LATE THAT EVENING THE Sheik himself came to see us. Somewhere in a compound beyond us were the eight members of his harem and his twenty-two children; also from a later glimpse I had of the place some of his sheep and his goats, his dogs and his horses. But he came alone.
A fine, benevolent old figure he was, rather like a patriarch of Biblical times. And with some of the ancient weaknesses, too. He regards his family with a certain bored philosophy, but in order to see him really brighten one must inquire into his past. Then, ah, then he draws himself up. Once more he is the handsome young Sheik, running away from his wives and his children, his sheep, his goats and his camels, with a beautiful lady from Paris.
His eyes snap. He is ready for any lurid detail. He shows the gold watch he got there, and that it still goes. Happy days, great days, wonderful days! But he says nothing of that time six years later when he returned to his desert again, riding gravely on a camel, leading another on which were packed the buhl chest, the gilt mirrors, the silver-mounted pistol, which still mark his ancient conquest.
Later we slept in his room. The buhl chest, inlaid with mother of pearl, was warped and cracked with neglect, its color dimmed with dirt. The antique gilt mirrors had suffered the same fate, and were hung some seven feet from the ground! Only the pistol, in its worn scabbard, gleamed with care and with use.
His eldest son, showing me to this chamber, pointed to it proudly.
“The weapon of my father,” he said. “From Paris.”
For the benefit of those romantic ladies who dream of being abducted by a Sheik, I made a careful record of the contents of that room.
Picture, then, a small room opening onto a second and even dirtier court-yard, with two windows, which do not open. On leaving the door wide, a large and bony white horse attempts to enter, and is repulsed with difficulty. Two brilliant saddle cloths hang on the wall, and below them a canvas sack contains the other camel trappings. A handsome sword, inlaid with silver and in a silver scabbard, decorates another wall, between two small imitation Oriental rugs, made probably in Manchester, England. The room has been swept for visitors, but not dusted, and on shelves over the beds, thick with the dirt of ages, are a large white soup tureen, a broken mustache cup painted with flowers, an empty tin box marked “ginger biscuits,” a litter of cheap and unwashed glassware, and an ancient carbine. With the mirrors and the chest of drawers, and the beds and washstand placed there by the company, this completed a room undoubtedly the boast of the entire region.
This is not the place to discuss Zenobia and her dream of empire. Dawn the next morning showed us the ruins of her magnificent capital, through which the old caravan routes from Persia traveled to the sea. Not even then could the country have been the desert it now is. Trees grew and gardens flourished here, and with wells and irrigation would do so again.
But now it is only a desert plain, with an entire village of wretched Arab huts in the ruins of the Temple of the Sun, and mile-long rows of great Corinthian columns, the roofs they once upheld vanished, the people they sheltered forgotten.
In the brilliant sunlight of the dawn the Arabs, squatters and vandals, emerged from the Temple and filled the dead columned streets with noisy life. Their women went for water, their camels filed along. And in a tiny room beneath the Temple wall a school had opened, and children carrying quaint pens and ink pots showed us their copy books, written in Arabic!
Dawn, I have said, showed us these things. But only dawn. Almost before it was fully light we were off again on the long run between Palmyra and Quebeissa. We had picked up another passenger in Palmyra, a British official bound for Bagdad, and the Captain and his comforting revolver had moved to the car ahead.