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Gérard de Nerval

Travels in the Near East (Voyage en Orient, 1843)

Part VIII: The Women of Cairo (Les Femmes du Caire) – The Santa-Barbara

Sailing boats on a river in Egypt, 1828, Otto Baron Howen

Sailing boats on a river in Egypt, 1828, Otto Baron Howen
Rijksmuseum

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Chapter 1: A Companion

‘Istanbul’dan! Ah! Yélir firman!

Yélir! Yélir! Istanbul’dan!’

It was a deep, gentle voice, the voice of some blond young man or dark-haired girl, a voice with a fresh and penetrating timbre, resonating like the song of a cicada, filtered through the dusty mist of an Egyptian morning. To hear it better, I had half-opened one of the windows of the hut, whose gilded grille looked out, alas, on an arid shore; we were already far from the cultivated plains and rich palm groves which surround Damietta. Having left the city at the onset of night, we had reached in a short time the shore of Esbet-el-Bourg (Izbat-el-Burj), which was supposedly the maritime port, and original site, of the Crusader city. I was only half-awake, astonished at no longer being rocked by the waves, while the song continued to resound at intervals as if issuing from a person seated on the shore, but hidden by the elevation of the banks. And the voice continued again with a melancholy sweetness:

‘Kaikélir! Istanbul’dan!...

Yélir! Yélir! Istanbul’dan!’

I recognised that the song celebrated Istanbul, yet in a dialect whose words were new to me, and which no longer had the hoarse consonances of Arabic or Greek, of which my ear was weary. The voice was a distant proclamation of new peoples, fresh shores; I already glimpsed, as in a mirage, the Queen of the Bosphorus amidst her blue waters and dark verdure, and, I must admit, that a contrast with the monotonous and scorched nature of Egypt attracted me deeply. Even if it should mean mourning the banks of the Nile, later, beneath the green cypresses of Pera (Beyoğlu), I summoned, to the aid of my senses, softened by the summer, the invigorating air of Asia. Fortunately, the presence, on the boat, of the janissary whom our Consul had charged with accompanying me, assured me of a prompt departure.

We were waiting for the right time to pass the boğaz, that is to say the bar formed by the waters of the sea which opposed the course of the river, since a djerme loaded with rice, which belonged to the Consul, was to transport us on board the Santa-Barbara, anchored a few miles out to sea.

Meanwhile, the voice continued:

‘Ah! Ah! Ah! Drommatina!
Drommatina dieljédelim! ...’

— ‘What can this mean?’ I asked myself. ‘It must be Turkish’.

And I asked the janissary if he understood.

— ‘It’s a provincial dialect,’ he replied; ‘I only understand the Turkish spoken in Constantinople; as for the person who sings, it is a good-for-nothing, a poor devil without shelter, a banian (wretch)!

I have always noticed, with sorrow, the endless contempt of the man who fulfils servile functions towards poor people who seek to make a living and maintain their independence. We had disembarked, and from the top of the embankment I saw a young man lying, nonchalantly, in the middle of a tuft of dry reeds. Turned towards the rising sun, which was gradually piercing the mist spread over the rice fields, he continued his song, whose words I easily gathered, in many-times repeated refrain:

‘Déyouldoumou! Bourouldoumou!
Aly Osman yadjénamdah!’

There exists, in certain southern languages, ​​a syllabic charm, a grace of intonation which suits the voices of women and young people, and which one would willingly listen to for hours without understanding a word. And then, that languid chant, those quavering modulations which recalled our old folksongs, all this charmed me with the force of contrast and the unexpected; something pastoral and amorously dream-like sprang, for me, from these words rich in vowels, and with the cadence of birdsong.

— ‘It may be’, I said to myself, ‘some song of the shepherds of Trebizond, or Marmara. I seem to hear doves cooing amidst the branches of yew-trees; a song of bluish valleys where the fresh waters light, with silver reflections, the dark branches of larches, where roses bloom above tall hedges, where goats clamber among verdant cliffs as in an idyll of Theocritus.’

Meanwhile, I had neared the young man, who at last saw me, and, rising, greeted me by saying;

— ‘Bonjour, Monsieur’.

He was a handsome boy with Circassian features, dark eyes, a white complexion, and blond hair, close cut, but without his head being shaved according to the custom of the Arabs. A long, striped silk robe, then an overcoat of grey cloth, composed his attire, and a simple tarbouch of red felt served as his headdress; except that its tuft of blue silk, more amply-shaped and fuller than that of Egyptian hats, indicated a direct subject of Abdul-Medjid (Abdülmecid I). His belt, made of a cheap cashmere weave, bore, instead of the collections of pistols and daggers which customarily bristled at the waist of every free man or hired servant, a writing-set of copper half a foot long. The handle of this oriental instrument contains the ink, and the scabbard contains the reeds which serve as pens (calami). From a distance, it might pass for a dagger; yet it is the peaceful insignia of the simple scholar.

I suddenly felt full of kindness towards this colleague, and was somewhat ashamed of my warrior’s attire which, in contrast, concealed my profession.

— ‘Do you live in this country?’ I asked the stranger.

— ‘No, sir; I came with you from Damietta.’

— ‘What, with me?’

— ‘Yes, the boatmen received me in the cange, and brought me here. I would have liked to introduce myself to you; but you were lying down.’

— ‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘and where are you heading?’

— ‘I will ask your permission to also board the djerme, to reach the ship on which you are going to embark.’

— ‘I don't see any problem with that,’ I said, turning to the janissary.

But the latter took me aside.

— ‘I do not advise you,’ he said to me, ‘to take this boy with you. You will be obliged to pay for his passage, for he has nothing but his writing-set; he is one of those vagabonds who scribble verse and other nonsense. He presented himself to the consul, who could get nothing else from him.’

— ‘My dear, fellow,’ I said to the stranger, ‘I would be delighted to help you, but I have barely enough to get to Beirut, and must await money there.’

— ‘That’s fine,’ he answered, ‘I can live here for a few days with the fellahin. I'll wait for an Englishman to pass by.’

His reply left me filled with remorse. I went off with the janissary, who guided me amidst the flooded countryside, by having us follow a path traced here and there among the sand dunes, so as to reach the shore of Lake Manzala. The time it took to load the djerme with the bags of rice, brought by various boats, left us all the leisure necessary for this expedition.

Chapter 2: Lake Manzala

We had passed on the right the village of Esbet-el-Bourg, built of raw brick, amidst which one can distinguish the remains of an ancient mosque, and the ruins of arches and towers belonging to ancient Damietta, destroyed by the Arabs, at the time of Saint Louis, as being too open to surprise. The sea formerly washed the walls of this city, and is now some few miles from it. This shows the extent of land gained by Egypt every six hundred years. The caravans which cross the desert towards Syria encounter, at various stages, regular lines and shapes, where one can see, here and there, ancient ruins buried in the sand, but whose contours the desert wind sometimes delights in reviving. These spectral cities stripped, for a time, of their dusty shrouds, frighten the imaginative Arabs, who attribute their construction to genies. European scholars, by following these traces, have found a series of cities built on the seashore, under this or that dynasty of Shepherd Kings, or Theban conquerors. It is by calculating this retreat of the sea’s waters, as well as by counting the various layers of the Nile’s flooding imprinted in the silt, the traces of which are discovered by excavation, that they have succeeded in revealing forty thousand years of Egypt’s ancient existence. This perhaps does not fit well with the account in Genesis; however, those long ages devoted to the mutual movement of the land and the waters, could have constituted the time when the Earth was, as the Bible claims: ‘without form, and void,’ the ordering of things being the only true principle of creation.

We had reached the eastern edge of the strip of land on which Damietta is built; the sand where we walked glistened in places, and it seemed to me that I saw solid puddles whose glassy surface our feet crushed; they were layers of sea salt. A curtain of slender rushes, perhaps of the kind which once provided papyrus, still hid the edges of the lake from us; we finally arrived at a harbour established for the fishermen’s boats, and from there I thought I saw the sea itself on a day of calm. Except that distant islands, tinged pink by the rising sun, and crowned here and there with domes and minarets, indicated a more peaceful location, though boats with lateen sails circulated, by the hundreds on the smooth surface of the waters.

This was Lake Manzala, the ancient Mareotis, whose principal island ruined Tanis still occupies, and where Pelusium bounded the neighbouring extremes of Syria; Pelusium, the ancient gate of Egypt, through which Cambyses, Alexander, and Pompey passed in turn, the latter, as we know, to find death there.

I regretted not being able to voyage around the charming archipelago scattered over the waters of the lake, and view one of those magnificent catches which provide fish for the whole of Egypt. Birds of various species soared over this inland sea, swam near the edges, or took refuge in the foliage of the sycamores, cassias, and tamarinds; the streams and irrigation-canals which cross the rice fields everywhere offer varieties of marshy vegetation, where reeds, rushes, water-lilies, and doubtless also the lotus of the ancients enamel the greenish water, and rustle with the flight of numerous insects which the birds pursue. Thus, is accomplished that eternal stir of primitive nature amidst which fertile, and deadly, creatures compete.

When, after crossing the plain, we returned to the jetty, I heard, once more, the voice of the young man who had spoken to me; repeating continually: ‘Yeli! Yeli! Istanbul’dan!’ I feared that I had been wrong to refuse his request, and I sought to enter into conversation with him by questioning him about the meaning of what he was singing.

— ‘It is a song,’ he said, ‘that was made at the time of the massacre of the Janissaries. I was lulled to sleep with this song.’

— ‘What!’ I said to myself, ‘these sweet words, this languid air, contain ideas of death and carnage! That is somewhat far removed from the eclogue.’

The song meant, roughly:

— ‘It comes from Stamboul, the firman (the one that announced the destruction of the Janissaries)! — A ship brings it — Ali-Osman awaits it — a ship arrives — but the firman does not come — all the people are anxious — A second ship arrives; here at last is the one that Ali-Osman was waiting for — All the Muslims don their embroidered clothes — and go off to amuse themselves in the countryside — for it has certainly arrived this time, the firman!’

What gain was there in trying to delve into it all? I decided, thenceforth, to ignore the meaning of the words. Instead of a shepherd’s song, or the dream of a traveller who thinks of Stamboul, I had nothing left in my memory but a trite, political ditty.

— ‘I would wish for nothing more,’ I said in a low voice to the young man, ‘than to let you share the djerme; but your song may have upset the janissary, though he appeared not to understand it....’

— ‘He, a janissary?’ he said to me. ‘There are none left in the whole empire; the Consuls still give that name, by habit, to their cavas (guards) — but he is simply an Albanian, as I am an Armenian. He is angry with me, because, at Damietta, I offered to conduct foreigners around the place; now, I am on my way to Beirut.’

— ‘I gave the janissary to understand that his resentment was groundless.

— ‘Ask him,’ he replied, ‘if he has enough to pay for his passage aboard ship.’

— ‘Captain Nicolas is my friend,’ answered the Armenian.

The Janissary shook his head, but made no further comment. The young man rose nimbly, picked up a small package that barely showed beneath his arm, and followed us. All my baggage had already been transported on the heavily laden djerme. The Javanese slave, whom the pleasure of a change of scene rendered indifferent to her memories of Egypt, clapped her brown hands with joy when she saw that we were about to leave, and saw to the moving of our cages of chickens and pigeons. The fear of running out of food acts strongly on these naive souls. The state of public health in Damietta had not allowed us to gather more varied provisions. Rice not being lacking, moreover, we were doomed for the whole crossing to a diet of pilau.

Chapter 3: The Bombard

We descended the Nile for another few miles; the flat, sandy banks stretched as far as the eye could see, and the boğaz which prevents ships from reaching Damietta now presented nothing more than an almost imperceptible bar. Two forts protect this obstacle, often crossed in the Middle Ages, but almost always fatal to ships.

Their voyages are today, thanks to steam, so devoid of danger, that it is not without some anxiety that one ventures on a sailing ship. Then there’s a renewed chance of that fatality which grants fish their revenge for human voracity, or at least the prospect of wandering for ten years on an inhospitable shore, like those heroes of the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Now, if ever a primitive and questionable vessel, out of some such fantasy, furrowed the blue waters of the Syrian Gulf, it was that bombard baptised with the name of Santa-Barbara which realised its purest incarnation. From the moment I saw that black carcass, like a coal ship, bearing on its single mast a long yardarm arranged for a single triangular sail, I understood that I had come to a dark time, and I had the idea, for a moment, of refusing the means of transport. However, how to do so? Returning to a plague-ridden town to wait for a European brig to pass by (steamships do not ply that course) was hardly less cheerful. I looked at my companions, who did not seem either displeased or surprised; the janissary seemed convinced that he had arranged things for the best; no thought of mockery pierced the bronzed masks of the rowers of the djerme; it seemed therefore that this ship had nothing ridiculous or impossible about it according to the customs of the country. However, its aspect of a deformed galley, of a gigantic clog, sunk in water up to the gunwale by the weight of those sacks of rice, scarcely promised a rapid crossing. If the winds were against us, we risked acquainting ourselves with the inhospitable homeland of the Laestrygones, or the porphyrous rocks of the ancient Phaeacians. O Ulysses! Telemachus! Aeneas! Was I doomed to verify for myself your deceptive itinerary?

However, the djerme came alongside the ship, they threw us a rope ladder made of sticks, and there we were, hoisted onto the planking, and initiated into the joys of life on deck.

— ‘Kalimera (Good day!)’, said the captain, dressed like his sailors, but making himself known by this Greek greeting.

And he hastened to return to the loading of goods far more important than ours. The sacks of rice formed a mountain at the stern, beyond which a small portion of the deckhouse was reserved for the helmsman and the captain; it was therefore impossible to walk anywhere but over the sacks, the middle of the ship being occupied by the ship’s boat, and the two sides cluttered with cages of hens; only a single, fairly narrow, space existed in front of the galley, entrusted to the care of a very alert young cabin boy.

As soon as the latter saw the slave, he cried out:

— ‘Kokona! Kali! Kali (A woman! Beautiful! Beautiful!)’

This was a departure from the Arab reserve which does not allow one to appear to notice either a woman or a child. The janissary had gone aboard with us and was supervising the loading of the goods which belonged to the Consul.

— ‘Ah, now! I said to him, ‘where are we to lodge? You told me we would be given the captain’s cabin.’

— ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied, ‘we’ll stow all these bags away, and then you’ll be fine.’

Whereupon he bade us farewell and descended into the djerme, which soon drifted away.

So here we are, the Lord knows for how long, on one of those Syrian ships that the slightest storm shatters on the coast like a nutshell. We had to wait for the three o’clock westerly wind to set sail. In the meantime, lunch was taken care of. Captain Nicolas had given his orders, and his pilau was cooking on the only stove in the kitchen; our turn would not come till later.

I was, however, searching as to where that famous captain’s cabin might be, that had been promised us, and I charged the Armenian to inquire of his friend, who did not appear to have recognised him until then. The captain rose, coldly, and led us to a kind of hold located under the bow decking, which one could only enter bent double, and whose walls were literally covered with those red crickets, as long as a finger, which are called cockroaches, and which had doubtless been attracted by some previous cargo of sugar. I recoiled in fright and feigned anger.

‘This is my cabin,’ the captain told me; ‘I do not advise you to live here, unless it rains; I will show you a much cooler and much more suitable place.’

He then led me to the ship’s boat, held by ropes, set between the mast and the bow, and made me look inside.

— ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you will be very well situated; you have cotton mattresses which you can spread from one end to the other, and I will have canvas stretched over the top to form a tent; now, you will be comfortably, and spaciously lodged, will you not?’

It would have been ungracious not to agree, the boat being given over to us, that it was certainly the most pleasant place, in African temperatures, and the most private that one could choose.

Chapter 4: ‘Andare Sul Mare’

‘Ah! Senza amare,

Andare sul mare….’

‘Ah! Without loving,

To set out to sea….’

(See the Tales of E. T. A. Hoffman: ‘Annunziata’)

We set sail: we saw that fringe of sand, which frames with such melancholy the splendours of old Egypt, diminish, and sink, and finally vanish beneath the flat blue sea; the dusty blaze of the desert alone glowed on the horizon; the Nile birds accompanied us for a while, then left us one after the other, as if to join the sun descending towards Alexandria. Meanwhile a brilliant star gradually climbed the arc of the sky and cast its fiery ray on the waters. It was the evening star, it was Astarte, the ancient goddess of Syria; she shone with an incomparable brilliance over the sacred waters which forever recognise her.

Be propitious to us, O divinity, who lack the pale hue of the moon, but who sparkle in the distance and pour golden rays on the world like a midnight sun!

Once my first impressions had been conquered, the interior aspect of the Santa-Barbara was not without a degree of picturesqueness. By the following day we had acclimatised ourselves perfectly, and the hours passed for us, as for the crew, in a most perfect indifference to the future. I believe that the ship’s course was set as in ancient times, journeying all day according to the sun, and at night according to the stars. The captain showed me the compass, which was not in working order. The honest man had a countenance at once gentle and resolute, marked, moreover, by a singular naivety which gave me more confidence in himself than in his ship. However, he confessed to me that he had once been something of a pirate, but only at the time of Hellenic Independence; this was after he had invited me to take part in his dinner, which consisted of a pilau heaped in a pyramid into which each of us dipped a small wooden spoon, in turn. This was already progress compared to the Arabian manner of eating, in which only fingers were used.

An earthenware bottle, filled with that Cyprus wine which is called Commandery, occupied our afternoon, and the captain, having become more expansive, was kind enough, to acquaint me with his affairs the young Armenian interpreting. Having asked if I could read Latin, he took from a case a large sheet of parchment which contained the confirmation of his moral right to captain the bombard. He wished to know in what terms the confirmation was conceived.

I began to read, and learned that ‘the Fathers who are Secretaries to the Holy Land, call down the blessing of the Virgin, and the saints, upon the ship, and certify that Captain Alexis, a Greek Catholic, native of Jarabalus (Syrian Tripoli), has always fulfilled his religious duties.’

— ‘They put Alexis,’ the captain pointed out to me, ‘but they should have put Nicolas; they made an error in writing this.’

I gave my assent, thinking to myself that, if he had no more official a patent, he would do well to avoid European waters. The Turks are satisfied with little: the red seal, and a Jerusalem cross, affixed to that testament would suffice, for a little baksheesh, to satisfy the requirements of Muslim legality.

Nothing is more cheerful than an afternoon at sea in fine weather: the breeze is warm, the sun dips above the sail, whose fleeting shadow signals a change of tack from time to time; this shadow finally left the deck to project its coolness uselessly on the sea. Perhaps it would be sensible to raise a simple canvas to shade the deck, but no one thinks of it: the sun gilds foreheads like ripe fruit. It was then that the beauty of the Javanese slave triumphed. I had not thought for a moment of making her don her veil, feeling, quite naturally, that a Frank with a wife had no right to hide her. The Armenian had seated himself near her on the sacks of rice, while I watched the captain play a game of chess with the pilot, and said to her several times in a childish falsetto: — ‘Ked ya, siti!’

Which I think meant, ‘Well then, Madame!’

She remained some time without answering, with that show of pride which informed her usual demeanour; then finally turned towards the young man, and a conversation began.

At that moment, I understood what I lost through lacking a fluent command of Arabic. Her brow cleared, her lips smiled, and she soon gave herself up to that ineffable chatter which, in all countries, is, it seems, a sore need for much of the fairest portion of humanity. I was happy, however, to have procured her this pleasure. The Armenian seemed very respectful, and, turning from time to time towards me, doubtless told her how I had met and greeted him. We should not apply our own ideas to what happens in the East, and hence believe that a conversation between a man and a woman immediately involves…guilt. People are often more innocent there; I was convinced it was only meaningless chatter. The expression of their physiognomies, and my gleaning a few words here and there, sufficiently indicated to me the innocence of their dialogue, so I remained as if absorbed in the observation of the game of chess (and what chess!) between the captain and his pilot. I compared myself, inwardly, to those amiable spouses who sit, of an evening, at the gaming table, without anxiety, leaving the women and young people to talk or dance.

And, besides, what is a poor devil of an Armenian, encountered in the reeds on the banks of the Nile, compared to a Frank who hails from Cairo, and who has led the life of a mirliva (general) there, gaining the esteem of his dragoman, and the whole neighbourhood? If ‘to a nun, the gardener is a man’, as they used to say in France in the last century, one should not believe the first comer is something to a Muslim qaden (slave). There is, in women raised simply, as in a magnificent bird, a certain pride which serves to defend them against vulgar seduction. It seemed to me, moreover, that by leaving her to rely on her own self-worth, I guaranteed the confidence and devotion of this poor slave towards myself; she whom, deep down, as I have already said, I considered free, from the moment she left the land of Egypt and set foot on a Christian vessel.

Christian! Was that the right term? The Santa-Barbara had only Turkish sailors as its crew; the captain and his cabin boy represented the Roman Church, the Armenian some heresy or other, and myself.... But who knows what a Parisian nourished on philosophical ideas, a child of Voltaire, an impious man according to the opinion of these good people, might represent in the East? Each morning, at the moment when the sun rose from the sea, and each evening, at the instant when its disk, invading the dark line of the waters, was finally eclipsed, leaving on the horizon that rosy tint which melts deliciously into the azure, the sailors gathered in a single row turned towards distant Mecca, while one of them intoned the prayer, as a muezzin might have hymned it gravely from the summit of a minaret. I could not prevent the slave from joining in this religious effusion, so touching and so solemn, from the first day, we found ourselves thus divided by our separate communions. The captain, on his side, made prayers from time to time to a certain image nailed to the mast, which could well have been the patron saint of the ship, Santa Barbara; the Armenian, on rising, after cleansing his head and feet with soap, mumbled litanies in a low voice; I alone, incapable of feigning, failed to perform any kind of ritual genuflection, and yet was somewhat ashamed to appear less religious than those people. I found among the Orientals a mutual tolerance for the various religions, each simply ranking themself higher in the spiritual hierarchy, but admitting that the others might well, at a pinch, be worthy of serving as their footstool; the simple philosopher disturbs this order: where to place him? The Koran itself, which curses the idolaters and the worshippers of fire and stars, failed to anticipate the scepticism of our age.

Chapter 5: Idyll

Around the third day of our voyage, we should have been able to see the coast of Syria; but, during the morning, we scarcely progressed, and the wind, which rose at three, swelled the sail, in gusts, then let it fall to the mast, once more, a moment later. This seemed to little concern the captain, who divided his hours of leisure between the game of chess, and a sort of guitar, to the sound of which he always sang the same song. In the East, everyone has their favourite tune, and repeats it tirelessly from morning to night, until they learn another newer one. The slave too had learned, in Cairo, I know not what harem song whose refrain returned in an endlessly drawn out, and soporific melody. It consisted, I recall, of the following two lines:

‘Ya kabibé! Sakel no!
Ya makmouby! Ya sidi!’.

I understood a few words, but the word kabibé was missing from my vocabulary. I asked the Armenian what it meant, and he answered:

— ‘It means a funny little man.’

I wrote the noun in my notebook, with its meaning, as is appropriate when one wants to learn.

In the evening the Armenian told me that it was unfortunate that the wind was not fairer, and that this worried him a little.

— ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘We risk being stuck here two days longer, that’s all, and we are decidedly very well-set on this ship.’

— ‘That’s not the point,’ he said, ‘We could well run out of water.’

— ‘Run out of water?’

— ‘You’ve, surely, no idea of ​​the carelessness of these people. To fill up the water barrels, would have necessitated sending a boat to Damietta, since the water at the mouth of the Nile is salty; and, as the city was in quarantine, they were afraid of the formalities!... at least, that’s what they say; but, in truth, they failed to think of it.’

— ‘It’s surprising,’ I said, ‘that the captain sings as if our situation was good.’

And I went with the Armenian to question him on the subject.

The captain rose, and showed me the water-barrels on deck, which were completely empty, except for one that might still have held five or six bottles of water; then he went and sat down again on the stern deck, and, taking up his guitar once more, began his eternal song, rocking his head back against the planking.

Next morning, I woke early, and went up to the forecastle thinking it might be possible to see the coast of Palestine; but I wiped my spectacles in vain; the distant line of the sea was as flat as a curved blade from Damascus. It is quite probable that we had barely progressed since the previous day. I descended again, and made my way to the stern. All were sleeping peacefully; the young cabin boy alone was awake, and washing his face and hands, abundantly, with water which he drew from our last barrel of drinkable liquid.

I could not help showing my indignation. I told him, or at least thought I made him understand, that sea-water was good enough for a little rascal of his species, and, wishing to formulate this last expression, I used the words ya kabibé, which I had noted down. The little boy looked at me with a smile, and seemed little affected by the reprimand. I assumed I’d mispronounced the phrase, and thought no more about it.

A few hours later, at that time in the afternoon when Captain Nicolas customarily had the cabin boy bring him an enormous jug of Cyprus wine, of which only we were invited to impart a sip, the Armenian and I, as Christians, and the sailors, out of a misunderstood respect for the law of Muhammad, drinking only anise brandy, the captain, I say, began to speak quietly in the Armenian’s ear.

— ‘He wishes,’ the latter said, ‘to make you an offer.’

— ‘Let him speak.’

— ‘He says it is delicate, and hopes you will not hold it against him if it displeases you.’

— ‘Not at all.’

— ‘Well, he asks if you wish to exchange your slave for the ouled (the little boy) who also belongs to him.’

I was ready to burst out laughing; but the perfect gravity of the two Levantines disconcerted me. I thought I perceived one of those feeble jests that Orientals only allow themselves in situations where a Frank could scarcely make them repent of doing so. I said this to the Armenian, who answered me, with astonishment:

— ‘But no, he speaks in all seriousness; the little boy has a pale complexion while the woman is swarthy, and,’ he added with an air of conscientious appreciation, ‘I advise you to think about it; the little boy is well worth the loss of the woman.’

I am not accustomed to being easily surprised: besides, it would be a waste of time in such countries. I confined myself to replying that the transaction did not suit me. Then, as I showed some ill-humour, the captain told the Armenian that he was sorry for his indiscretion, but that he had thought he was doing me a service. I failed to understand his aim, and thought I had heard a degree of irony in his speech; I therefore had the Armenian press him to explain himself clearly on the point.

— ‘Well,’ the latter said, ‘he claims you paid the lad a compliment this morning; that, at least, is what the boy reported.’

— ‘I did?’ I cried, ‘On the contrary I was furious with him. I called him a little rascal because he was washing himself with our drinking water.’

The Armenian’s astonishment gave me to understand that there was in this affair one of those absurd philological misunderstandings so frequent among people with a poor grasp of a language. The word kabibé, so singularly translated the day before by the Armenian, had, on the contrary, the most charming and amorous meaning in the world. I have no idea why the phrase ‘funny little man’ had seemed to him to render this idea perfectly.

We set about a new, amended translation of the refrain sung by the slave, which, decidedly, meant more or less:

‘Oh, my little darling, my beloved, my brother, my master!’

Which is how almost all Arabic love songs start, while being susceptible to the most diverse interpretations, and reminding beginners in the language of the classical ambiguity of Corydon’s eclogue (see Virgil: ‘Eclogues, II’).

Chapter 6: From the Logbook

Humble truth lacks the immense resources of dramatic or romantic invention. I myself gather, one by one, the details of events whose merit lies in their very simplicity, and while I know it would be easy, even in an account of a crossing as commonplace as that of the Gulf of Syria, to describe adventures truly worthy of attention, reality grimaces at the lie, and it is better, it seems to me, to speak, naively, as did the ancient navigators, and write: ‘On such and such a day, we saw nothing afloat but a piece of wood drifting randomly; on another day, only a grey gull...’ until that all too rare moment arrives when the action intensifies, and is complicated by the presence of a canoe full of savages, bringing yams and roast suckling pigs.

However, in the absence of the obligatory storm, a flat calm worthy of the Pacific Ocean and the lack of fresh water aboard a vessel composed as ours was might have brought scenes worthy of a modern Odyssey. Fate removed this interesting possibility by sending, that evening, a light zephyr from the west which sent us on our way quite swiftly.

I was, after all, quite joyful at this incident, and made the captain repeat his assurance that, next morning, we would see on the horizon the bluish peaks of Mount Carmel. Suddenly cries of terror came from the stern.

— ‘Farqha el bahr! Farqha el bahr!’

— ‘What is it?

— ‘A chicken overboard!’

The circumstance seemed to me to be of no great importance; however, one of the Turkish sailors, to whom the hen belonged, showed his distress in a most touching manner, and his companions pitied him deeply. They restrained him, to prevent him throwing himself into the water, while the hen, already far distant, made like signs of distress, the various phases of which were gazed on with some emotion. Finally, the captain, after a moment of doubt, gave the order that the vessel be turned about.

Meanwhile, thinking it a bit much that, having lost two days, we must now lose a fair breeze for a drowning hen, I gave the sailor two piastres, thinking that to be the whole point of the matter, for an Arab would have killed for much less. His face softened, but he doubtless calculated instantly that he might gain a double advantage by retrieving the hen and, in the twinkling of an eye, he threw off his clothes and plunged into the sea.

The distance he swam was prodigious. We had to wait half an hour, anxious about our situation and the coming night; our man finally reached us, exhausted, and had to be pulled from the water, since he no longer had the strength to climb over the bulwark.

Once safe, the man cared more about his hen than himself; he warmed her, sponged her, and was not happy until he saw her breathing easily, and fluttering on deck.

The voyage recommenced.

— ‘Devil take that chicken!’ I said to the Armenian, ‘We’ve lost an hour.’

— ‘What! Would you have had her drown?’

— ‘But I have chickens too, and would have given him several to replace that one!’

— ‘It’s not the same.’

— ‘How so! I would sacrifice all the chickens on earth not to lose a fair breeze for an hour, aboard a vessel in which we risk dying of thirst tomorrow.’

— ‘You see,’ said the Armenian, ‘the hen flew to his left, just as he was about to sever its neck.’

— ‘I readily admit,’ I replied, ‘that, as a Muslim, he devoted himself to saving a living creature; but I know the respect of true believers for animals does not extend that far, since they kill them to eat.’

— ‘Indeed, they kill them, but with ceremony, while pronouncing prayers, and even then, they can only cut their throats with a knife whose handle is pierced with three nails and whose blade is without a flaw. If the hen had drowned just now, the poor man would have been certain to die within three days.’

— ‘That’s a different matter,’ I said to the Armenian.

For Orientals, it is always a serious thing to kill an animal. It is only permitted to do so expressly for food, and in a way which recalls the ancient institution of sacrifice. We know that there is something similar among the Israelites: butchers are obliged to employ a slaughterer (shohet) who belongs to the religion, and kills each animal only in accord with consecrated ritual. This prejudice is found with various nuances in most of the religions of the Levant. Even hunting is tolerated only against wild beasts and as punishment for the damage they have caused. Hunting with falcons was, however, at the time of the Caliphs, an entertainment indulged in by the nobility, but according to an interpretation of the law which transferred the responsibility for the bloodshed to the bird of prey. Without adopting ideas belonging to India, we can agree that there is something fundamentally sound in refraining from killing any animal needlessly. Such rituals, designed for the case where one takes life due to one’s need for food, are undoubtedly intended to prevent suffering being prolonged more than a moment, a thing which our hunting methods, sadly, render impossible.

The Armenian told me regarding this subject that, in the days of Sultan Mahmud II, Constantinople was so full of dogs that it was difficult for carriages to navigate the streets: not being permitted to destroy them, either as wild animals, or for food, the idea was to abandon them on deserted islands at the entrance to the Bosphorus. They were embarked by the thousands in caiques; and, at the moment when, ignorant of their fate, they took possession of their new domains, an imam made a speech, explaining to them that this was done from absolute necessity, and that their souls, at the hour of death, should not hold it against the true believers; and that, moreover, if the will of heaven was that they should be saved, this would certainly happen. There were a host of rabbits on the islands, and the dogs did not at first protest against this Jesuitical reasoning, but, a few days later, tormented by hunger, they uttered such howls that they were heard from Constantinople. The devotees, moved by this lamentable protest, made a serious plea to the Sultan, already suspected of overly European tendencies, such that it was necessary to issue orders to recover the dogs, whose civic rights were triumphantly restored.

Chapter 7: The Hadji

The Armenian was of some aid to me as regards the tedium of our voyage; but I also saw with pleasure that his gaiety, his inexhaustible chatter, his narrations, his remarks, gave poor Zeynab the opportunity, so dear to the women of these lands, to express her ideas with a volubility of nasal and guttural consonants amidst which I found it difficult grasp not only the meaning, but the very sound of the words.

With the magnanimity of a European, I even suffered one or other of the sailors who happened to be sitting near us on the sacks of rice, to address a few ready words of conversation to him. In the East, the ordinary folk generally adopt familiar airs, firstly because the sense of equality is established there more genuinely than among us, and then because a sort of innate politeness exists among all classes. As for education, it is everywhere the same, summary indeed, but universal. This is what allows a man of humble origin to become, without any great transition, the favourite of a nobleman, and rise to the first ranks without ever appearing out of place.

There was among the sailors a certain Turk from Anatolia, very swarthy and with a grizzled beard, who talked with my slave more often and at greater length than the others; I had noted him, and I asked the Armenian what the subject of their conversation might be; he paid attention to a little of their speech, and replied:

— ‘They are talking of religion, together.’

This seemed very respectable to me, especially since it was this man who, as a hadji or pilgrim returning from Mecca, was performing the morning and evening prayers for others. I had not thought for a moment of thwarting my poor woman in her usual practice, she whose fate had been placed in my hands, alas, through a very inexpensive whim. Only, in Cairo, at a time when she was somewhat ill, I had tried to make her relinquish the habit of dipping her hands and feet in cold water every morning and evening, while saying her prayers; but she paid little attention to my precepts of hygiene, and only agreed to abstain from the henna dye, which, lasting only about five or six days, obliges women of the Orient to often renew a preparation very unsightly to those who view it closely. I am not an enemy of the dyeing of eyebrows and eyelids; I even accept carmine applied to the cheeks and lips; but what is the use of colouring yellow hands already coppery in hue, which, thence, acquire a shade of saffron? I had shown myself inflexible on that point.

Her hair had grown again over her forehead; it met on both sides the long braids mingled with silk-thread and quivering with pierced sequins (sadly false) which hung from neck to heels, according to the Levantine fashion. Her taktikos (headdress) festooned with gold inclined gracefully over the left ear, and her arms bore heavy threaded rings of silver-plated copper, roughly enamelled in red and blue, a thoroughly Egyptian adornment. Still others sounded at her ankles, despite the prohibition of the Koran, which does not permit a woman to allow the jewellery which adorns her feet to jingle (Sura 24:31).

I admired her thus, graceful in her silk-striped dress, and draped with the blue milayeh, with that air of an antique statue which women of the Orient possess without in the least suspecting so. The animation of her gesture, an unaccustomed expressiveness in her features, struck me at times, without inspiring me with anxiety; the sailor who was talking with her could have been her grandfather, and he did not seem to fear that his words would be heard.

— ‘Do you wish to know what the problem is?’ said the Armenian, who, a little later, had approached the sailors who were talking among themselves. ‘These people say that the woman who is with you does not belong to you.’

— ‘They are wrong,’ I said to him; ‘you can inform them that she was sold to me in Cairo by Abd-el-Kerim, for five purses. I have the receipt in my wallet. And, besides, it is none of their business.’

— ‘They say that the merchant had no right to sell a Muslim woman to a Christian.’

— ‘I care nothing for their opinion, and in Cairo they know more about it than they do. All the Franks have slaves there, whether Christian or Muslim.’

— ‘But they are only black Africans, or Abyssinians; they may not own slaves of the white race.’

— ‘Do you consider this woman as white?’

The Armenian shook his head doubtfully.

— ‘Listen,’ I said to him, ‘as to my right, I have no doubts, having obtained the necessary information in advance. Now tell the captain that it is not proper for his sailors to talk with her.’

— ‘The captain,’ he said to me after speaking to the latter, ‘replies that you could have first forbidden her to converse.’

— ‘I did not wish,’ I replied, ‘to deprive her of the pleasure of speaking her own language, nor to prevent her from joining in the prayers; besides, the conformation of the vessel requires everyone to jostle together, it is difficult to prevent the exchange of a few words.’

Captain Nicolas did not seem very well disposed towards me, which I attributed to a degree of resentment at having seen his proposal of exchange rejected. However, he summoned the hadji whom I had designated as having ill intentions from among the sailors, and spoke to him. As for myself, I did not want to say anything to my slave, so as not to adopt the odious role of a demanding master.

The sailor appeared to answer in a very proud manner, and the captain sent word to me through the Armenian that I should cease my concern; that the hadji was an exalted individual, a sort of saint, whom his comrades respected because of his piety; and that what he had said had no other import.

This man, in fact, did not speak to the slave again; but he talked very loudly before her with his comrades, and I understood that they were still discussing the question of the Muslim woman and the Roumi (Roman). It was necessary for them to conclude the matter, and I saw no way of avoiding their insinuations. I decided to summon the slave, and, with the help of the Armenian, had roughly the following conversation:

— ‘What did those men tell you earlier?’

— ‘That I was wrong, being a believer, to remain with an infidel.’

— ‘But don’t they know I purchased you?’

— ‘They say he had no right to sell me to you.’

— ‘And do you think that true?’

— ‘The Lord knows!’

— ‘These men are mistaken, and you must not speak to them again.’

— ‘It shall be so.’

I asked the Armenian to distract her a little, and tell her some stories. The lad had, after all, become very useful to me; he always spoke to her in that flute-like and graceful tone which is used to amuse children, and invariably began with ‘Ked ya, siti? ...Well, then, madame... what’s the matter? We are not laughing? Do you wish to hear the tale of the Head Baked in an Oven?’

He then related to her an old legend of Constantinople, in which a tailor, believing he was receiving a sultan’s garment to repair, took home the head of an officer (aga) in a parcel which had been given him by mistake, and not knowing how to get rid of the sad relic afterwards, he had despatched it, in an earthenware vase, to be disposed of in the oven belonging to a Greek pastry chef. The latter gave the head to a Frankish barber, furtively substituting it for his wig; the Frank put it on his head; then, realising his error, took it elsewhere; a host of more or less comical mistakes ultimately resulted. This is Turkish buffoonery in the highest good taste.

Evening prayer was celebrated with the usual ceremony. So as not to scandalise anyone, I went for a walk on the forward deck, gazing at the stars as they rose, and repeating my own prayer, that of the dreamer and poet, which is to say one expressing admiration of Nature, and the pleasures of memory. Yes, I admired them amidst that air of the Orient, so pure that it brings the heavens closer to man, those stars named for divinities, for those diverse and sacred forms that religion has rejected in turn, as masks of the eternal Isis ... Urania, Astarte, Saturn, Jupiter, you represent to me symbols of the humble faith of our ancestors. Those who, in their millions, have furrowed these seas doubtless mistook the radiance for the flame, and the throne for the god; but who is not free to adore in the stars of the sky the very proof of eternal power, and in their regular march the vigilant action of a hidden spirit?

Chapter 8: A Threat

Returning to where the captain stood, I saw, in a corner of the boat, the slave and the old hadji who had resumed their religious conversation despite my prohibition.

On this occasion, there was to be no exception; I pulled the slave violently by the arm, and she fell, very limply it is true, on a sack of rice.

— ‘Giaour!’ she cried.

I heard the word perfectly. There was no mistaking it.

— ‘Enté giaour!’ I replied, not really knowing how this last word was pronounced in the feminine gender. ‘It is you who are an infidel, and he,’ I added, pointing to the hadji,’ is a dog (kelb).’

I am unsure whether the anger that agitated me was that of seeing myself despised as a Christian, or due to thoughts of this woman’s ingratitude, whom I had always treated as an equal. The hadji, hearing himself called a dog, had made a threatening sign, but turned towards his companions with the usual cowardice of ordinary Arabs, who, after all, would not dare attack a Frank alone. Two or three of them came forward, uttering insults, and, mechanically, I seized one of the pistols from my belt without thinking that such weapons with their gleaming butts, bought in Cairo to complete my costume, are usually fatal only to the hand that seeks to use them. I will confess, moreover, that they were not loaded.

‘Are you dreaming?’ said the Armenian, clasping my arm. ‘He’s a madman, but to these people he’s a saint; let them shout, the captain will speak to them.’

The slave pretended to cry, as if I had done her a great deal of harm, and would not move from the place where she lay. The captain arrived, and said with his usual indifferent air:

— ‘What would you have! They’re savages!’

And he addressed a few words to them, rather weak in nature.

— ‘Tell them, in addition,’ I said to the Armenian, ‘that when I land, I will seek out the Pasha, and have them beaten with sticks.’

I believe that the Armenian translated this to them as some perfectly moderate compliment. They said nothing more, but I felt that their silence left me in far too doubtful a position. I remembered, most aptly, a letter of recommendation that I had in my wallet to the Pasha of Acre, and which had been given to me by my friend Alphonse Royer, who was for some time a member of the Divan in Constantinople. I took my wallet out of my jacket, which excited general disquiet. The pistol would have served only to have knocked me over ... especially since it was of Arabian manufacture; but the common people in the East always believe that Europeans are a species of magicians, capable of drawing from their pockets, at any given moment, sufficient firepower to destroy an entire army. They were reassured to see that I had only retrieved from my wallet a letter, very neatly written moreover, in Arabic, addressed to His Excellency Reşid Mehmed Pasha, (known as Kutahi), Pasha of Acre, who had previously resided in France for some time.

The most fortunate thing as regards my threat, and my situation, is that we were almost opposite Saint-Jean-d’Acre, where we had to anchor, so as to take on water. The city was not yet in sight, but we could not fail, if the wind continued to blow, to arrive there next day. As for Mehmed Pasha, by another stroke of good fortune worthy of being called providential for me, and fatal to my adversaries, I had met him in Paris at several parties. He had offered me Turkish tobacco, and done me honour. The letter I had about me recalled the occasion, in case time and his recent promotion had erased me from his memory; but it became clear to the captain, nonetheless, that the letter recommended me to a most powerful personage.

The reading of this document produced the effect of that ‘quos ego’ of Neptune’s (see Virgil, Aeneid I, 135). The Armenian, after placing the letter on his head as a sign of respect, had opened the envelope, which, as is customary for recommendations, was not sealed, and showed the text to the captain as he read it through. From then on, the promised blows of a stick were no longer illusory in the minds of the hadji and his comrades. The rascals lowered their heads, and the captain explained his own conduct to me as a fear of offending their religious ideas, being himself only a poor Greek subject (raya) of the Sultan, and one who had authority only by reason of his service to the latter.

— ‘As for the woman,’ he said, ‘if you are the friend of Mehmed Pasha, she indeed belongs to you: who would dare to oppose one in favour with the great?

The slave had not moved; however, she had heard, clearly, what had been said. She could have no doubt about her present position; for, in a Turkish country, protection is worth more than a right; however, from now on I was anxious to establish mine in the eyes of all.

— ‘Were you not born,’ I asked her, ‘in a country that does not belong to the Sultan of the Turks?’

— ‘That is true,’ she replied; ‘I am Hindi (Indian)’.

— ‘Then, you can be the servant of a Frank like the Abyssinians (Abesch), who are, like you, copper-coloured, and who are your equals.’

— ‘Aioua (Yes)!’ she replied, as if convinced; ‘ana mamluk enté (I am your slave)’.

— ‘But,’ I added, ‘do you recall that before leaving Cairo, I offered you your freedom if you remained there? And you told me that you would not know where to go.’

— ‘That’s right, I said it was better to sell me.’

— ‘So, you have followed me only to reach another land, and then leave me? Well, since you are so ungrateful, you may remain a slave forever, and will not be a qaden (lady), but rather a servant. From now on, you will wear your veil, and keep to the captain’s cabin... with the cockroaches. You must no longer speak to anyone here.’

She donned her veil without answering, and went to sit in the small cabin up front.

I had perhaps yielded somewhat to a wish to make an impression on these people, alternately insolent or servile, and always at the mercy of vivid and fleeting impressions, and whom one must know in order to understand why despotism is the normal government of the Orient. The most honest traveller finds himself forced, very quickly, that is assuming a sumptuous way of life does not at first win him respect, to pose theatrically and to take energetic action, in a host of situations, which, from then on, present little danger. The Arab is like a dog that bites if one retreats, but who will lick the hand raised against him. On receiving a blow from a stick, he knows not whether, deep down, you have the right to act so. You seemed to him at first of little account; but have him bound, and you immediately become a great personage, and merely affecting simplicity. The Orient never doubts a thing; all is possible: the simple calenderer (a roller and smoother of cloth) could very well be a king’s son, as in The Thousand and One Nights. Besides, do we not see the princes of Europe travelling about dressed in black tailcoats and rounded hats?

Chapter 9: The Coast of Palestine

I greeted, with intoxication, the longed-for appearance of the coast of Asia Minor. It had been many a day since I had seen mountains! The misty freshness of the landscape, the vivid brilliance of the painted houses and Turkish kiosks reflected in the blue water, the various levels of plateau rising boldly between sea and sky, the flattened summit of Mount Carmel, the square enclosure and high dome of its famous monastery illuminated in the distance, with that radiant tint of cherries, which always recalls the Aurora of Homer’s verse; and at the feet of the mountains, Haifa, already passed, and facing me Saint-Jean-d’Acre, situated at the other end of the bay, and before which our ship had anchored: all this was a spectacle at once full of grace and grandeur. The sea, barely undulating, spreading like oil towards the shore where the thin fringe of the wave foamed, and competing in azure hue with the ether already vibrating with the fires of the as yet invisible sun... this is what Egypt fails to offers with its low coastline and horizons soiled with dust. The sun, at last, appeared, clearly outlining before me the city of Acre, on its promontory of sand jutting into the sea, with its white domes, its walls, its houses with terraces, and its square tower festooned with battlements, formerly the residence of the terrible Jazzar Pasha (Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar), whom Napoleon encountered.

We had dropped anchor a short distance from shore. We had to wait for the visit of the health inspector before the boats could supply us with fresh water and fruit. As for disembarking, this was forbidden, unless we wanted to remain in the city and quarantine there.

As soon as the inspector’s boat came to ascertain whether we were sick, having arrived from the coast of Egypt, the sailing boats of the port were allowed to bring us the expected refreshments, and to receive our money while taking the usual precautions. For the tons of water, melons, watermelons and pomegranates that were passed to us, we were obliged to pour our coins, ghazis, piastres, and paras into basins of vinegar water that were placed within our reach.

Thus supplied, we had forgotten our internal quarrels. Unable to disembark for a few hours, and renouncing a sojourn in the city, I did not think it appropriate to send the Pasha my letter, which, moreover, might still act as a recommendation for me, at any other point of the ancient coast of Phoenicia which was subject to the Pashalik of Acre. This city, which the ancients called Akko, ‘the narrow’, and the Arabs Akka, was called Ptolemais until the time of the Crusades.

We set sail again, and henceforth our voyage was a celebration; we skimmed the coasts of Coele Syria (as the Romans named it) at a distance of a mile or so, and the sea, still clear and blue, reflected like a lake the graceful chain of mountains which runs from Carmel to Lebanon. At twenty-five miles from Saint-Jean-d’Acre, the town of Sur, formerly Tyre, appeared, with its causeway, built by Alexander the Great, joining the islet where the ancient city lay, which he was forced to besiege for so long, to the shore.

Six leagues further on was Saida, the ancient Sidon, whose mass of white houses crowded against the feet of those mountains inhabited by the Druze. These famous shores have few ruins to show as souvenirs of wealthy Phoenicia; what cities remain of a people dedicated exclusively to trade? Their splendour has passed like a shadow, like dust, and the curse of the Biblical books has been entirely realised, like everything that poets dream of, everything that the wisdom of nations denies!

However, on reaching one’s end, one tires of everything, even those beautiful shores, those azure waves. Here at last was the promontory called Raz-Beyrouth, with its grey rocks, dominated in the distance by the snowy peak of Mount Sannine. The coast is arid; the smallest details of the rocks, covered with reddish moss, are visible beneath the rays of a burning sun. We skimmed the coast, we turned towards the bay; immediately everything changed. A landscape full of freshness, shade and silence, a view of the Alps taken from the bosom of a Swiss lake, such is Beirut in calm weather. It is Europe and Asia melting in soft caress; it is, for every pilgrim a little tired of the sun and dust, a maritime oasis where one finds with delight, on the brow of the mountains, those things so melancholy in the North, so graceful and desired in the South: clouds!

O blessed clouds! Clouds of my homeland! I had forgotten your gifts! And the Eastern sun adds so greatly to your charm! In the morning, you are so gently tinted, half-pink, half-bluish; mythological depths, from whose bosom one always expects to see smiling divinities emerge; in the evening, there are marvellous blazes of colour, purple vaults that collapse and quickly disperse in violet flakes, while the sky passes from the hues of sapphire to those of emerald, a phenomenon rare in the countries of the North.

As we advanced, the verdure burst forth in different hues, and the dark tint of the ground and the buildings added still more to the freshness of the landscape. The town, at the end of the bay, seemed drowned in foliage, and, instead of the tiresome mass of whitewashed houses which constitutes most Arabian cities, I made out a collection of charming villas scattered over a space of eight miles or so. The buildings were clustered, it is true, around a notable point from which rose round and square towers; but this appeared to be only a central district indicated by numerous buildings in all colours.

Meanwhile, instead of entering, as I had expected, the narrow harbour crowded with small ships, we cut diagonally across the bay, and landed on an islet surrounded by rocks, where a few small buildings and a yellow flag represented the quarantine area, which, for the moment, was the only one allowed us.

Chapter 10: Quarantine

Captain Nicolas and his crew had become very friendly and courteous in their manner towards me. They were spending their quarantine period on board; but a boat, sent by the health inspector, came to transport the passengers to the islet, which, when viewed more closely, was more of a peninsula. A narrow cove among the rocks, shaded by ancient trees, led to the staircase of a kind of cloister whose pointed vaulting rested on stone pillars, and supported a cedar roof as in Catholic monasteries. The sea broke all around on the sandstone covered with algae, and all that was missing was a choir of monks, and the storm, to recall the first act of Charles Maturin’s play Bertram (or the ‘Castle of St. Aldebrand’, a Gothic tragedy).

We had to wait there for some time for the visit of the nazir, or Turkish director, who was kind enough to admit us at last to the joys of his domain. Buildings formed like cloisters succeeded the first, which, as the only one open on all sides, served for sanitising suspect goods. At the end of the promontory, an isolated pavilion, overlooking the sea, was indicated to us as a dwelling; it was the premises usually assigned to Europeans. The arcades that we had left on our right, contained Arab families camped out, so to speak, in vast rooms that served both as stables and lodgings. There, tethered horses quivered, and dromedaries passed their contorted necks and hairy heads between the bars; further on, whole tribes, crouching about their kitchen fires, turned round with a fierce air when they saw us pass the doors. However, we were allowed to walk two acres or so of land, sown with barley, and planted with mulberry-trees, and even to bathe in the sea under the supervision of a guard.

Once I became familiar with this wild, maritime place, I found our stay there charming. There was rest, and shade, and a variety of views to satisfy the most sublime reverie. On one side, the dark mountains of Lebanon, with their ridges of various hue, enamelled here and there with white by numerous Maronite and Druze villages, and the monasteries, scattered over thirty miles and more of horizon; on the other, in exchange for that upland chain, with the snowy front, which ends at Cape Batroun, the whole amphitheatre of Beirut, crowned with a fir-forest planted by Emir Fakhr al-Din II to halt the invasion of the desert sands. Crenellated towers, castles, and manor-houses, pierced by arched windows, and built in reddish stone, give the country a feudal and at the same time European aspect which recalls the miniatures in those knightly manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The Frankish ships at anchor in the roads, which the narrow port of Beirut cannot contain, further animated the picture.

Quarantine in Beirut was therefore quite bearable, and our days were spent either in dreaming beneath the thick shade of the sycamores and fig-trees, or in climbing a very picturesque rock whose cliffs embraced a natural basin where the sea’s waves broke softly. The place recalled descriptions of the rocky caves of the daughters of Nereus. We remained there all day long, isolated from the other quarantined inhabitants, and lying amidst the green seaweed, or struggling feebly against the foaming waves. At night, we were locked in the pavilion, where the mosquitoes and other insects gave us a less pleasant time. The long, tied shirts with masks, of which I have already spoken, were then of great assistance. As for the cooking, it consisted simply of bread and salted cheese, provided by the canteen; to this should be added eggs and chickens brought by peasants from the mountains; moreover, every morning, sheep were slaughtered in front of the door, the meat of which was sold to us at a piastre (twenty-five centimes) per pound. Further, Cyprus, at about half a piastre a bottle, was a treat worthy of the greatest European tables; I will admit, however, that one tires of that sweet wine when drinking it frequently, and I preferred the golden wine of Lebanon, which is something akin to Madeira, in its dry taste, and strength.

One day Captain Nicholas came to visit, with two of his sailors and the cabin-boy. We had become good friends again, and he had brought the hadji, who shook my hand with great effusion, perhaps fearing that I would complain of him once I was free to enter Beirut. I was, on my part, full of cordiality. We dined together, and the captain invited me to come and stay with him if I visited Jarabulus. After dinner, we walked on the shore; he took me aside, and made me observe the slave and the Armenian, who were talking together, seated below us on the shore. A few words in mixed French and Greek, and I understood his aspersion, which I rejected with marked incredulity. He shook his head, and, a little while after, returned to his boat, after taking affectionate leave of me.

— ‘Captain Nicolas’, I said to myself, ‘has taken to heart, my refusal to exchange the slave for his cabin boy.’

However, suspicion remained in my mind, challenging my vanity at least.

It should be understood that the violent scene which had taken place on the ship had resulted in a sort of coldness between the slave and myself. One of those ‘irreparable words’ of which the author of Adolphe, Benjamin Constant, spoke (see ‘Adolphe, Chapter IV’) had been uttered between us; the epithet ‘giaour’ had wounded me deeply.

— ‘So,’ I said to myself, ‘it has not proved difficult to persuade her that I have no rights over her; moreover, whether through advice or on reflection, she feels humiliated by belonging to a man of an inferior race according to Muslim ideas.’

The reduced situation of the Christian populations in the East has had its repercussion, ultimately, on the European, who is feared on the coast because of the apparatus of power, made visible in the passage of ships; but, in the inner regions where this woman had always lived, prejudice lives on in its entirety.

Nonetheless, I found difficult to believe that dissimulation was being practiced by that naive soul; the religious feeling so pronounced in her must surely have protected her from such baseness. I could not, on the other hand, hide from myself the Armenian’s advantages. Still young indeed, and handsome, possessing that Asiatic beauty, with firm and pure features, of a people born in the cradle of the world, he seemed like some charming girl who had taken the fancy to disguise herself as a man; his very costume, with the exception of the headdress, barely removed the illusion.

Here I am like Arnolphe (see Moliere’s play ‘L’école de Femmes’), spying on idle appearances, with the consciousness of being doubly ridiculous; for I am, after all, the master. I am experiencing the ill fortune not only of being deceived and robbed, but of repeating to myself, like a jealous character in comedy: ‘What a heavy burden it is to keep guard on a woman!... However,’ I said to myself almost immediately, ‘there is nothing surprising about it; he distracts and amuses her with his stories, he offers her a thousand niceties, while I, in trying to speak his language, must surely produce a comical effect, as an Englishman does, a man of the North, cold and heavy, in regard to a woman from my country. There is among the Levantines a warm expansiveness which must prove seductive indeed!’

From that moment, I confess, I seemed to note handshakes, tender words, which were not even curbed by my presence. I thought about this for some time; then concluded that I should adopt a firm resolution.

— ‘My dear fellow,’ I said to the Armenian, ‘what were you doing in Egypt?’

— ‘I was Tusun-Pasha’s secretary (Tusun Pasha, was the second son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the de facto ruler of Egypt; however Tusun had died in 1816!). I translated French newspapers and books for him; I wrote his letters to Turkish officials. He died suddenly, and I was dismissed; that was my position.’

— ‘And now, what do you plan to do?’

— ‘I hope to enter the service of the Pasha of Beirut. I know his treasurer, who is of my nation.’

— ‘And do you not think of marrying?’

— ‘I have no money to give as a dowry, and no family will grant me a wife otherwise.’

— ‘Come,’ I said to myself after a silence, ‘let me show myself to be magnanimous, let me make two people happy.’

I felt myself greater by this thought. Thus, I would free a slave and create an honest marriage. I would prove both a benefactor and a father!

I took the Armenian’s hands in mine and said to him:

— ‘You like her: marry her, she is yours!’

I would wish the whole world to have been a witness to this moving scene, this patriarchal picture: the Armenian astonished, confused by such magnanimity; the slave seated near us, still ignorant of the subject of our conversation but, it seemed to me, already unsettled and dreaming....

The Armenian raised his arms to the sky, as if stunned by my proposal.

— ‘What! I said to him, unhappy man, you hesitate!... You seduce a woman who belongs to another, you divert her from her duties, and then refuse to take charge of her when she is handed to you?’

But the Armenian failed to comprehend my reproach. His astonishment expressed itself in a series of energetic protests. He had never had the least idea of ​​the things I thought. He was so unhappy even, at such a supposition, that he hastened to inform the slave of it, and make her bear witness to his sincerity. Learning at the same time what I had said, she seemed hurt by it, and especially by the supposition that she could have paid attention to a simple raya (Turkish subject), a servant sometimes of the Turks, sometimes of the Franks, with no higher status than a yaoudi (Jew).

Thus, Captain Nicolas had led me into all sorts of ridiculous suppositions.... One can see in this the devious workings of the Greek mind!

The End of Part VIII of Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Travels in the Near East’