Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/180

 and from his indications drew a sketch map of the surrounding district. Comparing his statements with the notes and the map which I had prepared previously, I found that he was well acquainted with the whole region from the šeʻîb of al-Ḳena’ in the south to the šeʻîb of az-Zejte in the north. I therefore hired him as a guide.

Before noon Sâlem, the clerk and representative of the chief, Ḥarb eben ʻAṭijje, came to us. He greeted me very humbly, offered me his services, and assured me that he would rest neither by day or night until he had fulfilled my every desire. After a while he also began to ask who Rifʻat and Tûmân were, why they did not pray and did not speak either Arabic or Turkish. He explained to me that in recent years several foreigners had come to Tebûk, all of whom he had served willingly and faithfully, so that they had given him and his chief various precious things as keepsakes. I thanked him for his goodwill, overwhelmed him with pleasant words, and dismissed him with the assurance that I would satisfy everyone who satisfied me by aiding me materially to fulfil the task which Allâh himself had imposed upon me.

Soon after that there came to me a gendarme named Ḫalîl, an elderly Kurd, and warned me against Sâlem. He declared that in the whole of Tebûk and the distant surrounding area, where he had now been serving for fifteen years, there was no greater extortioner than Sâlem and that he fleeced not only the natives but also strangers. Thus recently, he said, two strangers had come to Tebûk and had wished to visit the ruins of Ṛwâfa. Sâlem had promised that he would guide them there; he described the journey as being so distant and dangerous that he might lose his life on it, yet nevertheless he said that he would do all in his power to protect them from every danger, if they gave him sixty Turkish pounds ($ 270). The strangers actually gave him fifty-five pounds ($ 247). Of this sum he distributed twenty pounds ($ 90) between the mudîr and the gendarmes and kept thirty-five ($ 157) for himself. Escorted by the gendarmes, he led the strangers toward Ṛwâfa, but they actually visited only the small heaps of old ruins and tombs of Rǧûm Šowhar situated about four hours south of Tebûk, and he returned with them on the same day. In the neighborhood of Ḳṣejr at-Tamra the gendarmes said they had discovered the tracks of a hostile band, and they so frightened the strangers that