Arabian Sands (20 page)

‘How do you manage for grazing in the summer?’

‘Yes, that is the difficulty. Often there is none round the wells and we have to take the camels long distances to water them.’

‘How long will a camel last without water in summer?’

‘Again it depends on the grazing. They will last longer in the wadis where they can get some shade from the trees. Under those conditions they would go for a week without a drink. In the Sands we try to water them every two or three days. Life is hard for the Bedu in the summer, Umbarak. Sometimes we are camped on wells which are so bitter that we can only drink the water mixed with milk. We water the camels and cannot drink the water ourselves. We splash it over us to cool us while we work, and our bodies get covered with sores. Watering the camels is hard work. They are thirsty and drink a lot, and the sun is hot. It is worse when the wind
blows; then it is like a furnace. Even when we stop to rest there is no shade on these wells in the sand. Only the Bedu could endure this life.’

Four hours later we came to large red dunes set close together. There were green plants growing there as the result of heavy rain which had fallen two years before. A little later we saw camels of the Bait Musan and a herds boy who was tending them. We camped in a hollow and loosed our camels to revel among the juicy shrubs.

Larks were singing round our camping place. Butterflies flitted from plant to plant. Lizards scuttled about, and small black beetles walked laboriously across the sand. We had seen a hare that morning, and the tracks of gazelle. The sand around us was still marked where jerboas and other small rodents had scampered about during the night. I wondered how they got here, how they had located this small green island, in the enormous emptiness which surrounded it.

Sultan, Musallim, and several others had gone off with the herds boy to the Bait Musan encampment. AI Auf was herding the camels. Several people were sleeping, their faces covered with their head cloths. I climbed a slope above our camp and bin Kabina joined me. I was hungry; I had eaten only half my portion of ash-encrusted bread the night before. The brackish water which I had drunk at sunset had done little to lessen my nagging thirst. Yet the sky seemed bluer than it had been for days. The sand was a glowing carpet set about my feet. A raven croaked, circling round us, and bin Kabina shouted, ‘Raven seek thy brother.’ Then another raven flew over the shoulder of a nearby dune and he laughed, and explained to me that a single raven is unlucky, a bearer of ill-tidings. We sat there happily together, and he taught me the names of the plants which grow in the Sands. The tribulus was
zahra
; the heliotrope which grew on the hard sand in the hollows was
rimram
; and the tasselled sedge was
qassis.
The straggling bush under which we sat, its fragile branches bright with fluffy yellow balls, was
abal,
and was good food for a thirsty camel. He gave me the names of other plants and bushes:
harm,
the vivid green salt-bush;
birkan, ailqi, sadan,
and
several others. He knew them all. Later when they were working out my collection in the museum in London they sometimes thought that bin Kabina had given me different names for the same plant, but nearly always when they examined them carefully they found that he was right.

He talked about his mother and his young brother Said, whom I had not met, and about his cousin whom he hoped to marry. The distant camels drifted in greedy haste from bush to bush. Then we saw Sultan and the others returning. As they drew near, bin Kabina said, ‘Sultan will make trouble. He is frightened and does not wish to go on’, and I knew that bin Kabina was right. They brought a bag of sour milk with them. We drank it thirstily and it was very good. Then Sultan called the others and they went off and sat in a circle apart from me. I told bin Kabina to fetch al Auf. Later Sultan asked me to join them. He said that they had discussed the situation and agreed that the Bait Musan camels were all in poor condition, that neither they nor our camels were capable of getting to Dhafara, that we must therefore return to the others on the southern coast, where if I wished we could hunt oryx in the Jaddat al Harasis. He added that our food was insufficient and that we had not enough water to go on, even if the camels had been in good condition. I then suggested that six of us should go on with the best of the camels, and that the other six should go back. But Sultan said that six would be too small a party, since the country on the other side of the Sands would be full of raiders as a result of the fighting between the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dibai; to discourage me he said that the Bait Musan had told him that a party of Arabs, well mounted and with plenty of water, had tried to cross to Dhafara two years before, when the grazing was good, and that all of them had died in the Sands. He declared that we must either all go on or all go back. We argued for a long time but I knew that it was useless. His nerve had gone. He had always been the undisputed leader, with a reputation for daring. It was a reputation not easily acquired among the Bedu; but he had lived all his life in the mountains and on the steppes. In the Sands he was confused and bewildered, no longer self-reliant. He looked an old and broken man and I was sorry. He had
helped me so often and I liked him. I asked al Auf if he would come with me, and he said: ‘I thought we came here to go to Dhafara. If you wish to go on I will guide you.’ I asked bin Kabina, and he answered that where I went he would go. I wondered if Musallim would come with us. The camel which I rode belonged to him; without it I did not see how I could go on. I knew that he was jealous of Sultan. I asked him, and he answered, ‘I will come.’ The others said nothing.

Once again we divided up the food. We took as our share fifty pounds of flour, some of the butter and coffee, what remained of the tea and sugar, and a few dried onions. We also took four skins of water, choosing the best skins that did not leak. Musallim told me that the Bait Musan possessed a bull camel in good condition, and suggested that we should buy it and take it with us as a spare. He also said that Mabkhaut bin Arbain was his friend and would come with us if he asked him to. I thought that Mabkhaut’s camel looked thin, but al Auf replied that they knew about camels and that this one would stand much hard work. He was anxious for Mabkhaut to accompany us, for he said that it would be better if we had one more person with us and that Mabkhaut was the most reliable of the Bait Kathir. Musallim went off to see about this. Later Mabkhaut came over, carrying his saddlery, and joined us. In the evening bin Turkia asked if he too might come with us. He was a relation of Mabkhaut’s and wished to share with him the dangers that were ahead of us. Unfortunately his camel was one of the worst, so reluctantly we refused. I promised him instead that I would take him and his young son bin Anauf with me to Mukalla, when I travelled there from Salala on my return from my present journey. We bought the bull, a large and very powerful black animal, after much haggling and for a fantastic price, paying the equivalent of fifty pounds, more than twice what it was worth. I felt more confident than I had felt for days. I had with me chosen companions all mounted on good camels. We had a spare camel with us which was used to the Sands. If our food ran out we could kill one of our animals and eat it. Water was short. We should have to be careful with this, and ration ourselves to a pint a day. Bin Kabina, Musallim, and Mabkhaut
each carried one of the service rifles which belonged to me. AI Auf had a long-barrelled .303 Martini, a weapon favoured by the Bedu. I carried a sporting model 303. We divided the spare ammunition between us. There was more than a hundred rounds for each of us. Next day after we had left the others, I told my companions that they could have these weapons as presents, and promised al Auf that he could take the pick of my remaining rifles as soon as we returned to Salala. Nothing that I could have given them could have delighted them more. Service rifles in good condition were unprocurable among these tribes. Even ammunition was scarce. All tribesmen like to wear a dagger or carry a rifle, even in peaceful surroundings, as a mark of their manhood, as a sign of their independence, but in southern Arabia the safety of their herds, even their lives, may at any moment depend upon their rifles. Bin Kabina had already confided to me that he hoped to buy a rifle with the money I gave him. He no doubt had visualized himself as the proud owner of some ancient weapon, such as he had borrowed when he accompanied me to the Hadhramaut, a fighting-man at last, envied by his young brother. Now he owned the finest rifle in his tribe. I watched the disbelief slowly fading from his eyes.

The Bait Musan came to us at dusk, carrying bowls of camel’s milk. The milk was soothing and cool after the bitter water, which rasped our throats. I sat with the Bait Kathir but there was constraint among us so I went and joined al Auf and bin Kabina who were mending a saddle. If they had not come to Shisur I should be turning back as Thomas had once turned back from Mughshin.

The departure of five Bait Kathir
leaves me with a party of only four.
We are short of food and water.
We cross the Uruq al Shaiba and
arrive at Khaba well near
Liwa Oasis.

The Bait Kathir helped us to load our camels. We said goodbye, picked up our rifles, and set off, passing the bush where bin Kabina and I had sat the day before. The plants he had collected to show me still lay there, withered on the ground. It seemed a long time ago.

The Rashid took the lead, their faded brown clothes harmonizing with the sands: al Auf, a lean, neat figure, very upright; bin Kabina, more loosely built, striding beside him. The two Bait Kathir followed close behind, with the spare camel tied to Musallim’s saddle. Their clothes, which had once been white, had become neutral-coloured from long usage. Mabkhaut was the same build as al Auf, whom he resembled in many ways, though he was a less forceful character. In the distance he was distinguishable from him only by the colour of his shirt. Musallim, compactly built, slightly bow-legged, and physically tough, was of a different, coarser breed. The least likeable of my companions, his personality had suffered from too frequent sojourns in Salala and he tended to be ingratiating.

After a short distance al Auf suggested that, as he did not know what we should find to the north, it would be wise to halt near by, with the Bait Imani, to allow our camels a further day’s grazing. The Arabs, he added, would give us milk so that we need not touch our food and water. I answered that he was our guide and that from now on such decisions must rest with him.

Two hours later we saw a small boy, dressed in the remnants of a loin-cloth and with long hair falling down his back, herding camels. He led us to the Bait Imani camp, where three men sat round the embers of a fire. They rose as we
approached. ‘Salam Alaikum’, ‘Ataikum as Salam’, and then, after we had exchanged the news, they handed us a bowl of milk, its surface crusted with brown sand. These Bait Imani belonged to the same section of the Rashid as al Auf and bin Kabina and were from three different families. Only one of them, a grizzled elderly man called Khuatim, wore a shirt over his loin-cloth, and all were bareheaded. They had no tent; their only possessions were saddles, ropes, bowls, empty goatskins, and their rifles and daggers. The camping ground was churned and furrowed where the camels slept, and littered with camel droppings, hard and clean on the sand like dried dates. These men were cheerful and full of talk. The grazing was good; their camels, several in milk, would soon be fat. Life by their standards would be easy this year, but I thought of other years when the exhausted scouts rode back to the wells to speak through blackened, bleeding lips of desolation in the Sands, of emptiness such as I myself had seen on the way here from Ghanim; when the last withered plants were gone and walking skeletons of men and beasts sank down to die. Even tonight, when they considered themselves well off, these men would sleep naked on the freezing sand, covered only with their flimsy loin-cloths. I thought, too, of the bitter wells in the furnace heat of summer, when, hour by reeling hour, they watered thirty, thrusting camels, until at last the wells ran dry and importunate camels moaned for water which was not there. I thought how desperately hard were the lives of the Bedu in this weary land, and how gallant and how enduring was their spirit. Now, listening to their talk and watching the little acts of courtesy which they instinctively performed, I knew by comparison how sadly I must fall, how selfish I must prove.

The Bait Imani talked of Mahsin and of the accident which had befallen him, asking endless questions. Then Khuatim shouted to the small herdsboy, his son, to fetch the yellow four-year-old and the old grey which was still in milk. When the boy had brought them, Khuatim told him to couch (hem and loosed the hobbles from our bull’s forelegs. Already (he bull was excited, threshing itself with its tail, grinding its teeth, or blowing a large pink air sac from its mouth and
sucking it back with a slobbering sound. Clumsily it straddled the yellow camel, a comic figure of ill-directed lust, while Khuatim, kneeling beside it, tried to assist. Bin Kabina observed to me, ‘Camels would never manage to mate without human help. They would never get it in the right place.’ I was thankful that there were no more than these two camels to be served; there might have been a dozen to exhaust our bull.

The boy brought in the rest of the herd, thirty-five of them, at sunset. Khuatim washed his hands beneath a staling camel and scrubbed out the bowls with sand, for Bedu believe that a camel will go dry if milked with dirty hands or into a bowl which was soiled with food, especially meat or butter. He stroked a camel’s udder, talking to her and encouraging her to let down her milk, and then standing on one leg, with his right foot resting on his left knee, he milked her into a bowl which he balanced on his right thigh. She gave about two quarts; several of the others, however, gave less than a quart. There were nine of these camels in milk. AI Auf milked Qamaiqam, bin Kabina’s camel. She had given us a quart twice a day at Mughshin, but now from hard work and lack of food she only gave about a pint.