Arabian Sands (30 page)

We decided to move up the valley of the Masila to the village of Fughama, where we were told that bin Tanas, the Manahil Sheikh, was collecting his fighting-men. Bin Duailan
went on ahead to tell him that we were coming, and that we would join him in an attack upon the Dahm if he could find out where they were. I had been uncertain whether the Rashid would agree to this, since they were still nominally at peace with the Dahm, but they said at once that, acting under my orders, they would consider themselves to be
askar
, or soldiers, not bound by tribal custom.

At Fughama there were only women and children and one old man, who told us that bin Tanas was farther up the valley, and that bin Duailan had gone on to find him. We camped near the village, among some tamarisk shrubs beside a stream fifteen feet wide, flowing under a high silt bank. Soon after sunset a man arrived who said that raiders had entered the Masila above Nabi Hud. A little later we heard three shots in rapid succession down the valley. We had already saddled our camels and posted sentries, and bin Kalut now told the Rashid to put out the fires. We sat in the dark beside our camels. Bin Kabina, his brother Said, and bin Ghabaisha were close beside me. Bin Ghabaisha was busy filling his cartridge belt from the spare ammunition in my saddle-bags. I whispered to them not to get separated from me if we were attacked. It was very dark and very quiet. I could hear the belching of the camels as they brought up the cud, the grinding of their teeth as they chewed it. A large bird, probably an owl, flew about over our heads. Al Auf had taken five other Rashid down the valley to scout. He came back and said that they could hear no movement in the valley. As he was convinced that the Dahm would not come on through unknown country in the dark, he told us to leave the camels saddled and sentries posted, and to be on the watch at dawn. I crawled into my sleeping-bag. Bin Kabina said, ‘God help you if you are caught in that. You will be knifed before you can get out of it,’ but I bet him that I would be out of it before he could even draw his dagger.

It was cold and and cheerless at dawn. I told bin Kabina and bin Anauf to make coffee and tea, for we had not eaten the night before. AI Auf had gone down the valley again while it was still dark. Later he came back and told us that he had seen no sign of the raiders. Shortly afterwards bin Tanas and bin Duailan arrived with about thirty other Manahil. The
Dahm had evidently turned north. Later the pursuit party arrived and confirmed this. They had come back, since they were too few to take on the Dahm, who were more than two hundred strong. Bin Duailan urged us to join the Manahil in pursuit even if it took us to the Yemen, but the Rashid refused, saying their camels were tired. I was glad of this, for if they had agreed it would have been difficult for me to refuse. I could imagine the protests which would arrive in Aden from the Yemen government if I entered their country with a raiding party.

We stayed there for another day, in case there was any more news of the raiders, and on 14 April we started for Mukalla, the journey’s end that I had no desire to reach. Dawdling away the days, we mounted through narrow,’ twisting gorges, among piles of fallen rock, to the large village and palm groves of Ghail ba Yamin. We crossed the stony blackened table land, known to the Arabs as al Jaul, descended to the coast near Shihr, and arrived at Mukalla on 1 May.

Sheppard, who was the Resident in Mukalla, arranged for the Arabs who were with me to stay in the Beduin Legion camp on the outskirts of the town. I left them there and went down to the Residency to get a bath and to change into the clothes which had arrived from Salalala. Later, having washed, shaved off my beard, and put on European clothes, I went back to the camp. My party was in a large building. As I approached, bin Anauf called out, There is a Christian coming.’ Realizing that he had not recognized me, I went to the door and stood there looking uncertain. Bin Turkia spoke to me and I answered in English. Someone said, ‘Bring him in’; another person told them to make coffee, and someone else asked, ‘Do the Christians drink coffee?’ They spread a rug for me and signed to me to sit down. Bin Kabina, bin Ghabaisha, al Auf, Mabhkaut, and old bin Kalut were all there looking at me. Suddenly bin Kabina said, ‘By God, it is Umbarak!’ and seized me by the shoulders with playful violence. I had not realized I looked so different. I said, ‘How would you like me to travel with you dressed like this?’ and they said, ‘No one would go with you like that. You look like a Christian.’

Perhaps the next four days eased the final parting. Until the
Rashid left, some of them were nearly always with me. They made themselves free of the Residency, sitting or sleeping in my room throughout the day, eager to accompany me wherever I went, for none of them had been here before. It was the largest town most of them had ever seen. They strolled with me through the streets hand in hand, as is usual with Arab friends, but I was slightly uncomfortable, having re-acquired my inhibitions with my trousers. In any case I sensed that the old familiarity between us was impaired. I was most conscious of the change when I visited their camp, where I was received as a visitor. By shaving off my beard, changing my clothes, moving into a house, and using the gadgets which our civilization provided, I had estranged myself from them. I thought ruefully that the effect on me would have been much the same if one of them, after adapting himself to English ways and living with me in London, had suddenly appeared in Arab clothes and insisted on eating with his fingers.

On his last evening in Mukalla, bin Kabina showed me what he had bought – a load of grain, two pounds of coffee-beans, two cooking-pots, three water-skins, a length of rope, a ball of string, two packing needles, a dozen boxes of matches, four yards of dark blue cloth for his mother, a loin-cloth for himself, and a penknife. I had watched him wandering about the bazaar, inspecting the bales of cloth, the coats, shirts, rugs, and blankets which were displayed in the successive stalls. Now that he had both the opportunity and the money I had hoped he would buy himself some protection against the cold. I shrank from the thought of him lying naked on the sands during the winter nights, and I knew that it might be years before he visited a town again. When I suggested that he should have bought some blankets, he said, ‘Camels are what I want. They are what matter. I can buy three more with the money which you have given me. With Qamaiqam, and the camel I bought in Salalala, and the one you gave me last year I shall have six. Now I am rich. I am used to hardship. Cold won’t hurt me. I am a Bedu.’

I return to Arabia with the
intention of crossing the Western
Sands. Starting from the
Hadhramaut I make a journey
through the country of the Saar
while waiting for my Rashid
companions to arrive. After they
have joined me we make ready at
Manwakh well.

From Mukalla I went to the Hajaz, and travelled there for three months, going as far as Najran in the country of the Yam, on the north-western edge of the Empty Quarter. Then I returned to London.

In deserts, however arid, I have never felt homesick for green fields and woods in spring, but now that I was in England I longed with an ache that was almost physical to be back in Arabia. The Locust Control Centre offered me a new job supervising the destruction of locusts in the Hajaz, with a good salary, all expenses paid, and the prospect of permanent employment. But it was not enough. I wanted the wide emptiness of the sands, the fascination of unknown country, and the company of the Rashid.

The Western Sands offered the challenge which I required in order to find a purpose for another journey. To cross them would be to complete the exploration of the Empty Quarter. Two years earlier I had thought of doing this journey. King Ibn Saud had however emphatically refused permission when our Ambassador had asked for it – and, in any case, it had been too late in the season to go there when I reached the Hadhramaut from Dhaufar. Now I made up my mind to make this crossing. I should be defying the King, but I hoped that I should be able to water at some well on the far side of the sands and then slip away unobserved. I was certain that some of the Rashid would accompany me, and with them I should have the freedom of the desert. I therefore wired to Sheppard at Mukalla asking him to send a messenger to bin Kabina at Habarut telling him, bin al Kamam, and bin Ghabaisha to meet me in the Hadhramaut at the time of the
new moon in November. If I kept the party small I could pay for the journey with the money I had saved. The future could take care of itself.

I arrived in Mukalla on 3 November and, after staying for a few days with Sheppard and collecting the rifles and ammunition which I had left with him the year before, I went up to Saiwun where I stayed with Watts, the Political Officer. Watts was having trouble with the Manahil. Some of them, led by my old friend bin Duailan, ‘The Cat’, had recently surprised two government posts in the Hadhramaut and captured a large number of rifles and much ammunition. One Bedu legionary had been killed. Since bin Duailan refused to hand back the rifles, Watts had forbidden any of the Manahil to come into the towns.

As there was no news of bin Kabina and the others, I decided to travel for a fortnight in the Saar country before I started on my journey across the Sands, in order to link up the traverses which I had made in southern Arabia, between the Halfain and the Hadhramaut, with Philby’s work in 1936 along the Yemen border. The Saar, a large and powerful tribe, have been aptly described as ‘the wolves of the desert’. They were hated and feared by all the south Arabian desert tribes, whom they harried unmercifully, raiding as far eastward as Mughshin and the Jaddat al Harasis, and northwards to the Yam, the Dawasir, and the Murra. Boscawen had hunted oryx in their country in 1931, and Ingrams paid a cursory visit to the edge of their territory in 1934; otherwise no Englishman had been there.

Watts found in Shibam two Saar who said they would take me into their country. They had two camels with them, both of which were bulls, for the Saar, like the Humum, own large numbers of bull camels which they hire for carrying goods to towns in the Hadhramaut. One of them, called Salim, was a lively little man in a blue loin-cloth. The other was tall and was called Ahmad. He was dressed in a white shirt, rather short for him, and his dour appearance belied a friendly spirit. Both were armed with Martini rifles.

We went up to Raidat al Saar, a shallow valley about two hundred yards across, running through a barren limestone
plateau. On the low cliffs which enclosed it were stone buildings and watch-towers, many of them empty. Ahmad told me that their inhabitants had died in the great famine in 1943. The terraced valley was green with crops of sorghum and beans, planted on floods in July; and there were clumps of date palms and many
ilb
trees. Raidat is the heart of the Saar country, but lacks permanent water. The inhabitants had recently tried to dig a well but had abandoned it when they failed to find water at sixty feet. In the Saar country there are only two permanent wells, one at Manwakh about 180 feet deep, and the other at Zamakh, which they told me was 240 feet deep.

The Saar, many of whom were collected in the Raidat to harvest the crops, had heard of me as a result of my wanderings in southern Arabia and welcomed me with great friendliness. I found them a pleasant, virile people, without the corroding avarice of the Bait Kathir. Other tribes call them treacherous, but this is probably a slander inspired by dislike. However, their reputation for godlessness is well merited in Arab eyes, since they neither fast nor pray, saying that the prophet Muhammad gave their forefathers a dispensation from both. Like all the southern Bedu, they are a small, lightly-built race. A few wore rags round their heads but most of them were bareheaded; they were dressed only in loin-clothes, many of which were dyed with indigo. All the men and most of the boys wore daggers and nearly everyone carried a rifle.

Leaving the Raidat we passed the grave of a woman saint known as Walia Riqaiya. This place was a sanctuary whose limits, about a hundred yards round the tomb, were marked by cairns of whitened stones. Salim and Ahmad walked round the grave, kissed their right hands after touching all three of the upright stones, and then rubbed dust on their foreheads. We left some coffee-beans in a stone shelter beside the tomb. There are many shrines in this country, and it is the custom for any passer-by who can do so to leave an offering of coffee. Other travellers who are weary can then use this offering, and the necessary utensils are kept inside the shrine. The Saar generally flavour their coffee strongly with ginger. When they serve it they fill the cup, which is usually large and made of
local earthenware, but the man to whom the cup is handed is expected to take only a few sips and then hand it back to the server, who fills it up again and hands it to the next person.

We visited the well at Manwakh, in the Aiwat al Saar which drains to the sands and of which the Raidat is a tributary. I was glad to have a look at this well, knowing that I must start my journey across the Empty Quarter either from it or from Zamakh. We found some Saar watering camels and goats. The water was fresh and I noticed that they mixed rock-salt in it before watering their camels. They raised the water by hand, the long ropes of palmetto fibre running over pulleys attached to a wooden scaffolding round the well. The southern Bedu do not use camels to draw the well-ropes, as is done on the deep wells in the Najd, although villagers in the Hadhramaut use camels and oxen to raise the trip-buckets from which they water their cultivations. After they had finished watering they took their ropes, pulleys, and leather watering-troughs away with them. There was a very lovely girl working with the others on the well. Her hair was braided, except where it was cut in a fringe across her forehead, and fell in a curtain of small plaits round her neck. She wore various silver ornaments and several necklaces, some of large cornelians, others of small white beads. Round her waist she had half a dozen silver chains, and above them her sleeveless blue tunic gaped open to show small firm breasts. She was very fair. When she saw I was trying to take a photograph of her she screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue at me. Salim, thinking to help me, had told her not to move and explained what I was doing. During the following days both he and Ahmad chaffed me whenever I was silent, saying that I was thinking of the girl at Manwakh, which was frequently true.