"Mary Stewart - The Gabriel Hounds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

of this sort it is inevitable that officials are mentioned
by office, if not by name. Any references to Government
bodies, Cabinet Ministers, frontier officials, etc.,
are made purely for the purposes of this story, and
do not refer to any actual holders of these offices,
living or dead. Moreover, though the Adonis Valley
certainly exists, the Nahr el-Sal'q--with the village
and the palace of Dar Ibrahim--does not.



I should also like to thank all those friends, from
Edinburgh to Damascus, who have given me so much
generous help.


M. S.
Chapter One


No vain discourse shall thou hear therein:
Therein shall be a gushing fountain;
Therein shall be raised couches,
And goblets ready placed,
And cushions laid in order,
And carpets spread forth.


--the koran: Swra Lxxxvn


I met him in the street called Straight.

I had come out of the dark shop doorway into the dazzle
of the Damascus sun, my arms full of silks. I didn't see anything
at first, because the sun was right in my eyes and he
was in shadow, just where the Straight Street becomes a dim
tunnel under its high corrugated iron roof.

The souk was crowded. Someone stopped in front of me to
take a photograph. A crowd of youths went by, eyeing me
and calling comments in Arabic, punctuated by "Miss" and
"'Allo" and "Good-bye." A small grey donkey pattered past
under a load of vegetables three times its own width. A taxi
shaved me so near that I took a half step back into the shop
doorway and the shopkeeper, at my elbow, put out a protective
hand for his rolls of silk. The taxi swerved, horn blaring,
past the donkey, parted a tight group of ragged children the
way a ship parts water, and aimed without any slackening of
speed at the bottleneck where the street narrowed sharply between