Ap. 26. [26 April 1914] We were off before dawn, a clear still morning.
And before we had been on our way two hours a great storm marched
across our path ahead of us. We, riding in a world darkened by its
august presence, watched and heard. The lightening flickered
through the cloud masses, the thunder spoke from them and on the
outskirts companies of hail, scourged and bent by a wind we could
not feel, hurried over the plain and took possession of the mountains.
Do you remember Shelley's song to the Spirit of Delight? -\n\nI love
snow and all the forms \n\nof the radiant frost; \n\nI love wind and
rain storms, anything almost \n\nThat is Nature's and may be
\n\nUntouched by man's misery. \n\nAnd after the pageant and the
splendour had all passed, malicious little scuds of rain drove before
us and tormented us for several hours. What with the weather and
what with his anxiety at oberving footprints of a large ghazzu - so he
held it to be - Assaf missed the way and we went a good deal further
north than we need have gone. Finally we hove up against tents and
camel herds of the Sba' ('Anazeh of Fahd Beg's people) and the
herdsmen set us right. We were in fact within sight of Palmyra
[Tadmur] and I can see the bay of desert wherein it lies from my tent.
For we have not reached Bukharra - I don't think we should have
reached it even if we had gone straight to it. Palmyra from the desert -
it must be nearly 10 miles from us - is a very different Palmyra from the
city you come to along the Roman road from Damascus [Dimashq
(Esh Shams, Damas)]. It is very different in spirit. One looks here
upon the Arab Palmyra, facing the desert, ruler of the desert and
dependent upon the desert for its life and force. I an wrong to call it
Palmyra; that was its bastard Roman name. Tudmor, Tudmor of the
Wilderness. And the Sba' know it by no other name. In the middle of
the morning we met a man walking solitary in the desert. We rode up
and accosted him in Arabic - he made no answer. Assaf opined that
he must be a Persian dervish. We addressed him in Turkish, Fattuh
and I, but he continued to regard us in complete silence. Then we
tried what words of Persian we could muster - with the same result.
With this we left him, after giving him a handful of bread, his
acceptance of which was the only act on his part which might be
described as intercourse with us. We rode off into the rain clouds to
the west and he continued his lonely way into the rain clouds to the
east. And what will become of him I cannot tell. He was heading for
the heart of an uninhabited desert. Don't you think that an odd story?