Talk:The Lion of Petra

Information about this edition
Edition:	Extracted from Adventure magazine, 1922 March, pp. 3–70.
Source:	https://archive.org/details/adventure-v-33-n-05-1922-03-20
Contributor(s):	ragpicker
Level of progress:
Notes:	Accompanying illustrations may be omitted
Proofreaders:	ragcleaner

The facts behind the fiction.

Extract from "The Camp-Fire," pp. 182-183

SOMETHING from Talbot Mundy concerning his complete novel in this issue. If I did not know the facts and Mr. Mundy I might suspect that what he says about the real identity of Jimgrim were a neat bluff to add interest to his stories. It isn’t.

New York City.

Petra, in Arabia, was practically unheard of for a thousand years until Burkhardt, the great explorer, rediscovered it, and even then there were Plenty who refused to credit his account. Nobody knows who first began to build it, but it was certainly a city in the days of Abraham. Hadrian, the Roman emperor, built most of the outstanding features, and in his day it was a great center of trade, on the highroad between Egypt and Syria. Again, nobody knows how or why it became deserted and forgotten.

LAWRENCE (Allenby’s famous young coadjutor, who swung the Arabs into line in the late war, as no other man in all history ever did) fought one of his biggest battles there, decisively beating the Turks by recruiting Bedouin women to reenforce his half-armed volunteers. He stationed many of the women in the “Treasury,” described in the story, whence they poured a hot fire through the twelve-foot gap and withered the advancing Turks, who were already thrown into confusion by the rocks hurled down on them from the cliffs six hundred feet above.

THE storied resemblance between Grim and Ali Higg may raise a smile from the too knowing, who like to disbelieve coincidences. Well, the fact is that this story, like all the others about Grim, is founded on sheer fact. It isn’t always fair to ask a man how much of his story is true and how much of it imagined (if it were, they couldn’t run the newspapers!) and I’m under oath not to divulge the identity of the real Grim. But this much I got from Grim himself: A raid was at one time expected into Palestine from over Jordan, by two parties of Bedouins, neither of which dared to tackle the job alone. If I remember rightly, each party numbered about three thousand men, and the southern party was commanded by a notorious fanatic, whose reputation had preceded him from Arabia. The northern party proposed to wait for the southern, so as to join forces; and if that had been accomplished, it would have been a nasty and expensive job to repel the raid.

Some one in the Jerusalem jail, however—some Arab friend of Grim’s, whose lot he had gone to ease a little with cigarets and gossip—told him how closely he resembled this fanatical Arab leader over Jordan. And, though it sounds incredible, Grim crossed the Jordan that night, introduced himself to the northern party of raiders as the redoubtable individual they were waiting for, told them that the southern force had played the coward and deserted him, and advised them to “beat it” for the hills before the British got after them. They took him at his word, and decamped. Hearing of that, by means of spies whom Grim sent down for the purpose, the southern force lost heart, deserted their furious leader, and the “raid” was over.

AS FOR the poison, and Ayisha’s readiness to use it on Ali Higg, in order to kill him and attach herself to Jimgrim: Poison throughout the whole East, including Egypt, is the one weapon that everybody affects to despise, and almost everybody, who can afford it, uses. It is the bane of polygamy—the thorn in the side of the owner of several wives, and therefore always the politician’s last—and often his first—resort. Jealousy among wives is an obvious weak place in a petty chief’s armor, and poison the first thing the women usually think of. Divorce, for the man, is fabulously easy, but the laws weren’t made for women, so if a junior wife bears a grudge or prefers another man, let her spouse beware! Poison and superstition are the two chief means by which leadership is made to change hands.

ONE other point about impersonation; it is commoner than supposed. An historical instance, alluded to in Burton’s “First Footsteps in East Africa,” is that of the Queen Talwambara, whose husband was slain in battle by the combined force of Portuguese and Abyssinians. To prevent panic and consequent destruction of the host of Al-Islam, the queen caused a slave, who resembled him, to take her fallen husband’s place. He succeeded in rallying the Arab army and conducting an orderly retreat; nor did they learn until some time afterward that another had been posing as the king. There are numerous similar instances on record.

THE original of Grim—he is an American, and very much alive—has the peculiar and highly developed gift of passing himself for an Arab. He has actually made the pilgrimage to Mecca more than once—on one occasion overland, and once by train. I only hope I have disguised his identity sufficiently to satisfy his strict injunctions on that int. He is not a good talker about himself, but has promised to give me the “makings” of a lot more yarns “some day,” subject to that one proviso, that I give no clue to his real name.