Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [6]
But then, beginning in the early 1800s, a succession of adventurers penetrated Arabia, concealing their identities by donning native costumes and creating elaborate cover stories. We don't know how Ulrich Seetzen, a Swiss biblical scholar, disguised himself, but whatever it was, it didn't work. At some point in his 1806 journey, he was set upon and murdered by fierce bedouin, their suspicions possibly aroused by his interest in ancient ruins. Wishing to avoid a similar fate, his countryman Johann Burckhardt darkened his face and hands with the juice of the betel nut and adopted the guise of a wandering physician from India. But when he opened his mouth, bedouin eyes narrowed. His Arabic was strangely accented. Of course it was, he responded, and unleashed a volley of guttural German. Perhaps the bedouin were unaware, he glibly explained, but this was how the Muslim faithful conversed in India. It was only in Cairo—after discovering the lost city of Petra and even entering forbidden Mecca—that Burckhardt's ruses reportedly failed, and he was poisoned or beheaded. Or he may have died of fevers contracted in his Arabian journeys; accounts vary.
Others, against considerable odds, lived to tell their tales. In Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land (1837) the American John Lloyd Stephens gave a hilarious account (not so hilarious at the time) of the down side of his elaborate getup. His magnificent turban, long red silk gown, and curly-toed yellow satin Turkish slippers were distinct liabilities when, his infidel identity suspected, he had occasion to flee, on foot over rocky terrain, a band of irate bedouin. He "dashed down the mountain with a speed that only fear could give. If there was a question between scramble and jump, we gave the jump."2
I really admired Stephens. Imagine a New York lawyer in failing health who was advised by his physician to seek a cure in travel and rest—and chose to venture across the Sinai and the deserts beyond, where no American had ever set foot. Certainly the desert Arabs had a weakness for brigandage, Stephens noted, but also they valued poetry, and they had a streak of chivalry that, if need be, dictated sharing their waterskin with their worst enemy. They believed that all others, like themselves, were guests of God in the wilderness and should not be denied God's gifts of sustenance and shelter.
What comes across in this and other accounts is that the Arabs of the desert were perhaps excitable and hot-tempered yet, surprisingly, not that intolerant of adherents of Western religions. They may have been riled more by deception than by infidelity. Englishman Gifford Palgrave journeyed deep into Arabia, freely admitting that he was a simple "Jewish Jesuit."3 And his countryman Charles Doughty persistently chided his Arab hosts for their lack of Christian charity (which they confirmed by throwing him in jail with predictable regularity). Even so, they allowed him to travel back and forth along the northern reaches of the Rub' al-Khali.
Anxious to obtain a copy of Doughty's masterpiece, Travels in Arabia Deserta (1868), I stopped by Hyman and Sons bookshop on a Saturday morning. A bell tinkled as I stepped inside, and I found myself the sole customer amid a jumble of books shelved, stacked on the floor, piled on tables. One table had been cleared off and was set with a pitcher of milk, glasses, and a plate of cookies. The door to a back room swung open.
"Go ahead. Somebody's got to eat them." It was Virginia. Though I never saw anything of Hyman, much less his Sons, I had gotten to know and respect Dr. Virginia Blackburn, who was clearly in charge here. She was in her late sixties, and if there