The Talbot Mundy Megapack - Talbot Mundy

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fourth wall, was a thing like an altar of dressed stone, on which the coffee was prepared in dozens of little copper pots.

      The benches being pretty well occupied, I was about to squat down on the floor, but they made room for me close to the front door, so I squatted on the corner of the bench and tucked my legs under me. Suliman dropped down on the floor in front of me with his head about level with my knees.

      The other occupants of the room were all Syrian Arabs—not a Bedouin among them. All of them wore more or less European clothing, with the inevitable tarboosh, each set at a different angle. You can guess the mentality of the Syrian by the angle of that red Islamic symbol he wears on his head. The black tassel normally hangs behind, and the steady-going conservatives and all who take their religion seriously, wear the inverted flower-pot-shaped affair as nearly straight up as the cranium permits.

      But once let a Syrian take up new politics, join the Young Turk Party, forswear religion, or grow cynical about accepted doctrine, and the angle of his tarboosh shows it, just as surely as the angle of the London Cockney’s “bowler” betrays irreverence and the New York gangster’s “lid” expresses self-contempt disguised as self-esteem.

      The head-gears were set at every possible angle in that coffee-shop of Yussuf’s, from the backward tilt of the breezy optimist to the far-forward thrust down over the eye of malignant cynicism, which usually went with folded arms, legs thrust out straight, and heels together on the floor.

      Yussuf brought me coffee without waiting to be asked. I paid him a half piastre for it, which is half the proper price, and utterly ignored his expostulation. He touched me on the shoulder, displayed the coin in the palm of his hand and went through a prodigious pantomime. I did not even try to appear interested. He ordered Suliman to explain to me.

      “Mafish mukhkh!” said the boy, touching his own forehead.

      My real motive was to act as differently as possible from the white man, who always pays twice what he should. By establishing the suggestion of accustomed meanness, I hoped to offset any breaks I might make presently. Spies, and people of that kind, usually have plenty of money for their needs, so that by acting the part of a man unused to spending except in minute driblets I stood a better chance of not being detected.

      But I was in luck. I have often noticed, so that it has become almost an article of creed with me, that luck invariably breaks that way. It almost never turns up blind. You sit down and wait for luck, and it all goes to the other fellow. But start to use your wits, even clumsily, and the luck comes along and squanders itself on you.

      “He is certainly from Damascus,” laughed one of the customers. “The price is a half piastre in Damascus at the meaner shops.”

      I did not know anything about Damascus then—had never been there; but from that minute it never entered the mind of one of those men to doubt that Damascus was my home-city, so easily satisfied by trifling suggestions is the unscientific human. Yussuf went back to his charcoal stove grumbling to himself in Turkish.

      But there was still one question in doubt. They seemed satisfied that I was really deaf and dumb, but in that land of countless mission schools and alien speech there is always a chance that even children know a word or two of French. They tested Suliman with simple questions, such as who was his mother and where was he born; but he did not need to act that part, he was utterly ignorant of French.

      So they proceeded to ignore the two of us and turn their political acrimony loose in French, discussing the maddest, most unmoral schemes with the gusto of small boys playing pirates. There seemed to be almost as many rival political parties as men in the room. The only approach to unity was when they agreed to accuse and destroy. As for constructive agreement, they had none, and every one’s suggestion for improvement was sneered at by all the rest. They were not even agreed about the Zionists, except hating them; they quarreled about what would be the best way to take advantage of them before wiping them out of existence.

      But they all saw exquisite humour in the item of news that Eisernstein had taken so to heart.

      “That was Noureddin Ali’s idea! He is a genius! To accuse the Zionists of offering two million pounds for the Dome of the Rock—ah! who else could have thought of it! The story has spread all through Jerusalem, and is on its way to the villages. In two days it will be common gossip from Damascus to Beersheba. In a week it will be known from end to end of Egypt; then Arabia; then India! Ho! When the Indian Moslems get the news—the Indian troops in Palestine will send it by mail—then what a furor! Then what anger! That was finesse! That was true statesmanship! Never was a shrewder genius than Noureddin Ali!”

      “Don’t shout his name too loud,” said somebody. “The Administration suspects him already.”

      “Bah! Who in this room is a friend of the Administration? The Administrator is a broken shard; the British will summon him home for inefficiency. Besides, there is only one man in Jerusalem of whom Noureddin is in the least afraid—that Major Grim, the American. And whoever would give the price of a cup of coffee for a lease of the life of Major Grim in the circumstances would do better to toss the money to the first beggar he meets!”

      “Hssh!”

      “Hah! All the same, I would not choose to be Noureddin’s enemy.”

      “There is another one who will share that opinion—or so I have heard. I was told that Bedreddin Shah, a recent recruit in the police, stumbled by accident on certain evidence and demanded a huge sum for silence. Hee-hee! How much will anybody give Bedreddin Shah for his prospect?”

      “Hssh!”

      “What did Bedreddin Shah discover?”

      “Nobody knows.”

      “You mean nobody will tell.”

      “The same thing.”

      “How long could a secret be kept in Jerusalem, if you people were informed of what is going on? You are good for propaganda, that is all! You can talk—Allah! how you all talk! But as for doing anything, or keeping a secret until a thing is done, you are no better than magpies.”

      The last speaker was a rather fat man, over in the corner by the scullery door. He had a nose like Sultan Abdul Hamid’s and large, elongated eyes that looked capable of seeing things on either side of him while he stared straight forward. Even in that dark corner you could see they had the alligator-hue that one associates with cruelty. He had the massive shoulders and forward-stooping position as he sat cross-legged on the seat that suggest deliberate purpose devoid of hurry.

      They all resented what he said, but none seemed disposed to quarrel with him. One or two remonstrated mildly, but he ignored their remarks, busying himself with digging out a cigarette from a gold case set with jewels; after he had lighted it very thoughtfully and examined the end once or twice to make sure that it burned just right, he let it hang between his lips in a way that accentuated the angle of his bulbous nose. You wondered whether he owned a harem, and what the ladies thought of him.

      “Will you sit and brag in here all day?” he asked after a few minutes. “Yussuf must be getting rich, you sip so much coffee. It is not particularly good for Yussuf to get rich; it will make him lazy, as most of you are.”

      The chattering had ceased, although there were several attempts to break that uncomfortable silence with inane re­marks. His ravenish, unpleasant voice seemed to act on the company like a chill wind, depriving treason of its warm so­cia­ble­ness but leaving in the sting.

      They did not

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