Читать онлайн «The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels»

PREFACE

AN IMAGINATIVE AUNT W H O , FOR MY NINTH BIRTHDAY, SENT A copy of the Arabian Nights, was, I suppose, the original cause of trouble.

Unfostered and unnoticed, the little flame so kindled fed secretly on dreams. Chance, such as the existence of a Syrian missionary near my home, nourished it; and Fate, with long months of illness and leisure, blew it to a blaze bright enough to light my w a y through labyrinths of Arabic, and eventually to land me on the coast of Syria at the end o f 1927.

Here, I thought, all difficulty was over: I had n o w but to look around me, to learn, and to enjoy.

A n d so it would have been had not those twin Virtues so fatal to the joie de vivre of our civilized West, the sense of responsibility and the illusion, dear to well-regulated minds, that every action must have a purpose—had not these virtues of Responsibility and Purpose met me at every step with the embarrassing enquiry: " Why are you here alone?" and:

" What do y o u intend to doi"

I may confess at once that I had never thought of w h y I came, far less of w h y I came alone: and as to what I was going to d o — I saw no cause to trouble about a thing so nebulous beforehand. My sense of responsibility was in effect deficient, and purpose non-existent. W h e n excessively badgered, the only explanation I could think of for being so unwantedly in Asia was an interest in Arabic grammar—a statement rarely accepted in that candid spirit in which I offered it to unconvinced enquirers.