We
stayed here two days, most of which I spent in Feisal's company, and so
got a deeper experience of his method of command, at an interesting
season when the morale of his men was suffering heavily from the scare
reports brought in, and from the defection of the Northern Harb. Feisal,
fighting to make up their lost spirits, did it most surely by lending of
his own to everyone within reach. He was accessible to all who stood
outside his tent and waited for notice; and he never cut short
petitions, even when men came in chorus with their grief in a song of
many verses, and sang them around us in the dark. He listened always,
and, if he did not settle the case himself, called Sharraf or Faiz to
arrange it for him. This extreme patience was a further lesson to me of
what native headship in Arabia meant.
His self-control seemed equally great. When Mirzuk
el Tikheimi, his guest-master, came in from Zeid to explain the shameful
story of their rout, Feisal just laughed at him in public and sent him
aside to wait while he saw the sheikhs of the Harb and the Ageyl whose
carelessness had been mainly responsible for the disaster. These he
rallied gently, chaffing them for having done this or that, for having
inflicted such losses, or lost so much. Then he called back Mirzuk and
lowered the tent-flap: a sign that there was private business to be
done. I thought of the meaning of Feisal's name (the sword flashing
downward in the stroke) and feared a scene, but he made room for Mirzuk
on his carpet, and said, 'Come! tell us more of your "nights" and
marvels of the battle: amuse us.' Mirzuk, a good-looking, clever lad (a
little too sharp-featured) falling into the spirit of the thing, began,
in his broad, Ateibi twang, to draw for us word-pictures of young Zeid
in flight; of the terror of Ibn Thawab, that famous brigand; and,
ultimate disgrace, of how the venerable el Hussein, father of Sherif
Ali, the Harithi, had lost his coffee-pots!
Feisal, in speaking, had a rich musical voice, and
used it carefully upon his men. To them he talked in tribal dialect, but
with a curious, hesitant manner, as though faltering painfully among
phrases, looking inward for the just word. His thought, perhaps, moved
only by a little in front of his speech, for the phrases at last chosen
were usually the simplest,
which gave an effect emotional and sincere. It seemed possible, so thin
was the screen of words, to see the pure and the very brave spirit
shining out.
At other times he was full of humour
- that
invariable magnet of Arab goodwill. He spoke one night to the Rifaa
sheikhs when he sent them forward to occupy the plain this side of Bir
el Fagir, a tangled country of acacia and tamarisk thickets on the
imperceptible watershed of the long depression uniting Bruka and Bir
Said. He told them gently that the Turks were coming on, and that it was
their duty to hold them up and give God the credit of their victory;
adding that this would become impossible if they went to sleep. The old
men - and in Arabia elders mattered more than youths - broke out into
delighted speech, and, after saying that God would give him a victory,
or rather two victories, capped their wishes with a prayer that his life
might be prolonged in the accumulation of an unprecedented number of
victories. What was better, they kept effective watch all night, in the
strength of his exhortation.
The routine of our life in camp was simple. Just
before daybreak the army Imam used to climb to the head of the little
hill above the sleeping army, and thence utter an astounding call to
prayer. His voice was harsh and very powerful, and the hollow, like a
sounding-board, threw echoes at the hills which returned them with
indignant interest. We were effectually roused, whether we prayed or
cursed. As soon as he ended, Feisal's Imam cried gently and musically
from just outside the tent. In a minute, one of Feisal's five slaves
(all freed men, but refusing discharge till it was their pleasure: since
it was good and not unprofitable to be my lord's servant) came round to
Sharraf and myself with sweetened coffee. Sugar for the first cup in the
chill of dawn was considered fit.
An hour or so later, the flap of Feisal's sleeping
tent would be thrown back: his invitation to callers from the household.
There would be four or five present; and after the morning's news a tray
of breakfast would be carried in. The staple of this was dates in Wadi
Yenbo; sometimes Feisal's Circassian grandmother would send him a box of
her famous spiced cakes from Mecca; and sometimes Hejris, the body
slave, would give us odd biscuits and cereals of his own trying. After
breakfast we would play with bitter coffee and sweet tea in alternation,
while Feisal's correspondence was dealt with by dictation to his
secretaries. One of these
was Faiz el Ghusein the adventurous; another was the Imam, a sad-faced
person made conspicuous in the army by the baggy umbrella hanging from
his saddle-bow. Occasionally a man was given private audience at this
hour, but seldom; as the sleeping tent was strictly for the Sherif's own
use. It was an ordinary bell tent, furnished with cigarettes, a
camp-bed, a fairly good Kurd rug, a poor Shirazi, and the delightful old
Baluch prayer-carpet on which he prayed.
At about eight o'clock in the morning, Feisal would
buckle on his ceremonial dagger and walk across to the reception tent,
which was floored with two horrible kilims. Feisal would sit down at the
end of the tent facing the open side, and we with our backs against the
wall, in a semicircle out from him. The slaves brought up the rear, and
clustered round the open wall of the tent to control the besetting
suppliants who lay on the sand in the tent-mouth, or beyond, waiting
their turn. If possible, business was got through by noon, when the Emir
liked to rise.
We of the household, and any guests, then
reassembled in the living tent; and Hejris and Salem carried in the
luncheon tray, on which were as many dishes as circumstances permitted.
Feisal was an inordinate smoker, but a very light eater, and he used to
make-believe with his fingers or a spoon among the beans, lentils,
spinach, rice, and sweet cakes till he judged that we had had enough,
when at a wave of his hand the tray would disappear, as other slaves
walked forward to pour water for our fingers at the tent door. Fat men,
like Mohammed Ibn Shefia, made a comic grievance of the Emir's quick and
delicate meals, and would have food of their own prepared for them when
they came away. After lunch we would talk a little, while sucking up two
cups of coffee, and savouring two glasses full of syrup-like green tea.
Then till two in the afternoon the curtain of the living tent was down,
signifying that Feisal was sleeping, or reading, or doing private
business. Afterwards he would sit again in the reception tent till he
had finished with all who wanted him. I never saw an Arab leave him
dissatisfied or hurt – a tribute to his tact and to his memory; for he
seemed never to halt for loss of a fact, nor to stumble over a
relationship.
If there were time after second audience, he would
walk with his friends, talking of horses or plants, looking at camels,
or asking someone the names of the visible land features. The sunset
prayer was at times public, though Feisal was not outwardly very pious.
After it he saw people
individually in the living tent, planning the night's reconnaissance's
and patrols - for most of the field-work was done after dark. Between
six and seven there was brought in the evening meal, to which all
present in headquarters were called by the slaves. It resembled the
lunch, except that cubes of boiled mutton were sorted through the great
tray of rice, Medfa el Suhur, the mainstay of appetite. We
observed silence till all had eaten.
This meal ended our day, save for the stealthy
offering by a bare-footed slave of a tray of tea-glasses at protracted
intervals. Feisal did not sleep till very late, and never betrayed a
wish to hasten our going. In the evening he relaxed as far as possible
and avoided avoidable work. He would send out for some local sheikh to
tell stories of the district, and histories of the tribe and its
genealogy; or the tribal poets would sing us their war narratives: long
traditional forms with stock epithets, stock sentiments, stock incidents
grafted afresh on the efforts of each generation. Feisal was
passionately fond of Arabic poetry, and would often provoke recitations,
judging and rewarding the best verses of the night. Very rarely he would
play chess, with the unthinking directness of a fencer, and brilliantly.
Sometimes, perhaps for my benefit, he told stories of what he had seen
in Syria, and scraps of Turkish secret history, or family affairs. I
learned much of the men and parties in the Hejaz from his lips.
