The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron Read Free Book Online Page A

fifty? Can you do arithmetic? Soda water indeed. Twenty now. No
not
twenty-five. Twenty. There is all the difference, if you could only realise it. Bring the bottle at once, and for heaven’s sake don’t argue.”
    During the five-course dinner, we complimented the man on some succulent birds.
    â€œPartridges, sir,” he replied, “I make them fat in little houses.”
    Admission to the ruins costs five shillings per person per visit. Having secured a reduction of this charge by telephoning to Beyrut, we walked across to visit them.
    â€œGuide, Monsieur?”
    Silence.
    â€œGuide, Monsieur?”
    Silence.
    â€œQu’est-ce que vous désirez, Monsieur?”
    Silence.
    â€œD’où venez-vous, Monsieur?”
    Silence.
    â€œOù allez-vous, Monsieur?”
    Silence.
    â€œVous avez des affaires ici, Monsieur?”
    â€œNon.”
    â€œVous avez des affaires à Baghdad, Monsieur?”
    â€œNon.”
    â€œVous avez des affaires à Téhéran, Monsieur?”
    â€œNon.”
    â€œAlors, qu’est-ce que vous faites, Monsieur?”
    â€œJe fais un voyage en Syrie.”
    â€œVous êtes un officier naval, Monsieur?”
    â€œNon.”
    â€œAlors, qu’est-ce que vous êtes, Monsieur?”
    â€œJe suis homme.”
    â€œQuoi?”
    â€œH OMME .”
    â€œJe comprends. Touriste.”
    Even “voyageur” is obsolete; and with reason: the word has a complimentary air. The traveller of old was one who went in search of knowledge and whom the indigènes were proud to entertain with their local interests. In Europe this attitude of reciprocal appreciationhas long evaporated. But there at least the “tourist” is no longer a phenomenon. He is part of the landscape, and in nine cases out of ten has little money to spend beyond what he has paid for his tour. Here, he is still an aberration. If you can come from London to Syria on business, you must be rich. If you can come so far without business, you must be very rich. No one cares if you like the place, or hate it, or why. You are simply a tourist, as a skunk is a skunk, a parasitic variation of the human species, which exists to be tapped like a milch cow or a gum tree.
    At the turnstile, that final outrage, a palsied dotard took ten minutes to write out each ticket. After which we escaped from these trivialities into the glory of Antiquity.
    Baalbek is the triumph of stone; of lapidary magnificence on a scale whose language, being still the language of the eye, dwarfs New York into a home of ants. The stone is peach-coloured, and is marked in ruddy gold as the columns of St. Martin-in-the-Fields are marked in soot. It has a marmoreal texture, not transparent, but faintly powdered, like bloom on a plum. Dawn is the time to see it, to look up at the Six Columns, when peach-gold and blue air shine with equal radiance, and even the empty bases that uphold no columns have a living, sun-blest identity against the violet deeps of the firmament. Look up, look up; up this quarried flesh, these thrice-enormous shafts, to the broken capitals and the cornice as big as a house, all floating in the blue. Look over the walls, to the green groves of white-stemmed poplars; and over them to the distant Lebanon, a shimmer of mauve and blue and gold and rose. Look along the mountains to the void: the desert, that stony, empty sea. Drink the high air. Stroke the stone with your own soft hands. Say goodbye to the West if you own it. And then turn,
tourist
, to the East.
    We did, when the ruins closed. It was dusk. Ladies and gentlemen in separate parties were picnicking on a grass meadow, beside a stream. Some sat on chairs by marble fountains, drawing at their hubble-bubbles; others on the grass beneath occasional trees, eating by their own lanterns. The stars came out and the mountain slopes grew black. I felt the peace of Islam. And if I mention this commonplace experience, it is because in