By Desert Ways to Baghdad — Key Ideas to Explore

e was becoming extraordinarily easy, for we had left behind most things and forgotten all the injunctions and warnings of our friends.

But there was still Constantin in his European clothes and his aristocratic ideas and his broken French.

However, he does make delicious omelettes; we will forgive him for smuggling in that omelette-pan in defiance of our orders.

It is getting very dark; we could no longer see the hillocks, but we knew that they were there. We could hardly see the horses tethered beyond the fire, but we could hear them munching and stamping, and now and then one would neigh suddenly.

Constantin lit a lantern and hung it on a stick; then he washed up the dishes. The other men sat on by the fire and we looked through the smoke at them. There was Calphopolos. Now Calphopolos was a Greek, and he was a mistake. We have said that Constantin was on the border-line of civilisation and reminded us of what we had left. But Calphopolos was right in it without really being of it--so that when he was about one forgot that there was anything to be said for civilisation and only remembered its drawbacks. His unbrushed black clothes contrasted painfully with the native dress, especially when seen through the smoke of a camp-fire. He always carried about a little black handbag, out of which his tooth-brush was constantly falling. But his worst offence was that he spoke a language which we understood, and jabbered French at us from morning to night. He was in the employment of well-meaning friends whom he accompanied when they made business excursions into the interior. They had sent him to start us comfortably on the way; his knowledge of the amenities of life was to pave the road leading away from civilised methods of living.

Then there was Ibrahim, a long, lean Turk with a smiling face. He put up the tents and rode in attendance upon us, and haggled with the villagers over milk and eggs. They had told me earlier in the day that Ibrahim was troubled in his mind; "never before had a woman looked him straight in the face and shown him a watch." Two Eastern precepts had been violated, and I had been the unwitting offender. It was at Brusa, which we had left with such difficulty that morning. We had arranged the night before to start at 8 o'clock. But 8 came, and 8.30 came, and 9 came, and then the Zaptichs came who were to have come at 8 to escort us on the way; but there was no sign of our own retinue, of Constantin, of Ibrahim, of our own hired horses, of the arabas and muleteers with the baggage.

The news of our departure had got about and the people of the hotel gradually collected at the door. "Where is your dragoman?" they said; "why do you not send for him?" We confessed to having engaged no dragoman. "No dragoman! that was very rash. We could speak the language, then?" No, we had only a Turkish dictionary. They gave us up then as hopeless. Another individual pushed his way up to us. "You will never get your men to start or do anything else," he said; "you do not realise what these Turks are."

I recognised him as a professional dragoman offered to us by Cook the week before. But he was only telling us what everybody else out of the trade had been dinning into our ears ever since we planned the journey.

I repaired to the inn where the men and horses had been collected the night before. In the open yard stood the araba, unpacked and horseless. Constantin sat on a roll of baggage near by, with a resigned expression and a settled look, as if he had been sitting there for hours.

"Pas possible, mademoiselle," he said.

Ibrahim stood in the stable door, smoking complacently, and our muleteers were squabbling violently over the roping of a box.

It was at this moment that I stepped up to Ibrahim and showed him my watch. He looked at me with a startled expression, his jaw dropped, and he turned hastily on the muleteers. But it was not till later that I learnt how his inmost susceptibilities had been roused. One is at a decided disadvantage with no knowledge of a suitable language, but by dint of gesticulating with my riding-whip and pointing at everybody in turn, I managed, at the end of another half-hour, to get the araba and the men under way, and mounting my own horse rode behind them to the hotel. In another five minutes we had sallied out on our road. X and I rode ahead with Ibrahim and Calphopolos and the two Zaptiehs, then came the araba with our baggage and the muleteers, then Constantin with bulging saddle-bags suggesting the intrusion of various forbidden cooking utensils.

Our road ran unshaded and dusty through the outskirts of Brusa, with Mount Olympus towering above us. Bit by bit we left behind the staring tourists, the staring native children, the unconcerned stall-keepers displaying their wares of Brusa silk and printed cottons from England; then we passed the country people riding in on mules with their vegetables and chickens; we passed the little cultivated patches and got amongst the larger fields, stretching away on each side of the road. "Tutun," said Ibrahim, pointing at them with his riding-whip. I looked at him inquiringly. He tapped his cigarette and pointed again at the field.

"Tutun," he repeated. "Tobacco, you understand, mademoiselle, tobacco--such as he is now smoking." Calphopolos always would insist on explaining the obvious. The day got hotter and the road got dustier. At midday we skirted a willow plantation, and a stream gurgled through the damp green patch, inviting us to come in and rest. We crawled out of the sun under the low willow bushes, and the men tied the horses to the stronger branches. This first lunching place will always remain indelibly printed on my memory: the slices of brown bread thickly spread with solid cream; the watermelons and the grapes; the men grouped about amongst the willows, eating great hunches of bread and cheese; the horses breaking loose and straying about, browsing the finer herbage which sprang up through the dried and yellow tufts of older grass; the joy of being out of the sun and the dust; the cool sound of the water in the brook; the sense of rest and freedom, the sense of having really escaped at last.... On recalling this lunch with X, after many adventures had made it seem very remote, I found that she retained equally vivid recollections of it. I heard her murmur reflectively to herself, "And we thought it was always going to be like that!"

Then we had reluctantly left it all, the unwilling horses were pulled and dragged away, snatching at last bites, and we rode off on the dusty road again, until we reached the village near which we had arranged to camp. We had ridden round and chosen this site in the middle of the mysterious hillocks, which shut us out so effectually from everything except the stars.

We were destined to spend many more such nights in camp; but perhaps none can give you exactly the same thrill as the one on which for the first time you sleep out in the open.

It is full of surprises; you expect it to be quiet, and you find the darkness and stillness is full of noise. Nothing escapes you: the breathing of men and animals, the crackling of the fire, the rustling of leaves and grass: there seems to be a continuous movement very close to you. You sit up many times expecting to see something in your tent; it all makes you very wakeful. You drop off into a disturbed sleep very late, and are awakened before sunrise by the stir in the camp. You are positive you have not slept all night and that strange people have been prowling round you in the dark.

Yet as one lay in this semi-wakeful state of excitement and mystery, one's strongest impression was that of wanting protection merely against a few primitive forces; with the wild beasts we shared the dangers of cold and hunger and attacks from man. Slowly and painfully you have crawled out of the net in which you have all this time been unconsciously enveloped, and emerging stripped and bewildered grope about for what is actually going to serve and protect you in this primeval state of battling against the primitive forces of nature; a state, moreover, where protection against the dictates of an organised society is no longer needed. To those who are confronted with this problem for the first time, it is almost impossible to walk straight out of the net and have an impartial look round. Tradition still clings to us in little bits, and we grope hopelessly about, wondering what will be an essential and what will not.

Looking back now on these first few days of preparation for our journey in the wilderness, I realise that by far the hardest part of the journey was this initial disentanglement from the forces of tradition. If you are about to alter fundamentally your method of living, you must take care that you are discarding all those accessories which are due to tradition; you must either adopt those evolved by the tradition of the races among which you are about to travel, or you must bring abstract science to bear on the question of how to provide for your immediate wants under the changed conditions. A bare tent in a country where weather is still an interesting topic is a safe place for such reflections; the realities of the situation make one strictly practical. On getting out of bed our clothes were damp with dew and the grass was cold to our bare feet; at the next town we bought the strip of carpet, the idea of which we had rejected at Constantinople.

Brigandage. The capture of Miss Stone, ancient history as it now is, has served to give a vivid meaning to this word in the public mind. We were being continually asked if we wished to emulate Miss Stone. Travelling second-class through Bulgaria on our way to Constantinople our fellow-passengers, rough, good-natured farmers, joked about it; but they always added, "No, it will not happen to you." Then they would look at one another and laugh. The capture of Miss Stone did not seem to be looked upon seriously out there.

Then there was the Embassy at Constantinople. They were horribly nervous about international complications. As a matter of fact capture for ransom is a decided danger in the neighbourhood of larger towns in Asiatic Turkey. Not that there are any professional brigands prowling about, but there is a certain class of native ready to become a brigand on the spur of the moment, should they get wind of suitable prey. They are not Turks--no Turk would be bothered; they are, as a rule, Greeks, and always Christians. It is as well, therefore, on any expedition, not to make very great preparations and talk too much of your line of route; but as quietly and expeditiously as possible to get hold of your horses and men and start off before news of your movements has been noised abroad.

It was not at all in our favour that X bore a name well known to fortune hunters; one of her uncles was in the habit of big-game shooting in this district, and his means were fabulously exaggerated.

Calphopolos had been sent with us partly because he could be so thoroughly trusted to take all precautions. He certainly earned his reputation; he seemed to have been born with the fear of brigands in his soul; mere conversation about them caused him to break out into a profuse perspiration. He had talked to us very seriously on leaving Constantinople, as we sat on the deck of the steamer which took us across the Sea of Marmora on our way to Brusa.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mesdemoiselles, soyez secrètes; la secrécé, c'est tout."

"La secrécé" became his by-word. If there was one thing he was more afraid of than anything else on earth it was X's surname. He implored her not to use it, but to call herself Miss Victoria. He had all our luggage labelled Miss Victoria; and if in casual conversation the dreaded name leaked out, beads of perspiration rolled down his face and he would glance nervously round to see who was within earshot.

X was rather a reprobate on the subject. On our arrival at Madame Brot's well-known hotel at Brusa, from where we were making our final departure the next day, she marched up to Madame Brot and said, "I think you know my uncle"--mentioning him by name. Calphopolos, who was just behind, explaining that our name was Victoria pure and simple, turned green with horror. With bent back and staring eyes, shaking the same finger in warning which his subconscious self was trying to put on his lips, he endeavoured to attract X's attention from behind Madame Brot's broad back. But X went glibly on, quite oblivious of the panic she was creating. Calphopolos turned to me with the resigned expression of a man on whom death-sentence has been passed. "It is all over now," he said, "everybody in Brusa will know about us in half an hour. Mesdemoiselles, did I not implore you for the love of God to respect the secrecy? Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quelles demoiselles!"

And then poor old Calphopolos, who was not without his sense of fun, laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "The only thing left to do," he went on, when he had sufficiently recovered to speak again, "is to pretend we are going to Angora and put them off the scent. Mesdemoiselles, for the love of God please try and remember that it is Angora you are going to. Tell everybody you are going to Angora. The secrecy it is everything."

It must be confessed it was very difficult at that time to feel seriously alarmed about brigandage, for we seemed to be moving in ordinary respectable society, and Calphopolos's treatment of the subject merely caused us to think of it as a joke. Still, we fully realised that it was a real risk, against which it would not do to neglect taking ordinary precautions; and this sense was heightened by the extreme alarm of the Vice-Consul at Brusa to whom we applied for the escort of Zaptiehs, without whom one is not permitted to travel in Turkey with any guarantee of safety. He could not understand why we would not drive through to Nicæa in a landau in one day, like the ordinary tourist; this, with a suitable escort, made the journey quite safe, and it is a common thing for travellers to do. But to ride there in three days with our camp, sleeping on the way, was another matter. Every extra hour spent loitering in any one district heightened the risk of being attacked by brigands. X tried to explain that it was for the sake of her health, which only made him more bewildered; surely a landau was more suitable for invalids!

Finding us, however, unmoved by his arguments, he promised to send us two men the next morning and implored us never to leave their sides for a moment. He must have rubbed the same instructions well into the Zaptiehs, for during the seven days which they accompanied us as far as Mekidje on the Anatolian Railway, they never were more than a couple of yards away from us, day and night. This certainly detracted from the sense of freedom we were otherwise experiencing. It seemed at first as if we had only escaped from one form of bondage to fall into another. But the fact that the men were unable to speak any language we understood prevented it from becoming irksome, and one was soon able to become nearly oblivious of the clanking sword at one's elbow.

Calphopolos, however, was not so easily ignored. He had a sort of feeling that we were always running away from him, and tried to check this pernicious tendency on our part by engaging us in constant conversation in his broken French. The more we edged our horses away from his side and tried to put a silent Zaptieh between him and ourselves, the more persistently would he pursue us, propounding some new problem which required an answer. Our behaviour on breaking camp that morning had probably given rise to his state of mind. We had ordained that the start should be made at eight o'clock; but the usual procrastinations had ensued and the men seemed totally unable to get off. Calphopolos kept packing and unpacking his little bag in search of the missing tooth-brush, and tried to keep us calm.

"It is thus in this country, mademoiselle; have no anxiety--we shall go, we shall go."

X and I agreed that there was only one way to go. We had our horses saddled and rode away, in spite of Calphopolos's prayers and entreaties to wait till the whole camp was packed. The Zaptiehs, after the orders they had received, were obliged to ride after us. This left Calphopolos and the muleteers without Government protection, which so filled them with terror that in a very few minutes they also were on the way. Calphopolos came tearing down the road after us, the tails of his long black coat flying out behind, the tooth-brush sticking out of his pocket, and the perspiration rolling down his cheeks.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu!" he gasped as he caught us up, "pour l'amour de Dieu!" and then he had so much to say that he couldn't say it and relapsed into laughter and ejaculations of "Mais quelles demoiselles, mon Dieu, quelles demoiselles!"

The second day our road lay across the great Jenishehr plain. Herds of buffaloes strayed about on the wilder parts, and here and there fields of corn and tobacco, suddenly springing up beside the stretches of rough grass, signalled the approach to an occasional village.

Here also it was very difficult to think of brigands; the harmless look of peaceful cultivators did not suggest them. Besides which the country was so open that you could not be suddenly pounced upon; you would have ample opportunity of considering evil-doers as they approached you across the wide plain.

We encamped that evening near the small village of Jenishehr. The excitement of the novelty had worn off and we had had a long day in the open air. In consequence of this I had fallen into a profound sleep at once on going to bed. Suddenly I was awakened by a noise in the tent, and looking up distinctly saw the figure of a man coming cautiously through the tent door. In one moment I had hold of my revolver, kept loaded at the head of my bed, and had it levelled at him, wondering when the psychological moment for pulling the trigger would occur and whether I should manage to live up to its requirements.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mademoiselle! pour l'amour de Dieu!" came in a terror-stricken voice.

I put down the weapon rather crossly.

"What do you want?" I said.

"Quels sont vos noms," stuttered out Calphopolos in great agitation.

"What on earth do you mean?" I said; "you know our names well enough."

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, quels sont vos noms," he repeated.

"X," I called out, "wake up and tell me what is the matter with Calphopolos--I think his head has been turned by this fright about your name; he is going about jibbering over it."

X had a soothing influence on Calphopolos, and gradually extracted from him that the local Zaptieh had come up for our _tezkerehs_ and wanted to know our names. His agitation over the revolver had been so great that he had been unable to explain articulately that it was our _tezkerehs_ that he had come for.

The next day the whole character of the country changed. The plain gradually oozed away into a more tumbled country and cultivation disappeared. We were about to cross the range of hills which shut out our view to the north.

The Zaptiehs were very much on the alert here; they unslung their rifles from behind and rode with them across their knees. We were told to keep close together and ride quietly without talking.