Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/178

 greeting only with a nod of the head, my letters of recommendation he did not even want to look at, and he slowly went on copying out the Government orders word by word, taking no further notice of me. He offered me neither coffee nor cigarettes. After a while the little room was filled with settlers from Tebûk, who all looked at me inquisitively. Neither the mudîr nor the gendarmes had any great knowledge of Arabic. A young gendarme asked me where I came from, where I wanted to go, what my business was, what I thought of political affairs in the Ḥeǧâz, etc. As I did not answer some of the questions at all, and others only very curtly, he started a conversation with Ismaʻîn, from whom he learnt a great deal except that it was all invention. I told the mudîr that after a few days I was leaving for Medâjen Ṣâleḥ and that I wanted him to let me have a reliable guide. The mudîr wagged his head several times and groaned at the difficulties of his position. The young gendarme accompanied me to our encampment (Fig. 62), where he found out who Rifʻat and Tûmân were and why they were going with me, since there was nothing about them in my orders. From various hints I gathered that he was longing for gifts, both for himself