Arabian Sands (38 page)

The next day we crossed some salt-flats to the far side of the Jabrin depression, where we found a few bushes which had been touched to life by a shower of rain, and there we stopped to let our camels feed. I was again surprised how local were many of these showers, wetting only a few score acres. In the afternoon we rode across a gravel plain marked with many tracks. Towards evening a grey haze from the north came down, blotting out the emptiness that lay beyond.

After dinner Muhammad insisted that we must have more to eat. I suggested facetiously that he should go off and buy some flour, and also a goat while he was about it, but he grumbled that they could none of them go on unless they had more food. I maintained that our supplies would barely last us,
and that it would be idiotic to increase our rations, and asked him what we should do when our flour was finished. He said, ‘God will provide!’, but I, not having Elija’s faith, doubted this. We argued angrily, and finally I got up, telling them that they had better finish the flour that evening and then we should know exactly where we were, and went off to bed in a temper, thinking indignantly, ‘I am just as hungry as they are but less improvident.’ Next day we ate the same ration as before and nothing more was said about it.

We travelled for eight and a half hours until we reached the western edge of the Jaub depression, which I hoped would lead us to Dhiby. It was a burning hot day. For the past ten days clouds had banked up each evening and there had been distant thunder and lightning; now it rained almost continuously for three days and intermittently for the next four, often with thunderstorms, especially at night.

They were miserable days. It was maddening to ride along drenched to the skin and watch the driving rain soak into the sand, for although I was bitterly cold I was also thirsty. We had no idea where we should find more water, and were again rationing ourselves to a pint a day. We had nothing with us, except a few small pots, in which to catch the rain, not that we could afford the time to stop. My companions were worried about the camels, and warned me that we might wake up any morning and find some of them dead, killed in their weakened state by the ulcers which were eating into them. Each morning I looked anxiously to see if they were still alive.

One night there was a terrific storm, which started soon after dark and revolved around us until dawn. On that bare plain there was no sort of shelter. We could only lie cowering on the ground while the lightning slashed through the darkness of driven clouds, and the thunder crashed about our ears. I had placed my rug and sheepskin over my sleeping-bag. On other nights these had kept me fairly dry, but tonight the weight of water was too great to be turned aside. It flowed over me like an icy torrent. Sometimes the rain stopped and I peered out to see, silhouetted against the night by the almost continuous flashes of lightning, the dark shapes where the others lay beneath their coverings, like grave-mounds on a wet seashore;
and the group of sodden animals, squatting tail to storm. Then I would hear the muffled drumming of the rain as it came down once more. I was certain that some of our camels would die that night, but in the morning they were still alive.

At dawn there was no wood dry enough to light a fire. We exchanged once more the sodden misery of the night for the cold, dripping discomfort of the day, as we forced the unwilling camels forward into the wind and stinging rain. Nothing grew here but occasional matted growths of salt-bush, whose juicy green foliage gave an irritating illusion of fertility to depressions which were really more sterile than the surrounding sands. That evening the starving camels, finding nothing else, ate these bushes and suffered next day from the inevitable diarrhoea. We tied their tails sideways to our saddlery to prevent them from flicking messily over our clothes. There was no food in their stomachs, but this loss of liquid would entail immediate thirst. Luckily we came on a well, a shallow hole in hard sand, discernible from a distance only by the carpet of camel-droppings that surrounded it. We tasted the water, but it was too brackish to drink; the thirsty camels, however drank as if they could never have enough. While we watered them a gleam of pale sunlight flooded across the wet plain, like slow, sad music. Then it started to rain again. Bin Kabina coaxed a fire to burn, and cooked a large meal of rice in water from the well, but it tasted horrible and most of it remained uneaten.

Next day was fine and sunny and our spirit rose as the sun dried our clothes and warmed our bodies. My companions sang as we rode across sands which looked as if they had been uncovered by an outgoing tide. They were Bedu and it had rained, not scattered showers, but downpours which might well have covered all the desert. ‘God’s bounty’ they called it, and rejoiced at the prospect of rich grazing that would last for years. As I rode across these interminable naked sands it seemed incredible that in three months’ time they would be covered with flowering shrubs. Eskimos enduring the cold and the darkness of the arctic winter can count the days till the sun appears, but here in southern Arabia the Bedu have no certainty of spring. Often there is no rain, and even if there is,
it may fall at any time of the year. Generally the bitter winters turn to blazing summers over a parched and lifeless land. Bin Kabina told me now that he only remembered three springs in his life. Occasional spring times such as these were all the Bedu ever knew of the gentleness of life. A few years’ relief from the anxiety of want was the most they ever hoped for. It seemed to me pathetically little and yet I knew that magnificently it was enough.

As we rode along, the others spoke of years when it had rained, and bin Kabina told me that never in his life had he known such rain as this. Then inevitably they spoke of the great flood in Dhaufar of sixty years ago. I had myself seen palm-trunks which had been jammed by this flood eighteen feet up among the rocks in the cliffs of the Wadi Aidam, where the valley was more man a thousand yards wide. We speculated as to how many days it must have rained to produce this flood, which had occurred in summer when it was warm. I wondered how long a man could survive such rain in winter before he died of exposure. It rained again in the evening and continued to do so intermittently for the next three days.

On the afternoon of the eighth day since we had left Jabrin I reckoned that we must be near Dhiby well, and my calculation was confirmed by the ’bearings which I took on two rocky peaks in a low escarpment to the north of us. An hour later, after again checking our position, I said that we were near the well. Bin Ghabaisha went on to look for it and found it a quarter of a mile away in a hollow in the sands. He came back and said, ‘By God, Umbarak, you
are
a guide!’, but my justifiable satisfaction was spoilt when the water proved too brackish to drink. The camels, however, were thirsty and drank it greedily.

Near the well there was a little fresh
qassis
which I hoped foretold that we were on the edge of grazing, but the next day we marched twenty-eight miles and found nothing all day. It rained again throughout the night. I was too cold and wet to sleep, too worried about what we should do. We had decided to go on to the Sabkhat Mutti, still hoping to find Arabs, but as we had found no trace of any so far I saw no reason why we should. My map marked only Abu Dhabi about
two hundred and fifty miles farther on and our water was nearly finished.

We woke to a grey, lowering day, heavy with massed clouds, threatening rain. With cold, numbed fingers we loaded our camels and then walked dispiritedly beside them trying to bring some warmth into our bodies, while our long shirts flapped damply round our legs. I felt sure that the camels could not survive another day. Then unbelievably we came on grazing. It covered only a few square miles, and we walked straight into it. The camels hardly moved. They just ate and ate. We stood and watched them and bin Ghabaisha said to me, ‘This grazing has saved our lives.’

Next day we crossed the Sabkhat Mutti. We decided we must make a detour and cross these salt-flats near their head, otherwise the camels might become inextricably bogged, especially after the recent heavy rain. They would only have to sink in as far as their knees to be lost. Camels are always bad on greasy surfaces, so we fastened knotted cords under their feet to stop them from slipping. Here the salt-flats were divided into three arms by crescent-patterned drifts of sterile white sand. The flats themselves were covered with a crust of dirty salt which threw up a glare into our faces and, even through half-closed eyes, stabbed deep into my skull. The camels broke through this crust and floundered forward through liquid black mud. It took us five unpleasant, anxious hours to get across.

On the far side we camped among undulating, utterly lifeless white sands, where even the salt-bushes were dead and then-stumps punctured our naked feet like needles. It was eleven days since we had left Jabrin. In the evening we had a long and anxious discussion. Muhammad had at last to admit that he knew nothing about this country, and my map was a blank as far as Abu Dhabi, which was still two hundred miles away. We had only a few gallons of water left. We should never get there unless we found water, and none of us had any idea if there were any wells along the coast. Muhammad said that we should probably find Bedu. He had been saying this since we left Laila, and we had come three hundred and fifty miles without meeting any. Finally, in desperation, I suggested that we should try to find the Liwa oasis, which I reckoned was only
about a hundred miles away. I had not yet been there, but bin Kabina had visited three of the settlements from Balagh well when he fetched food for us the year before. He agreed that he would recognize the shape of the dunes at Liwa if I could guide us there. Unfortunately I did not have with me the compass-traverse which I had then made. Liwa was written in large letters across the map, but it was marked from hearsay, for no European other than myself had been near there. I puzzled over this map. Each time I fixed a bearing, some reason or other made me think I was wrong. The others sat round and watched me as I worked in the failing light. We all knew that if I went wrong and we missed Liwa we should be heading back into the Empty Quarter. It was a frightening thought; but to look for Liwa seemed to be our only chance.

Next morning, after travelling for twelve miles across flat white sands, we came to a succession of dune-chains, each of which, when approached from the west, showed up in turn as a wavy silver-blue wall, three to four feet high, running out of sight to north and south along the top of an orange-red slope a mile wide. Their farther sides fell away into a jumble of hollows. They gradually became larger and more complicated and developed into high but uniform dune-ranges and swelling downs, full of crescent-shaped hollows and deep pot-holes. The steeper sides of many of these hollows showed marks where water from the recent heavy rain had flowed down, and in some places the crust formed by the rain had been pitted by hailstones. Here we found grazing and noticed the tracks of hares, fennec foxes, honey badgers, and monitor lizards. On 28 February we found a filled-in well at the bottom of a deep hollow. Bin Kabina climbed to a summit and shouted down to us, ‘I can see the sands of Liwa.’ We climbed up to join him, and I saw the great mountains of golden sand where we had been the year before. We were safe now, but no one commented on the fact. Muhammed merely said, ‘Those dunes are rather like those in Ghanim.’

Next day we found a shallow well where the water was drinkable though brackish. It was fifteen days since we had left Jabrin, and we had perhaps two gallons of water left in the skins.

We arrived at Balagh on 4 March, passing the hollow where bin Kabina and I had camped and starved for three days on our last journey. It was a still, hot afternoon. Next morning we found a small Manasir encampment on the edge of Liwa, and persuaded a man to guide us to Abu Dhabi. He told us that two months earlier a raiding party from Dibai, three hundred strong, had surprised an encampment not far away and killed fifty-two Manasir, losing five themselves, but that since then peace had been made between the Sheikhs of Abud Dhabi and Dibai. We had heard about this raid when we were in Laila.

We were now on the western edge of Liwa, which our guide said extended eastward for three days’ journey. I should have liked to explore this famous oasis, but our camels were exhausted and we ourselves were worn out. Our food was nearly finished and it was difficult to buy anything here but dates. I knew that we must go direct to Abu Dhabi, and could only hope that perhaps I should be able to come back later. We passed through the settlements of Qutuf and Dhaufir. Palms were planted along the salt-flats, close under high steep-sided dunes, and in hollows in the sands. The groves were fenced in, and other fences were built along the dune-tops, to try to control the movement of the sands, which in a few places had partly buried the trees. They were carefully spaced, and evidently well tended. There was no other cultivation, probably because of the salt on the surface of the ground. Water was abundant at a depth of between seven and twenty feet. It was scarcely brackish, tasting only a little flat.

The Arabs here were Bani Yas. They lived in rectangular cabins made from palm fronds, built for the sake of coolness on the downs above the palm groves, two or three cabins being enclosed by a high fence and inhabited by one family. They owned some camels and a few donkeys and goats, and in the summer many of them went to Abu Dhabi to join the pearling fleet as divers.

We left Liwa on 7 March. Abu Dhabi was still a hundred and fifty miles away, but now we had a guide. We were very tired, and were no longer sustained by the struggle to survive, so each day’s march became a plodding weariness during
which we were inclined to quarrel over trifles. It rained at intervals during these days, sometimes heavily.

We reached the coast and followed it eastward through desolate country. There were limestone ridges, drifts of white sand, and stretches of gravel dotted with tussocks of woody grass and shrivelled plants. Salt-flats ran far out to sea, but yellow haze made it impossible to distinguish where the salt-flats ended and the sea began. The scene was colourless, without tones or contrast. We descended to the salt-flats, and led our slithering camels across this greasy surface to the creek which separates Abu Dhabi from the mainland. We waded through the sea, rested for a while outside the stone fort which guards the ford, and then went on to the town, arriving there early in the afternoon. It was 14 March. We had left Manwakh on 6 January.