Arabian Sands (4 page)

A childhood in Abyssinia is
followed by a journey in the
Danakil country and service in the
Sudan. The opportunity to travel
into the Empty Quarter of Arabia
comes from a wartime meeting
with the head of the Middle East
Locust control
.

I first realized the hold the desert had upon me when travelling in the Hajaz mountains in the summer of 1946. A few months earlier I had been down on the edge of the Empty Quarter. For a while I had lived with the Bedu a hard and merciless life, during which I was always hungry and usually thirsty. My companions had been accustomed to this life since birth, but I had been racked by the weariness of long marches through wind-whipped dunes, or across plains where monotony was emphasized by the mirages shimmering through the heat. There was always the fear of raiding parties to keep us alert and tense, even when we were dazed by lack of sleep. Always our rifles were in our hands and our eyes searching the horizon. Hunger, thirst, heat, and cold: I had tasted them in full during those six months, and had endured the strain of living among an alien people who made no allowance for weakness. Often, in weariness of body and spirit, I had longed to get away.

Now, in the Assir, I was standing on a mountain-side forested with wild olives and junipers. A stream tumbled down the slope; its water, ice-cold at 9,000 feet, was in welcome contrast with the scanty, bitter water of the sands. There were wild flowers: jasmine and honeysuckle, wild roses, pinks and primulas. There were terraced fields of wheat and barley, vines, and plots of vegetables. Far below me a yellow haze hid the desert to the east. Yet it was there that my fancies ranged, planning new journeys while I wondered at this strange compulsion which drove me back to a life that was barely possible. It would, I felt, have been understandable if I had been working in some London office, dreaming of freedom and adventure; but here, surely, I had all that I could possibly desire on
much easier terms. But I knew instinctively that it was the very hardness of life in the desert which drew me back there – it was the same pull which takes men back to the polar ice, to high mountains, and to the sea.

To return to the Empty Quarter would be to answer a challenge, and to remain there for long would be to test myself to the limit. Much of it was unexplored. It was one of the very few places left where I could satisfy an urge to go where others had not been. The circumstances of my life had so trained me that I was qualified to travel there. The Empty Quarter offered me the chance to win distinction as a traveller; but I believed that it could give me more than this, that in those empty wastes I could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world. Many who venture into dangerous places have found this comradeship among members of their own race; a few find it more easily among people from other lands, the very differences which separate them binding them ever more closely. I found it among the Bedu. Without it these journeys would have been a meaningless penance.

I have often looked back into my childhood for a clue to this perverse necessity which drives me from my own land to the deserts of the East. Perhaps it lies somewhere in the background of my memory: in journeys through the deserts of Abyssinia; in the thrill of seeing my father shoot an oryx when I was only three; in vague recollections of camel herds at water-holes; in the smell of dust and of acacias under a hot sun; in the chorus of hyenas and jackals in the darkness round the camp fire. But these dim memories are almost gone, submerged by later memories of the Abyssinian highlands, for it was there that I spent my childhood until I was nearly nine.

It was an unusual childhood. My father was British Minister in Addis Ababa, and I was born there in 1910 in one of the mud huts which in those days housed the Legation. When I returned to England I had already witnessed sights such as few people had ever seen. I had watched the priests dancing at Timkat before the Ark of the Covenant to the muffled throbbing of their silver drums; I had watched the hierarchy
of the Ethiopian Church, magnificent in their many-coloured vestments, blessing the waters. I had seen the armies going forth to fight in the Great Rebellion of 1916. For days they passed across the plain in front of the Legation. I had heard the wailing when Ras Lul Seged’s army was wiped out trying to check Negus Michail’s advance, and had witnessed the wild rejoicing which proclaimed the final victory. I had seen the triumphant return after the battle of Sagale, where the armies of the North and the South had been locked throughout an entire day in desperate hand-to-hand fighting, only fifty miles to the north of Addis Ababa.

Each feudal lord was surrounded by levies from the province which he ruled. The simple fighting men were dressed in white, but the chiefs wore their full panoply of war, lion’s-mane head-dresses, brilliant velvet cloaks stiff with silver and golden ornaments, long silk robes of many colours, and great curved swords. All carried shields, some embossed with silver or gilt, and many carried rifles. The Zulu impis parading before Chaka, or the dervishes drawn up to give battle in front of Omdurman, can have appeared no more barbaric than this frenzied tide of men which surged past the royal pavilion throughout the day, to the thunder of the war-drums and the blare of war-horns. This was no ceremonial review. These men had just returned after fighting desperately for their lives, and they were still wild with the excitement of those frantic hours. The blood on the clothes which they had stripped from the dead and draped round their horses was barely dry. They came past in waves, horsemen half concealed in dust and a great press of footmen. Screaming out their deeds of valour and brandishing their weapons, they came right up to the steps of the throne, whence the Court chamberlains beat them back with long wands. Above them, among glinting spear points, countless banners dipped and danced. I can remember one small boy who seemed little older than myself being carried past in triumph. He had killed two men. I can remember Negus Michail, the King of the North, being led past in chains with a stone upon his shoulder in token of submission, an old man in a plain black burnous, with his head wrapped in a white rag. The most moving moment of that wildly exciting day was
when the drums suddenly stopped and in utter silence a few hundred men in torn, white, everyday clothes came slowly down the long avenue of waiting troops, led by a young boy. It was Ras Lul Seged’s son bringing in the remnants of his father’s army, which had gone into battle five thousand strong.

It is not surprising that I dreamt of Africa during the years I was at school. I read every book that I could find on African travel and adventure, by Gordon-Cumming, Baldwin, Bruce, Selous, and many others. I pored over Rowland Ward’s
Records of Big Game
and I could easily have passed an examination on African animals, while I was failing repeatedly in Latin. During sermons in chapel I could picture again the scenes of my childhood, conjure up the mountains mat had ringed my horizon, Zuquala, Fantali, Wuchacha, Furi, and Managasha. These are names which have always held a nostalgic fascination for me. Until I went to school I had hardly seen a European child other than my brothers. I found myself in a hostile and incomprehensible world. I was ignorant of the rigid conventions to which schoolboys conform and I suffered in consequence. I spoke of things which I had seen and done and was promptly called a liar. I felt little confidence in my ability to compete with my contemporaries and was often lonely. Fortunately I went on to Eton, for which I acquired a deep and lasting affection.

I returned to Abyssinia when I was twenty. Haile Selassie had never forgotten that during the critical days of the Great Rebellion my father had sheltered his infant son, the present Crown Prince, in the Legation. He sent me, as my father’s eldest son, a personal invitation to attend his coronation, and I went out to Ethiopia attached to the Duke of Gloucester’s mission. We landed at Jibuti. I do not think I have ever felt so intoxicatedly happy as I did that night in the train on my way to Addis Ababa. When I arrived back at the Legation more than half my life simply vanished from my mind. It needed an effort to remember even the immediate past. It was impossible to believe that eleven years had passed since I had last climbed the hill behind the Legation, watched the blue smoke rising into the cold clear air above the servants’ quarters, or listened to the kites shrilling above the eucalyptus
trees. I recognized every bird and plant, even the rocks themselves.

During ten hectic days I took part in processions, ceremonies, and state banquets, and finally I watched while the Patriarch crowned Haile Selassie, King of Kings of Ethiopia. Crowned, robed, and anointed, he showed himself to his people, another king in the long line that claimed descent from Solomon and Sheba. I looked on streets thronged with tribesmen from every province of his empire. I saw again the shields and brilliant robes which I remembered from my childhood. But the outside world had intruded and the writing was on the wall. I realized that traditions, customs, and rites, long cherished and revered, were soon to be discarded; that the colour and variety which distinguished this scene were to disappear from the land for ever. Already there were a few cars in the streets, harbingers of change. There were journalists, who forced themselves forward to photograph the Emperor on his throne and the priests as they danced. I was thrust aside by one of them who shouted ‘Make room for the Eyes and Ears of the World.’

I had grown up dreaming of big-game shooting and exploration, and was determined, now that I was back in Africa, to get away into the wilds. I had brought a rifle out with me. One day, standing on the Legation steps during a lull in the coronation festivities, I asked Colonel Cheesman, the well-known explorer, if there was anywhere left in Abyssinia to explore. He told me that the one problem left unsolved was what happened to the Awash river, which, rising in the mountains west of Addis Ababa, flowed down into the Danakil desert and never reached the sea. This conversation turned my thoughts to the Danakil country, where the people were head-hunters who collected testicles instead of heads. I was expected back at Oxford in six weeks’ time, but could at least get down to the edge of this country and have a look at it. Helped by Colonel Sandford, an old family friend, I collected my caravan. Just as I was ready to start, Sir Sydney Barton, the British Minister, said that he was unhappy about my travelling by myself in this completely unadministered and dangerous area, and suggested that, instead, I should join a shooting trip which
he was arranging. I was grateful to him for this offer, but I knew that acceptance meant turning my back for ever on the realization of my boyhood dreams, and that then I should have failed even before I had started. I tried fumblingly to explain what was at stake; how I must go down there alone and get the experience which I required. He understood at once and wished me well, and added as I left the room, ‘Take care of yourself. It would be awkward if you got yourself cut up by the Danakil immediately after the coronation. It would rather spoil the effect of it all.’

My first night in camp, as I sat eating sardines out of a tin and watching my Somalis driving the camels up from the river to couch them by the tent, I knew that I would not have been anywhere else for all the money in the world. For a month I travelled in an arid hostile land. I was alone; there was no one whom I could consult; if I met with trouble from the tribes I could get no help; if I were sick there was no one to doctor me. Men trusted me and obeyed my orders; I was responsible for their safety. I was often tired and thirsty, sometimes frightened and lonely, but I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall.

This was the most decisive month in my life. When I returned to Oxford the pictures crowded back into my mind. I saw once more a group of Danakil leaning on their spears, slender graceful figures, clad only in short loin-cloths, their tousled hair daubed with butter; an encampment of small dome-shaped huts and the sun’s rays slanting through the clouds of dust as the herds were brought in at sunset; the slow-flowing muddy river and a crocodile basking on a sandbank; a waterbuck stepping out of the tamarisk jungle on its way down to drink; a kudu bull with magnificent spiral horns silhouetted on a skyline against fast failing light; the scrambling rush of an oryx shot through the heart; vultures planing down on rigid wings to join others hopping clumsily about the kill; a frieze of baboons sitting on a cliff against the sky. I could feel once more the sun scorching through my shirt; the chill of the early dawn. I could taste camels’ urine in water. I could hear my Somalis singing round the camp-fire; the roaring of the camels as they were loaded. I was determined to go
back and to discover what happened to the Awash river; but it was the attraction of the unknown rather than any love of deserts which was luring me back. I still thought that my heart was in the Abyssinian highlands; and, certainly, if there had remained any unknown country there I should have chosen them in preference to the desert.

Three years later, accompanied by David Haig-Thomas, I