Hamed of Jeddah

“Caravans that from Bassora’s gate
With Westward steps depart;
Or Mecca’s pilgrims, confident of fate
And resolute of heart.”
More of a Dutchman in build than Arab — broad-based, bandy-legged, stubby, stolid, and slow; spare of his speech, but nimble with his fingers in all that appertains to the rigging and working of small boats, as much at ease in the water as a rollicking porpoise — such is Hamed of Jeddah.
His favourite garment is a light green woollen sweater. He wears other, but less obvious things. His green sweater sets all else at naught. If it be a fact that one of the pleasures to which the true Mohammedan looks forward in the region of the blest is to recline in company with the Houris on green sofas while contemplating the torments of the damned, Hamed was merely foretasting that which is to come. The everlasting green sweater became a torture — at least to me. Perhaps he was aware of the fact, and because he knew that my damnation is inevitable his unsoothing preliminary was merely human. For Hamed is amicable in all respects.
Though his sentiments may be truly Arabian, his figure, as I have remarked, is a travesty on that of the typical Arabian — the Arab of the boundless and comfortless desert. I have tried to picture him as a lean and haughty mameluke in loose, white robes, mounted on a dust-distributing camel, and, lance in hand, peering ferociously across the desert
“The desert with its shifting sand And unimpeded sky.”
But the tubby form in the green sweater and those bleached dungarees shortened in defiance of all the prescriptions of fashion, positively refuses to be glorified. Except for his swarthiness Hamed is unreconcilable to the ideals of an Arab, and he has a most heretical dislike to the desert. All his best qualities are under suppression on dry land. He is the Arab of the dhow. His eyes are muddy. The pupils begin to show opacity. He follows slowly and with stumbling steps through the bush and often misses his way, for he cannot see far ahead and you cannot always be looking backward and hailing him. Still, he is never lost. When he fails to recognise landmarks and his guide is out of sight, his cup-shaped ears detect the faintest call of the sea. Then he works in a direct course to the beach, where everything is writ large and plain to his understanding. Of his own motive he never ventures inland without a compass, and with that in his hand he is safe, even in a strange place and out of sound of the sea.
Hamed tells a wonderful story of a ride that befell him in his early youth. By the way, there is something to be said of his age which, according to his own account, varies. Sometimes he is 72, then 48, and again 64 and 35. Like the present-day almanacs of his race, his age is shifty and uncertain. Hamed’s ride occurred “a long time ago”— that hazy, half-obliterated mark on life’s calendar. Pious Mohammedan that he is, he undertook a pilgrimage to Medina. To that holy orgy he rode on a donkey. So miraculous was the chief event of the journey that it is due to Hamed that his own uncoloured version should be given.
“So hot the sun of my country you carn ride about alonga a day. Every time you trabel alonga night — sit down daytime. We start. We ride all night. I ride alonga dunkee. Sit down one day, ride night time. Dunkee he no go quick — very slow. I am tired. That dunkee tired. B’mbi that dunkee he talk. He say —‘Hamed, you good man, you kind man. Subpose you no hammer me too much I take you up, alonga Medina one time quick.’ I say, ‘I no want hammer you.’ My word, that dunkee change! — dunkee before, horse now — Arab horse. Puff! We along Medina! Wind bin take ’em!” With the wind in his favour Hamed does wonders even now — at sea. It was not seemly to suggest to him that cynical memory dulled the polish of his story; but if there really are chinks in the world above at which they listen to words from below, did the Prophet smile to hear the parable by which his devout and faithful follower brought his own ride on the flying mare up to date?
Having the unwonted privilege of cross-examining a man who had ridden or rather been wafted to Medina specially that he might do homage at the Tomb of the Prophet, I asked a few questions respecting the famous coffin. Was it a fact that the coffin hung in the air on a wire so fine that no one could see it? Was it, in fact, without lawful visible means of support?
Hamed would neither deny nor confirm the legend. “I dunno what people you! I bin tell-straight my yarn go one time like wind to Medina. What more you want? I dunno what kind people you!” One mystery at a time is enough for Hamed.
Hamed now deals in oysters. In the trade he had a partner — a fair lad of Scandinavian origin named Adolphus. All these orientals have extraordinary faith in the medicinal properties of the gall of out-of-the-way creatures. That of a wallaby is prized; of a “goanna” absolutely precious; while in respect of a crocodile, only a man who has leisure to be ill and is determined to doctor himself on the reckless principle of “blow the expense,” could afford any such luxurious physic. It is reckoned next in virtue to a text from the Koran written on board: “Wash off the ink, drink the decoction, and lo! the cure is complete.” So, too, if the Lama doctor has no herbal medicines he prescribes something symbolic. He writes the names of the remedies on scraps of paper, moistens the paper with saliva, and rolls them into pills, which the patient tosses down with the same perfect confidence as though they were genuine medicaments, his faith leading him to believe that swallowing a remedy or its name is equally efficacious.
A “goanna” scrambled for safety up a small tree. Adolphus undertook to kill it. Hamed insisted on preemption of the gall, while yet the quaking reptile certainly had the best title to it; but Hamed stood below and some distance off, for he was nervous. Adolphus climbed the tree, killed the “goanna” offhand, and threw it so that it fell close to Hamed, and Hamed fell in a spasm of fright, upon recovering from which he chased fair, fleet-footed, laughing Adolphus for half an hour — murder in his pearly eyes, a mangrove waddy in his hand, frothy denunciations on his lips, and nothing on his body but the green sweater. Peace was restored on the presentation to him of the all-healing gall; and then Hamed apologised, almost tearfully, explaining, “That goanna, when you chuck heem, close broke heart of me!”
A dissolution of partnership was then and there decided on, and Hamed thus detailed his sentiments to me:—
“That boy, I like heem too much. Good-for-working boy. Me and heem make ’em three-four beg oyster every day. He bin say: ‘You carn be mate for me!’ He go along two Mulai boy. Dorphy [Adolphus] carn mek too much now — one sheer belonga him, Mulai boy two sheers. Carn beat me — one sheer one man.” Hamed has clean-cut notions on the disadvantages of multiplicity of partners.
Hamed has been to Europe, and there — he does not mention the country — he was initiated into the mysteries of making Irish stew. In an outburst of thankful confidence for some little entertainment at the table he let out the secret in these terms: “Eerish sdoo you make ’em. Four potats, two ungin, hav-dozen garleek, one hav-bucket water.” At first it appeared that he had obtained his knowledge from a passionate vegetarian, but upon reflection we concluded that in his opinion meat was so essential an item that it was to be taken for granted. Any one wishing to try the recipe would be safe in adding “meat to taste.”
Hamed revels in chillies, fiery, red, vitriolitic little things that would bring tears to the eyes of a molten image. Even his recipe for porridge (likewise obtained during his ever-memorable European travels) is not complete without them: “Alonga one hand oot-meal, pannikan water, one h............