The escort began to look sullenly ferocious, as only Arabs can.
There was a time, during the Turkish regime before the War, when Cook's Agency took tourists in parties to El-Kerak, and all the protection necessary was a handful of Turkish soldiers, whose thief employment on the trip was to gather fuel and pitch tents.
Some one paid the Arabs to let tourists alone, and they normally did.

But the War changed all that.

A post-Armistice stranger in 1920, with leather boots, was fair quarry for whoever had rifle or knife.
We passed by a village or two, tucked into folds in the hills and polluting the blue sky with a smell of ageing dung, but nothing seemed disposed to happen.

A few men stood behind stone walls and stared at us sullenly.

The women looked up from their grindstones at the doors, covered their faces for convention's sake, and uncovered them again at once for curiosity.