The Reader Must Not Fancy Such Escapade To Be A Serious Thing In
Arabia.
The father did not punish his son; he merely bargained with him
to return home for a few days before starting to Egypt.
This the young
man did, and shortly afterwards I met him unexpectedly in the streets
of Cairo.
Deprived of my companion, I resolved to waste no time in the Red Sea,
but to return to Egypt with the utmost expedition. The boy Mohammed
having laid in a large store of grain, purchased with my money, having
secured all my disposable articles, and having hinted that, after my
return to India, a present of twenty dollars would find him at Meccah,
asked leave, and departed with a coolness for which I could not
account. Some days afterwards Shaykh Nur explained the cause. I had
taken the youth with me on board the steamer, where a bad suspicion
crossed his mind. “Now, I understand,” said the boy Mohammed to his
fellow-servant, “your master is a Sahib from India; he hath laughed at
our beards.”
[p.272] He parted as coolly from Shaykh Nur. These worthy youths had
been drinking together, when Mohammed, having learned at Stambul the
fashionable practice of Bad-masti, or “liquor-vice,” dug his “fives” into Nur’s
eye. Nur erroneously considering such exercise likely to induce
blindness, complained to me; but my sympathy was all with the other
side. I asked the Hindi why he had not returned the compliment, and the
Meccan once more overwhelmed the Miyan with taunt and jibe.
It is not easy to pass the time at Jeddah. In the square opposite to us
was an unhappy idiot, who afforded us a melancholy spectacle. He
delighted to wander about in a primitive state of toilette, as all such
wretches do; but the people of Jeddah, far too civilised to retain
Moslem respect for madness, forced him, despite shrieks and struggles,
into a shirt, and when he tore it off they beat him. At other times the
open space before us was diversified by the arrival and the departure
of pilgrims, but it was a mere rechauffe of the feast, and had lost all
power to please. Whilst the boy Mohammed remained, he used to pass the
time in wrangling with some Indians, who were living next door to us,
men, women, and children, in a promiscuous way. After his departure I
used to spend my days at the Vice-Consulate; the proceeding was not
perhaps of the safest, but the temptation of meeting a
fellow-countryman, and of chatting “shop” about the service was too great
to be resisted. I met there the principal merchants of Jeddah; Khwajah
Sower, a Greek; M. Anton, a Christian from Baghdad, and
others.[FN#11]And I was introduced to Khalid Bey, brother of Abdullah
bin Sa’ud, the Wahhabi. This noble Arab once held the
[p.273] official position of Mukayyid al-Jawabat, or Secretary, at
Cairo, where he was brought up by Mohammed Ali. He is brave, frank, and
unprejudiced, fond of Europeans, and a lover of pleasure. Should it be
his fate to become chief of the tribe, a journey to Riyaz, and a visit
to Central Arabia, will offer no difficulties to our travellers.
I now proceed to the last of my visitations. Outside the town of Jeddah
lies no less a personage than Sittna Hawwa, the Mother of mankind. The
boy Mohammed and I, mounting asses one evening, issued through the
Meccan gate, and turned towards the North-East over a sandy plain.
After half an hour’s ride, amongst dirty huts and tattered coffee-hovels,
we reached the enceinte, and found the door closed. Presently a man
came running with might from the town; he was followed by two others;
and it struck me at the time they applied the key with peculiar
empressement, and made inordinately low conges as we entered the
enclosure of whitewashed walls.
“The Mother” is supposed to lie, like a Moslemah, fronting the Ka’abah, with
her feet northwards, her head southwards, and her right cheek propped
by her right hand. Whitewashed, and conspicuous to the voyager and
traveller from afar, is a diminutive dome with an opening to the West;
it is furnished as such places usually are in Al-Hijaz. Under it and in
the centre is a square stone, planted upright and fancifully carved, to
represent the omphalic region of the human frame. This, as well as the
dome, is called Al-Surrah, or the navel. The cicerone directed me to
kiss this manner of hieroglyph, which I did, thinking the while, that,
under the circumstances, the salutation was quite uncalled-for. Having
prayed here, and at the head, where a few young trees grow, we walked
along the side of the two parallel dwarf walls which define the
outlines of the body: they are about six paces apart, and between them,
upon Eve’s
[p.274] neck, are two tombs, occupied, I was told, by Osman Pasha and
his son, who repaired the Mother’s sepulchre. I could not help remarking
to the boy Mohammed, that if our first parent measured a hundred and
twenty paces from head to waist, and eighty from waist to heel, she
must have presented much the appearance of a duck. To this the youth
replied, flippantly, that he thanked his stars the Mother was
underground, otherwise that men would lose their senses with fright.
Ibn Jubayr (twelfth century) mentions only an old dome, “built upon the
place where Eve stopped on the way to Meccah.” Yet Al-Idrisi (A.D. 1154)
declares Eve’s grave to be at Jeddah. Abd al-Karim (1742) compares it to
a parterre, with a little dome in the centre, and the extremities
ending in barriers of palisades; the circumference was a hundred and
ninety of his steps. In Rooke’s Travels we are told that the tomb is
twenty feet long. Ali Bey, who twice visited Jeddah, makes no allusion
to it; we may therefore conclude that it had been destroyed by the
Wahhabis.
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