On reaching
Baghdad he made a side-trip into Kurdistan, and became so enamored of the
life of the tribesmen that he lived there with them on and off for two
years--years filled with adventure of the most thrilling sort.
I had finished a translation of Xenophon shortly before and found it a
very different book than when I was plodding drearily through it in the
original at school. Here it was all vivid and real before my eyes, with
the scene of the great battle of Cunaxa only a few miles from Museyib.
Babylon was in sight of the valiant Greeks, but all through the loss of a
leader it was never to be theirs. On the ground itself one could
appreciate how great a masterpiece the retreat really was, and the
hardiness of the soldiers which caused Xenophon to regard as a "snow
sickness" the starvation and utter weariness which made the numbed men lie
down and die in the snow of the Anatolian highlands. He remarks naively
that if you could build a fire and give them something hot to eat, the
sickness was dispelled!
The rain continued to fall and the mud became deeper and deeper. It was
all the Arabs could do to get their produce into market. The bazaar was
not large, but was always thronged. I used to sit in one of the
coffee-houses and drink coffee or tea and smoke the long-stemmed
water-pipe, the narghile. My Arabic was now sufficiently fluent for
ordinary conversation, and in these clubs of the Arab I could hear all the
gossip.
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