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“They have financial support from outside the region,” Lawrence said, “and they’re experimenting with scientific farming methods. If they can make the desert bear crops, they’ll bring prosperity to the whole area. Feisal agrees.”
I was surprised by his optimism, given Karl’s doubts, but before I could ask anything more, Lawrence uncoiled from the ground in a single fluid motion. He was wearing a wristwatch, but he studied the sun’s position on the horizon instead. It was getting late.
“Shall we spend a night in Beirut,” he asked, “or push on to Jebail?”
“Push on,” I said, and received a toothy grin as my reward.
Traffic in Beirut was terrible, and we reached the American Mission long past the time that visitors would ordinarily appear. The school’s porter was amazed to see us, and I gathered our unexpected visit was one of Lawrence’s una
Word spread. Soon the parlor was filled with staff members, including my sister’s beloved friend Miss Fareedah el-Akle. Once everyone got over the shock of our arrival, we were welcomed with much rejoicing and even more food. There were half a dozen bowls of hot and cold salads; a walnut paste spiced with chilies; a mixture of mint leaves and tomatoes with cracked wheat berries and onion called tabbouleh; minced lamb with pine nuts and onion. Piles of chicken kebabs and lamb kebabs and two big platters of rice. Finally, when we swore we could eat no more, there were bowls of grapes and apples and oranges, and honey-drenched pastries filled with pistachios.
Naturally Lawrence was made much of, and after heartfelt condolences on the loss of my sister and her family, I was regaled with many stories about Lillie and Douglas, and the pranks of my two nephews. The children did not live long, but I was gratified to know that they must have had a grand boyhood. That night, in fact, we were surrounded by children; they piled in around the adults, listening to the stories while nibbling on fried falafel or dipping flat bread into a grainy paste that looked and tasted something like peanut butter. No bedtime was enforced, but neither were there tantrums or demands for attention. Sometime after eleven, a sweet little boy, not quite two, climbed onto my lap with a perfect confidence that he would be cuddled, and I was happy to fulfill his expectation.
For the delighted Miss el-Akle and her Muslim assistant Omar, Lawrence demonstrated the rough-and-ready Bedouin dialect he had added to the literate Arabic they’d taught him ten years earlier. There were many reminiscences of his stay back in 1911. “Do you remember?” he asked. “There was snow on the beach.”
“The worst winter in years!” Miss el-Akle exclaimed. “We begged him to stay longer, Miss Shanklin, but he insisted he had to leave.”
“I was due at Carchemish,” he said simply.
“No matter how we argued, he would only say, ‘I must go, even if I have to cross the snow on a sledge!’ ”
He leaned over and confessed, sotto voce, “I got a ride from two English ladies going north in a carriage.”
“Whose little boy is this?” I asked, looking down at the small, warm bundle now blissfully asleep in my arms. And I astonished myself by asking, as well, “Is he an orphan?”
The question was translated. A short, plump woman of great dignity smiled proudly. Wearing a transparent white veil draped loosely over her graying hair, she introduced herself as Um Omar—Mother of Omar—and informed me with shining eyes that in addition to the young man who worked for Miss el-Akle, she had five other sons, and two daughters as well. The boy in my lap was her youngest.
I felt an unexpected pang but shook it off, rising to the occasion. Lillian had told me about meetings such as these, and I tried to remember the correct response to a woman’s declaration of prodigious progeny. “Ma shallah!” I said. The phrase meant “What Allah wills, happens!” Everyone clapped with surprise and pleasure. There was more to the formula, but I couldn’t remember the Arabic and said it in English instead: “May Allah keep them in good health.”
“Allah ichallik yahum!” Lawrence supplied, and once more there was a round of applause for my small gesture of courtesy. “Omar,” Lawrence said then to this lady’s eldest son, “how much for Miss Shanklin, who is so learned and polite?”
Omar looked at me and shook his head. “No good,” he decided. “Too old.”
All the women participated in the howl of expected indignation, so Lawrence continued teasing. “And how much for Miss el-Akle?”
Miss el-Akle was rather younger than I, and quite beautiful. “One cow,” Omar declared judiciously. “Too old for two cows.”
“Neddy, you are incorrigible,” she said.
His eyes dancing, Lawrence continued: “Omar, I think you are mistaken, for a schoolteacher is the mother of minds, and each has many children. These ladies are worth ten camels apiece!”
“Ah, Neddy,” said Miss el-Akle affectionately. “Now you are forgiven.”
The evening went on like that until well after midnight. Reluctantly, I ceded the small, sleeping boy to Um Omar; I was surprised to notice how cold and empty my arms felt when I let him go. When I was alone in the guest room, Omar’s judgment echoed in my mind. No good. Too old. But was that true? His own mother must have given birth to the little boy when she was my age, or even older. Back in Little Italy, many of the students were the eighth or even ninth in their families, born to mothers no longer young …
That first night in Jebail, a plan began to take form, one that I hoped would change my life permanently and for the better. I grant you, it was not well thought out. In my defense, I can say only that I had lived too much in my mind, too little in my body until then. I was finished with being sensible and too old to wait much longer, but the moment I so much as thought about it, I heard that awful, inward chorus of objection:
What if he doesn’t—?
—raised you to be a lady—
What will people think?
Conscience makes cowards of us all, the Bard wrote, but these were not the voices of my own conscience. They were the voices of my mother, and her mother before her. It was time to stop listening to the i
Oh, Agnes, you don’t want that! Mumma said, pleading with me.
Yes, I realized. Yes, I do. I want. I want!
There was no one left alive to tell me no. Karl was waiting for me in Cairo. And he had promised me the Nile.
At breakfast the next morning, Lawrence told us all he would be driving on that day, to his meeting with Emir Abdullah. This was going to be good-bye. The thought made me very sad indeed, but before he left, Lawrence suggested a walk; naturally, I agreed.
He ushered me out the back door, walking past the school buildings and up a hill near the rear of the compound. “The American missionaries here understood that it was death for a Muslim to convert, so they didn’t proselytize,” he told me as we climbed. “They opened schools like this instead and welcomed any student who wished to attend. Simply by giving classwork in English and French, they brought important Western ideas to the region. Prosperous families began to visit Paris on holiday. For poorer ones, contact with Americans promoted emigration. There’s hardly a family in Syria without at least one son who’s been to America for a few years. Those men came home eager to reform the government here.”
All this seemed merely informative, something that an academic like Lawrence might suppose a teacher like me would find interesting. Then I saw that he had led me to the gate of the mission’s small cemetery. “It wasn’t only Syria that was affected,” he continued, leading the way along a path that wove through crowded headstones. “One of the Young Turks—secretary for the Lebanon, before the war—he told me that the progressive changes in the Turkish constitution were entirely due to the influence of the American Mission School.”