A Winter in Arabia

by Freya Stark

  We had an international meal of tinned soup and fruit salad, and Arab rice to support the kid whose sad appearance led my mind wandering to the fountain of Bandusium, more shining than glass, while Alinur enjoyed herself, being gently chaffed by the Mansab, who likes her. It is pleasant to see her happy. She has a weary time of it just now, for the geology she would like to examine is buried under many layers that have filled in and levelled the wadi floor; so that she must feel like a surgeon who has to operate on someone monstrously fat, his vital parts all choked in superfluous matter. The age and alternation of these layers of silt are given by sheets of gravel, sandwiched between them, washed down in successive periods of flood—but these are only visible where some sort of erosion has occurred to give them in section. Later torrents will cut through them—but no current has eaten its way deep enough to reach the bottom of the great trough, whose history, with that of the world it belonged to, is buried like forgotten empires out of sight.

  January 6.

  “The word and nought else in time endures.”

  (HUMBERT WOLFE.)

  Alinur and I eat alone; our conversation is about easy things like English gardens, and we sit over our food much longer than we did. Science, I begin to feel, is a dreary affair in conversation and incompatible with meals. An omelette is undoubtedly a composite of eggs and butter, but to say so is usually devastating at table. My vagrant fancies are often being pulled home and confined to tangible objects such as potsherds, beyond which it appears to be unsafe to draw conclusions. But when, ye gods, should one draw unsafe conclusions if not at dinner? when the mind roams released, adventurous and playful, “scegliendo,” like Matilda “fior da fiore,” and leaving statistics, like the omelette’s egg-shells, decently out of sight?

  * * *

  There is a difference, no doubt, between science and art, but I think it is not near so great as many men imagine. In all human adventure two types of mind exist—one formal and the other seeking for reality through and beyond the obvious bounds of form; and the formal mind as such is held to be scientific because it is in effect able to collect data for other men to use. In art, on the other hand, each artist must gather material for himself.

  But the ultimate aim of all human wisdom is but the liberation of the spirit; and on the degree of this freedom the excellence of all intellectual endeavour must depend. The assembling of facts is a means only; the collector is no more master of his universe than the paving stone is master of the road: he makes it indeed for freer feet to tread. It would be ungrateful to despise his devout and necessary labour; but it is also singularly unfair to limit the majesty of science to so pedestrian a track, and to take from it those ecstasies of the imagination which alone transmute the dead array of facts.

  In this more vivid rank I do not believe that art and science intrinsically differ. The data of the one is certainly no less accurate and no less indispensable than the other, though less tangible. Too elusive for the instrument of language, it must be gathered by every maker for himself, and the labourer and the creator, often separate in science, in art must ever be combined. A sentence in Jane Austen is the fruit of observation as conscientious, minute and catholic as ever was produced by a biologist. On its truth and honesty her excellence, as his, depend.

  Apart from the fact that art alone is a creator, the difference between them is one of method rather than of accuracy. The facts that the scientist simply states, the artist evokes. Instead of relying on words alone, he lets the reader’s mind fill in the meaning, and, in the measure of his magnanimity, will trust to what his reader can supply. It is collaboration, as between player and instrument.

  “Avenge oh Lord thy slaughtered saints whose bones

  Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.”

  In the language of science, the adjective merely applies to the rocks of the hillside; but the poet knows that in the mind of his readers it awakens the vision of the cold and stiffened bodies of dead men.

  Almost any fine piece of literature exhibits this delicate suggestiveness.

  Take the Iliad:

  “As far as a man’s view ranges, as he sits in the haze on a point of outlook and gazes over the wine-dark sea, so far at a spring leap the loud-neighing horses of the gods.”

  Everything helps to the infinity of that great spring: the “point of outlook” eliminates the finite sense of land around one: the width of sea horizon is indefinite and vaster in the haze that makes it at one with the sky above it: the reader sees the horses of the gods leaping into an unbounded space of light.

  In Lycidas two different passages close together show this art supremely:

  “While thee, alas the winds and warring seas

  Wash far away where ’ere thy bones are hurled

  Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides

  Where thou perchance beneath the whelming tide

  Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world. …”

  The words scattered here and there press through one chaos of movement to the remote limits of the world. The next lines with their change, show how consciously the whole effect is gained:

  “Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,

  Sleepst by the fable of Bellerus old

  Where the great vision of the guarded mount

  Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold. …”

  All is rest and immobility—though only once actually expressed in the word “sleep”; the other words all imply it, and there is nothing in the whole passage to express motion except in the last line where the eyes that “look toward” Namancos are made with infinite skill to increase the feeling of immobility, of imprisoned stillness evoked unconsciously in the reader’s mind by the images of age, of guarded fortresses, of enclosing walls.

  The artist does indeed play his instrument on the living hearts of men—even he who stumps his feet on a box in Hyde Park. He has the whole gamut of his audience’s capacities to choose from for his practice, and the permanence of his labours depends on whether the things he chooses to evoke are permanent or ephemeral in the human heart.

  The facts that science communicates are, on the other hand, permanent as long as the peculiar linguistic convention in which she clothes them is understood. But I have noticed that science is of no manner of use for talking to Arabs. It is not a matter of language: I have watched the scientists explaining things in Arabic which, though painful, could yet be understood, but it produces nothing but a blank from the mere fact that they are thinking of their subject and not of their listeners. The despised artistic method builds to the tribesman’s eyes a picture he can see: his ancestors dispersed after the flood, their gradual descent to the lands of Yemen, the scattering of their records before the days of Qahtan: the natural desire of all men to know the beginnings of their race: the possibility of unknown kinship among the races of the world; the possibility, indeed, that English and Arab were cousins long ago: all these are familiar chords that wake an echo. Over and over again the Ja’da tribesmen come and, puzzled by the science of excavation out yonder, ask to have the matter explained in the intelligible language of art: like a house delicately built, I see the light of understanding rise in their eyes stage by stage: and the explanation, lamentably deficient in what the Archæologist calls “objective truth,” has at least succeeded in convincing them that our aim is research and not treasure.

  January 8.

  “The world stands out on either side

  No wider than the heart is wide.”

  (E. ST. VINCENT MILLAY.)

  Nothing could be more lovely in its sober tints than the view of our wadi in the morning. Its farther cliffs are washed with transparent blue, a thin veil of those whose innumerable numbers make the sky. The naked brown houses stand on their brown steep. A little ragged mist still catches the low distance of the palms. The landscape is as simple and severe as an early picture, bathed in this luminosity of morning.

  My heart no longer flutters so badly, I can go earlier on to t
he terrace and look at the first beauty of the world, and copy my manuscript in the cool and pleasant hours, under a sunshade which Qasim ties to three nails in a corner. No sooner does it appear than the small voices of children are heard from the slope below, calling my name with an implacable soft persistence for hours on end. It is agreeable to be loved, but no one enjoys hearing it said for hours together in a word of two syllables only.

  Salim this morning brought a gift in his hand, an amber bead from the necklace round his neck.

  “I want no money,” he said hastily. “I want to give it as a present.”

  He tied it round my wrist with a piece of cotton and an expression of trembling joy and looked at his work with pleasure when it was done. “It will bring you luck when you wear it,” he said. “Do not say that I gave it you; it is my amulet and I should be scolded.” Among his few possessions, it was the only precious thing he had to give.

  He asked me if we use arrows for divining. This ancient pagan custom still persists here, and people go to visit the witch or the diviner in a cave, and, having brought him meat or flour or whatever it is he requires, throw their arrows, which the diviner reads as they fall. The children tell me this, but it is denied by grown-up Moslems if one asks.

  * * *

  Another charming object has been brought for sale to-day—a tiny green axe like polished jade; the Archæologist says it is called a celt. No one knows where the beautiful stone comes from.

  * * *

  I have a copyist now—a thin-faced student in a long gown who writes out for me the manuscript of the Sultan of Qatn for which I have no time: it has six hundred pages and tells, under red and green headings, the history of the sixteenth century in Yemen. It is called the Sirat al Mutawakkiliya and was written in A.D. 1600, and in it are described scraps with the Ferangi (probably the Dutch) in the Red Sea, and a mission from Yemen to Abyssinia and news too of this land. Whether it is known or not in Europe, I have no means of telling, but it is good enough in itself to be worth the copying, and it is a pleasure to perpetuate learning by this slow and ancient means. It is very expensive, for every two sheets of paper cost a quarter of a dollar (4½d.), apart from the scribe’s time; and it is difficult too to deal with, for none of the pages are numbered.

  The first section of my own manuscript is copied out now and has given useful information, such as the date of the restoration and final ruin, in A.D. 1298, of al-’Urr by the Arabs.

  In the afternoon, before the sunset prayer, the Qadhi comes to locate for me names of places and tribes which no one in Europe would know. He sits, turning over with his delicate fingers the pages written by his grandfather and treasured above all the books they have. The Egyptian who came here last year was never even allowed to see this book, for the man who wrote it is a saint in their eyes.

  The Qadhi loves these hours. He has in him a pure passion for learning, a small flame with little enough to feed it, that burns for itself alone. He is happy to come and think of abstract things, and looks up from his page at intervals with quiet and gentle affection in his eyes, infinitely touching. In the middle of it all, a slave runner came in with a mail from Shibam. He got a small tip and, wishing to make all he could out of the occasion, asked in a truculent way: “When do we dine? I should like to eat.”

  I laughed and said he should eat when we did, and after us at that, and the Qadhi, shocked, looking up to me, said: “We in Hureidha all thank you for the kindness of your speech.”

  Before he left I showed him the Christmas cards that the mail had brought. There was one with a field of buttercups among them.

  “That,” I told him, “is our country in spring.”

  He looked for a long time at the deep grass and the flowers, scarce believing, and at last, turning to me, said in a voice of wonder: “And why do you come here?”

  January 9.

  “When Eudoxus shore his first lovely fleece of hair, he gave its childish glory to Phœbus.

  (Greek Anthology.)

  To-day is Friday, a holiday, and all the boys have had their heads shaved like convicts and only the “gamzuz” left, a streak about two inches wide like a ridge from front to back. Sayyid ’Ali says it is left till they are fifteen, so that nobody will kill them by mistake. I remarked that in that case I would leave it on all my life, which appeared to him an uproarious joke. One cannot help having a tender spot for him. He likes jokes and adventures, two considerable merits: but something will have to be done, for he is giving just one quarter of the money paid for donkeys to their rightful owners.

  The whole of this country must be full of his creditors. One of them walked in yesterday, a bedu of the Ja’da with a beard, grey and curly, like a waterfall down his chest. He had an expression of permanent and cheerful surprise which many of the Ja’da have, and looked like one of those lascivious Tritons one sees in pictures, clasping a nymph by the waist, half out of the sea. He was rather abashed because he had wandered upstairs and met the convalescent Archæologist in her dressing-gown, and the nymph and the Triton had not taken to one another. His beauty was indeed a little spoilt by a very greasy European vest over the top half of him. He settled himself on the coffee hearth near my bed and, after a preliminary discussion on archæology and treasure, came to the burning topic of politics and the Wadi ’Amd murder. Could he have, he asked, a letter of introduction to Mr. Ingrams to tell him that the Qu’aiti government in the Wadi ’Amd was about to go up in smoke?

  “That is interesting,” I remarked, “but why not go and tell the Mansab?”

  “Oh, we tribesmen think nothing of the sayyids. If it were not for you English we would have been fighting long ago. Why do your aeroplanes never come to look at us?”

  “They are busy preparing to bomb the Se’ar, as you know. But no doubt if you do things to your governor in ’Amd they will come up to you soon enough.”

  The old man laughed. He went off with no official letter, but made me write a private one for him to a relative in Java, telling of the approaching downfall of government, and asked me in an off-hand way as he went to be sure and stamp it for him. In the afternoon he was back: the echo of my voice, he said, had remained sweet in his ears; but now the actual business came out in the shape of fifty dollars owed him by Sayyid ’Ali. Sayyid ’Ali walked in just as the matter was being laid before me, and took him, with many flourishes of oratory, safely out of earshot.

  “It would be better,” he said to me later, “if you would not let people come in as they do. I could see them all for you first.”

  “You do see the donkey people first,” said I. “And every one of them has been in after to tell me that he is not properly paid. Now I shall pay them myself, and that will be less trouble for both of us. Why do you take such a heavy tax? If you had taken only a little no one would have spoken.”

  “Do you think it much?” said ’Ali with perfect good humour. “You know that anyone would do it in my place.”

  He sat, with his mug of tea in one hand and his melon seeds in the other, spitting husks over my unhappy carpet at random, and told me how Husain “is stirring up plots.” There is a feud between ’Ali and the House of the Children of Muhsin, and it is crystallizing over the problem of our landlord. Strange as it may seem to persons unacquainted with this country, it is quite impossible to find out who our landlord is. There is no doubt that the owner of our house is the old sayyid who lives in Du’an; but it appears that he is living in the house of his cousin, who, being our neighbour here, claims the proceeds of this house in exchange. The whole coil goes to prove what a mistake it is not to follow the customs of the land: if I had not suggested the innovation of paying rent, covetousness would never have entered the cousins’ hearts, and a present at the end would have contented everyone. As it is, the most absurd contretemps has happened. Husain came to me this morning as usual and told me that the Du’an landlord is staying with him on a short visit, and would come for his rent. I was only too delighted at the thought of getting rid of it
, and when a venerable, wall-eyed old man arrived this afternoon, and showed his holiness by wrapping his hand in a striped green-and-yellow shawl before contaminating it by the contact of mine, and told me that he was going back to Du’an and had come for money—I hastened to ask Qasim for the fifteen dollars and pressed them into the green shawl. They were accepted with equanimity, and the old man’s brusque departure immediately afterwards might have been due either to excessive holiness or to surprise. No sooner had he gone, however, than the assembled bystanders, who had not breathed a word during the proceedings, informed me that he is not the landlord at all, but a wandering religious man who had come merely on the chance of being helped in his travels. No one had liked to spoil sport while it was actually going on, but they all volunteered to scatter over the town and find my fifteen dollars again. The old man, meanwhile, had vanished from the house of Muhsin: he was no doubt celebrating the mercies of Allah in a sober way with some religious friend. Late in the evening he was discovered and came, with the same equanimity, the fifteen dollars tied in a little bundle in the shawl. It went to my heart to take them back, but we cannot afford to be known as squanderers of dollars. The old wanderer himself saw them go with the same placid serenity with which he had seen them come. Having handed them all back, he waited in a dignified way while I selected two to give him. I had to drop them into his hand from a foot or so above, so as to avoid any chance of pollution, and we parted with another handshake made safe by the wrappings of the shawl. As for the rent, I have decided to hand it over to the Mansab, who alone can deal with the complexity of the problem.