Past Perfect: Of Suleymân the Dragoman

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Marmaduke William Pickthall (1875–1936), a descendant of a knight of William the Conqueror, was reared in an upper-middle-class family in turn-of-the-century Britain. He was a schoolmate of Winston Churchill and became a renowned novelist and journalist much admired by his peers. His travels took him throughout the Middle East, where he became increasingly knowledgeable about the culture and religion. He would eventually convert to Islam and become the first Muslim to translate the Qur’an into English. Below is an excerpt of a travel journal (Oriental Encounters, 1918) reflecting his memories of his friend Suleymân, a Syrian, who recounted for tourists the stories of Samson’s revenge on the Philistines (Judges 15) and Elijah’s slaughter of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40).

Of Suleymân in his capacity of dragoman I saw little but heard much both from himself and others. The English residents in Palestine and Syria—those who knew of him—regarded him as but a doubtful character, if one may judge from their repeated warnings to me not to trust him out of sight. His wisdom and his independent way of airing it did not please everybody as they did me; and reverence in dealing with a fellow-man was not his strong point. By travelers, I gather from innumerable testimonials which he showed me, he was either much beloved or the reverse, though none could say he did not know his business.

His English, though voluminous and comprehensive, was sometimes strange to native English ears. He had read the Bible in a German mission school, and spoke of “Billiam’s donkey” and “the mighty Simpson” where we should speak of Balaam’s ass and Samson. He called the goatskins used for carrying water “beastly skins,” and sometimes strengthened a mild sentence with an expletive.

He knew how to adapt his language to his audience. But it is curious that a man whose speech in Arabic was highly mannered, in English should have cultivated solecisms. That he did cultivate them as an asset of his stock-in-trade I can affirm, for he would invent absurd mistakes and then rehearse them to me, with the question: “Is that funny? Will that make the English laugh?”

For clergymen he kept a special manner and a special store of jokes. When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and preach a sermon on the subject of the next day’s journey. This he would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen, he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter of a certain kind.

One English parson he bedeviled utterly by telling him the truth—or the accepted legend—in such a form that it seemed false or mad to him.

As they were riding out from Jaffa towards Jerusalem, he pointed to the mud-built village of Latrûn and said:

“That, sir, is the place where Simpson catch the foxes.”

“Ah?” said the clergyman. “And who was Simpson?”

“He was a very clever gentleman, and liked a bit of sport.”

“Was he an Englishman?”

“No, sir; he was a Jew. He catch a lot of foxes with some traps; he kill them and he take their skins to Jaffa to the tailor, and he tell the tailor: ‘Make me one big skin out of these little ones.’ The tailor make one thundering big fox’s skin, big enough for Simpson to get inside of it. Then Simpson, he put on that skin one night, and go and sit out in the field and make the same noise what the little foxes make. The little foxes come out of their holes to look; they see one big fox sitting there, and they not know it’s really Simpson. They come quite near and Simpson catch hold of their tails and tie their tails together. Then they make the noise, and still more foxes come, and Simpson catch hold of their tails and tie their tails together, till he got hundreds and hundreds.”

“Whatever did he do with them?” inquired the parson.

“He set fire to them.”

“What on earth did he do that for?”

“That, sir, was to annoy his wife’s relations.”

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“And would you believe it,” added Suleymân when he told me the story, “that foolish preacher did not know that it is in the Bible. He took it all down in his notebook as the exploit of a Jewish traveler. He was the Heavy One.”

The last remark was in allusion to an Arabic proverb of which Suleymân was very fond:

“When the Heavy One alights in the territory of a people there is nothing for the inhabitants except departure.”

Many Heavy Ones fell to the lot of Suleymân as dragoman, and he was by temperament ill-fitted to endure their neighborhood. Upon the other hand, he sometimes happened on eccentrics who rejoiced his heart. An American admiral, on shore in Palestine for two days, asked only one thing: to be shown the tree on which Judas Iscariot had hanged himself, in order that he might defile it in a natural manner and so attest his faith. Suleymân was able to conduct him to the very tree, and to make the journey occupy exactly the time specified. The American was satisfied, and wrote him out a handsome testimonial.

It must have been a hardship for Suleymân—a man by nature sensitive and independent—to take his orders from some kinds of tourists and endure their rudeness. If left alone to manage the whole journey, he was—I have been told, and I can well believe it—the best guide in Syria, devoting all his energies to make the tour illuminating and enjoyable; if heckled or distrusted, he grew careless and eventually dangerous, intent to play off jokes on people whom he counted enemies.

One afternoon, when I was riding round the bay from Akka towards the foot of Carmel, supposing Suleymân to be a hundred miles away, I came upon a group of tourists by the river Kishon, on the outskirts of the palm grove. They had alighted and were grouped around a dragoman in gorgeous raiment, like gulls around a parrot. The native of the land was holding forth to them. His voice was richly clerical in intonation, which made me notice that his audience consisted solely of members of the clergy and their patient women.

“This, ladies and gentlemen,” the rascal was declaiming like a man inspired, “is that ancient riffer, the riffer Kishon. It was here that the great Brophet Elijah bring the Brophets of Baal after he catch them with that dirty trick which I exblain to you about the sacrifice ub there upon that mountain what you see behind you. Elijah he come strollin’ down, quite habby, to this ancient riffer, singin’ one little song; and the beoble they lug down those wicked brophets. Then Elijah take one big, long knife his uncle gif him and sharben it ubon a stone like what I’m doin’. Then he gif a chuckle and he look among those brophets; and he see one man he like the look of, nice and fat; and he say: ‘Bring me that man!’ They bring that man; Elijah slit his throat and throw him in the riffer. Then he say: ‘Bring his brother!’ and they bring his brother, and he slit his throat and throw him in the riffer … till they was ALL gone. Then Elijah clean his knife down in the earth, and when he’d finished laughin’ he put ub a brayer.”

“That was a glorious massycration, gentlemen!”

The preacher was Suleymân, at struggle with the Heavy Ones.

Marmaduke William Pickthall (1875–1936), a descendant of a knight of William the Conqueror, was reared in an upper-middle-class family in turn-of-the-century Britain. He was a schoolmate of Winston Churchill and became a renowned novelist and journalist much admired by his peers. His travels took him throughout the Middle East, where he became increasingly knowledgeable about the culture and religion. He would eventually convert to Islam and become the first Muslim to translate the Qur’an into English. Below is an excerpt of a travel journal (Oriental Encounters, 1918) reflecting his memories of his friend Suleymân, a Syrian, who recounted for […]