Arabian Sands (28 page)

Bin al Kamam’s proposal to go to the Dahm and demand the return of the Rashid camels was opposed by many of the tribe who wanted war. After dinner an argument about this started among the Arabs who were sitting with me. The discussion, like most Bedu discussions, quickly became heated and the raised voices drew other people over to us. More than a hundred tribesmen from the Rashid, Bait Kathir, Mahra, and Manahil were camped around us that night, and soon they were all collected round our fire. They belonged to tribes which had suffered from Dahm raids. The moon was nearly full, so that I could see them clearly as they sat there, crowded together with their rifles in their hands. Behind them the cliffs were white in the moonlight, and above were the wooded slopes of the Qarra mountains. All around us were the couched camels and the dying light of many fires. Bin Kabina and bin Anauf moved round pouring out coffee for each man in turn. I could sense the expectancy which is always present when Bedu contemplate a raid. I knew that many of them were already picturing the looted camels which would make them rich.

Bin al Kamam argued that the Dahm were tribesmen and would be bound to return camels taken during a truce. He spoke slowly, poking at the ground with his camel-stick. There were mutters of ‘Yes, by God!’ and ‘True! True!’ Someone interrupted him, saying that the Dahm were faithless, worse even than the Saar. Another man spoke, trying by raising his
voice to hold the attention of the crowd, but his words were lost in the growing din. Suddenly an excited Rashid, whose name I did not know, sprang to his feet, hurled his head-cloth on the ground, and shouted,
‘Ba Rashud
, if twenty men will come with me I will go and fetch the two camels they have taken from me. What is more, by God, I will bring back a hundred Dahm camels as well!’ He turned on bin al Kamam and asked furiously, ‘What is the good of your negotiations? You made a truce for the Rashid, and the Dahm immediately broke it. The only result of your truce was that we were caught unprepared. How many camels have the Rashid lost? The Dahm are utterly faithless. God’s curse on them! Our rifles should be our answer to this raid. Let the rifles speak. Listen to me, you people. Get together and raid. God almighty, are the Rashid women thus to be harried by the Dahm? It would be a disgrace to negotiate now.’

Everyone was shouting, and I could hardly make out a word. Old one-eyed Abdullah was arguing furiously with a group of Mahra, while he hammered the ground with his stick. Bin Mautlauq was shouting for war, abetted by a handsome boy in a blue loin-cloth. Bin Kabina had stopped pouring out coffee and was gesticulating with the pot. Occasionally one man commanded attention for a while, and then the strained silence was broken only by a single urgent voice, but inevitably someone else joined in and the two voices rose, the one against the other, until both were lost in the returning noise. I noticed a little man sitting opposite me who was insistent that the tribes should unite and inflict a really crushing defeat on the Dahm. His clothes were stained and torn, but he wore a large silver-hilted dagger set with cornelians and a belt filled with cartridges, and he held a brass-bound Martini rifle between his knees. He had very bright eyes, and all his movements were jerky. He looked rather like an assertive sparrow, but I noticed that the others listened carefully to everything he said. I asked bin Kabina who he was, and he answered, ‘Don’t you know him? He is bin Duailan, “The Cat”.’ I looked at him again with interest, for bin Duailan was the most famous raider in southern Arabia. Eight months later he was to die on the Yemen border, surrounded by the men he had
killed in his last and most desperate fight, which plunged the desert into war. Bin al Kamam made a joke which I could not catch, and everyone nearby laughed; and then bin Kalut, who had been sitting silent and unmoved, spoke in his deep voice, ‘Let bin al Kamam go to the Dahm and demand the return of the Rashid camels. If they hand them over the Rashid will keep the truce. If they refuse we will collect a force and raid them after we have taken Umbarak to Mukalla.’ The decision seemed to have been made as far as the Rashid were concerned.

Next day we crossed the Kismim pass and camped once more by the pool of Aiyun. Bin Kabina was accompanied by the boy I had noticed the night before. They were about the same age. This boy was dressed only in a length of blue cloth, which he wore wrapped round his waist with one tasselled end thrown over his right shoulder, and his dark hair fell like a mane about his shoulders. He had a face of classic beauty, pensive and rather sad in repose, but which lit up when he smiled, like a pool touched by the sun. Antinous must have looked like this, I thought, when Hadrian first saw him in the Phrygian woods. The boy moved with effortless grace, walking as women walk who have carried vessels on their heads since childhood. A stranger might have thought that his smooth, pliant body would never bear the rigours of desert life, but I knew how deceptively enduring were these Bedu boys who looked like girls. He told me that his name was Salim bin Ghabaisha
¹
and he asked me to take him with us. Bin Kabina urged me to let him join us, saying that he was the best shot in the tribe and that he was as good a hunter as Musallim, so that if he was with us we should feed every day on meat, for there were many ibex and gazelle in the country ahead of us. He added, ‘He is my friend. Let him come with us for my sake. The two of us will go. with you wherever you want. We will always be your men.’ I told bin Ghabaisha that he could come, and later when we camped I gave him one of my spare rifles to use until we reached Mukalla. Next morning he went off at dawn to hunt for ibex and he came back in the evening carrying across his shoulders a large ram which he had shot. I met few good hunters among the Bedu – only an occasional
one of them possessed the necessary enthusiasm – but bin Ghabaisha was one of these, and Musallim bin Tafl was another.

After dinner bin Kabina got up from beside me, saying that he was going to fetch his camel. Suddenly someone called out, ‘Bin Kabina has fallen down.’ I looked round and saw him lying in the sand. He was unconscious when I reached him. His pulse was very feeble and his body cold; he was breathing hoarsely. I carried him to the fire and piled blankets on him to warm him. I then tried to pour a little brandy down his throat but he could not swallow. Gradually his breathing became easier and his body a little warmer, but he did not recover consciousness. I sat beside him hour after hour wondering miserably if he was going to die. I remembered how I had first met him in the Wadi Mitan, how he had come to Shisur to join me, how he had unhesitatingly remained with me at Ramlat al Ghafa when the Bait Kathir had deserted me. I remembered his happiness when I gave him his rifle, and I knew that whenever I thought of the past months I should be thinking of him, for he had shared everything with me, even my doubts and difficulties. I remembered with bitter regret how I had sometimes vented my ill-temper on him to ease the strain under which I lived, and how he had always been good-tempered and very patient. The others crowded round and discussed the chances of his dying, until I could scarcely bear it; and then someone asked where we were going tomorrow and I said that there would be no tomorrow if bin Kabina died. Hours later as I lay beside him I felt him relax and knew that he was sleeping and was no longer unconscious. He woke at dawn and at first could hear but could not speak, and signed to me that his chest was hurting. By midday he could speak and in the evening he was all right again. The Rashid gathered round him, changing incantations and firing off their rifles; and then sprinkled flour, coffee, and sugar in the stream-bed to appease the spirits which they had exorcized. Later they slaughtered a goat, sprinkled him with its blood, and declared him cured. I have often wondered what was wrong with him and can only think it was some kind of fit.

Next day we travelled slowly to Mudhail, where a trickle of
water seeped out from beneath a low cliff, but the trunks of fifty dead palms proved that this water had been more abundant in the past. We camped under some low cliffs where an overhang gave us a little shade. Here I picked up a small, well-burnished, neolithic axe-head, similar to one I had been given by a Kathir who had told me that he had found it on the Jarbib plain. Both the axes were made of jade, which is unknown in Arabia.

There were two Muslim tombs in the valley, fifteen feet square and seven feet high, crowned with plaster-covered domes. My companions could tell me nothing of these tombs except that someone called Sheikh Saad was buried there, and this was confirmed by a well-executed Arabic inscription on the stele of one of the three graves inside the tombs, but unfortunately his father’s name was obliterated. One section of the Bait al Sheikh, a religious tribe, is called the Bait Sheikh Saad. Near the tombs was a small graveyard, no longer in use because of the Bedu belief that the ancient dead would not tolerate intrusion. There were many trilithon monuments in the valley and tumuli on the nearby hills.

My companions had already told me about buildings and ‘writings’ at Mudhail. I had hoped I might discover another Petra, and had at any rate expected to find something older and more interesting than these Islamic tombs. The civilizations of southern Arabia had been situated farther to the west, but for fifteen hundred years they had depended for their prosperity on frankincense gathered on the mountains of Dhaufar. I knew that the best frankincense was collected on the northern slopes of this mountain and that the gum from the other side of the mountain was of poor quality. Near Aiyun I had seen a grove of brittle bushes with small crumpled leaves which the Arabs told me produced frankincense, but there seemed to be few of these groves. I saw only this one.

It seems strange that there are so few ruins on the northern side of the mountain, considering the great length of time during which this region was of vital importance to the successive civilizations of southern Arabia. I had expected to find the remains of forts or block-houses which had been made to defend these priceless groves against attack from the desert.
But apart from crude tumbledown
sangars
of indeterminate age above many of the wells, it was only at Andhur that I found the ruins of a well-constructed building. This, which was on a ridge above the palm grove, seemed to have been a storehouse rather than a fort. The walls were built of cut stones set in mortar, and were half buried in rubble. Along the top of the low outer wall were some mortar-lined stone troughs, about five feet in length and two feet in width and depth, similar to others which I had seen among the ruins near Salala. I had already been told of the buildings at Mudhail and the ruins at Andhur before I visited them; I never heard of any others.

On my way back from the tombs I saw a young man sitting under the cliff near our camping-place. I noticed that his wrists were shackled with a short length of heavy chain. I greeted him, but he did not reply, though he turned his head and looked at me. He had a striking face, but there was no intelligence in his eyes. His hair was long and matted, and the rag that he wore did not cover him. He stood up, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, and then walked away muttering to himself. I asked bin Kabina who he was and he told me that he was Salim bin Ghabaisha’s brother, and that he had lost his reason three years earlier; before this happened he had been one of the friendliest boys in the tribe. I asked why he was shackled, and bin Kabina answered that two years ago he had killed a boy who had been his special friend by smashing in his skull with a rock while he slept. The dead boy’s family had accepted blood-money.

Bin Ghabaisha returned later carrying a buck which he had shot. Bin Kabina told him that his brother had turned up, and without a word he went off to find him, taking a dish of dates. Later he came back depressed and unhappy. He took me aside and said: ‘Have you no medicine, Umbarak, that will cure my brother? I beseech you if you have to give it to me. I loved my brother. We used to be inseparable. We did everything together; we went everywhere together. I was like his shadow. Now he hardly knows me. He wanders round like an animal and is less responsive to me than a camel. Give me medicine to cure him, Umbarak, and all that I have is yours.’ I told him sadly,
‘I have no medicine that will do your brother any good. Lies are no use to you. Only God can cure him.’ He answered resignedly, ‘The praise be to God.’

We travelled slowly, for I was in no hurry to reach Mukalla. After the slogging effort of the past months it was sheer enjoyment to dawdle along, on the watch, almost from the moment when we started, for somewhere to stop again. We would choose a spot in the cool shadow of a cliff, or else under some trees, where the tracery of branches threw a net of shade across the sand. There we would remain for the rest of the day or move on again in the evening, as the fancy took us. We had plenty of food and water, and there was acacia to feed our camels. Almost daily bin Ghabaisha shot ibex or gazelle, and then bin Kabina cooked the meals of which he and I had dreamt when we had starved together in the sands.

The intimacy which had characterized our small party on that journey was impossible in these crowded camps. I was especially sorry that I never really got to know bin Duailan, the famous Cat, as he fed with another group. Sometimes he came over to us, bearing a battered brass coffee-pot. He would carefully unwrap from a dirty rag a small cracked cup, dark with stains, and serve us with coffee, explaining to me with a twinkle that he was the only person in camp who knew how to make it properly. He would then squat down and sooner or later lead the conversation round to rifles, expressing the hope that I would give him a service .303. How, he would ask, could a man raid effectively armed only with an old single-shot Martini? I would counter by saying that he at least seemed to have managed very successfully.

We remained for three days at Habarut, where families of Mahra watered their camels at the shallow wells beside the tangled palm groves. At dawn, on our first day there, I heard one Rashid ask another, as they washed before they prayed, ‘Is he dead yet?’ and the other answered, ‘No, not yet, but he soon will be.’ Startled, I sat up and asked, ‘Who is dying?’ and one of them said, The old Afar who is travelling with us. He fell down when he got up to pray. He is over there.’ I knew the man; he came from the east, from somewhere near the Wadi al Amairi, and had attached himself to us two days
before, for the food and protection which we afforded him whilst he travelled in our company. The night before, bin Kabina had told me that this man was sick, and had shown me where he lay behind a rock, a desiccated bundle of skin and bones, shivering under the goatskin which he had wrapped about his head and shoulders. I had given him some tablets, and he had clasped my hand and murmured a blessing, grateful for this light attention in an indifferent world. Now he lay where he had fallen, and no one heeded him. I could not feel his pulse. I called to bin Kabina, and together we lifted him on to a rug and covered him with blankets; the others took no notice, being either busy with their prayers or frankly indifferent. We then lit a fire beside him and I poured some brandy down his throat. He spluttered and recovered consciousness. I gave him more brandy and soon he was a little tipsy from the forbidden spirits. Three days later he parted from us, quite recovered.