The Innocents Abroad
enchanted carpets.
It was fairly dark a few minutes after we got within the wall, and we
rode long distances through wonderfully crooked streets, eight to ten
feet wide, and shut in on either side by the high mud-walls of the
gardens. At last we got to where lanterns could be seen flitting about
here and there, and knew we were in the midst of the curious old city.
In a little narrow street, crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm
of uncouth Arabs, we alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall
entered the hotel. We stood in a great flagged court, with flowers and
citron trees about us, and a huge tank in the centre that was receiving
the waters of many pipes. We crossed the court and entered the rooms
prepared to receive four of us. In a large marble-paved recess between
the two rooms was a tank of clear, cool water, which was kept running
over all the time by the streams that were pouring into it from half a
dozen pipes. Nothing, in this scorching, desolate land could look so
refreshing as this pure water flashing in the lamp-light; nothing could
look so beautiful, nothing could sound so delicious as this mimic rain to
ears long unaccustomed to sounds of such a nature. Our rooms were large,
comfortably furnished, and even had their floors clothed with soft,
cheerful-tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see a carpet again,
for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like, stone-paved
parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not know what it is.
They make one think of the grave all the time. A very broad, gaily
caparisoned divan, some twelve or fourteen feet long, extended across one
side of each room, and opposite were single beds with spring mattresses.
There were great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All this luxury
was as grateful to systems and senses worn out with an exhausting day's
travel, as it was unexpected--for one can not tell what to expect in a
Turkish city of even a quarter of a million inhabitants.
I do not know, but I think they used that tank between the rooms to draw
drinking water from; that did not occur to me, however, until I had
dipped my baking head far down into its cool depths. I thought of it
then, and superb as the bath was, I was sorry I had taken it, and was
about to go and explain to the landlord. But a finely curled and scented
poodle dog frisked up and nipped the calf of my leg just then, and before
I had time to think, I had soused him to the bottom of the tank, and when
I saw a servant coming with a pitcher I went off and left the pup trying
to climb out and not succeeding very well. Satisfied revenge was all I
needed to make me perfectly happy, and when I walked in to supper that
first night in Damascus I was in that condition. We lay on those divans
a long time, after supper, smoking narghilies and long-stemmed chibouks,
and talking about the dreadful ride of the day, and I knew then what I
had sometimes known before--that it is worth while to get tired out,
because one so enjoys resting afterward.
In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of note that we had to
send for these things. I said Damascus was an old fossil, and she is.
Any where else we would have been assailed by a clamorous army of
donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars--but in Damascus they so
hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse
whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his person was not always
safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory
out of Arabia. Where you see one green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the
honored sign that my lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you
will see a dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest
looking villains we have seen. All the veiled women we had seen yet,
nearly, left their eyes exposed, but numbers of these in Damascus
completely hid the face under a close-drawn black veil that made the
woman look like a mummy. If ever we caught an eye exposed it was
quickly hidden from our contaminating Christian vision; the beggars
actually passed us by without demanding bucksheesh; the merchants in the
bazaars did not hold up their goods and cry out eagerly, “Hey, John!”
or “Look this, Howajji!” On the contrary, they only scowled at us and
said never a word.
The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange
Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as
we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These
persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours
together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired
themselves or fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over their
heads occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount and hurry
on again. We were banged against sharp corners, loaded porters, camels,
and citizens generally; and we were so taken up with looking out for
collisions and casualties that we had no chance to look about us at all.
We rode half through the city and through the famous “street which is
called Straight” without seeing any thing, hardly. Our bones were nearly
knocked out of joint, we were wild with excitement, and our sides ached
with the jolting we had suffered. I do not like riding in the Damascus
street-cars.
We were on our way to the reputed houses of Judas and Ananias. About
eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago, Saul, a native of Tarsus, was
particularly bitter against the new sect called Christians, and he left
Jerusalem and started across the country on a furious crusade against
them. He went forth “breathing threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord.”
“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there
shined round about him a light from heaven:
“And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me?'
“And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he trembled,
and was astonished, and said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?'”
He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one would tell
him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers stood speechless and
awe-stricken, for they heard the mysterious voice but saw no man. Saul
rose up and found that that fierce supernatural light had destroyed his
sight, and he was blind, so “they led him by the hand and brought him to
Damascus.” He was converted.
Paul lay three days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during that time
he neither ate nor drank.
There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ananias, saying,
“Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire at
the house of Judas, for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for behold, he
prayeth.”
Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul before, and
he had his doubts about that style of a “chosen vessel” to preach the
gospel of peace. However, in obedience to orders, he went into the
“street called Straight” (how he found his way into it, and after he did,
how he ever found his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be
accounted for by the fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.)
He found Paul and restored him, and ordained him a preacher; and from
this old house we had hunted up in the street which is miscalled
Straight, he had started out on that bold missionary career which he
prosecuted till his death. It was not the house of the disciple who sold
the Master for thirty pieces of silver. I make this explanation in
justice to Judas, who was a far different sort of man from the person
just referred to. A very different style of man, and lived in a very
good house. It is a pity we do not know more about him.
I have given, in the above paragraphs, some more information for people
who will not read Bible history until they are defrauded into it by some
such method as this. I hope that no friend of progress and education
will obstruct or interfere with my peculiar mission.
The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but not as
straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to commit himself; he
does not say it is the street which is straight, but the “street which is
called Straight.” It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious
remark in the Bible, I believe. We traversed the street called Straight
a good way, and then turned off and called at the reputed house of
Ananias. There is small question that a part of the original house is
there still; it is an old room twelve or fifteen feet under ground, and
its masonry is evidently ancient. If Ananias did not live there in St.
Paul's time, somebody else did, which is just as well. I took a drink
out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the water was just as fresh
as if the well had been dug yesterday.
We went out toward the north end of the city to see the place where the
disciples let Paul down over the Damascus wall at dead of night--for he
preached Christ so fearlessly in Damascus that the people sought to kill
him, just as they would to-day for the same offense, and he had to escape
and flee to Jerusalem.
Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at a tomb which
purported to be that of St. George who killed the dragon, and so on out
to the hollow place under a rock where Paul hid during his flight till
his pursuers gave him up; and to the mausoleum of the five thousand
Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say
those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and
children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all
through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was
dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and
the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the “infidel
dogs.” The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and
Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians
were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a
Christian in Damascus!--and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And
how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again!
It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing
to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved
for a thousand years. It hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to
eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have
eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our
Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which they
put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! I never disliked a
Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready
to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good
breeding or good judgment to interfere.
In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as their
little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that way.
In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That was
three thousand years ago. He says: “Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them
and be clean?” But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was,
long ago. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the
favorite of the king and lived in great state. “He was a mighty man of
valor, but he was a leper.” Strangely enough, the house they point out
to you now as his, has been turned into a leper hospital, and the inmates
expose their horrid deformities and hold up their hands and beg for
bucksheesh when a stranger enters.