Arabian Sands (41 page)

Naked children romped in the shallows, and rowing-boats patrolled the creek to pick up passengers from the mouths of alleys between high coral houses, surmounted with square wind-turrets
¹
and pleasingly decorated with plaster moulding. Behind the diversity of houses which lined the waterfront were the
suqs,
covered passageways, where merchants sat in the gloom, cross-legged in narrow alcoves among their piled merchandise. The
suqs
were crowded with many races –pallid Arab townsmen; armed Bedu, quick-eyed and imperious; Negro slaves; Baluchis, Persians, and Indians. Among them I noticed a group of Kashgai tribesmen in their distinctive felt caps, and some Somalis off a
sambuk
from Aden. Here life moved in time with the past. These people still valued leisure and courtesy and conversation. They did not live then-lives at second hand, dependent on cinemas and wireless. I would willingly have consorted with them, but I now wore European clothes. As I wandered through the town I knew that they regarded me as an intruder; I myself felt that I was little better than a tourist.

I could have gone to Bahrain by aeroplane from Sharja but I preferred to go there by dhow. The journey should have taken four days but lasted eleven. The
naukhada,
or skipper, was an old man, nearly blind, who spent most of his time asleep on the poop. The mate, an energetic Negro, described what he saw and the
naukhada
told him where to go. Once he woke the old man in the middle of the night to consult him.
The
naukhada
gave his orders, but when the mate said ‘Nonsense, Uncle!’, he went grumbling back to sleep. The first night it blew a gale. The seas broke over the ship and I was very sick. We had to shelter under the Persian coast, and there we remained for three days, since the wind, when it moderated, was against us. While waiting for the wind to shift, we were joined by seven other dhows, great ocean-going
booms
, sailing back from Zanzibar to Kuwait. Their
naukhadas
rowed over to visit us, and we fed them on rice and dates and a large fish which we had just harpooned. They drank tea, smoked in turn from a hubble-bubble, and described their voyage, but I found it difficult to follow their talk, for I did not know the terms they used. Then the wind changed and we sailed for Bahrain. It was thrilling to watch these great dhows surging along beside us through the breaking seas.
¹
They were the last trading vessels in the world that made long voyages entirely by sail. Soon they too would disappear.

When we were almost within sight of Bahrain the wind dropped. For four days we lay, rolling slightly on an oily sea. The brief spring was past. The sky was without a cloud, and the damp heat wrapped itself round me like a wet towel. An occasional cat’s paw of wind ruffled the surface of the sea, but died away as I watched. The brackish water in the rusty iron tank was warm as tepid tea. I was sick of rice and dates flavoured with rancid butter. The crew, who, like all Arabs, had an enviable capacity for sleeping when there was nothing else to do, rigged themselves an awning and slept interminably, and I reread H. A. L. Fisher’s
History of Europe
, the only book I had with me.

I was sailing on this dhow because I wanted to have some experience of the Arab as a sailor. Once they had been a great sea-going race, sailing their dhows round the coast of India to the East Indies and perhaps even farther. The Trucial Coast which we had just left had been known and dreaded as the Pirate Coast; in the early nineteeth century Juasimi pirates had fought our frigates on level terms on these very waters. But there was a deeper reason that had prompted me to make this journey. I had done it to escape a little longer from the
machines which dominated our world. The experience would last longer than the few days I spent on the journey. All my life I had hated machines. I could remember how bitterly at school I had resented reading the news that someone had flown across the Atlantic or travelled through the Sahara in a car. I had realized even then that the speed and ease of mechanical transport must rob the world of all diversity.

For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice. Scott had gone to the South Pole in order to stand for a few minutes on one particular and almost inaccessible spot on the earth’s surface. He and his companions died on their way back, but even as they were dying he never doubted that the journey had been worth while. Everyone knew that there was nothing to be found on the top of Everest, but even in this materialistic age few people asked, ‘What point is there in climbing Everest? What good will it do anyone when they get there?’ They recognized that even today there are experiences that do not need to be justified in terms of material profit.

No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey. Who, after all, would dispute that it is more satisfying to climb to the top of a mountain than to go there in a funicular railway? Perhaps this was one reason why I resented modern inventions; they made the road too easy. I felt instinctively that it was better to fail on Everest without oxygen than to attain the summit with its use. If climbers used oxygen, why should they not have their supplies dropped to them from aeroplanes, or landed by helicopter? Yet to refuse mechanical aids as unsporting reduced exploration to the level of a sport, like big-game shooting in Kenya when the hunter is allowed to drive up to within sight of the animal but must get out of the car to shoot it. I would not myself have wished to cross the
Empty Quarter in a car. Luckily this was impossible when I did my journeys, for to have done the journey on a camel when I could have done it in a car would have turned the venture into a stunt.

At last a puff of wind stirred the water and did not immediately die away. The mate shouted to the sleeping crew. They trimmed the sail, stamping and singing as they hauled. The breeze freshened.

We arrived at Bahrain on 28 May, the old blind
naukhada
taking his boat into the crowded roadstead under full sail. She smashed through the choppy waves and brought up within twenty yards of a dhow that had lain beside us under the Persian shore a week before.

I return to Buraimi, visit the Liwa
oasis, and go hawking with Zayid

I returned to Dibai from England at the end of October. Musallim bin al Kamam was waiting for me at Henderson’s house, having come there to join me from the Yemen, where he had renewed the truce between the Rashid and the Dahm for another two years. He told me how the Imam of the Yemen’s son had sent two parties of Dahm to intercept us when we crossed the Sands to Sulaiyil. He said, ‘When I reached Najran I heard mat you had been imprisoned in Sulaiyil. Bin Madhi, the Amir with whom you once stayed in Najran, declared that you had been lucky to get there, as the Yam would certainly have killed you if they had found you in the Sands.’ I asked about the fight with the Abida at Thamud, and he told me how Salim bin Mautlauq had been wounded but had later recovered. He then asked me if I remembered Muhammad, Salim bin Mautlauq’s brother, and told me that he had been savaged by a bull camel which had bitten off his knee-cap when he tried to shoot it, after it had attacked and killed an old man and a small boy as they sat round the fire in the evening. He also told me that Awadh had died of tuberculosis. Awadh had travelled with me to Tarim and also to Mukalla, and had been a charming man and a skilled hunter who had shot more than forty oryx. I was delighted to have bin al Kamam with me, for I had found him amusing and accommodating when he had travelled with me to Tarim. He was exceptionally intelligent, level-headed, and reliable; he had travelled widely, was a good guide, skilled in negotiations, and had considerable authority among the desert tribes.

We left Dibai for Abu Dhabi on 27 October, going there by launch. I had meant to leave for Buraimi on the 31st but it poured with rain during the night and we woke to find most of
the island under water. Shakhbut advised us to remain at Abu Dhabi for at least another day, to give the salt-flats, which we had to cross, a chance to dry. So bin al Kamam and I left on 1 November, riding borrowed camels, and arrived at Muwaiqih four days later. Zayid was there and put us in the room that I had been in before. He said, ‘Bin Kabina, bin Ghabaisha, and Amair spent last night in an Awamir encampment on the edge of the Sands. They will turn up as soon as they hear that you are here. Muhammad has gone to Dakaka. They’ve been having a fine time while you were away, lifting camels from everybody.’

It was late at night when they arrived. Bin al Kamam and I had lain down to sleep, when someone hammered at our door and bin Kabina and the other two came in. Bin Kabina said, ‘We only just heard that you had arrived. We were off in the morning to raid the Bani Kitab.’ We relit the fire, bin al Kamam made coffee, and the others fetched their saddlebags. They asked bin al Kamam about their families and friends, and pressed him for every detail of recent happenings in the south, discussing them at length. Later they told us of their own doings. They had spent the summer harrying the Bani Kitab and other tribes, and serving as soldiers of fortune with the local sheikhs. They had each collected half a dozen camels. As I listened to their talk I thought how well their adventures illustrated the chronic insecurity of these parts, where jealous and often hostile sheikhs relied on the uncertain support of the Bedu to maintain their position. These sheikhs competed for the support of the tribesmen by the lavishness of their hospitality and the scale of their gifts. Not one of them was prepared to acknowledge a paramount power, nor were any of them able to enforce their authority over the Bedu; none would even try, lest by doing so they should alienate Bedu support in time of need. In consequence the country was full of outlaws, who feared no punishment other than the blood-feud and the retaliation of hostile tribesmen. Knowing perfectly well that each sheikh would rather have their friendship than incur their enmity, the outlaws travelled quite openly among the villages which they had robbed, assured of hospitality commensurate with the strength and
nearness of their own tribe and the reputation which they personally had acquired. If an exasperated ruler did detain them, they knew they could count on an immediate demand for their release by some other sheikh, who, anxious to court their favour, would claim that they were under his protection.

At present the politics of the area were dominated by the bitter enmity between the Al bu Falah of Abu Dhabi and the bin Maktum of Dibai. The truce between these two families which had recently put an end to several years of intermittent fighting, had, I knew, in no way lessened this enmity. Beneath these recent hatreds and jealousies lay the age-old feud between the tribes of Yemen and Nizar origin, largely identified today with the factions of Hanawi and Ghafari. This feud had torn Oman for centuries, and here in the north had always prevented the establishment of an effective government.

Next morning bin Kabina appealed to me to secure the release of a young
saiyid
, called Ahmad bin Saiyid Muhammad who came from Qasm in the Hadhramaut, and was now imprisoned with a companion in Hamasa, one of the two villages at Buraimi which did not belong to Zayid. He said that both of them had been sold to Ali al Murri, a well-known slave-dealer, who had recently arrived from the Hasa. He added that the
saiyid
had been beaten to make him more amenable. I gathered that he and his companion had been shipwrecked on their way back from Singapore and that they had been picked up by a dhow and landed on the Trucial Coast, where they had been kidnapped and brought to Hamasa. Bin Kabina said: ‘It is terrible that a descendant of the Prophet should be sold as a slave. You must secure his release. Do you remember the
saiyid
who gave us lunch in Qasm, the first time we went to the Hadhramaut? Well, he is this boy’s uncle. They know quite well he is not a slave, otherwise they wouldn’t have sold the two of them for 230 rupees.’ I knew that many of the slaves who were sold in Hamasa were in fact Baluchis, Persians, or Arabs who had been kidnapped, but I also knew that the usual price slave-traders paid for one of them was 1,000–1,500 rupees, and for a young Negro even more. An Arab or Persian girl was however, more valuable than a Negress and would fetch as much as 3,000 rupees. The ridiculously
low price which Ali al Murri had paid for the
saiyid
and his companion showed that he expected to have great difficulty in disposing of them.

A few days later the Sheikh of Hamasa visited Zayid. I advised him to release these two men, saying that I knew their families in the Hadhramaut and that one of them was a
saiyid
. He grumbled that he would lose a lot of money if he let them go, but I assured him that it would pay him to do so. I heard later that they had been released and that they had gone to Sharjar, where the Political Officer had arranged to send them to the Hadhramaut.

I was anxious to explore Liwa before I started on my journey into Oman. Zayid advised me to take an old Rashid called bin Tahi as my guide. He said: ‘You will like him. He is a pleasant old man. He has settled down and become respectable in the last few years, but he was a notorious outlaw when he was younger. He must have lifted camels from pretty well every tribe in southern Arabia, and knows every corner and water-bole in the desert. Your lads know him; everyone does.’ Later I asked bin Kabina about bin Tahi and he said, ‘Yes, that is a splendid idea. Let’s take bin Tahi. He is a wonderful old man. He can guide us wherever we want to go. He is camped at present near the southern end of Jabal Hafit. I was staying with him only ten days ago.’