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CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
was a mosque. I had not eaten since early morning and the
day had been particularly nerve-wracking. I stoked away a delicious supper, took a bath—my first real hot bath since my
stay at the Jerusalem YMCA, weeks before—and went to
sleep. I slept till noon of the following day. Then I had another hot bath, another full meal, and was fortified for whatever kismet had in store.
JEWEL OF THE ORIENT
WHAT a rich treasury of culture was represented in Damascus, the fourth holy city of Islam after Mecca, Medina,
and Jerusalem! At one time it ranked next to Jerusalem as a
center of Christian missionary zeal—here Paul had been converted—but it was now a city of mosques and minarets, hundreds of them rising above the flat rooftops. Through the long
centuries it had been conquered and reconquered, ravaged,
burned, and looted time and again. So ancient was it that Abraham, as recorded in Genesis, waged war against the abductors
of Lot and chased them "unto Hobah, which is on the left
hand of Damascus." This was the fabulous city in which the
reputed tomb of John the Baptist was housed beneath the
dome of a giant mosque; down one of its minarets—called
Jesus Minaret—Moslems believed Christ would descend on
Doomsday.
Sightseeing was a compulsion I could not resist. I took an
Armenian guide with me. His only request was that I keep
him plied with arak, the brandylike liquor, every hour on the
hour, with a chaser of more arak.
"But it's too hot for arak," I observed,
"Arak keeps me cool in summer, and warm in winter," he
remarked sagely, and then added: "I will take you first to a
harem—a real harem—without women."
We walked over cobblestone streets, tortuously twisting and