On One Side Of The Road, Which Is Not Forty Feet Broad,
Stood A Row Of Shops Belonging Principally To Barbers.
On the other
side is the rugged wall against which the pillar stands, with a chevaux
de frise of Badawin and naked boys.
The narrow space was crowded with
pilgrims, all struggling like drowning men to approach as near as
possible to the Devil; it would have been easy to run over the heads of
the mass. Amongst them were horsemen with rearing chargers. Badawin on
wild camels, and grandees on mules and asses, with outrunners, were
breaking a way by assault and battery. I had read Ali Bey’s
self-felicitations upon escaping this place with “only two wounds in the
left leg,” and I had duly provided myself with a hidden dagger. The
precaution was not useless. Scarcely had my donkey entered the crowd
than he was overthrown by a dromedary, and I found myself under the
stamping and roaring beast’s stomach. Avoiding being trampled upon by a
judicious use of the knife, I lost no time in escaping from a place so
ignobly dangerous. Some Moslem travellers assert, in proof of the
sanctity of the spot, that no Moslem is ever killed here: Meccans
assured me that accidents are by no means rare.
Presently the boy Mohammed fought his way out of the crowd with a
bleeding nose. We both sat down upon a bench before a barber’s booth,
and, schooled by adversity,
[p.205] awaited with patience an opportunity.
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