Surely, since this was the spring of 1915, it could only be a few months before peace was signed. He reckoned on September or October. Surely none of the Powers would dare another winter campaign. Till peace he would have to make the best of things and then -- back to Paris, as fast as possible.

 

 

The bazaar bore him along. That deep surge which knows none of the ebb and flow, the hurry, of a crowd along a European pavement, which rolls on with an irresistible, even motion as time flows on into eternity. He might not have been in this God-forsaken provincial hole, Antakiya, but transported to Aleppo or Damascus, so inexhaustibly did the two opposing streams of the bazaar surge past each other. Turks in European dress, wearing the fez, with stand-up collars and walking-sticks, officials or merchants. Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, these too in European dress, but with different headgear. In and out among them, Kurds and Circassians in their tribal garb. Most displayed weapons. For the government, which in the case of Christian peoples viewed every pocketknife with mistrust, tolerated the latest infantry rifles in the hands of these restless mountaineers; it even supplied them. Arab peasants, in from the neighborhood. Also a few bedouins from the south, in long, many-folded cloaks, desert-hued, in picturesque tarbushes, the silken fringes of which hung over their shoulders. Women in charshaffes, the modest attire of female Moslems. But then, too, the unveiled, the emancipated, in frocks that left free silk-stockinged legs. Here and there, in this stream of human beings, a donkey, under a heavy load, the hopeless proletarian among beasts. To Gabriel it seemed always the same donkey which came stumbling past him in a coma, with the same ragged fellow tugging his bridle. But this whole world, men, women, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, with trench-brown soldiers in its midst -- its goats, its donkeys -- was smelted together into an indescribable unity by its gait -- a long stride, slow and undulating, moving onwards irresistibly, to a goal not to be determined.

 

 

And Gabriel smelt the savors of his childhood. The whiff of seething oil of sesame, which came in sharp gusts across the street through crevices in the herbalists' vats, the onion-laden reek of mutton fricassees, simmering over open fires. The stench of rotting vegetables. And of humanity, more noisome than all the rest, which slept in the clothes it wore by day.

 

 

He recognized the yearning cries of the street-venders: Jâ rezzah, jâ kerim, jâ fettah, jâ alim -- so the boy who offered for sale his rings of white bread from a basket still chanted sentimentally. -- "O All-Nourisher, O All-Good, O All-Provident, O Knower of all things." The ancient cry of the ages still proffered fresh dates -- "Thou brown one, O brown of the desert, O maiden." The salad-vender retained his throaty conviction: "Ed daim Allah, Allah ed daim" -- that the Everlasting alone was God, that God alone was the Everlasting -- some consolation, in view of his wares, to the purchaser. Gabriel bought a berazik, a little cake spread with grape syrup. This "food for swallows" also brought its memories of childhood. But the first bite of it turned his stomach, and he gave the sweetmeat to a youngster who had stood in rapture, eyeing his mouth.

 

 

His heart sank so, that for an instant he had to close his eyes. What could have happened to change the world so completely? Here, in this country, he had been born. Surely he ought to feel at home here. But -- the irresistible, evenly moving crowd in the bazaar seemed to put his home at enmity with him. And that young müdir? Surely he had been scrupulously polite. . . .