Bimbashi Baruk Of Egypt Page 4

  The Negress resumed her burden and walked away. Dipping the lettuce in the fountain, the dervish tore off a tender leaf and began to eat it. The poet watched him in high disdain; and now the holy man condescended to notice this supercilious onlooker.

  “O poet,” he called, “what do you ask of life?”

  “Love.”

  “What have you to offer in return?”

  “Beauty and song.”

  “But to God?”

  “Nothing.”

  The dervish, thrusting the lettuce into his waistband, sprang up, seizing his staff. His melodious tones grew suddenly rugged.

  “O conceited spawn!” he cried. “O gnat's egg! O insect most unclean! For that black heresy I will, without remission or let or hindrance, beat thee insensible!”

  Pouncing, he grasped the youth with fingers seemingly made of iron and began to thrash him savagely.

  Merchants came running out of near-by shops; a ring formed around the one-sided contest. The poet struggled, struck blindly, kicked and screamed curses. But the beating went on. Certain more Westernized tradesmen whose only tribute to Islam took the form of atarbush, or turban, joined the onlookers. A native policeman appeared last of all. One man, stout, florid, intervened.

  “Back, dervish! Stop, I say! Are you mad? This is one of the household of Raschid Azem!”

  The dervish paused.

  “And I am a hadji of the Bektashiyeh. No infidel dog shall deny God and escape my anger.”

  Now, the order in question, founded in Khorassan, derives from the dreadful Old Man of the Mountain, father of the Assassins. Few lightly flout a fakir of this brotherhood. But the portly tradesman stuck to his guns.

  “Such is the word. I speak to a wise man. Be advised then, O hadji, and go in peace.”

  The native policeman had disappeared. Reluctantly, the dervish lowered his staff, releasing the poet. Eyes aflame, the youth backed away, turned and ran. The dervish took the lettuce from his waistband and nibbled a leaf.

  “There is no virtue in mercy,” he remarked. “Our Lord Mohammed (may God be good to him) enjoins us to smite the infidel and spare not.”

  THE DERVISH MADE his next recorded appearance in the shop of Abu Hassan in the Street called Straight. A customer was being shaved and he started so nervously at the sight of the ragged figure that Abu Hassan narrowly avoided gashing him. Seating himself on a chair in the doorway, the dervish produced a string of beads, and bending, muttered prayers.

  “God be with you, hadji,” said the barber.

  “And with you,” muttered the dervish, in parenthesis, continuing his prayers.

  Abu Hassan's client was easily satisfied. He departed at speed, muttering a formal salutation, which was acknowledged, to the dervish in passing. The barber prepared to attend to his second, and profitless, customer without delay, for certainly no one would come in while this fakir remained in the shop.

  “What can I do for the servant of God?”

  “Give me the letter which you have in the cupboard.” Abu Hassan's jaw fell; his dark eyes opened widely. “Or shave me fourteen times for the greater glory of the Prophet, who watches us from Paradise.”

  A sudden flash of teeth which lighted up the dirty unshaven face convinced Abu Hassan that this indeed was the messenger he had been warned to expect. He smiled in return, but nervously.

  “O effendim! The path you tread is set with pit-falls, but who is better equipped to avoid them?” He opened a small cupboard. “Here is the letter.”

  The dervish concealed it under his tattered robe.

  “Tell me,” he said, “all you know about a boy who carries a rose in his mouth and who belongs to the household of one called Raschid Azem.”

  “He is analdtee” (musician and singer) “and a great favorite of his master's. He is worthless and dissolute.”

  “But Raschid Azem?”

  “O effendim, Raschid Azem is wealthy beyond the dreams of men, but he burns with the fires of love and ambition. He has great possessions and much business. He is favored by those in power and beloved of women. He is to marry Yasmina, daughter of the Sheikh Ismail ed-Din, rose of the Lebanon, called Pool-o'-the-Moon.”

  “Why, O Abu Hassan, is she called Pool-o'-the-Moon?”

  “It is said that as a child she would kneel by a lily pond in the dusk of the evening, looking down, and when her nurse asked her what she saw, she replied, 'There is another moon in the water. I like it better than the moon in the sky.' And so she came to be called Birket el-Kamar, or Pool-o'-the-Moon. Her beauty and loveliness enchant all beholders; and it is told that Raschid Azem cannot sleep, nor has wine any savor for him because of his love and longing. All men may see this. For know, effendim, that love is difficult, and the concealment of it melteth iron, causing disease and infirmity.”

  “Is there some obstacle to their marriage?”

  Abu Hassan went to the door of his shop. He stared to right and left along the Street called Straight and furtively noted passers-by. He returned and bent to the dervish's ear. “It is whispered, effendim—” And he spoke on, softly and fearfully.

  POOL-O'-THE-MOON gazed out from an open lattice in themushrabiyeh window of her apartment. Below lay a terraced garden ablaze with flowers glittering in the sun. It cupped a rock pond where lilies floated and comet-tailed carp streaked the water with gold. Stone steps led up from the pond to a kiosk or small pavilion; and the whole was sheltered from biting winds of the Lebanon Mountains by a high, vine-cloaked wall. Doves were wooing in the walnut tree. This was my lady's garden and sacred to Yasmina, called Pool-o'-the-Moon.

  But Yasmina found this cloistered life hard to endure. Once it had seemed inevitable, until her father, Ismail ed-Din, much against his personal inclinations, had sent her to the French school in Beirut for two years, because her mother, who was dead, had always wished it to be so. Those two years had revealed new horizons; and for this reason Yasmina accepted but could not welcome the fate which God had ordained should be hers. Although nearly seventeen, which is full maturity in the East, she had evaded marriage; but she knew that it was not to be evaded forever. Raschid Azem, to whom she was promised, had found means to gaze often and ardently upon this guarded treasure, and he desired her as he desired no other woman. She did not return his passion.

  Pool-o'-the-Moon had the complexion of a Damascus rose and her skin resembled the purity of white petals. In figure, she was slender as the painted Isis of Egypt; and her dark eyes, though gentle in expression, were observant and mysterious. The kiosk in the garden was her workroom. Here she made delicate plaques in rare woods, inlaid with ivory, jade, mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli; designs of leaves and flowers and graceful Arabic letters. She drew them first, exquisitely, in water colors, as Sister Felice had taught her. She was highly talented. From her mother she inherited her beauty and her sense of romance; her father had endowed her with a practical brain.

  She had secret dreams. Once, in Beirut, while seated in the large, high old motor omnibus belonging to the school, she had seen a young man in a smart uniform who stood looking up at her. He wore histarbush with an inimitable air. She had felt a flush steal all over her body as their glances met. He had blue eyes; they were approving eyes. Smiling gravely at the pretty, embarrassed girl, he had raised his hand in salute and turned away. Yasmina had supposed him to be French, but because she could not forget him she had made discreet inquiries, and had learned that he was a British officer attached to a military mission. That memory had woven itself into the fabric of her life. If only she had been born a European!

  Yet at heart she remained Oriental. She loved to deck herself in rich robes, with sashes cunningly contrived and intertwined, and with jewels on her slim arms and fingers to posture before a mirror. Sometimes it came to her that she posed for a dream lover and not for the man destined to take her. Then, very sadly, she would cease her play, put on working overalls, and go down to the kiosk in the garden where she created her wonderful plaques.

&n
bsp; Yasmina, staring from her window, was thinking of Raschid Azem. Always she had disliked him; certain recent events had changed dislike to hatred. The prospect of her marriage was one she feared to think about. True, in his way Raschid Azem was not ill-looking, and he kept some state at his large house near Damascus. He had extensive property, not only in Syria but in Irak, and in his business dealings was highly up-to-date; but at home, she had heard, he preserved the more dignified Oriental virtues. Yasmina suspected that she would not reign alone.

  Sighing, she turned from the window and opened a large cedarwood cupboard recessed in a wall. It was filled with dresses. But all she wanted was the suit of overalls. So attired, she went onto a wooden balcony and down steps to the garden. Passing the pond, she crossed to the kiosk and entered her workshop. Sometimes she worked there right into the night, when Aida, her Syrian maid-companion, would bring her supper out.

  BIMBASHI BARUK trudged along a path which divided a field of maize from a pistachio orchard. He was thinking with admiration about the ways of the British agent, A 14. Concealed in the lettuce given to him by the colored woman whom he had been instructed to meet by the Marwan fountain at noon, there had lain a tiny note in English capitals. It read, “The barber has a message in the cupboard,” and it was signed with what looked like a row of scratches but was actually the Arab letteralif (A) written fourteen times. This note he had eaten with the lettuce.

  The second message, held by Abu Hassan, was similarly penned. It said: “Well of Seven Palms on the road to el-Kasr three hours after sunset.” This, also, he had destroyed. Visualizing Madden's operations, he had accosted fodder merchants, portage contractors, market gardeners and others, always with the words: “Has Abdul the camel dealer passed this way?”

  When asked what he wanted of Abdul, he replied: “I want to slay him.”

  But he failed to pick up any clue until at last he detected a spark of interest in the eyes of a lean and furtive fruitseller.

  “Is he,” the fruitseller asked, licking his lips, “is he a small but very vicious villain, this Abdul, whose face resembles a ripe pomegranate?”

  “A baked apple,” the bimbashi corrected; “but a ripe pomegranate will serve.”

  “Hard and heavy of hand and filthy of tongue?”

  This presented a reasonably sound description of Captain the Honorable J. Popham Madden, and the bimbashi nodded, snarling savagely.

  “Lead me to him!” He grasped the man by the shoulder. “Dare to refuse and I will slay thee also!” He relaxed his grip. “Abdul, the son of a mule, stole my camel,” he added in more gentle tones, “the only camel I ever had.”

  The fruitseller grinned sadistically.

  “Hearken, O hadji. He stole my donkey—the only donkey I ever had—on the road to el-Kasr.”

  “The road to el-Kasr! How long since?”

  “It was the night of the full moon, a mile beyond the house of Raschid Azem.”

  About an hour later, outside Damascus, the dervish secured a lift in the cart of a homeward-bound vegetable gardener. His offer was a simple one: a prayer or a crack on the head.

  At a suitable spot he alighted, and now, the path by the pistachio orchard reaching a high road, he saw the residence of Raschid Azem on a cypress-guarded slope beyond. Ten minutes later, the dervish took a seat on an old stonemastabah beside the jasmine-bowered gate of the courtyard and prepared to make himself a nuisance.

  He had learned that Raschid Azem was akadi, that is, something between a Chief Constable and a Justice of the Peace—evidently a considerable citizen. He therefore anticipated some state, and met it now in the shape of an obese and pasty-faced porter wearing a red uniform, who emerged from the courtyard. Having surveyed this splendid exhibit from his high tarbush down to his twinkling brown shoes, the dervish took out his string of beads and began to mutter prayers. The porter's pale features quivered emotionally.

  “Begone from here!” he cried in a reedy, angry voice. “We allow no beggars to loiter.”

  The dervish raised his eyes.

  “Have I begged?”

  “Out, I say! Guests are expected. Be gone.”

  “This seat was set beside the gate that the Faithful might rest.”

  The porter took a step forward.

  “It is not for such as you. Begone, or join the other miscreants who await sentence.”

  The dervish concealed his beads, grasped his staff and stood up.

  “O misbegotten! O dreadful error of an otherwise beneficent Creator! O pork-fed abomination! O unutterable—”

  Swinging the staff above his head, the dervish leaped, and the porter, dignity deserting him, turned and darted across a courtyard with an agility surprising in one so fat. The dervish strode a few paces after him along a sanded path pleasantly shaded by cherry trees in full blossom. Here he paused—for he had heard a car approaching. When it drew up at the gate, he was standing inside, concealed by a vine-covered gatepost.

  Two men alighted. One, wearing a well-cut white linen suit and atarbush, was a man of about thirty-five. He had a brief and very black mustache, a good figure and a manner of authority. The other, whose bulky body was a product of human appetite but whose short legs were an act of God, the bimbashi recognized as Dr. Rosener of the Nazi Intelligence Staff. They were speaking in German.

  “I shall be interested, nevertheless, Raschid Azem, my friend, to see this camel dealer. In your absence your servants have perhaps been over-zealous of your honor. What they believe to be a love intrigue—”

  The dervish strode into view and saluted Raschid Azem.

  “I claim justice, OKadi!” he said harshly. “Your porter has misused me, yet I came here only to slay Abdul the Thief, Abdul who robbed me of my camel! Justice, O Kadi!”

  “Stand aside,” said Raschid Azem quietly. “I have been absent, but my Court opens on Monday. Attend there, and justice shall be done.” Dr. Rosener grasped his arm. “Not so hasty, my good friend,” he whispered. “If this fellow can indeed identify your prisoner, one doubt at least will be set at rest.”

  Raschid Azem, a man of swift decisions, hesitated for no longer than a moment, then nodded shortly. Running footsteps announced the return of the porter, his flabby features moist with perspiration.

  “O my master! this villainous dervish—”

  “Silence! Get the keys of the Old Stables and join me there.” He beckoned to the bimbashi. “You—follow.”

  “There is no god but God,” intoned the dervish. “May all blessing and peace be thine, O King of Kings.”

  He followed the pair with an air of docility—but muttering smothered curses upon Abdul—through a delightful garden, until they came to a stone building on the eastern outskirts. From flotsam of conversation picked up, he gathered that the official jail had become unduly crowded during thekadi's absence, overflow being accommodated here. The fat porter, his wet features a mask of malignancy, now coming up with keys, a heavy lock was unfastened and the bimbashi saw a row of stalls which had been converted to cells by means of fitting iron bars to the half-doors. From one, a bearded face peered out.

  “I demand to be released!” the prisoner spoke in French. “I am a Turkish subject and I warn you—

  Divining the fact that this was the unfortunate Armenian, Bimbashi Baruk in passing murmured:

  “It is written that there are fourteen consolations.”

  At a cell beyond, Raschid Azem stopped and turned.

  “Come here, hadji, and tell me if this is the man you seek.”

  Bimbashi Baruk looked in through the bars. He saw a stone floor, a pallet bed, and a small, dirty man who lay glaring up at him. The light was poor, but even so he knew that chubby face, its redness discernible through the stain, those wicked little hazel eyes. By means of an acrobatic twist, the camel dealer curled up like a startled hedgehog, concealing his features, but Bimbashi Baruk had read a message in his eyes; it said: “Come inside.”

  “Open the door, my lord!” he demanded. “See
! The rat hides from me! Open the door!”

  “Unlock the door,” Raschid Azem directed.

  Fat fingers twitching, the porter obeyed. And no sooner was it done than the dervish hurled himself in, grasped the camel dealer and turned him over bodily.

  “O Abdul—filthy insect”—rage seemed to be choking him—“prepare to die!”

  Abdul at that moment whipped wiry arms around the dervish's neck, and hauled him down onto the pallet. The dervish grasped Abdul's throat. Both men screamed the foulest of imprecations. The bimbashi's head was being dragged lower and lower in the struggle. The fat porter was shouting for assistance.

  When Baruk's ear almost touched the unshaven face of the captive, Madden whispered: “Avoid Seven Palms! It's a trap! Now yell like hell!”

  Whereupon he nearly made his teeth meet in the bimbashi's ear!

  Uttering a howl of pain only partially simulated, Bimbashi Baruk sprang back. Blood already was dripping onto his shoulder. As he said later, “Pop Madden is an inspired actor, but my ears are real, they are not stage properties.”

  He submitted to forcible ejection from a side entrance into part of the extensive maize crop. What he feared most was the appearance of the youth with a rose in his mouth.

  WHEN DUSK swept its violet brush across the Lebanon, Bimbashi Baruk was many miles north of the house of Raschid Azem. He had followed unfrequented ways, avoiding, as formerly he had courted, observation. At a village market he had paused to beg some fresh fruit, sticky honey cakes and a handful of dried dates. These, and a draft of water from a spring, served for dinner. He was beginning to enjoy himself. The incidents of his mission seemed to hang together, although the thread was frail. An amazing theory demanded admission: that Colonel Roden-Pyne's underground system had gone wrong because his messengers were suspected to be, not British agents, but accomplices in a love intrigue!

  Bimbashi Baruk sat upon the crumbling wall of a bridge spanning an irrigation ditch and laughed silently. He would have given much for a cigarette, or even more for a full pipe; but he carried nothing which could betray him in the event of capture.