Arabian Sands (29 page)

This incident impressed upon me the Bedu’s indifference to human life. The man was sick and if God ordered it he would die. He was a stranger who came from a tribe unrelated to theirs. None of them felt an interest because he was a human being like themselves. His death would in no way affect them. Yet their code demanded that, however unwanted he might be, they should fight in his defence if he were attacked whilst with them.

There was a constant passage of visitors to our camping place while we were at Habarut. A woman came over to us and I recognized her as Nura, whom I had met the year before. Her three small children were with her; only the eldest one, aged about nine, wore any clothes. She told me that they were camped four miles away, and that the children had insisted on coming to see me again when they heard I was here. I gave the children dates and sugar to eat, while I talked to Nura. She was unveiled, and like most of the women in this part of Arabia was dressed in dark blue. She had a strong, square, weather-beaten face, and wore a silver ring through her right nostril. I thought she was surprisingly old to have three small children. She talked in a rather husky voice, telling me how she was going down to Ghaidat al Mahra on the coast to get
a load of sardines. As bin Ghabaisha had shot an ibex we had meat and soup for lunch. The children fed with us, but Nura was given a dish by herself. Arabs will not feed with women. Later, however, she returned and, sitting a little back from the circle, was given coffee and tea which she drank with the rest of us.

The general belief among the English people that Arab women are kept shut up is true of many of the women in the towns, but not among the tribes. Not only is it impossible for a man to shut up his wife when he is living under a tree, or in a tent which is always open on one side, but he requires her to work, to fetch water and firewood, and to herd the goats. If a woman thinks she is being neglected or ill-treated by her husband she can easily run away to her father or brother. Her husband has then to follow her and try to persuade her to come back. Her family will certainly take her part, insisting that she has been monstrously ill-treated. In the end the husband will probably have to give her a present before he can induce her to return. Wives cannot divorce their husbands, but the husband may agree to divorce his wife if she has refused to live with him, on condition that he recovers the two or three camels which he gave as the bride-price. If, however, he divorces her of his own accord he does not get back these camels.

In the evening someone mentioned Nura. I asked if her husband was dead, and al Auf said, ‘She has no husband. The children are bastards.’ When I expressed my surprise he said that bin Alia; who was one of our party, was also ‘a son of unlawfulness’. I asked if there was any slur attached to being a bastard, and bin Kabina said, ‘No. It is not the child’s fault,’ and added jokingly, ‘Next time, Umbarak, you see a girl that pleases you, sit down next to her in the dark, push your camel-stick through the sand until it is underneath her, and then turn it over until the crook presses against her. If she gets up, gives you an indignant look, and marches off, you will know that you are wasting your time. If she stays where she is, you can meet her next day when she is herding the goats.’ I said, ‘If it is as easy as all that there must be plenty of bastards,’ and someone answered, ‘Not among the Rashid, but the Humum near Mukalla have a whole section composed entirely of bastards.’

I knew that elsewhere in the Arab world a girl who is
immoral, or indeed in many places even if she is only suspected of immorality, will be killed by her relatives in order to protect the family honour. An Englishman told me of a tragic case that occurred on the Lower Euphrates while he was serving there as a Political Officer after the First World War. An Arab boy and his sister, who were orphans, lived in a tent outside his house and were close friends of his. One day his servants rushed into his house and told him that the boy had stabbed his sister and that she was calling for the Englishman. He went to their tent where the girl was lying fatally wounded. She said, ‘I am dying and I have a last request to make of you.’ He asked her what it was, and she said, ‘Grant it before I ask you.’ The Englishman hesitated, and the girl became so upset that he granted her request. She said, ‘Tell my brother that I was innocent and that I never did anything to shame him. I swear this as I die. But you have promised me my request and you are not to punish him, for I know that I was talked about and by our custom he did right to kill me.’ Later, when the Englishman told the tribal sheikhs what had happened, they all said, ‘But of course the boy was right to kill her. She brought shame upon her family because she was talked about.’ I told my companions this story, and they shook their heads, and old bin Kalut said it was barbarous to kill a girl even if she had been immoral, and that among them such things would never happen.

From Habarut we climbed up on to the Daru plateau, a featureless gravel plain which drains to the sea. We came across some crude shelters with walls of rock and roofs of branches overlaid with earth and supported on pillars of piled stones. But they were all empty, since seven rainless years had driven the Bait Khawar down into the valley of the Kidyut, which starts here as a deep sheer-sided canyon. I climbed down into this with some of my companions, while the others took the camels round by an easier route. A small spring trickled out from among the limestone slabs which had fallen from the precipices above. Some Mahra were watering camels and filling goatskins. One of their women had stained her face green, and another had blue and green stripes painted down
her nose and chin, and across her cheeks. The effect was not only weird but repulsive. I was on the point of suggesting to bin Kabina that both of them would be more alluring if they were veiled, when a small boy about ten years old darted over to us. He was Said, bin Kabina’s brother. He had large sparkling eyes, very white teeth, and a face as fresh as a half-opened flower. He was trying desperately to be dignified, but could not hide his excitement. He assured me at once that he was coming with us, and pointed to the camel which I had given to bin Kabina the year before, saying, There is my mount.’ I asked him where his rifle was and he waved his stick and said that this would have to do unless I gave him one. Suddenly we heard many voices shouting on the cliff above us. A party of Bait Khawar were refusing passage to our camels, saying that the Christian might not pass through their valley. A scuffle had started, and it looked as if there might be a fight, until our
rabia
drove his tribesmen back, and the camels came lurching down the steep path to join us in the valley-bottom. Said said scornfully, ‘They are only Bait Khawar,’ and went on to tell me how he had heard that we should pass this way and had ridden for two days to meet us. I asked him who would look after his mother and sister if he came with us to Mukalla, and he assured me that they were with his uncle and that they would be all right without him. I decided to let him come and he trotted happily off to tell bin Kabina.

A large, vociferous, but badly-armed crowd of Bait Khawar had collected and they insisted that I could not pass down the valley unless I paid them money. I refused, saying that I had a
rabia
and was entitled to pass, but they went on shouting that I must give them money if I wished to see their valley. I knew that there would be no end to our troubles if I once paid blackmail. I have never done so and had no intention of doing so now. In the Western Aden Protectorate European travellers are constantly held up, since the tribes have learnt that they can extort money from them. Our
rabia
, an old man with tired faded eyes and a straggling white beard, said furiously that he would take me through the valley if I wished to go in defiance of his whole tribe, since they had no right to stop us. However, the gathering broke up without reaching an agreement.
Many of the Bait Khawar who had been defying us a few minutes earlier came over to our camping place to chat with us and give us their news.

That evening we discussed what we should do. The general opinion was that the Bait Khawar were bluffing, since they were defying tribal custom and had no reason for their behaviour except avarice, but bin Kalut, al Auf, and bin Duailan and others asked me how much it would matter if we followed the path along the top of the cliffs. This was the route we had indeed originally planned to take, but the Rashid had wished to travel down the valley, where they thought that there would be better grazing for their camels. Bin Kalut pointed out that if some fool did shoot at us and hit anyone it would start a war between tribes who were traditionally allied. I willingly agreed to take the top road, which indeed suited me better, since, for the purpose of mapping, I should overlook the valley and the country on both sides of it. In any case, the last thing I wished to do was to cause trouble among the tribes. I knew that my freedom of movement in the desert depended on my reputation for harming no one.

We descended into the valley again where it joins the Mahrat to form the Jiza. There were palm groves and small settlements, with a little cultivation in all these valleys. The Jiza bends in a great arc, draining the greater part of the Mahra country, before it finally enters the sea near Ghaidat, the largest of the Mahra villages. All this country was completely unmapped, but I was now able to fix its general outlines. My companions wished to travel due west to the Masila, which is the name of the lower reaches of the Wadi al Hadhramaut, but the Gumsait Mahra refused to let us pass. They collected in our camp in the evening and explained that they were prepared to take me through their country, provided that I hired their camels and sent the Rashid who were with me back to their homes. The Mahra are Ghafaris, and are usually on terms of armed neutrality with the Rashid and Bait Kathir. Since we had no
rabia
from their section their attitude seemed to me reasonable, but I had no intention of parting with the Rashid. Sulaim, our Mahra
rabia
,
¹
belonged to the Amarjid,
and he said that he could frank us through the Mahra tribes along the upper Mahrat as far as the watershed, beyond which lay the country of the Manahil. This route suited me better than the other, since by following it I should be able to fix the watershed as far as the Masila.

We were held up again in the Mahrat, this time by the Amarjid, who had probably heard that we had been turned back by the Gumsait. They, too, offered to take me on provided I sent back the Rashid. I eventually agreed to engage five of them to accompany us for two days. A little later one of them came back and said that, as they had no animals here with which to feast us, they would forgo the payment of these men. I then gave them an equivalent sum as a present and everyone was satisfied.

Fifteen years earlier, watching the coronation of Haile Selassie as King of Kings of Ethiopia, I had been fascinated by the continuity, however tenuous, which linked that ceremony with Solomon and Sheba. Now watching these half-naked, indigo-smeared figures, sitting beneath the dying palms in the Wadi Jiza, discussing our movements in a language which had once been spoken by Minaeans, Sabaeans, and Himyarites, I realized that here was a link with the past even older and more authentic, for scholars believe that the Mahra are descended from the ancient Habasha, who colonized Ethiopia as long ago as the first millennium B.C. and gave their name to the Abyssinians. I myself had discovered the year before a mountain called Jabal Habashiya which was only fifty miles to the west of our present camp.

Three days later we crossed the watershed between the wadis flowing to the north and to the south, a flat rocky plateau about a quarter of a mile across. To the south the country was very broken and there were many deep gorges, while to the north a number of broad valleys, whose beds were of gravel and hard sand, started abruptly from the foot of the escarpment. I watched an eagle chasing a gazelle and a little later saw two ibex. These were very common both here and on the cliffs above the Mahrat.

We arrived at Dahal well three days later. The water, which stank of sulphur, was at the end of a tunnel through the
limestone rock and was difficult to reach. While we were watering the camels bin Duailan told us that a wolf had killed two small boys a few months earlier. Their father had left them at the well with a load of sardines which he had brought up from the coast, saying that he would come back next day. During the night the wolf drove them off the sardines, some of which it ate. When some Manahil turned up in the morning the children told them what had happened, but as these Manahil were going down to the coast they left the children at the well, confident that their father would shortly return. The father did not arrive until the following day, and then he found both his sons dead and partly eaten.

In the afternoon a small party of Manahil turned up with some goats. They warned us that two hundred and fifty Dahm were raiding the country ahead of us, and had killed seven Manahil in one place and seven or eight Awamir elsewhere. They said that they themselves intended to seek refuge among the Mahra. Beyond Dhal the land was empty; everyone had fled, either across the watershed or down into the valley of the Masila, which it took us three more days to reach. The country was very broken, and the only possible route for our camels was along the bottom of deep canyons, which cut the limestone plateau into blocks. We pushed scouts out ahead when we were travelling, and posted sentries whenever we stopped, for we were well aware what would happen to us if we were trapped by the Dahm in the bottom of one of these sheer-sided gorges.

When we reached the shrine of Nabi Hud in the Masila, we found many Manahil collected there with their camels, sheep, and goats. They told us that one party of raiders, believed to be seventy strong, had surprised an encampment of six Manahil in the nearby Wadi Hun. One of them had escaped, but no one knew what happened to the others. They also said that another and much larger force was raiding in the steppes to the north. Eighty Manahil had gone off up the Wadi Hun in pursuit.