With the Turks in Palestine

CHAPTER IX

A ROB­BER BARON OF PALES­TINE

Beirut is a city of about two hun­dred thou­sand in­hab­itants, half of whom are Chris­tians and the rest Mo­hammedans and Jews. The pinch of hunger was al­ready felt there. Bread was to be had on­ly on tick­ets is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment, and prices in gen­er­al were ex­treme­ly high. The pop­ula­tion were dis­con­tent­ed and tur­bu­lent, and ev­ery day thou­sands of wom­en came be­fore the gov­er­nor's res­idence to cry and protest against the scarci­ty of bread.

The Al­lies' war­ships of­ten passed near the town, but the peo­ple were not afraid of them, for it was known that the Al­lies had no in­ten­tion of bom­bard­ing the cities. On­ly once had a bom­bard­ment tak­en place. To­ward the end of March, 1915, a French war­ship ap­proached the bay of Haifa and land­ed an of­fi­cer with a let­ter to the com­man­dant of that town giv­ing no­tice of his in­ten­tion to bom­bard the Ger­man Con­sulate at 3 P.M. sharp. This was in re­tal­ia­tion for the pro­pa­gan­da car­ried on by the con­sul, Leutweld von Hard­egg, and chiefly be­cause of his des­ecra­tion of the grave of Bona­parte's sol­diers. The con­sul had time to pack up his archives and valu­ables, and he left his house be­fore three. The bom­bard­ment be­gan ex­act­ly at three. Fif­teen shells were fired with a won­der­ful pre­ci­sion. Not one house in the neigh­bor­hood of the con­sulate was touched, but the con­sulate it­self was a heap of ru­ins af­ter a few shells had struck it. The pop­ula­tion was ex­ceed­ing­ly calm. On­ly the Ger­man colony was pan­ic-​strick­en, and on ev­ery Ger­man house an Amer­ican flag was raised. It was rather hu­mor­ous to see all the Ger­mans who were ac­tive in the Turk­ish army in one ca­pac­ity or an­oth­er seek safe­ty by means of this trick.

This bom­bard­ment had a sober­ing ef­fect up­on the Mo­hammedan pop­ula­tion. They saw that the Al­lies were not whol­ly ig­no­rant of what was go­ing on in the coun­try and that they could re­tal­iate, and safe­ty for the non-​Mo­hammedans in­creased ac­cord­ing­ly.

In gen­er­al Beirut was a rather qui­et and safe place. The pres­ence of an Amer­ican cruis­er in the port had much to do with that. The Amer­ican sailors were al­lowed to come ashore three times a week, and they spent their mon­ey lav­ish­ly. It was es­ti­mat­ed that Beirut was get­ting more than five thou­sand dol­lars a week out of them. But the na­tives were es­pe­cial­ly im­pressed by the man­li­ness and quick ac­tion of the Amer­ican boys. Fre­quent­ly a few sailors were in­volved in a street fight with scores of Arabs, and they al­ways held their own. In a short time the Amer­icans be­came feared, which in the Ori­ent is equiv­alent to say­ing they were re­spect­ed. The Beirut peo­ple are fa­mous for their fight­ing spir­it, but this spir­it was not man­ifest­ed af­ter a few weeks of in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance with the Amer­ican blue-​jack­ets.

My in­spec­tion of the dev­as­ta­tion caused by the lo­custs com­plet­ed, I re­turned home. The news that greet­ed me there was alarm­ing. I must nar­rate with some de­tail the events which fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed me to leave the coun­try. About one hour's ride on horse­back from our vil­lage lives a fam­ily of Turk­ish no­bles, the head of which was Sadik Pasha, broth­er of the fa­mous Ki­amil Pasha, sev­er­al times Grand Vizier of the Em­pire. Sadik, who had been ex­iled from Con­stantino­ple, came to Pales­tine and bought great tracts of land near my peo­ple. Af­ter his death his sons--good-​for-​noth­ing, wild fel­lows--were forced to sell most of the es­tate--all ex­cept one Fewzi Bey, who re­tained his part of the land and lived on it. Here he col­lect­ed a band of friends as worth­less as him­self and grad­ual­ly com­menced a ca­reer of plun­der­ing and “fright­ful­ness” much like that of the rob­ber barons of me­di­ae­val Ger­many. Be­fore the out­break of the war he con­fined his at­ten­tions chiefly to the Arabs, whom he treat­ed shame­ful­ly. He raid­ed cat­tle and crops and car­ried off girls and wom­en in broad day­light. On one oc­ca­sion he stopped a wed­ding pro­ces­sion and car­ried off the young bride. Then he seized the bride­groom, against whom he bore a grudge, and sub­ject­ed the poor Bedouin to the basti­na­do un­til he con­sent­ed to di­vorce his wife by pro­nounc­ing the words, “I di­vorce thee,” three times in the pres­ence of wit­ness­es, ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammedan cus­tom. This Bedouin was the grand­son of the Sheikh Hilou, a holy man of the re­gion up­on whose grave the Arabs are ac­cus­tomed to make their prayers. But we vil­lagers of Zi­cron-​Ja­cob had nev­er sub­mit­ted to Fewzi Bey in any way; our young men were or­ga­nized and armed, and af­ter a few en­coun­ters he let us alone.

Af­ter the mo­bi­liza­tion, how­ev­er, and the tak­ing away of our arms, this out­law saw that his chance had come. He be­gan to send his men and his camels in­to our fields to har­vest our crops and car­ry them off. This pil­lage con­tin­ued un­til the lo­custs came--Fewzi, in the mean while, be­com­ing so bold that he would gal­lop through the streets of our vil­lage with his horse­men, shoot­ing right and left in­to the air and in­sult­ing old men and wom­en. He boast­ed--ap­par­ent­ly with rea­son--that the au­thor­ities at Haifa were pow­er­less to touch him.

[IL­LUS­TRA­TION: HAIFA AND THE BAY OF AK­KA. LOOK­ING EAST FROM MOUNT CARMEL]

There was one hope left. Dje­mal Pasha had boast­ed that he had in­tro­duced law and or­der; the coun­try was un­der mil­itary rule; it re­mained to see what he would say and do when the crimes of Fewzi Bey were brought to his no­tice. Ac­cord­ing­ly, armed with my _boy­ouroul­ton_, or pass­port, of a lo­cust-​in­spec­tor, I rode to Jerusalem, where I pro­cured, through my broth­er, who was then in fa­vor, an in­ter­view with Dje­mal Pasha. He re­ceived me on the very day of my ar­rival, and lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly while for a whole hour I poured out the sto­ry of Fewzi Bey's out­rages. I put my whole heart in­to the plea and wound up by ask­ing if it was to the cred­it of the pro­gres­sive Young Turks to shel­ter feu­dal abus­es of a by­gone age. Dje­mal seemed to be im­pressed. He sprang from his chair, be­gan walk­ing up and down the room; then with a great dra­mat­ic ges­ture he ex­claimed, “Jus­tice shall be ren­dered!” and as­sured me that a com­mis­sion of army of­fi­cers would be sent at once to start an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I re­turned to Zi­cron-​Ja­cob with high hopes.

Sure enough, a few days lat­er Fewzi Bey was sum­moned to Jerusalem; at the same time the “com­mis­sion,” which had dwin­dled to one sin­gle of­fi­cer on se­cret mis­sion, put in an ap­pear­ance and be­gan to make in­quiries among the na­tives. He got lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion at first, for they lived in mor­tal ter­ror of the out­law; they grew bold­er, how­ev­er, when they learned his pur­pose. Com­plaints and tes­ti­monies came pour­ing in, and in four days the of­fi­cer had the names of hun­dreds of wit­ness­es, es­tab­lish­ing no less than fifty-​two crimes of the most se­ri­ous na­ture. Fewzi's friends and rel­atives, in the mean while, were do­ing their ut­most to stem the tide of ac­cu­sa­tions. The Kaimakam (lieu­tenant- gov­er­nor) of Haifa came in per­son to our vil­lage and threat­ened the el­ders with all sorts of sever­ities if they did not re­tract the charges they had made. But they stood firm. Had not Dje­mal Pasha, com­man­der-​in- chief of the armies in Pales­tine, giv­en his word of hon­or that we should have re­dress?

We were soon shown the depth of our naivete in fan­cy­ing that jus­tice could be done in Turkey by a Turk. Fewzi Bey came back from Jerusalem, not in con­vict's clothes, but in the uni­form of a Turk­ish of­fi­cer! Dje­mal Pasha had com­mis­sioned him com­man­dant of the Mou­ja­had­deen (re­li­gious mili­tia) of the en­tire re­gion! It was bad enough to stand him as an out­law; now we had to sub­mit to him as an of­fi­cer. He came rid­ing in­to our vil­lage dai­ly, or­der­ing ev­ery­body about and pick­ing me out for dis­tin­guished spite­ful­ness.

My po­si­tion soon be­came un­bear­able. I was, of course, known as the or­ga­niz­er of the young men's union which for so long had put up a spir­it­ed re­sis­tance to Fewzi; I was still looked up­on as a lead­er of the younger spir­its, and I knew that soon­er or lat­er Fewzi would try to make good his threat, of­ten re­peat­ed, that he would “shoot me like a dog.” It was hard­ly like­ly that an open at­tempt on my life would be made. When Am­bas­sador Mor­gen­thau vis­it­ed Pales­tine, he had stayed in our vil­lage and giv­en my fam­ily the ev­idence of his sin­cere friend­ship. These things count in the East, and I soon got the rep­uta­tion of hav­ing in­flu­en­tial friends. How­ev­er, there were oth­er ways of dis­pos­ing of me. One evening, about sun­set, while I was rid­ing through a val­ley near our vil­lage, my horse shied vi­olent­ly in pass­ing a clump of bush­es. I gave him the spur and turned and rode to­ward the bush­es just in time to see a horse­man dash out wild­ly with a ri­fle across his sad­dle. I kept the in­ci­dent to my­self, but I was more cau­tious and kept my eyes open wher­ev­er I went. One af­ter­noon, a fort­night lat­er, as I was rid­ing to Hed­era, an­oth­er Jew­ish vil­lage, two hours' ride away, a shot was fired from be­hind a sand-​dune. The bul­let burned a hole in the lapel of my coat.

That night I had a long talk with my broth­er. There was no doubt what­ev­er in his mind that I should try to leave the coun­try, while I, on the con­trary, could not bear to think of de­sert­ing my peo­ple at the cri­sis of their for­tunes. It was a beau­ti­ful night, such a night, I think, as on­ly Pales­tine can show, a white, serene, moon-​bathed night. The roar of the Mediter­ranean came out of the still­ness as if to re­mind us that help and sal­va­tion could come on­ly from the sea, the sea up­on which scores of the war­ships of the Al­lies were sail­ing back and forth. We had ar­gued in­to the small hours be­fore I yield­ed to his per­sua­sion.

[IL­LUS­TRA­TION: THE BAZAAR OF JAF­FA ON A MAR­KET DAY]