BY CONVOY TO BAGDAD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3379, 20 June 1927, Page 2

BY CONVOY TO BAGDAD.

BY MOTOR CAR ACROSS THE SYRIAN DESERT TO IRAQ.

(By Freda u White.)

The Mandatories of the Near East are busy bestowing the inventions of the West upon their cnarges. Some of their gifts are good, some evil* none is so romantic as the Overland Desert Mail. In 1.923 two brothers called Nairn, New Zealanders, organised a service of motor cars running weekly between Beirut and Baghdad. There is a deal of significance! packed into that statement. Jt means the opening of the land door to the East, that was locked through the live centuries of Turkish rule. It means a quick route to India. Jt may mean a great shifting in the tides of trade. And meantime it provides a very interesting journey to Iraq. .Last year the cars went South to Jerusalem, to avoid the region disordered by the Druse war. For the overland mail is dependent on three things: the condition of the desert surface the condition of mind of the Bedouins, and. of course, the condition of the cars and drivers.

When the tribes ot the mid-Syrian Desert arc in a state of unrest, the cars must traverse the inferior surface of the more southerly route, or run North to Palmyra and Homs. The convoy in which the writer travelled is worth describing as a typical “good run” at the best time of year for scenery. it started from Joru-

salcm on March 11, and consisted of three cars all American, to the shame of the unenterprising British manufacturers. There was a relief mechanic as well as the drivers, nine men passengers and one woman. The cars were piled to the level of the door-tops with mails and mixed luggage, most of it of the tin, “for tropical use,” variety. Tims getting into the front seats involved a clamber, at which passengers grew more expert till by the journey’s end they skipped in like local black goats. The dominant factor in the varied load was the mails. The passengers were relatively of little consequence, and the ruthless driving, fit to break the driver’s endurance, was because of that phrase “tinder the contract with the Government of Iraq to carry the mails.” The convoy left Jerusalem at hall past two in the afternoon. It was a late start, the convoy-leader hesitating owing to the news of a washout in the road near the Alienin' Bridge over the Jordan. The news was true enough.. After the sensational drop to the Dead Sea, the road through the strange kopjes of the valley was damp and sticky and of the embanked approach to the bridge 30 metres had been washed away by a flood of the day before. The loading car took a rudimentary side-track which was being made in the slime by a gang of Arab workmen. But not being a tank, it failed to scale the lonrfoot embankment at the far end; its front wheels stuck, and the hack wheels got hopelessly hogged. The second car tried to gob up beside it, and stuck too. The third waited cautiously on the road

Then appeared a little Englishman in charge of, a road gang. Me had tho worn-out look of everyone who has to work in that terrible valley. But there was nothing worn-out about Ins language when he addressed the road gang, promising them much backsheesh if they got the cars out, and (as far as I could understand) death if they left them encumbering bis sidetrack. After this oration the gang hung cm to a tow-rope and pushed at the hack with such will and such shouts of “ Yallah !” that they lifted the loading car bodily on to the road. It then towed the others out fairly easily. This interlude occupied -Id minutes. It is typical of what may happen in the rainy season. For tho Syrian desert is not sand, but soil, which an hour’s downpour converts into soft mud. And when, as is normal, there is no road gang handy, the ears may stick until fair weather dries the surface. The convoy has once taken 11 days to get through; the one previous to ours was hung up for two nights. The drivers, however, accept those fortunes of the desert with perfect philosophy.

Alleby Bridge is one of the reminders of the War that arc still heartshaking after a decade of peace. East of it the road runs into Transjordan, a land always visible from Jerusalem, when the Mountains of Boah look like the Mills of Dream. And id most dwellers in Palestine they remain as unsubstantial as a dream; few of them cross Jordan. For what is there on the other side? The ruins of Greco-Ro-man cities built in the days of a dead prosperity; a fertile land unfilled; a Imlf-wiid people ruled by the Amir Abdulla, one of the several Near Eastern potentates, kings by grace of tho British Aii- Force.

The ears ran along a road, loss good than the Palestine roads, hut passable enough. Presently it began to climb a steep-rising glen. The contrast of this westward-facing ravine with the descent from Judea was extraordinary. Instead of naked “brown paper” slopes, tho Hills of Moab were thick in flowers. The wady (stream) in the glen was half hidden by oleanders, insi Mushing into bloom. its sides wore

’!-:i' limit with marigolds, mustard, scarlet anemones, poppies, and ;• thousand (Imvors loss distinct. For all ilio vividness of the near color, however. the further hills wore a purple aurooh- reminiscent of the West Highlands, and it soon appeared why. There was a storm coining. Soon after flic hond whence his Salt was momentarily visible, a perpendicular town, we were overtaken hy the violent driving rain of the uplands. The taciturn Se.it driving - iiiv ear opened his mouth: “1 dnuhfc.’’ said he, “we’ll not he getting lar to-morrow morning,” 'i he heights once gained, Transjordan is a plateau. The road runs stmight across the green, waste land, through Suweileh. a Circassian village planted hy the Turks to keep the count ry (|uiet. r fhr- Circassians keep iln'inselves to themselves to this day. with theip language and national eusIntiis eomjdete. It grew colder with the laliing dusk. Cut the rain had eea:-ci| when we reached the valley of Amman. The town looked unattractive in the dark, for the booths were dirty and empty, though some of them were lie hv electric lhd.it. The new palace e! the Kino fanned on the Kasteru

Iv-iglit--.il is said he probably cannot a'ford to finish building it. At .seven o'clock, a mile beyond the town, the '•■i'.' ran into a ba. rbed-wire enclosure ami stopped beside a row of bell-tents li wars a police post and the tents our

Wo welcomed a good hot dinner ravenously. But the tents were just like tents always are in wot weather,

cones of damp sot over dump hods. M •■’■■iver, (he camp dogs, a pair of yellow and white half-bred pariahs, w excessively conscientious. They were always talcing alarm, raving round

the enclosure, and murdering sleep. I lowevcr, it seemed little time enough before a hov brought lea at five

Company ai ‘ breakfast was cold am! nee as (lie Knglisli always are in (lie Homing. Bui by half-past six, when ,'c st arl - -1. tlm sun had risen, aml cotJe’s spirits with it. After the oiice no-i. no more road, only a track

in (he flowery valley, sloping to Za'ah. the last village on the desert’s edge. Here il was that the drivers had feared

we might stick, but a dry night had saved the situation and the going was not bad. Za’ab looked picturesque enough, as Arab villages do from the distance, its lines picked out by the level dawn rays. But the trail left it aside running South and then Northeast; East into a rolling wilderness, flower-grown between stretches of small, flat grey pebbles. Presently “Is this the Desert?” asked Ignorance; and “Oh, yes, this is the desert right enough,” said Jock. W ell, if but it always looked like this, ’ “the Desert were a' Paradise enow.” The crystal sky was floated with .silver clouds; the great undulations of the waste downy with rare green, all interwoven with the flowery hues. The color was brilliant, milky, fiery, like a clear opal. In ones and twos, then in coveys( and at last in clouds, the sand grouse rose, as the cars passed. All the way to Iraq these continued. We must have put up scores of thousands. There were imperial sand grouse, too, a couple of storks, three bustards; and in the small hours w© nearly ran over a vulture that sat craning and gaping a yard in front of the lamps, fascinated by the glare like any silly rabbit. It would be a great sporting country, save for lack of water. The desert drought that tries life so sorely protects it, after all, from the worst enemy—man. On the North-east a line of hills came over the horizon. “That’s the end of the Djebel Druse range,” said the driver. “Down below the side of it is Kin Azra’ak, which is a .pool that never dries. The Druses have nearly all their women and children there encamped, so that they’ll not get bombed in the villages by the French. It’s only two hours by camel from the Druse country.” “Do you think they’ll crush the rebels in time?” “They can’t hold tho Djebel Druse with a big army. There’s no wells; only the village tanks; when they’ve finished them they’re done. And there’s no roads, and the line of communication open to attack everywhere.” “Do you think they could have made permanent pence, the French?” “Certainly they could.” “There’s another,” thought 1 to myself. “Will 1 ever meet a man who knows this country and doesn’t believe that a little sensible dealing and good faith would have won.peace?”

The trail —which was no more nor less than' the mark of the Nairn car wheels —was rutted in the bottoms, scarce visible on tire hard crests of the great desert swell. We were making a long southward angle to avoid a transient lake two or three miles long, a remainder of phenomenally heavy rain. As we ran towards a big square building, “That’s Castel Haurani,” said Jock. “The Romans built it for a sort of inn on the desert route. It’s all in disrepair now, and the Arabs have knocked it about inside. They use it to lay their dead in.”

At this point Providence befriended the passengers, and a tyre burst. “Here you are,” said the driver, extracting a gun, against which 1 had been leaning, and giving it to a passenger who had been sighing to shoot the pin-tailed grouse. “You can go and shoot pigeons round Castel Hanrani while 1 change this.” We all walked over to the great khan. It was built of pink sandstone, two, storeys high, three towers a side, a beautiful diamond string-course high up. The single door, on the south side, led into a central court with rooms opening off it, and two stairways to the upper storey. Upstairs the rooms led out of each other. One was imposing, arch-roofed, round-ended with a sort of (ienr-de-lys carving on the walls—a refectory, perhaps. There was a Faint smell of mortality. I am not archaeologist enough to know if it is really Roman, hut it is grim to think that the Bedouins know no use for this grandiose building save to stow their dead away from the beaks of the vultures. So' passes the glory of the world.

After this we made a more northerly course, as 1 thought, heading for a gap in the tuil-encl of the Djebel Druse hills. “You’re going to go over the worst road in the world, bar none,” said Jock. “Me call it the Bay of B’scay.” The name was 'veil chosen. In. the soft parts of the Hanran desert car-wheels sink till they flow a knob of pebbles. The surface was corrugated, the ruts a foot deep. The passengers hung desperately on to the crossbar of tlie lined, but bump, bn inn went their beads against the roof, and bang-bang against each other’s shoulders. However, with the foot-hills this tyranny was past. There was nothing very notable about the hills, except that- the flowms for a time seemed to be mainly white—marguerites and white broom. Bui from the summit there appeared, seutli and east across a wide stretch, a strange line of mountains, conelimped and sugar-loaf, and coal black in the mm light like a, frieze painted upon the horizon with Indian ink

“That’s the Lava Country; we’ve to go tln.ugili the heart of it, worse luck. The hills are all black basalt. You sn ; d the Hainan was stony, you just wait and see the lava, country, and von’ll know what stones can be!”

We dropped to the valley, and diwg through .a bis wady running very strong in space, but shallow on its wide bed. There was nmd on the further side, and the leading car turned when it saw that the second was bogged, ran back to it and towed it out; reversing. Each car is responsible for watching the car behind, and at intervals the driver looks back to sec that Ids successor is in sight. If it is not, he waits a quarter of an hour, in case, as is most usual, the trouble is a puncture; and if the car docs not then appea, turns back to rejoin it. This system ensures mutual help in breakdowns—and is a necessary precaution in the wide 'insecurity of the desert. Ear if a car wore stranded and ran out of water its passengers would die of thirst lust like the men of the old slow caravans. Betides, the desert is ivf always a'S empty as it looks. !n that valley we passed two men.

walking towards Palestine with small packs on their hacks. “Haps—pilgrims—sooner them than me—just going across the desert for a walk!”' Also two planes boomed over our heads flying north. These roused great curiosity in the experienced passengers. for it seemed it was not the right hour for tlie Air A lad from Cairo, which follows the car track in this region.

Then came the Lava. Country. It is not lava at all, properly speaking, bnl basalt, as black as Hack magic, and with a look of evil enchantment. The nhnlc place is n waste of bould-

ers, from sca-hcnjih pebble size to tho size of footstools, conery. shjarp as Knives, remaining In that almost rainless country a, they wore when the volcanoes all about vomited them up. The orange of the marigolds and the scarlet of (he poppies, proving here in millions, had an oddly modish look against the black hackgound. Tho peaks seen near to, were filmed by

the verdure to a very dark ho-ttle->>reen. (I the dawn-lit Hainan was’ hke a pale opal, the Lava Country was like a black opal. The going was extremely humpy, for the car wheels had not squeezed so many stones out of their tracks hut

that there were plenty left. We had puncture after puncture. At the third in five miles our' driver heaved

a sigh. “Oh, Mr Buick!” he murmured gently—only that, and nothing more! ’Forty-six miles of this at less than ten miles anjiour, and the power of the aid sorcerer who ill-wished that country seemed to wear out. The black stones only appeared in streaks, the black peaks fell away on either aide. We were still in what is called the Hauran, but the camel-colored earth of the Syrian Desert was beneath our wheels. At two o’clock we stopped to eat on a knoll starred with little irises apd tulips*. The drivers spread lunch on a rug, sandwiches in sealed packets, cold meat, sardines (of course), and bread and cheese. Alsi tea, made with hot radiator water, boiled over a fire of packing-case sticks, drunk out of paper cups and tasting strong-

ly of * ciilorine. The meal took almost half am hour. The forks were washed u£» and packed with incredible expedition, and we were off again. We stopped to change the time of day with the crews ot a. couple of armored cars, out on patrol on the AirMail route. They accounted for the two planes, which had returned over our heads, but I failed to hear the explanation, only catching the words “Forced landing —dud mag.’’ Afterwards, we passed the Nairn convoy going to Jerusalem, three hours late, and mud to the windscreens. The car had been sticking somewhere. These encounters sound as though the desert were as full of traffic as Piccadilly • but there were hours of time and hundreds of miles between each meeting. “What time is it?” asked the convoy leader. “Four.” “We’re making good time.” “What are you supposed to average?” “Twenty-three and a half miles an hour over the whole trip, allowing for punctures, meals and sleep. It’s a good average.” “It is,” said I; we were running 45 miles an hour at that minute. “How much time for sleep to-night?” “Maybe, threequarters of an hour, before dawn.” “And when do we dine?” “When we reach the Monoplane.” Then on and on, steady, swift driving broken only by punctures, a fate with which the leading car seemed especially cursed. Three times we left the track and pursued a bustard across the trackless desert; each time the low sluggishlooking flights of the big bird kept it just out of range. Moreover the drivers only let go of the' steering wheel to shoot, and to hit from an uncontrolled car going 15 miles an hour demands remarkable shooting. Only one shot was wasted on each. But the drivers killed a number of grouse. The sun set in a beautiful lowering sky as a wheel was being changed, and for three hours we ran in the cold night. Very dark it was, with no moon, and the shapes of the low hills we were crossing could only be guessed by the running of the car. ,We stopped at nine by a wrecked aeroplane, which had crashed, they said, some months before, without, however, killing its pilot. All the back-seat passengers were very cold by now, and everyone tumbled out to stamp their feet alive. The men broke up some of the shattered aeroplane wings and built a blazing fire with them, starting it with that infallible •firelighter —a half-pint of petrol. The bonfire, the crumpled plane, and the dark figures made a dramatic scene. As we dismembered a cold chicken by the oldest method, an airman fellowpassenger remarked to me, ’’You may be pleased to think that your tea was boiled with about £2OOO worth of fuel.” “Ah, well, it didn’t crash in vain then —oh, look! They’re washing up; we’re starting again. After dinner the hours passed slowly, broken only by an occasional pause to tinker with our back wheel, which seemed to have a disposition to come off. One of the passengers in my car slept; not I, there is nothing to lean your head on in the front seat, and there was an occasional violent hump as the car took a wady. Then we, stopped at Ilutba Wells—a half-built fort, some tents, and a few Arabs appearing at the clamor of the “pidogs.” “The first well this side of the desert and a place of ill-repute. It was here the French Consul’s wife was killed, ambushed in the wady. Do you remember But they caught the raiders here; they made it an armored car post, and the bad Arabs were forced to bring their camels in to water. So they cleared them up. It’s safe now-—or safe enough.” It was two o’clock in the morning When Ave started again the relief man was at the wheel. Ho drove till a quarter-past three and stopped. “A hit of sleep now,” he remarked. The other cars drew Aip and stopped—sleep at last, thank heaven! . . . and then, it seemed a moment after, the horn went. “How long have wc slept?” “Forty minutes.” Already the cold scented breeze smelt of dawn. As the light came flooding the air Avith a colorless tide that Avashed clean the blackest night I have CA'er Avakcd. avc could see a country or a ugav character. The track Avas more defined. The far horizons of the day before Avere gone; the vicAv Avas bounded by the near summit of a succession of doAvn-like hills, perhaps a hundred feet or lavo high. They Avere much less floAvery and much greener than the Hauran desert, and they AA*ere full of life. Everywhere the beards of camels and flocks of sheep were grazing; the camels far apart, making Avonderful groups and lines ns they always do; the dark sheep bunched tightly together in circular hands, each one obedient to a chirruping shepherd. There Avere quantities of donkeys, too, and some horses, and in almost eA-ery hollow one or more of the “houses of hair, the Avide blame tents of the Bedoui.

Tlie people shaded their eyes to look at us; the children waved and cried a. greeting just as children in' the Highlands wave to a passing train. It was all friendly; yet just how friendly would it be if the Nairns did not conform to the imineinorial custom of the desert, and pay toll to the sheiks to keep the route secure (or to refrain from rendering them impassable, which ever way yon care to look at the matter) ?

Wo stopped for breakfast, sausages fried in their tins, among the knolls, and after it my friend the Scot was at the wheel again. “Are all those tents of one tribe?” “Well, there’s a collection of tribes, but all their sheiks owe obedience to quo man hereabouts. He’s a powerful sheik.” “Whatever do_ they do with all these camels?” “You'd wonder; sometimes wc see them by the million. They live on tlie milk and trade in them, of course; but they can't use many of them for that. It’s just their way of being rich.” “This should lie a good year for the beasts.” “\es, the best for many a long dav. This is the season they graze well and lay up fat against the hnrnt-up months; this season they’ll have a start such as they seldom get.” r l hen the hills ceased and we were running across a flat plain. It was hot too—not only the fully risen sun could account for its being so much hotter. The air was heavy to breathe, and burned the mouth, j Wo passed a wireless aerial, I and ran into Pamado, the first j town of Iraq, at 9.80. Here wc. : were given customs forms, and dropped I a passenger whom I had much admired. He wore the Arab robe, a brown and I

cream woollen abbayah, and a monocle! —an entrancing combination and one typical of big job, that of a soldier acting as political officer in an outpost. We were given drinks by the Air Force; two or three of them in a flyblown canteen where they companied with about ten spoiled dogs. Then we rose, heavy with sleep, and crawled out of the burning sun into the shade of the car roofs. The road now lay under the side of a strange line of tan-colored cliffs. The verdure had vanished utterly. On the left the Euphrates showed and disappeared, a river in the main, without a green blade on its bank, though here and there a cluster of date palms marked a village. At length we switch-backed across the boat bridge at Fellujah. After this sordid little town we crossed the “Interior Desert”—the desert between the rivers, in an ever increasing glare. This was the only desert as one fancies it in cool England: dead earth, scaly with salt owing to the silting up of the canal drainage, whose traces are still clearly visible; scarce any greenness, so that one marvelled how the occasional village managed to live apart from the well that no doubt is its “raison d’etre”. Yet we passed quite a number of Arabs mounted on pretty ponies that shied at the cars—and some in dilapidated Fords. They must live on something—but what? At last, to the left, a light flashed across the plain. “Kadhimain, the Golden Domes,” said Jock, who was driving viciously fast to keep awake. Very soon after, at a quarter to three, we passed a railway, ran between palm groves lined with crowded coffee-houses crossed a long iron bridge, over a wide, swift, brown river. A glimpse of blue domes and ramshackle latticed houses, and we stopped in New Street, Baghdad.

Some impressions stick in the mind from this seven-hundred mile drive. One is of the beauty of the desert, heightened at this season by its transitory blossoming. Many have tried to describe that merciless enchantment of the wilderness; to feel it at secondhand one must turn to “Arabia Desert a.”

Another vivid impression is a stunned admiration of the Nairn drivers. As a feat of endurance alone, the thing is well-nigh incredible. My driver drove from 6.30 a.m. on Friday till 2.45 p.m. on Saturday with a fourhours’ break. The meals are no rest, for the drivers prepare them and wash up. On the return journey there was no relief man, and the drivers drove for exactly 36 hours with H hours’ sleep, it may be commented that, although they are young men, the strain of this effort must be very bad for them, and it should not be imposed upon them. But it was not only their endurance that evoked admiration, but beautifully skilled driving, and perfect good humor. kindness and courtesy.

Again this Amman route is described in preference to the return trip by Palmyra and Homs because it is of great Imperial importance. The An-glo-Persian Oil people talk of an All-Red road to accompany a pipe line to the Mediterranean, and sucti a road must follow, approximately, the line our convoy took. There is the more important question of the route to India. “All-Red” means, of course, that Palestine and Thansjordan-Jraq and South Persia, are all in one way or another under British influence, and that a security otherwise impossible can now be established on the road. But the road would take a lot of making. The Syrian desert, when dry, is good going, and needs nothing but a trail to give direction. But the Hauran is an atrocious surface. A road would have to be built, and there is no stone suitable for road metal in the region. Basalt has to be mixed with other metal, or it will not “bind.” The possibility of a railway over that long stretch must lie, for reasons of expense, even more remote.

Lastly, there is the impression of a great door unlocked. The vast space of the desert has always been a physical barrier between the East and the West; far more, it has been a moral barrier. The Mediterranean is a common road for the peoples on its shores; the desert is an abyss. For instance. Islam itself is a very different thing in Iraq from its Syrian expression. Well, we have set out lightly enough to offer the civilisation of the West to the East. Wc are giving Iraq motor cars and electric light and oil wells — all the concrete achievements of an ugly and doubtfully beneficent industrialism. We are trying, too, to give the spiritual energy and physical health that produce these results. But we could try, and better try, if the desert barrier staved unbroken. Wl mt is the use of a Parliament to a ] ample who have no conception of public service? Or of new Courts to Judges with no training in justice? But now that London is but nine days from Baghdad, it may become possible, through greater intercourse, for the Arabs to absorb that sense of responsible co-operation for the public weal, which, after all. is the meaning of what wo call “Western civilisation.” A far dream! Yet maybe historians, one day, in recording its realisation, will say “This great revolution was rendered possible by the desert communications established by two pioneers called Nairn.”