Charles Warner - In The Levant

“Oh,” I said, “if I am a distinguished American general, travelling with my lady in pursuit of Heaven knows what, I am glad to know it.”

Fortunately the peaceful father did not know anything more of war than I did, and I suppose my hastily assumed modesty of the soldier seemed to him the real thing. It was my first experience of anything like real war, the first time I had ever occupied any military position, and it did not seem to be so arduous as has been represented.

Great regret was expressed by the superior that they had not anticipated my arrival, in order to have entertained me in a more worthy manner; the convent was uncommonly full of pilgrims, and it would be difficult to lodge my suite as it deserved. Then there followed a long discussion between the father and one of the monks upon our disposition for the night.

“If we give the general and his lady the south room in the court, then the doctor”—etc., etc.

“Or,” urged the monk, “suppose the general and his lady occupy the cell number four, then mademoiselle can take”—etc., etc.

The military commander and his lady were at last shown into a cell opening out of the court, a lofty but narrow vaulted room, with brick floor and thick walls, and one small window near the ceiling. Instead of candles we had antique Roman lamps, which made a feeble glimmer in the cavern; the oddest water-jugs served for pitchers. It may not have been damp, but it felt as if no sun had ever penetrated the chill interior.

“What is all this nonsense of the general?” I asked Abd-el-Atti, as soon as I could get hold of that managing factotum.

“Dunno, be sure; these monk always pay more attention to ‘stinguish people.”

“But what did you say at the convent in Jaffa when you applied for a permit to lodge here?”

“Oh, I tell him my gentleman general American, but ‘stinguish; mebbe he done gone wrote ‘em that you ‘stinguish American general. Very nice man, the superior, speak Italian beautiful; when I give him the letter, he say he do all he can for the general and his suite; he sorry I not let him know ‘forehand.”

The dinner was served in the long refectory, and there were some twenty-five persons at table, mostly pilgrims to Jerusalem, and most of them of the poorer class. One bright Italian had travelled alone with her little boy all the way from Verona, only to see the Holy Sepulchre. The monks waited at table and served a very good dinner. Travellers are not permitted to enter the portion of the large convent which contains the cells of the monks, nor to visit any part of the old building except the chapel. I fancied that the jolly brothers who waited at table were rather glad to come into contact with the world, even in this capacity.

In the dining-room hangs a notable picture. It is the Virgin, enthroned, with a crown and aureole, holding the holy child, who is also crowned; in the foreground is a choir of white boys or angels. The Virgin and child are both black ; it is the Virgin of Ethiopia. I could not learn the origin of this picture; it was rude enough in execution to be the work of a Greek artist of the present day; but it was said to come from Ethiopia, where it is necessary to a proper respect for the Virgin that she should be represented black. She seems to bear something the relation to the Virgin of Judæa that Astarte did to the Grecian Venus. And we are again reminded that the East has no prejudice of color: “I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem”; “Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.”

The convent bells are ringing at early dawn, and though we are up at half past five, nearly all the pilgrims have hastily departed for Jerusalem. Upon the roof I find the morning fair. There are more minarets than spires in sight, but they stand together in this pretty little town without discord. The bells are ringing in melodious persuasion, but at the same time, in voices as musical, the muezzins are calling from their galleries; each summoning men to prayer in its own way. From these walls spectators once looked down upon the battles of cross and crescent raging in the lovely meadows,—battles of quite as much pride as piety. A common interest always softens animosity, and I fancy that monks and Moslems will not again resort to the foolish practice of breaking each other’s heads so long as they enjoy the profitable stream of pilgrims to the Holy Land.

After breakfast and a gift to the treasury of the convent according to our rank—I think if I were to stay there again it would be in the character of a common soldier—we embarked again in the ark, and jolted along behind the square-shouldered driver, who seemed to enjoy the rattling and rumbling of his clumsy vehicle. But no minor infelicity could destroy for us the freshness of the morning or the enjoyment of the lovely country. Although, in the jolting, one could not utter a remark about the beauty of the way without danger of biting his tongue in two, we feasted our eyes and let our imaginations loose over the vast ranges of the Old Testament story.

After passing through the fertile meadows of Ramleh, we came into a more rolling country, destitute of houses, but clothed on with a most brilliant bloom of wild-flowers, among which the papilionaceous flowers were conspicuous for color and delicacy. I found by the roadside a black calla (which I should no more have believed in than in the black Virgin, if I had not seen it). Its leaf is exactly that of our calla-lily; its flower is similar to, but not so open and flaring, as the white calla, and the pistil is large and very long, and of the color of the interior of the flower. The corolla is green on the outside, but the inside is incomparably rich, like velvet, black in some lights and dark maroon in others. Nothing could be finer in color and texture than this superb flower. Besides the blooms of yesterday we noticed buttercups, various sorts of the ranunculus, among them the scarlet and the shooting-star, a light purple flower with a dark purple centre, the Star of Bethlehem, and the purple wind-flower. Scarlet poppies and the still more brilliant scarlet anemones, dandelions, marguerites, filled all the fields with masses of color.

Shortly we come into the hills, through which the road winds upward, and the scenery is very much like that of the Adirondacks, or would be if the rocky hills of the latter were denuded of trees. The way begins to be lively with passengers, and it becomes us to be circumspect, for almost every foot of ground has been consecrated or desecrated, or in some manner made memorable. This heap of rubbish is the remains of a fortress which the Saracens captured, built by the Crusaders to guard the entrance of the pass, upon the site of an older fortification by the Maccabees, or founded upon Roman substructions, and mentioned in Judges as the spot where some very ancient Jew stayed overnight. It is also, no doubt, one of the stations that help us to determine with the accuracy of a surveyor the boundary between the territory of Benjamin and Judah. I try to ascertain all these localities and to remember them all, but I sometimes get Richard Cour de Lion mixed with Jonathan Maccabæus, and I have no doubt I mistook “Job’s convent” for the Castellum boni Latronis , a place we were specially desirous to see as the birthplace of the “penitent thief.” But whatever we confounded, we are certain of one thing: we looked over into the Valley of Ajalon. It was over this valley that Joshua commanded the moon to tarry while he smote the fugitive Amorites on the heights of Gibeon, there to the east.

The road is thronged with pilgrims to Jerusalem, and with travellers and their attendants,—gay cavalcades scattered all along the winding way over the rolling plain, as in the picture of the Pilgrims to Canterbury. All the transport of freight as well as passengers is by the backs of beasts of burden. There are long files of horses and mules staggering under enormous loads of trunks, tents, and bags. Dragomans, some of them got up in fierce style, with baggy yellow trousers, yellow kuffias bound about the head with a twisted fillet, armed with long Damascus swords, their belts stuck full of pistols, and a rifle slung on the back, gallop furiously along the line, the signs of danger but the assurances of protection. Camp boys and waiters dash along also, on the pack-horses, with a great clatter of kitchen furniture; even a scullion has an air of adventure as he pounds his rack-a-bone steed into a vicious gallop. And there are the Cook’s tourists, called by everybody “Cookies,” men and women struggling on according to the pace of their horses, conspicuous in hats with white muslin drapery hanging over the neck. Villanous-looking fellows with or without long guns, coming and going on the highway, have the air of being neither pilgrims nor strangers. We meet women returning from Jerusalem clad in white, seated astride their horses, or upon beds which top their multifarious baggage.