Arabian Sands (13 page)

This money was in canvas bags tied with string; the saddlebags were unfastened. My companions were desperately poor and yet the coins were as safe in my saddle-bags as if they had been in a bank. I was five years with the Bedu and I never lost a single coin nor a round of ammunition, although this was even more valuable to them than money.

I lay in my sleeping-bag listening to the never-ending noises. Some people were still talking. They talked at intervals throughout the night as, woken by the cold, they squatted round the fire. Someone else was singing quietly to himself on the far side of the camp. The camels, uncomfortable on the rocky floor, shuffled and groaned. I heard a leopard cough somewhere on the slopes above us. Others heard it too and Musallim called out, ‘Did you hear that? It is a leopard.’ I found it difficult to sleep; my mind was too full of plans, too stimulated by my return. I thought how welcoming are Arabs, more so than any race I know.

We remained next day at Al Ain. In the afternoon I climbed the slopes above us. Sultan, Musallim, bin Turkia and his son, bin Anauf, came with me. We visited a Qarra encampment on a small terrace, immediately above a narrow gorge, choked with trees and creepers. A family were living in a shallow cave which undercut the limestone cliff. The floor was carpeted with goat-droppings. We sat talking with them for a while, sitting in the mouth of the cave. There was an old man, half blind, two sixteen-year-old boys, both of them with cock’s -combs of hair, and a powerfully built man of middle age who carried a straight-bladed sword, a throwing-stick of heavy wood,, and a small, deep, circular shield of wicker-work, covered with hide, which he used as a stool. One of the boys fetched us some sour milk in a dirty wooden bowl. Musallim warned me to look out for
dhafar,
leathery ticks, whose bites raise large painful lumps and sometimes cause fever, and which are common in these caves where goats are housed. I had slept in one such cave the year before when it threatened rain, and had been so badly bitten I had scratched for days.

The sun was setting and it was time to go back to camp. We
were high on the mountain-side looking down on the plain, on salala and the distant ocean. As we rose to go an old man approached. He mumbled a salutation and we replied. He stood and stared at me, wrinkling his eyes; he wore a short dirty loin-cloth and carried a stick – he was evidently too poor to own a dagger. Grey hair sprouted on his chest and eldritch locks fell round his emaciated face; a single tooth wobbled as he spoke. He looked at me for some time and then mumbled again, ‘I came to see the Christian’. Sultan said to me, ‘He is a Shahara’. I wondered what he saw as he peered at me with bleary eyes, this old man whose ancestors were tabled in Genesis. Perhaps dimly he foresaw the end. As we went down the hillside I asked my companions who he was. ‘He is mad’, one of them answered, and parodied ‘I came to see the Christian’, and they laughed. Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of ‘his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.

Next day we climbed to the top of the Kismim Pass and camped in a hollow in the downs. Some Al Kathir lived here between the Bait Qatan and Bait Saad sections of the Qarra, whom they resembled in mode of life and general appearance, although they spoke Arabic. Our camp was soon infested with them, anxious to sell butter or goats at fantastic prices, and to scrounge flour. Their sheikh was a particularly unpleasant old man. Avarice inflamed his eyes and raised the pitch of his voice, while he pawed at my possessions with eager, trembling fingers. We felt no desire to linger here, and in any case water was difficult to obtain.

To the south, grassy downs, green jungles, and shadowy gorges fell away to the plain of Jarbib and to the Indian Ocean which opened on to another world, whereas immediately to
the north a landscape of black rocks and yellow sand sloped down to the Empty Quarter. I looked out over the desert. It stretched away unbroken for fifteen hundred miles to the orchards round Damascus and the red cliffs of Rum. A desert breeze blew round me. I thought of that ruined castle in distant Syria which Lawrence had visited. The Arabs believed that it had been built by a prince of the border as a desert palace for his queen, and declared that its clay had been kneaded with the juice of flowers. Lawrence was taken by his guides from room to crumbling room. Sniffing like dogs, they said, ”This is jasmine, this violet, this rose’; but at last one of them had called, ‘Come and smell the very sweetest smell of all’, and had led him to a gaping window where the empty wind of the desert went throbbing past. ‘This’, they told him, ‘is the best: it has no taste.’

Early next morning we moved down to the pool of Aiyun, which lies beneath sheer-sided limestone cliffs two hundred feet in height, at the head of the Wadi Ghudun. This deep pool, which is fed by a small spring, is a hundred and fifty yards long and thirty yards across, and its still, green waters are fringed with rushes. Tamtaim declared that a monster serpent lived in the pool and that sometimes it seized a goat when the flocks came down to drink.

We watered our camels and filled our water-skins. The water-course which gave access to the pool was soon packed with jostling camels, picking their way with clumsy deliberation among the boulders and snatching mouthfuls from any bushes they passed.

Many Englishmen have written about camels. When I open a book and see the familiar disparagement, the well-worn humour, I realize that the author’s knowledge of them is slight, that he has never lived among the Bedu, who know the camel’s worth: ‘Ata Allah’, or ‘God’s gift’, they call her, and it is her patience that wins the Arab’s heart. I have never seen a Bedu strike or ill-treat a camel. Always the camels’ needs come first. It is not only that the Bedu’s existence depends upon the welfare of his animals, but that he has a real affection for them. Often I have watched my companions fondling and kissing them whilst they murmured endearments. The year before,
riding through the cultivations near Tarim, we had come across a villager thrashing a camel. Several of the Rashid who were with me jumped down at once and remonstrated angrily with the man, and then as we rode on they expressed their contempt for him.

A few days later as we were walking across the desert, with the camels unattended some thirty yards away, Sultan challenged another Arab to call his camel over to him. Camels are gregarious and hate separating from their fellows, but as soon as her owner called she swung out of the line and came over. I can remember another that was as attached to her owner as a dog might have been. At intervals throughout the night she came over, moaning softly, to sniff at him where he lay, before going back to graze. My companions told me that no one else could ride her unless he took with him a piece of her owner’s clothing.

To Arabs, camels are beautiful, and they derive as great a pleasure from looking at a good camel as some Englishmen get from looking at a good horse. There is indeed a tremendous feeling of power, rhythm, and grace about these great beasts. I certainly know few sights finer than mounted Arabs travelling fast on well-bred camels, but this is rarely seen for they seldom travel faster than at a walk.

To talk intelligently to the Bedu about camels I tried to learn the different terms which they used, and these, numerous enough in any case, tended to vary among different tribes. They used several different words for the singular and the plural. They had different names for the different breeds and colours, for riding camels and herd camels, and a different term, which varied according to the animal’s sex, for a camel in each year of its life until it was fully grown, and others for it as soon as it began to grow old. They had terms for a barren female, and for one in calf or in milk, which varied again depending on how long she had been in calf or in milk. I listed many of these words but found it impossibe to carry most of them in my head.

We had unsaddled beneath some acacia trees, where the wadi widened out. Soon, Arabs appeared from the pool staggering under filled water-skins, which they laid out in the
shadow of the trees. The skins lay there in the thin shade, wobbling slightly like giant slugs, bloated and curiously obscene. Travelling with Bedu I learnt to use their things. It is, I am convinced, a mistake to introduce innovations from outside, however much better they may appear to be. The Arabs know their own gear – it has stood the test of time. The goatskins in which they carry their water can be rolled up when they are empty, weigh nothing, and are easily stowed away. If they sweat they can be treated with butter; if they leak the holes can be plugged with thorns or with splinters of wood wrapped round with cloth. This looks precarious but it works surprisingly well. The water tastes and smells of goat, but in the desert untainted water is tasted only in dreams. Flour, rice, and dates are packed in other skins which are easily slung along the saddle and balance the weight of water on the other side. Butter is usually carried in lizard-skins, about eighteen inches long.

Musallim had gone out hunting along the cliffs, and he came in a little before sunset, carrying an ibex which he dumped down beside the fire. It was an old ram whose meat would taste much as it smelt, but it was meat. Musallim gave some to each party and then, tirelesss as ever, helped young bin Anauf to cook the rest of it. Later he heaped the steaming rice on to a single tray, and surrounded the tray with bowls of greasy gravy. The cooked meat was set apart. Sultan then divided it into seven equal portions. Tamtaim took seven twigs and named each twig after one of us. Musallim, whose back had been turned, then placed a twig on a heap of meat, saying as he did so, ‘Here is for the best man.’ This lot fell to bin Turkia. ‘Here is for the worst’, as he laid down another twig. This was for Mabkhaut, which was not fair. ‘This is for the man who won’t get up in the morning.’ It was mine and apposite, as the laughter reminded me, but the laughter was redoubled when Musallim called out, ‘This is for the man who pokes the girls’, and Tamtaim picked up the meat which had fallen to him. Bin Anauf grinned at the old man, and said, ‘Evidently, uncle, you will have another son next year.’ Musallim went on until each of us had drawn his share of the meat.

There is always trouble if meat is not divided by lot. Someone immediately says that he has been given more than his share, and tries to hand a piece to someone else. Then there is much arguing and swearing by God, with everyone insisting that he has been given too much, and finally a deadlock ensues which can only be settled by casting lots for the meat – as should have been done in the first place. I have never heard a man grumble that he has received less than his share. Such behaviour would be inconceivable to the Bedu, for they are careful never to appear greedy, and quick to notice anyone who is. I remember the story of a destitute Bedu boy, who told his mother that he liked dining when there was no moon, for then his companions could not see how much food he took. His mother said, ‘Sit with them in the dark and cut at a piece of rope with your knife turned the wrong way round.’ The boy did so that very night. There was no moon and it was very dark, but as he picked up the knife a dozen voices called out, ‘You have got it the wrong way round!’

We squatted round the dish of rice over which Musallim had poured some gravy, each of us with his portion of meat in front of him, and we dipped our right hands in turn into the rice. We moulded the handful which we had taken in the palm of the hand until it had become a ball, and then put it neatly into our mouths with fingers and thumb. An Arab always feeds with his right hand and avoids if possible touching food with his left hand, for this is the unclean hand with which he washes after he has relieved himself. It is even bad manners to pass anyone anything with this hand or to accept anything with it.

After dinner we sat round and talked, the favourite occupation of the Bedu. They are unflagging talkers. A man will tell the same story half a dozen times in a couple of months to the same people and they will sit and listen with apparent interest. They find it an almost unendurable hardship to keep silent. Yet that evening when someone started to recite poetry a hush fell over the camp, broken only by the sound of pounding as they crushed
saf
leaves which they had gathered in the wadi before plaiting the fibre into rope. One after the other they gathered round, silent except when they repeated the final line of each verse.

When moved, Arabs break easily into poetry. I have heard a lad spontaneously describe in verse some grazing which he had just found: he was giving natural expression to his feelings. But while they are very sensible of the beauty of their language, they are curiously blind to natural beauty. The colour of the sands, a sunset, the moon reflected in the sea: such things leave them unmoved. They are not even noticed. When we returned from Mughshin the year before, and had come out from the void of the desert on to the crest of the Qarra range and looked again on green trees and grass and the loveliness of the mountains, I turned to one of them and said, ‘Isn’t that beautiful!’ He looked, and looked again, and then said uncomprehending, ‘no – it is rotten bad grazing.’ Yet their kinsmen in Hadhramaut have evolved an architecture which is simple, harmonious, and beautiful. But this architecture is doomed, for the Arabs’ taste is easily corrupted. New and hideous buildings, planned by modern Arab architects, are already rising in these ancient cities. My companions when they saw them were deeply impressed. They turned to me and said, ‘By God, that is a wonderful building!’ It was useless to argue.

We travelled slowly northwards following the Ghudun, one of the five dry river-beds which run down from the coastal range to form the great trunk wadi of Umm al Hait. Gouged out from the limestone plateau the Ghudun begins abruptly as a canyon two hundred feet below the desert floor. Gradually it increases in size until finally it is four hundred feet in depth, and several hundred yards across. Great slabs of rock, fallen from the cliffs on either side, forced us to travel in the stream bed, where a jumble of polished boulders made awkward going for our camels. There was a little scattered vegetation among the screes below the cliffs – caper bushes, acacias, various leguminous plants, and small thickets of
saf,
a species of palmetto. Sometimes I climbed the cliffs with Musallim to look for ibex, and then I could see for miles across a flinty plain which sloped gradually down towards the inner desert and where the only signs of vegetation were a few leafless acacia bushes growing on pans of gravel and hard sand.