Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah (38 page)

Ahmad and a cousin, unable to show me their dead sultanic forbears in the Ribat Palace grounds, led me to a nearer graveyard and a more recent ancestor. It was Shaykh Abdulqadir’s father, ‘the Pious and Erudite Shaykh, Salim ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Sayl al-Ghassani’.

‘Why “al-Sayl”?’ I asked, reading the tombstone. It was an unusual name: the Flash-flood.

‘It’s the flood at Marib mentioned in the Qur’an,’ the cousin elucidated, obscurely. ‘The Ghassanis are a very old family.’

Somewhere, a bell was ringing.

It was only later that I realized where I had come across Flash-flood: in Bertram Thomas’s
Arabia Felix
. ‘Next to me sat old Salim al Sail, another merchant, a God-fearing man and a Solomon among his kind. Human frailty made him claim descent from the noble Bait Ghassan, while all men whispered that he was a foundling child of low Shahari origin that a mountain torrent had swept down in a summer freshet.’ There was a further, charming insight into the pious
shaykh
: ‘Salim’s eyes, as became his eighty years, were growing dim, though were still capable of a twinkle when he begged in secret for an aphrodisiac.’

As I pondered the questions raised by Thomas’s revelation I realized that, despite the whispering campaign, logic was on the side of old Flash-flood. A burn in the Qara Mountains sounded only marginally more likely an origin than the left-luggage office at Victoria Station. More important, if the rumours were a fact, why advertise it on your tombstone? It would be like Wilde’s Jack having his card engraved ‘Mr Ernest Handbag-Worthing’. All the same, I wasn’t entirely convinced by the Rasulid pedigree of the Salalah Ghassanis.
God
, of course, is the most knowing; for the rest of us, genealogy is more art than science.

Then came another chance encounter of a different sort. Qahtan took me one day into the foothills behind Khawr Ruri, the spooky lagoon where Dhofari witches park their hyenas. Before us lay a most unexpected object – a wall, over a mile long and perhaps five hundred feet high, spanning the gap between two hills. ‘That’, said Qahtan, ‘is the Abyss of Darbat.’ As we drew nearer, the feature grew less wall-like and began instead to resemble the business-end of a grubby glacier. We stopped the car and approached on foot through dense scrub. Close up, the true nature of the Abyss became apparent from the little trickles of water that ran down it and continued through the undergrowth. I noticed that the stream-beds were lined with a greyish, calcareous deposit. The Abyss of Darbat was limescale on a grand scale.

We returned to the car and drove up a track beside the escarpment. Above it we emerged into a broad flat valley bordered by cave-riddled cliffs; one of the higher caves pierced the rock-face entirely, revealing a patch of sky beyond. The valley floor was covered with close-cropped grass, and dotted with cabin-like dwellings and huge trees. Shepherdesses tended flocks, boys milked camels, cattle mooched and munched, and all this busy hanging garden echoed with bleatings and grumblings. Further along the valley we came to a long meandering lake, not unlike the Serpentine and strewn with heron, coots, moorhens, duck and geese; lakeside trees rustled with doves and egrets. Here the
andante pastorale
of the lower valley gave way to an aleatoric
allegro
– hoots, coos, burbles, chirrups, twitters and clatters of weedy take-offs. Darbat was justly famous for its bird life. (I heard later – from a trustworthy person, as IB would say – that when the Sultan came to visit, art improved on nature: the birds of Darbat had their wings clipped.) Qahtan told me that the place was famous for its profusion of jinn.

While we were strolling along the lake, we came across a bus and a group of about twenty men sitting in a circle, silent and motionless, under a
Ficus vasta
. We greeted them hesitantly; they returned the greeting in unison. Qahtan and I looked at each other, then the men began to announce their names, one by one, as if they were about to take part in some bizarre team game. The last three names and their owners were recognizably non-Omani. ‘We are from the Arabic
Department
of the Teacher Training College,’ one of them explained, ‘and we are engaged in an educational expedition.’ I looked at him with awe: here was a man who spoke with case-endings.

We joined the circle. I dusted off my inflections and explained what had brought me to Dhofar. One of the foreign-looking men smiled. ‘We, that is my two colleagues and I,’ he said, ‘are from the Maghrib. I, like IB, am a native of Tangier …’

I stared at him. In Wadi Darbat, a migrant Tangerine was almost as improbable as a passing penguin.

‘… and’, he continued, ‘I am the author of two papers on my illustrious fellow citizen. “The Subjective and the Objective in the
Travels
of IB” explores the continuous narrative interplay between IB’s internal reactions to the alien environment, to what one may term the Other – the
aja’ib al-asfar
, the “Wonders of Travel” of his full title – and his reportage of external phenomena –
ghara’ib al-amsar
, the “Marvels of Cities”. My second paper focuses on the latter aspect,
c’est à dire l’aspect miraculeux des
Voyages. I am firmly of the opinion that it is a grave mistake to dismiss the miraculous, as some commentators are prone to do; indeed, we must contemplate miracles more closely, for they are an integral part of the
Travels
as a valid historical document.’

I realized that he had paused, and that the circle was looking in my direction. ‘Oh, me too,’ I said wholeheartedly. For a while I spoke of my own, relatively sublunar approach to IB, of my search for physical and human survivals from his world. Then one of the other professors looked at his watch and whispered something to the Tangerine.

‘You must excuse us,’ he said. ‘We have a very full programme.’

The group rose simultaneously, bade us farewell and bumped off in their bus.

‘Well, that was a coincidence, no?’ I said to Qahtan.

‘One of the wonders of travel,’ he replied.

As the afternoon waned, we too left Darbat to its shepherdesses, its birds and its jinn. Qahtan pulled off the track that descended by the Abyss and prayed the sunset prayer on an eminence. I watched a layer of orange light – concentrated orange, tangerine in fact – floating on the humidity of the plain, and thought about the meeting. It was certainly a coincidence; but, like the infrequent transit of planets in different orbits, there was also a fatedness about it.

The light had gone. Qahtan folded his Michelin Man prayer mat, and we set off for Salalah.

That night Qahtan and I joined some of his Khawar kinsmen on the beach. We smoked apple tobacco, and for a time conversation revolved again around Mubarak bin London’s attack on the Khawar in
Arabian Sands
. Then, by popular request, Qahtan’s nephew began telling a story: ‘Uncle Qahtan’s family are called Ba’ir.’ He tapped my knee. ‘You know the meaning of “Ba’ir”? Yes, that’s right, a camel. Just checking. They’re called this because their immediate ancestor was incredibly strong. He could kill a man just by throwing a sharpened flint at him. Now Sa’id Ba’ir (Uncle Qahtan’s father and my maternal grandfather) once found himself in Kuwait and short of money. But he was a clever man. He borrowed some cash from a Palestinian and went to the printer’s. He ordered fifteen thousand passports – well, pieces of paper that said: “Government of the Ba’iri State. Temporary Travel Document.” Then he sold these, to Indians and so on. He covered his costs, and made quite a bit on top.’

I thoroughly approved of a blow struck against the tyranny of passports; but it all seemed an unlikely tale. Then Qahtan said, ‘I once met a Sudanese in Kenya. When he heard my family name was Ba’ir, he said, “You’re not by any chance related to Sa’id Ba’ir?” I said, “Yes. He’s my father.” Then he said, “Well, your father sold me a bit of paper in Kuwait. A Ba’iri State passport.” God, I was worried when I heard that. Then he said, “And I travelled all the way to Sudan on it. Nobody ever questioned it.”’

Everyone laughed. They must have heard the story many times, but it was one that would never grow stale – like the stories of Abu Zayd al-Saruji, the fake Ghassanid.

The pipe was charged with more apple tobacco. Qahtan’s nephew drew on it. The sea sucked at the sand. ‘Tell the one about the
bisht
,’ they said.

‘Ah, the
bisht
.’ He tapped my knee. ‘You know what a
bisht
is? Yes, that’s right – a kind of cloak. Just checking. You see, the
bisht
is important to the story. Well, Grandfather had a particularly fine
bisht
. No one else had one as fine. Anyway, when he was in Kuwait he kept bumping into this Mahri. The Mahri coveted Grandfather’s
bisht
. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. On top of this, the Mahris and the Khawar are not the best of friends, and the Mahri kept slagging Grandfather off. One day he said, “You Khawar, you’re nothing but slaves.”’ He drew on the pipe. ‘Now Grandfather was wandering about, feeling really pissed off by all this. Then he spotted
this
slave, hanging out in the
suq
, a really big black man. Well, to cut a long story short, Grandfather went up to the slave and said, “Come and shag me on the beach.”’ I noticed a general turn of heads among the neighbouring groups of beach-bums. ‘“Tonight. I’ll be sleeping in such-and-such a spot” – he described the place exactly – “and I’ll be wearing this
bisht
. You can’t mistake it. There’s a full moon, and there isn’t another
bisht
like it in the whole of Kuwait. Oh, and when you come, don’t say anything. Just get on with it as quickly as possible.”’

The storyteller paused and peered at his watch. ‘Oh dear. It’s nearly midnight. Perhaps I ought to break off … Or do you want me to carry on?’ I nodded vigorously; I knew what Scheherazade’s husband must have felt like as dawn approached.

‘Okay. Well, Grandfather found the Mahri and said to him, “Look, I know we’ve had our differences. But I want bygones to be bygones. And as a token of our friendship, please take this
bisht
.” The Mahri of course didn’t have to be asked twice, and went off wearing the
bisht
. Now, the Mahri always slept in the same spot on the beach. It just happened to be the rendezvous Grandfather had agreed on with the slave. And that night the Mahri had a big surprise.’

‘Did the Mahri enjoy it?’ I asked when the laughter had died down. It would have been a delicious narrative twist.

‘No, he didn’t,’ said the storyteller. ‘He was very angry.’

*

Time rolled on, my watch ran slower, I grew fatter. Habibah’s cooking was supplemented by food parcels sent by Thumna – cakes and chickens done in coconut milk. One evening we went to an Olde Worlde Dhofari restaurant to eat
habshah
, a fry-up of tripe and intestines, and a special order: porridge with dried sardines, a thirteenth-century recipe I had come across in Ibn al-Mujawir.

I spent the days gossiping with Habibah, the nights in beach- or plain-salons. Then one morning I came across a poem attributed to the orthodox imam, al-Shafi’i. It was quoted in the introduction to Habibah’s edition of the
Travels
, and it shook me out of my pleasant but un-Battutian stasis:

Travel! Set out and head for pastures new –

Life tastes the richer when you’ve road-worn feet.

No water that stagnates is fit to drink,

For only that which flows is truly sweet.

No lion that spurned the hunt could catch its prey,

No arrow unreleased could earn a score.

A sun that hung immobile in the sky

Would soon become a universal bore.

Sandal’s mere firewood in its native grove,

Gold is but dust, unmined within the lode.

Things that are stationary have little worth:

They only gain their value on the road.

Soon afterwards I set out for the Kuria Muria Islands. As I was leaving, Habibah handed me some folded sheets of paper. ‘A
hirz
,’ she said, ‘an amulet – to keep you safe in the boat.’

She had copied al-Shadhili’s
Litany of the Sea
, the prayer IB had heard in Alexandria:

… Subject to us every sea that is Thine on earth and in heaven, in the world of sense and in the invisible world, the sea of this life and the sea of the life to come. Subject to us everything, O Thou in Whose Hand is the rule over all.
Kaf-Ha-Ya-Ayn-Sad
…

Kuria Muria

Minor Monuments

‘Men’s disagreements stem from names; when they proceed to the reality, peace ensues.’

Jalal al-Din al-Rumi (d. 1273),
Mathnawi

K
AF-HA-YA-AYN-SAD
. There again were those amuletic letters, this time part of a prayer carved on the stern of a sailing
sambuq
: ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. I ask for Your succour, forgiveness and approval, and that You bring us bounty from whence we know not. Dated 5 Rajab 1371.
Ya-Sin. Kaf-Ha-Ya-Ayn-Sad. Ha-Mim Ayn-Sin-Qaf
.’ Beside this prayer was another one: ‘O Protector of souls in hulls, O Saviour of hulls in the fathomless sea, protect this
sambuq
whose name is
al-Dhib
, O God, O Sustainer, O God, O Protector.’
Al-Dhib
, the
Wolf
, was less than fifty years old. But the inscription crossed a sea of centuries – to al-Shadhili’s Alexandria, to Ibn Jubayr’s Aydhab with its trembling souls and leaky hulls.

Qahtan and I found the
Wolf
on the beach at Sad’h, a haven seventy miles east of Salalah at the end of the graded track. A few old skippers’ houses survived from the days when it had been a major frankincense port; the old mosque, however – ‘a simple still space’ with a ‘remarkable minaret’ – had according to the
Journal of Oman Studies
been ‘(demolished 1983, Ed.)’. It was still a pretty place, although Qahtan shook his head at it. ‘I couldn’t live here. Ever. Too shut in.’ It was the voice of the claustrophobe from the inland steppe.