Arabian Sands (39 page)

A large castle dominated the small dilapidated town which stretched along the shore. There were a few palms, and near them was a well where we watered our camels while some Arabs eyed us curiously, wondering who we were. Then we went over to the castle and sat outside the walls, waiting for the Sheikhs to wake from their afternoon slumbers.

From Abu Dhabi we go to Buraimi
where we stay for a month with
Zayid bin Sultan, and then travel
to Sharja. From Dubai I sail by
dhow to Bahrain.

The castle gates were shut and barred and no one was about. We unloaded our camels and lay down to sleep in the shadow of the wall. Near us some small cannon were half buried in the sand. The ground around was dirty, covered with the refuse of sedentary humanity. The Arabs who had watched us watering had disappeared. Kites wheeled against a yellow sky above a clump of tattered palms, and two dogs copulated near the wall.

In the evening a young Arab came out from a postern gate, walked a little way across the sand, squatted down, and urinated. When he had finished, Muhammad called to him and asked if the Sheikhs were ‘sitting’ – an Arab expression for giving audience. The boy answered, ‘No, not yet,’ and Muhammad told him to tell them that an Englishman had arrived from the Hadhramaut and was waiting to see them. The boy asked, ‘Where is the Englishman?’ and Muhammad pointed to me and said, ‘That’s him.’

Half an hour later a grey-bearded Arab came out, asked us a few questions, and went back into the castle. He came out again a little later and invited us in. He led us up some stairs to a small, carpeted room where Shakhbut, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, and his brothers Hiza and Khalid were sitting. They were dressed in Saudi fashion, in long white shirts, gold-embroidered cloaks, and white head-cloths, which fell round their faces and were held in place with black woollen head-ropes. Shakhbut’s dagger was ornamented with gold. They rose as we came in, and after we had greeted them and shaken hands, Shakhbut invited us to be seated. He was a pale, slightly-built man, with small, regular features, a carefully-trimmed black beard, and large dark eyes. He was courteous,
even friendly, but aloof. He spoke softly, moved slowly and deliberately, and seemed to impose a rigid restraint on a naturally excitable temper. I suspected that he mistrusted all men, and for this he had reason, since of the fourteen previous rulers of Abu Dhabi only two had died peacefully in power. Eight of them had been murdered and four had been driven out by rebellion instigated by their families. Hiza was very different from Shakhbut. He was large and jovial, with a thick black beard covering half his chest, whereas Khalid was chiefly remarkable for a loose front tooth which he poked at with his tongue.

Shakhbut called for coffee, and it was produced by an attendant in a saffron-coloured shirt. After we had drunk it and eaten a few dates, Shakhbut asked about our journey. Later I mentioned that I visited the outskirts of Liwa the year before. Hiza said, ‘We heard rumours from some Awamir that a Christian had been there, but we disbelieved them. We could not believe that a European could have come and gone without being seen. Bedu news, as you know, is often unreliable. We thought they must have been talking of Thomas, who crossed the Sands sixteen years ago.’

Shakhbut then discussed the war in Palestine and ended with a diatribe against the Jews. Bin Kabina was obviously puzzled and whispered to me, ‘Who are the Jews? Are they Arabs?’

Later the Sheikhs escorted us to a large dilapidated house near the market. We climbed up a rickety staircase to a bare room, carpeted ready for our arrival. Shakhbut ordered two of his attendants to look after us, and then said that he would leave us now as we must be tired, but would come and see us in the morning. When I asked him about our camels, he said they would be taken into the desert where there was grazing and brought back when we required them; but, he added, that would not be for many days, for we had come a long way and now we must rest here in comfort. He smiled at me and said, This is your home for as long as you will stay with us.’

When it was dark, servants arrived carrying a large tray heaped with rice and mutton, and many small dishes filled with dates and various kinds of sweetmeats. After we had
fed they sat among us with easy informality and talked. In Arab households servants count as part of the family* There is no social distinction between them and their masters.

Merchants from the market-place and Bedu who were visiting the town came in to hear our news. A hurricane-lamp smoked through a broken glass but gave some light. It was cosy and very friendly, and pleasing to feel that for a while we had no further need of travelling, that we could eat and sleep at will. I wondered why people ever cluttered up their rooms with furniture, for this bare simplicity seemed to me infinitely preferable.

I remembered how, two years before, I had ridden in to Taif at sunset on a donkey, with two Arab companions and three half-naked Yemeni pilgrims who had joined company with us. We had come a long way across the mountains from the borders of the Yemen. We found a room in a lodging for pilgrims – an empty cubicle, one of several opening on to a courtyard. The others were all occupied. We swept it out, furnished it with our rugs, and borrowed a lamp. One of the Yemenis fetched us food from the market – grilled meat, rice, and flaps of bread; sour milk, water melons, and sweet black grapes. When we had fed, our neighbours came in and entertained us with their talk. I had everything that I could want – food, shelter, and good company after long days upon the road. In the morning I called upon the king’s grandson, who was acting as Governor of Taif. I looked forward to the civilized comfort of Arab hospitality, but, thinking to please, he arranged for me to stay in the new ’hotel’, where the rooms were filled with furniture in the Victorian style. On the walls were framed prints of Scottish lochs and Swiss chalets; there was electric light, fans, and tinned food served by a Sudanese suffraigi. My two companions were housed elsewhere. Some Egyptians were staying in the hotel, townsmen from Cairo with whom I had nothing in common; I could not even understand their speech. I was lonely, bored, and uncomfortable and I marvelled that Arabs should wish to ape our ways.

We stayed for twenty days at Abu Dhabi, a small’ town of about two thousand inhabitants. Each morning the Sheikhs
visited us, walking slowly across from the castle – Shakhbut, a stately figure in a black cloak, a little ahead of his brothers, followed by a throng of armed retainers. We talked for an hour or more, drinking coffee and eating sweets, and, after they had left us, we visited the market, where we sat cross-legged in the small shops, gossiping and drinking more coffee; or we wandered along the beach and watched the dhows being caulked and treated with shark-oil to prepare them for the pearling season, the children bathing in the surf, and the fishermen landing their catch. Once they brought in a young dugong or sea-cow which they had caught in their nets. It was about four feet long, a pathetically helpless-looking creature, hideously ugly. They said its meat was good eating, and that its skin made sandals.

We had many visitors who made themselves at home in our room, often remaining overnight. They just rolled up in their cloaks and went to sleep among us on the floor. One of them was a Rashid called Bakhit al Dahaimi. He had enlisted two years before among the Sheikh’s retainers and won a reputation as a fighter during the war with Dibai. I had already heard of his doings when I was on the southern coast. He was a lightly built man of about thirty, of average height, with a sallow face and close-set eyes. He wore a yellow shirt and a brown head-cloth. He stayed with us for three days. My Rashid were very impressed by him and frequently quoted what he had said, but I disliked him on sight. Hearing that I was going to Buraimi he announced that he would travel with us, but I arranged with Shakhbut that he should be sent on ahead to give Zayid bin Sultan, Shakhbut’s brother at Buraimi, word of our coming. Al Dahaimi was to make trouble for me in the future.

I was anxious to penetrate into Oman and to visit the places which Staiyun had described to me the year before while we waited in the Wadi al Ain for the others to come back from Ibri. I believed that my best chance of getting there would be from Buraimi, and I hoped that Zayid would be able to help me. It was too late in the season to attempt a journey into Oman that year, and anyway I needed a rest. My mind was taut with the strain of living too long among Arabs. But I
could at least go up to Buraimi, and make some discreet inquiries about Oman.

I left Abu Dhabi with my four Rashid, and a guide provided by Shakhbut on 2 April. Buraimi was about a hundred miles away, and it took us four days to get there. We had plenty of food and were no longer tired, and there was good grazing. Hiza had lent me a splendid camel to ride. These Al bu Falah sheikhs owned many thoroughbreds from Oman. The Arabs in Abu Dhabi had been inclined to disparage our animals, contrasting them with those owned by their sheikhs, until bin Ghabaisha was provoked to say, ‘Your Sheikh’s camels are admittedly wonderful animals, pictures of beauty. I am a Bedu, I can appreciate them; but there is not one of them that would do the journey ours have just done,’ and his listeners were silent, for there was truth in what the indignant boy said.

The Batina camels
¹
from the Oman coast are famed throughout Arabia for their speed and comfort; but they are accustomed to being hand-fed on dates and are useless when food and water are short. The Wahiba in the interior of Oman own a famous breed, the
Banat Farha
, or “The Daughters of Joy’, and the Dura own the equally famous
Banat al Hamra
, or ‘The Daughters of the Red one’. These are hardier than the Batina camels, but the Rashid said that none of them would survive for long in the Empty Quarter.

The evening before we reached Buraimi I was lying contentedly on the ground watching bin Kabina roasting some toadstools that he had found while herding the camels. They were creamy-tasting and delicious. There were also truffles here which were even better. Bin Ghabaisha tickled my foot, and, instinctively kicking out and catching him in the solar plexus, I knocked him out. Anxiously I bent over him, but bin Kabina said, ‘He is all right. He is only knocked out’; and a few seconds later bin Ghabaisha sat up. He said reproachfully, ‘Why do you try to kill your brother?’ and when I protested he laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly; of course I realize it was an accident.’ I asked bin Kabina, ‘What would you have done if I really had killed bin Ghabaisha?’ and he answered at once, ‘I should have killed you.’ When I protested that it would have
been an accident, he said grimly, That would have made no difference.’ He was joking, and yet I knew that Bedu demand a life for a life whether the killing was intentional or accidental. Sometimes when their temper has cooled they may agree to accept blood-money, especially if the killing was accidental, but their immediate reaction is to exact vengeance. In Abu Dhabi we had met a Rashid lad who had been shot through the hand while raiding the Bani Kitab. Muhammad told him, ‘As soon as Umbarak has gone off to his country we will avenge you. We will catch a boy of your own age from the Bani Kitab, hold his hand over a rifle, and blow it off.’

Next morning we approached Muwaiqih, one of eight small villages in the Buraimi oasis. It was here that Zayid lived. As we came out of the red dunes on to a gravel plain I could see his fort, a large square enclosure, of which the mud walls were ten feet high. To the right of the fort, behind a crumbling wall half buried in drifts of sand, was a garden of dusty, ragged palm-trees, and beyond the palms the isolated hog’s back of Jabal Hafit about ten miles away and five thousand feet high. Faintly in the distance over the fort I could see the pale-blue outlines of the Oman mountains.

Some thirty Arabs were sitting under a thorn-tree in front of the fort. Our guide pointed and said to me, The Sheikh is sitting.’ We couched our camels about thirty yards away and walked over, carrying our rifles and camel-sticks. I greeted them and exchanged the news with Zayid. He was a powerfully built man of about thirty with a brown beard. He had a strong, intelligent face, with steady, observant eyes, and his manner was quiet but masterful. He was dressed, very simply, in a beige-coloured shirt of Omani cloth, and a waistcoat which he wore unbuttoned. He was distinguished from his companions by his black head-rope, and the way in which he wore his head-cloth, falling about his shoulders instead of twisted round his head in the local manner. He wore a dagger and cartridge-belt; his rifle lay on the sand beside him.

I had been looking forward to meeting him, for he had a great reputation among the Bedu. They liked him for his easy informal ways and his friendliness, and they respected lus force of character, his shrewdness, and his physical strength.
They said admiringly, ‘Zayid is a Bedu. He knows about camels, can ride like one of us, can shoot, and knows how to fight.’

A servant brought rugs for us to sit on; Zayid had been sitting on the bare sand. The servant then produced the inevitable coffee and dates. Zayid asked me questions about my journey, about the distances and the wells we had used, about Jabrin, and the Saudis we had met in Laila and Sulaiyil. He was well informed about the desert, and especially interested when I told him that I had been through the Duru country the year before, and expressed his surprise that the Duru had allowed me to pass. I told him that I had pretended to be a Syrian merchant, and he said laughingly, ‘I should have known at once that you weren’t.’ He mentioned that an Englishman called Bird was staying in Buraimi in another of the villages, trying to persuade the tribes to let a Company look for oil. I gathered that he was having little success.

I had met Dick Bird three years before when he was a Political Officer in Bahrain. He was interested in and sympathetically disposed towards the Arabs, and we later became friends. But I realized that if, in the eyes of the local tribesmen, I became identified with an oil company, it would greatly lessen my chances of getting into Oman, and I therefore decided to stay with Zayid, and not with Bird, while I was in Buraimi.