The man who could not do that in a crusader city, crammed with sons of Ishmael who looked as if they had stepped out of the pages of the Old Testament, would be difficult to please.  I asked for Ahmed, to act as interpreter.  Ben Nazir volunteered to provide me with two men in addition as a sort of bodyguard.

“Because Ahmed is a person who is not respected.”

It did not take ten minutes to produce Ahmed and the two men.  The latter were six-foot, solemn veterans armed with rifles and long knives.  With them at my heels I set out to explore El-Kerak.

“There is nothing to see,” said Ahmed, who did not want to come.  But Ahmed was a liar.  There was everything to see.  The only definite purpose I had in mind was to find Grim.  It was possible I might recognize him even through his disguise.  Failing that, he could not help but notice me if I walked about enough; if so, he would find his own means of establishing communication.

But you might as well have hunted for one particular pebble on a beach as for a single individual in all that throng.  Remembering Grim’s disguise when I first saw him, I naturally had that picture of him in mind.  But all the Bedouins looked about as much alike as peas in a pod.  They stared at me as if I were a curio on exhibition, but they did not like being stared back at.

There was no hint of violence or interference, and no apparent resentment of an alien’s presence in their midst.  The loud-lunged bodyguard shouted out to all and sundry to make way for the “Amerikani,” and way was made forthwith, although several times the bodyguard was stopped and questioned after I had passed, to make sure I was really American and not English.  Ahmed assured me that if I had been English they would have “massacred” me.  In view of what transpired he may have been right, though I doubt it.  They might have held me as hostage.

Not that they were in any kind of over-tolerant mood.  There was a man’s dead body hanging by one foot from a great hook on a high wall, and the wall was splattered with blood and chipped by bullets.  I asked Ahmed what kind of criminal he might be.

“He did not agree with them.  They are for war.  He was in favor of peace, and he made a speech two hours ago.  So they accused him of being a traitor, and he was tried and condemned.”

“Who tried him?”

“Everybody did.”

“War with whom?” I asked.

“The British.”

“Why?”

“Because they favor the Zionists.”

“And that is what the conference is all about?”

“Yes.  There is a man here from Damascus, who urges them to raid across the Jordan into Palestine.  He says that the Palestinian Arabs will rise then, and cut the throats of all the Zionists.  He says that Emir Feisul is going to attack the French in Syria, and that the British will have to go and help the French, so now is the time for a raid.”