There
were, of course, no Germans in the Hejaz, and I was the first
Englishman; but each party loved cursing, and any epithet would sting
on the tongues of such artists.
I asked Feisal what his plans were now. He said that till Medina fell
they were inevitably tied down there in Hejaz dancing to Fakhri's tune.
In his opinion the Turks were aiming at the recapture of Mecca. The
bulk of their strength was now in a mobile column, which they could
move towards Rabegh by a choice of routes which kept the Arabs in
constant alarm. A pa**ive defence of the Subh hills had shown that the
Arabs did not shine as pa**ive resisters. When the enemy moved they
must be countered by an offensive.
Feisal meant to retire further yet, to the Wadi Yenbo border of the
great Juheina tribe. With fresh levies from them he would march
eastwards towards the Hejaz Railway behind Medina, at the moment when
Abdulla was advancing by the lava-desert to attack Medina from the
east. He hoped that Ah' would go up simultaneously from Rabegh, while
Zeid moved into Wadi Safra to engage the big Turkish force at Bir
Abbas, and keep it out of the main battle. By this plan Medina would be
threatened or attacked on all sides at once. Whatever the success of
the attack, the concentration from three sides would at least break up
the prepared Turkish push-outwards on the fourth, and give Rabegh and
the southern Hejaz a breathing space to equip themselves for effective
defence, or counter-attack.
Maulud, who had sat fidgeting through our long, slow talk, could no
longer restrain himself and cried out, 'Don't write a history of us.
The needful thing is to fight and fight and k** them. Give me a
battery of Schneider mountain guns, and machine-guns, and I will finish
this off for you. We talk and talk and do nothing.' I replied as
warmly; and Maulud, a magnificent fighter, who regarded a battle won as
a battle wasted if he did not show some wound to prove his part in it,
took me up. We wrangled while Feisal sat by and grinned delightedly at
us.
This talk had been for him a holiday. He was encouraged even by the
trifle of my coming; for he was a man of moods, flickering between
glory and despair, and just now dead-tired. He looked years older than
thirty-one; and his dark, appealing eyes, set a little sloping in his
face, were bloodshot, and his hollow cheeks deeply lined and puckered
with reflection. His nature grudged thinking, for it crippled his speed
in action: the labour of it shrivelled his features into swift lines of
pain. In appearance he was tall, graceful and vigorous, with the most
beautiful gait, and a royal dignity of head and shoulders. Of course he
knew it, and a great part of his public expression was by sign and
gesture.
His movements were impetuous. He showed himself hot-tempered and
sensitive, even unreasonable, and he ran off soon on tangents. Appetite
and physical weakness were mated in him, with the spur of courage. His
personal charm, his imprudence, the pathetic hint of frailty as the
sole reserve of this proud character made him the idol of his
followers. One never asked if he were scrupulous; but later he showed
that he could return trust for trust, suspicion for suspicion. He was
fuller of wit than of humour.
His training in Abdul Hamid's entourage had made him past-master in
diplomacy. His military service with the Turks had given him a working
knowledge of tactics. His life in Constantinople and in the Turkish
Parliament had made him familiar with European questions and manners.
He was a careful judge of men. If he had the strength to realize his
dreams he would go very far, for he was wrapped up in his work and
lived for nothing else; but the fear was that he would wear himself out
by trying to seem to aim always a little higher than the truth, or that
he would die of too much action. His men told me how, after a long
spell of fighting, in which he had to guard himself, and lead the
charges, and control and encourage them, he had collapsed physically
and was carried away from his victory, unconscious, with the foam
flecking his lips.
Meanwhile, here, as it seemed, was offered to our hand, which had only
to be big enough to take it, a prophet who, if veiled, would give
cogent form to the idea behind the activity of the Arab revolt. It was
all and more than we had hoped for, much more than our halting course
deserved. The aim of my trip was fulfilled.
My duty was now to take the shortest road to Egypt with the news: and
the knowledge gained that evening in the palm wood grew and blossomed
in my mind into a thousand branches, laden with fruit and shady leaves,
beneath which I sat and half-listened and saw visions, while the
twilight deepened, and the night; until a line of slaves with lamps
came down the winding paths between the palm trunks, and with Feisal
and Maulud we walked back through the gardens to the little house, with
its courts still full of waiting people, and to the hot inner room in
which the familiars were a**embled; and there we sat down together to
the smoking bowl of rice and meat set upon the food-carpet for our
supper by the slaves.