Hav by Jan Morris

beneath red umbrellas like Turkish pashas themselves, to make sure there is no cheating.
    Virtually all Hav turns out for this stupendous athletic event. All shops and government offices are closed for the day, and almost the only person who cannot come to watch is Missakian the trumpeter, because it is his call from the castle rampart which is the signal for the start. In former times the race was run at midnight, as the messenger supposedly ran, but so many competitors died or were terribly injured, tripping over unseen projections, misjudging the width of lanes, that in 1882 the Russians decreed it should be run instead as dawn broke over the city — to the chagrin of those young bloods whose chief pleasure, if we are to believe Tolstoy, lay in seeing the splayed bodies falling through the street-lights to their deaths. But if it was well ordered in Russian times, when Grand Duchesses came to watch, it is less so now: the race itself may be properly umpired and refereed, but the spectators, conveniently removed as they are from the actual course above their heads, are left absolutely uncontrolled. ‘You are strong,’ said Mahmoud, inviting me to join him at the great event, ‘we will do the triple.’
    This meant so positioning ourselves that we could see the three climactic moments of the race, one after the other — the start, the Bazaar Leap and the finish. For aficionados this is the only way to watch, and over the years dozens of ways of doing it have been devised. Some use bicycles to race around the outer circle of the walls. Some are alleged to know of passages through the city’s cellars and sewers. Our system however would be simple: we would just barge our way, with several thousand others, down the clogged and excited streets from one site to the other.
    Forty-two young men took part in the race this morning, and when we hastened in the half-light to join the great crowd at the Market Gate, we found them flexing their muscles, stretching themselves and touching their toes in a long line below the city wall. Two were Chinese. One was black. One I recognized — he works at the Big Star garage, where I bought my car. One was Mahmoud’s cousin Gabril, who works for the tramways company. Several wore red trunks to show that they had run the race before, in itself a mark of great distinction, and they were all heavily greased — a protection, Mahmoud said, against abrasions.
    The eastern sky began to pale; the shape of the high wall revealed itself before us; from the mosque, as we stood there in silence, came the call to prayer; and then from the distant castle heights sounded Missakian’s trumpet. The very instant its last notes died those forty-two young men were scrabbling furiously up the stonework, finding a foothold here, a handhold there, pulling themselves up bump by bump, crack by crack, by routes which, like climbers’ pitches, all have their long-familiar names and well-known characteristics. A few seconds — it cannot have been more — and they were all over the top and out of sight.
    â€˜Right,’ said Mahmoud, ‘quick, follow me,’ and ruthlessly pushing and elbowing our way we struggled through the gate into the street that leads to the Great Bazaar in the very middle of the Medina. In sudden gusts and mighty sighs, as we progressed, we could hear spectators across the city greeting some spectacular jump, mourning some unfortunate slither — first to our right, then in front of us, then to our left, and presently behind our backs, as the runners finished their first lap. ‘Quick, quick,’ said Mahmoud to nobody in particular, and everyone else was saying it too — ‘quick, only a few minutes now, we mustn’t miss it, come along, dirleddy’ — and at last we were beneath the vaulted arcade of the bazaar, lit only by shafts of sunlight through its roof-holes, shoving along its eastern axis until we found