by Mary Stewart
‘Was it nice?’ I said gently, through my anger, and the dog’s eyes rolled up whitely to me as the tail wagged again. It was so closely clamped to his body that only the tip of it moved, and I suspected it was the first time he had wagged it for years. The next sandwich, I saw, was chicken, a fresh roll full of luscious meat. I put it in the dust. He snatched it, more confidently this time, but even in the act of bolting it, turned and fled. I looked round. Hamid had left the frontier building and was approaching the car.
I had my door half open when I saw he was shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid there’s something wrong. They say we cannot pass.’
‘Can’t pass? Why on earth not?’
‘Apparently your passport is not in order.’
‘But that’s nonsense! Of course it’s in order! What’s supposed to be wrong with it?’
He was apologetic and unhappy. ‘There’s no entry visa for the Lebanon … in fact he says that there isn’t an exit from Syria, so you’re not officially in the country at all, and he can’t give you an exit now.’
I stared. I hadn’t quite taken it in yet. ‘Not officially in the – well, how the blazes does he think I got here? Tunnelled?’
‘I don’t think he’s worked that out. He realises there’s some mistake, of course, but he can’t do much about it here and now.’
I said angrily: ‘Well, isn’t that nice? Have you got the passport there? May I see? Damn it, I came through this very frontier on Friday, there must be a stamp … Hamid, why do you have such a terrible alphabet? Have you looked through this yourself?’
‘Yes, I did, and I’m afraid he’s right, Miss Mansel. There isn’t a stamp.’
There weren’t all that many stamps in my passport, so my hasty search didn’t take long, and it did, indeed, seem as if he was right. I looked up, not prepared to admit even yet that the mistake, whatever it was, could actually prevent me from going to Damascus. ‘But I tell you, I came through here on Friday. They must have stamped it then, surely? If they didn’t stamp it, it’s their mistake. I certainly handed the passport over, and they let me through … Did you tell the man I’d been through here on Friday?’
‘I told him you’d come from Damascus recently. I was not sure which day.’
‘I came with the group, five cars – twenty-two people and an English courier. It was Friday at about midday. If it’s the same man on duty, he may remember passing us all through, and anyway, they’ll have records, won’t they? And the courier had a list; it would have my name on it. Would you please go back and tell him this?’
‘Certainly I’ll tell him. But you know, I think this may be the trouble; if you came through with a group your name was no doubt on the group passport – the “list” your courier showed. They do not always stamp the individual passports of these groups unless you ask them specially. You did not ask them for a stamp, no?’
‘Of course I didn’t, I never thought of it. I suppose our courier should have realised – he knew I was supposed to be staying on in Lebanon … But look, Hamid, this is nonsense! They surely must know I couldn’t be here illegally! Surely they know you and your car? You must come this way often.’
‘Every week. Oh, yes, they know me … I can pass, and my car; our papers are in order. But not you, I’m afraid. The rules are very strict.’
Another car, it seemed mockingly, revved up and moved off through the barrier. From the other side the bus arrived, shaking and roaring and churning up dust, I moved back out of the cloud to the road’s edge. People were staring, but not much interested. This must happen every day. The rules, as Hamid had said, were very strict.
I said angrily: ‘It seems so stupid! It’s like having this hooha between England and Scotland. It seems to me these days that the smaller the country the more silly fuss it makes … I’m sorry, Hamid, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just so infuriating … and it’s beastly hot. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Hamid, meaning it generously. His look was troubled and sympathetic. ‘But he will be coming back tomorrow, no?’
‘Who will?’
‘The cousin.’
‘I wasn’t even thinking about the cousin,’ I snapped. But I was of course, and Hamid had known I was before I did. I felt somehow vulnerable, a feeling which was new to me, and entirely unpleasant.
He was saying gently: ‘I know these frontiers are annoying to foreigners, but we have problems here, I’m afraid, big problems. Among other things a good deal of smuggling goes on … Do not mistake me, I do not say that anyone thinks you are taking part in this, but the rules have to be made and kept, and unhappily you have fallen wrong of them.’
‘Foul.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I have fallen foul of them. Fallen wrong means something different. Smuggling? What sort of smuggling, for pity’s sake? Do we look as if we were loaded down with guns or brandy or whatever?’
‘Not brandy, no, not here. But you could easily be carrying drugs.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Drugs? I suppose I could. I was forgetting where I was. One of my cousin’s books called it “the hashish run”.’
He laughed. ‘Is that the phrase? Yes, I’m afraid that Beirut has – shall we say it has certain reputations? And it isn’t only hashish, I’m afraid – there’s still opium grown in Turkey and Iran, and smuggled through to the sea. I told you the controls were tight now, and getting tighter. The National Assembly of the UAR has been making representations to the Governments and the penalties are being made more severe, and as you see, things are a little fierce at the frontiers.’
‘I can see they have to be, I suppose. But surely they needn’t bother tourists about this?’
‘A few tourists have even been guilty. Quite recently two English students were arrested, and found guilty. Didn’t you see it in the papers?’
I shook my head. ‘What happened to them? What’s the penalty?’
‘For them, imprisonment. They’re still in Beirut. It used to be only about three years, but now it’s a long term of hard labour. For a Lebanese national, besides the sentence, it would mean being deprived of his civil rights and registered in the police files as a trafficker – is that the word? – in drugs. And in other countries, much worse penalties. In Turkey, for instance, the penalty is death – and in Egypt now, and I think also in Iran. You see how seriously it is taken.’
‘But I thought you said the other day that it wasn’t taken seriously in the Middle East? At least, you implied that nobody thought it very wrong to smoke hashish.’
‘Whenever a Government takes anything seriously you will find that it is not a moral problem but an economic one,’ said Hamid cynically. ‘In Egypt, for instance, the problem is very serious – your addict is pretty useless as a worker, you know – and the Government has been getting badly worried about its illegal imports from the Lebanon, so it makes representations to the National Assembly, and unhappily at present we all have to take a lot of notice of what Egypt thinks and wants.’ He smiled. ‘So you see why things are difficult? They are also, I may say, difficult for the Customs men. Do you see the bus?’
This had, mercifully, switched off its engine, and was immobilised at the Lebanese barrier. The passengers had alighted, and were standing about while their papers were checked. They all had the fatalistic air of people prepared to wait about all day, and one could see why, for on top of the bus, piled up like a refugee’s cart or a poor man’s removal van, were what looked like the household goods of every person on board. There even seemed to be overstuffed armchairs and mattresses, along with rugs, bundles of clothing, filthy canvas bags which had once been labelled Air France or BOAC, and a wicker cage full of unhappy-looking hens.
‘They have to search all that,’ explained Hamid.
‘For a few packets of powder?’ I exclaimed. ‘Not really?’
He laughed. ‘But yes. Sometimes more than a few packets. And there are hundreds of ways in which the hashish can be disguised and carried. Only las
t week a man was stopped, a cobbler he called himself, and with his cobbler’s kit there was a large suitcase full of leather soles for shoes. But they were hashish, powdered very finely, and then stamped into this shape. Sometimes it looks like gum, or ham, or sheeps’ droppings.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I imagine that anyone caught carrying a suitcase full of sheeps’ droppings through a frontier ought to be locked up anyway.’
‘That is very true,’ said Hamid gravely. ‘Well, if you like I will go and explain about the group passport. Will you wait here?’
‘I’ll come in with you if you don’t mind, and talk to them myself. Does anyone speak English in there?’
‘I doubt it, but I will translate for you.’
The room inside the hut was small and stiflingly hot, and rather too full of stout olive-coloured men all talking at once. The talk broke off as I went in with Hamid, and the uniformed man – stout and olive-coloured – behind the office counter raised his eyes despairingly and shook his head. I explained, and Hamid translated, and the official listened as well as he could, while other cars piled up outside and the drivers shoved their way to the counter with their dog-eared papers, and the flies droned in the heat, and the smell of sweat and ink and Turkish tobacco was almost visible in the air.
But it was no use. The official was civil but firm. He nodded understandingly when I explained, he even commiserated with me, but that was as far as he would go. And the matter was clear. There was no entry stamp; how then could he affix an exit? He was sorry, but it was not possible; he had his orders. He was very sorry, but a rule was a rule.
It was obvious enough that he wasn’t being obstructive, and he had been patiently civil in the face of considerable odds. I gave up at last, before my own temper frayed in the sticky heat, thanked him, and fought my way back out of the shed.
After the sweaty crowded room the hot air outside seemed almost fresh. I walked over to the car, wondering crossly what to do now. Go back, of course, that was obligatory; all I could do was salvage the day somehow and get Hamid to take me somewhere for a run. Baalbek, I supposed … I had seen Baalbek already, with the group, but it had been a crowded sort of day; perhaps if we went up the Bk’aa valley, taking it slowly, saw Baalbek again, then went back into Beirut by the road through the mountains … I could telephone Ben when I got back, there was no hurry for that, and tell him what had happened. It was disappointing, even infuriating, but it really didn’t matter.
But by the pricking of my thumbs, it did.
I met Hamid’s eye. I said suddenly, abruptly: ‘I know I’ll probably be seeing him tomorrow, but I wanted to see him today, now, as soon as possible. I can’t explain … Hamid, my cousin isn’t just an ordinary cousin, we’re almost twins. I know there’s an awful lot of guff talked about twins, but there can be something a little bit odd about it. One tends to be rather – well, close. All I know is, I want to see Charles, today. I want to hear what he has to tell me. And I want to be with him. Oh, not in the sense you might think, not in any sense I can explain, but …’ I lifted my shoulders, and spread my hands in a very un-English gesture, but one which must have been as familiar as every day to the Arab.
He said quickly: ‘You mean you think he is in trouble?’
‘Oh, no, no, nothing like that. How could he be? I told you I couldn’t explain. Well, if we can’t get through, we can’t get through, and there’s not much point in staying here talking about it, is there? We’ll just have to go back, and I’ll ring up Damascus when I get to the hotel again. Thanks for being so patient with me, Hamid – it’s terribly good of you to take such a lot of trouble for me. Oh Lord, wait a minute … I forgot! Did you fix up a return job in Damascus? What’ll happen if you can’t get there in time to pick them up?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t due to come back until tomorrow in any case. I can telephone and someone else can do it.’ He opened the car door for me. ‘Don’t give it a thought, today is yours. Where else can I take you? You’ve seen Baalbek?’
I hesitated. ‘I suppose it’s too late in the day to start now for Homs?’
‘Not really, but there’s a frontier there, too.’
‘Hell’s teeth, I suppose there is. We’re nicely stuck, aren’t we? Well, if you’re sure it’s all right about your Damascus job, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Baalbek again on my own, with time to spare.’ But in the act of getting into the car another thought struck me, and I paused. ‘You know, I really think we’ll have to call it a day and go back to Beirut. I’ve just thought – what’s going to happen when I want to leave the country for London? Will I have to get a new visa, or go to the Consul and make inquiries about this wretched exit stamp, or something? If there are going to be difficulties, it might take time. I’d better do it straight away.’
‘I think you’re right, but I don’t think it will concern your Consul, I think we’ll have to go and see the Chef de Sûreté in Beirut and get another visa. If you’ll wait a moment longer I’ll go back and ask the official here what we should do. And who knows, it may not take so very long. We might even be able to come back and get through to Damascus by nightfall.’
Even I was not expecting the surge of pleasure and relief that this gave me. I smiled at him. ‘Oh, yes, that would be marvellous, and you could do your return job, too! Thanks a million, Hamid, you’re very good!’
‘For a smile like that,’ said Hamid, ‘I would be prepared to be very bad. The cousin is lucky.’
And he disappeared into the buildings.
The car was like an oven, so I waited outside in the road. The bus – it was labelled Baalbek – had been unloaded, and the dirty baggage was lying in the dust and being prodded over by sweaty, sullen-looking men. People hung around, staring, smoking, spitting. One or two youths lounged nearer, eyeing me.
I glanced across at the office buildings. Through the open door I could see the shoving, vociferous crowd round the counter. Hamid might be some time, I left the car and climbed the bank again above the road.
This time I went higher, out of the dust and the petrol fumes, but still keeping the car in sight and directly below me. The road here was in a shallow cutting, and almost immediately as I climbed I found myself in cooler air and treading on grass and flowers.
There wasn’t the profusion of flowers that I had seen along the Afka road, but the hillside was green enough, with sparse grass moving in the breeze, and the grey whorls of thistles, and drifts of some small white flowers that looked from the distance like frost. Over this in violent contrast, blinding over grey stone, went the blazing, cascading gold of the broom; and everywhere, thrusting up boldly from the hoar-frost veils of the white flowers, were hollyhocks – the simple familiar hollyhock of the English cottage garden, red and yellow and white, crowding wild among the rocks of a mountainside in Lebanon.
And a quarter of a mile away, where the same hollyhocks and the same broom flowered above the same rocks, that was Syria.
I had climbed, I suppose, about a hundred feet, and from this height I could see away beyond the no-man’s-land, beyond the Syrian frontier post, to where the road curved round underneath a rocky bluff and dropped down to cross the water at the bottom of the valley.
As always in this thirsty country, the green of the trees and cultivation followed the water, and the river wound its way south in a thick sash of trees and corn and vines which crowded along the valley bottom. Here and there, like green veins threading a dry leaf, the small tributary valleys ran down to join the main stream. I could see – perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond the Syrian frontier – one such tributary, curling down through the bare hillside with its ribbon of green, its few patches of growing corn, the bone-white stems of poplars with young leaves whitening in the breeze, and the dusty track where a donkey plodded with a woman beside it carrying a jar on her head. I was watching her idly, when I suddenly stiffened and stared, all attention now, at the point where that distant dusty track met the main road.
Just
off the road was a small thicket of trees. And under those trees something white, metallic. A car. A familiar car, parked there in the shade, nose to the south.
I think I have mentioned before that I am very longsighted. It did not take me more than a minute or two’s staring to convince me that this was indeed Charles’s Porsche. The screen of leaves prevented me from seeing if he was in the car, but soon I was almost sure I had caught a glimpse of movement beyond the bushes.
I turned and began to make my hasty way down to the road, arriving with a thump in the dust beside the car just as Hamid came out of the buildings.
He started without preliminary. ‘I think it will be all right. It is the Sûreté we must go to, so if we go back now – Is something the matter?’
Excitement and the sharp scramble had made me breathless. ‘I’ve just seen his car – Charles’s – my cousin’s! It’s parked about a quarter of a mile past the other frontier. I went up there,’ pointing, ‘and you can see over that bluff down towards the river, and it’s there, parked behind some trees. You don’t suppose Ben’s told him I’m coming, and he came to wait for me?’
‘Perhaps, but it doesn’t make much sense to me,’ said Hamid. ‘You’re sure it’s his car?’
‘Pretty sure. At any rate it’s a white Porsche, and they can’t be all that common hereabouts. It must be his!’
‘Which way is it facing?’
‘South.’ Near us the barrier shut with a bang behind a south-bound car, and the Arab guarding it squatted down by the roadside and lit another cigarette. Beyond the farther frontier the sun dazzled on the waiting windscreens. I frowned into the glare. ‘But you’re right it doesn’t make sense. If he was all that eager to see me, he’d have waited for me yesterday, or else telephoned, not left it to a chancy pick-up. But then what is he doing here? If he did get to Damascus last night, he’d hardly come straight up again before Mr Sifara gets home, and Ben’ll have told him I’m expected. Anyway he was facing south.’
