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BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD
a resigned expression and a settled look, as if he
had been sitting there for hours.
" Pas possible, mademoiselle," he said.
Ibrahim stood in the stable door, smoking com
placently, and our muleteers were squabbling violently
over the roping of a box.
It was at this moment that I stepped up to Ibrahim
and showed him my watch. He looked at me with
a startled expression, his jaw dropped, and he turned
hastily on the muleteers. But it was not till later
that I learnt how his inmost susceptibilities had been
roused. One is at a decided disadvantage with no
knowledge of a suitable language, but by dint of
gesticulating with my riding-whip and pointing at
everybody in turn, I managed, at the end of another
half-hour, to get the araba and the men under way,
and mounting my own horse rode behind them to
the hotel. In another five minutes we had sallied
out on our road. X and I rode ahead with Ibrahim
and Calphopolos and the two Zaptiehs, then came the
araba with our baggage and the muleteers, then
Constantin with bulging saddle-bags suggesting the
intrusion of various forbidden cooking utensils.
Our road ran unshaded and dusty through the
outskirts of Brusa, with Mount Olympus towering
above us. Bit by bit we left behind the staring
tourists, the staring native children, the unconcerned
stall-keepers displaying their wares of Brusa silk
and printed cottons from England; then we passed
the country people riding in on mules with their
vegetables and chickens ; we passed the little cultivated
patches and got amongst the larger fields, stretching
r