Authors: Wilfred Thesiger
The Saar told me some Rashid were camped near by. We went over to them next day and found one-eyed Abdullah, Muhammad, who was bin Kalut’s son, and some Awamir and Mahra sheikhs. When I was close they fired shots low over my head, their usual greeting for sheikhs or other distinguished people. About forty Saar were with them, discussing the renewal of a truce with the Rashid. Muhammad told me that bin Kabina had received my letter at Habarut and that
he had ridden down to Ghaidat on the coast to find someone to translate it. I knew that it was at least a hundred miles from Habarut to Ghaidat and realized this extra distance would account for his not having arrived yet. However, it was good to know that he was on the way. Muhammad also told me that bin al Kamam was still in the Yemen, negotiating with the Dahm for the return of the Rashid camels, and that bin Ghabaisha was in Dhaufar. Taking me aside he asked where I was going and I told him, but begged him to keep It secret since I knew that it would be dangerous if the tribes learnt of my movements in advance. He volunteered to come with me and I accepted his offer, as it seemed unlikely that I should be able to get hold of either bin al Kamam or bin Ghabaisha. We agreed to meet in the Raidat at the time of the next new moon. He could not come with me now, as the discussions with the Saar would go on for some days. He told me news had just arrived that the Manahil had again raided the Yam. It had been a big raid of a hundred and forty men and they had killed ten Yam and lifted a hundred and fifty camels. Nine of the Manahil had been killed, including bin Duailan, who had led the raid. Later I was to hear the story of his death from the man who killed him.
This was very bad news, for it meant that there were almost certain to be large-scale retaliatory raids by the Yam, and probably by the Dawasir, several of whom had recently been killed in a raid by the Saar. If we crossed the Sands we should have to water in the Dawasir country near Sulaiyil, and I knew from the inquiries I had made at Najran, a few months earlier, that the Yam pastured their herds during the winter in the sands to the south of Sulaiyil. We could not possibly find a
rabia
from either of these tribes, and both tribes would now consider themselves at war with my companions.
The news here was all of raids and rumours of raids. Muhammad and Abdullah were worried about a force of a hundred and fifty Abida from the Yemen which had passed eastwards along the edge of the Sands a fortnight earlier. They had heard that the leader of this raid was Murzuk, a renegade Saar who lived with the Abida. I knew that Murzuk
had a formidable reputation as a raider and a bitter hatred for the Mishqas, the collective name for the tribes who live to the east of the Saar. The desert was more disturbed than it had been for years.
Muhammad pressed me to spend the night with them, but I was anxious to get back to the Hadhramaut now that I knew that bin Kabina had received my message. Two days later we were near Tamis well, which belongs to the Awamir. This was dangerous border country. Ahmad went on ahead to scout as we approached the well. A little later he came back and signalled to us to be quiet and to stay where we were. When he got up to us he told us that a large party of Manahil were coming up the main valley. I went with him to look. He warned me to keep well out of sight, since he said the Manahil hated the Saar, and that after their attacks on the government posts in the Hadhramaut they might well feel that they were at war with the Christians. He added that, anyway, they were raiders who had suffered losses and would be in a savage mood. Peering cautiously between some rocks I saw about twenty men just disappearing round a corner a quarter of a mile away. They were driving some camels with them and were riding in silence with their rifles in their hands. They were naked except for their dark-blue loin-cloths. If they had been ten minutes later they would have found us on the well. We remained where we were till late in the afternoon, and then after Ahmad had looked to see that there was no one about, we went up to fill our water-skins. There were fresh tracks everywhere. Ali said he had seen about forty mounted men with about thirty captured camels, and explained that the main party would have split up into several groups after the raid in order to make pursuit more difficult.
There was excellent water at fifteen feet in a hole in the rock. A loopholed
sangar
overlooked it from the cliff immediately above. Although it was getting, late we went on again after filling our water-skins, so as not to camp near the well, always a dangerous thing to do in disturbed country. We found a shallow cave and stopped there, since the weather was cloudy and looked like rain. After dinner, as we were making tea and chatting quietly, a voice suddenly said ‘Salam
Alaikum’. We grabbed our rifles, which were beside us, unable owing to the firelight to see into the darkness. I answered, and Amair dropped off his camel and came forward to greet us. He told me that he had come with bin Kabina from Habarut and that bin Kabina had foundered his camel and had stopped with Muhammad to await my return. He explained that bin Kabina had ridden to Ghaidat, and then, after he had found out what was in the letter, had ridden back to tell his mother and young Said where he was going. I realized that he must have ridden nine hundred miles and I was not surprised mat his camel had collapsed.
I asked Amair for news of bin Ghabaisha and he said that he was with his father at Mudhail. Later I asked him if he thought that bin Ghabaisha would fly to Mukalla from Salala if I could arrange it, but he said, ‘No, he is only a boy. If you were with him he might go in an aeroplane but he won’t go by himself with the Christians.’
On our way back to Saiwum we passed the palm groves at Quff, the original homeland of the Awamir, although most of this tribe, like their allies the Rashid, now live in the Sands. Thirteen days after leaving Shibam, we camped once more on the plateau above the Hadhramaut. We have travelled 225 miles. For the last three days the sky had been overcast, and that night we saw continuous flickers of lightning far away to the north. Amair watched with intent eyes, and several times exclaimed,’ God willing, we will have a year of plenty.’
Next morning we scrambled down the high cliffs into the Hadhramaut itself. Below us we could see the Sultan’s palace at Saiwun, massive and very white above the dark wall of palms. Other buildings, too, with crenellated towers, and minarets, and glistening domes, stood among green fields and gardens filled with fruit-trees.
I always felt imprisoned in the Hadhramaut; I should have been interested to see it ten years earlier, before Ingrams had established law and order; for it was very old, a fragment from a vanished world that had survived in this remote valley. But now the spoiling hand of progress was on the land. Already some of the richer and more ostentatious
saiyids
in Tarim and Saiwun had built themselves houses which were as hideous
as they were incongruous, furnished at great cost with modern ‘conveniences’. The year before in Tarim I had experienced how embarrassing it could be to use a lavatory which, intended only for display, was not connected with anything. These houses were much admired and would, I knew, be assiduously copied. Soon this new style would oust the local architecture, which, although harmonious and beautiful, was suddenly no longer fashionable, simply because it had lasted unchanged for centuries. I had been told that the late Shah of Persia divided everything in his realm into
moderne
and
démodé
and gave orders for the
démodé
to be replaced. The same process would happen here. Walking through Saiwun, the largest town in the Hadhramaut with about twenty thousand inhabitants, I felt that it would not be long before there were cinemas, and wirelesses blaring at street corners.
Watts was on leave in Aden but I stayed with Johnson, his assistant. Despite Amair’s scepticism, I sent a telegram to the Air Officer Commanding at Aden. I asked whether the C.O. at ‘Salala could get hold of bin Ghabaisha through the Wali, and if he was successful – whether bin Ghabaisha could be flown to Riyan and then sent up to Saiwun by car. A week later I got a reply: ‘Bin Ghabaisha contacted Stop Leaving by air for Riyan tomorrow.’
Two days later Johnson was entertaining the Saiwun and Tarim football teams to tea in his house. I had watched with sardonic amusement as they had rushed about kicking a football to cries of ‘Well played!’ and ‘Pass! Pass!’ I was busy handing cakes to the Tarim centre-forward when I heard a well-known voice saying ‘Salam Alaikum’ and in walked bin Ghabaisha. He was wearing his dagger and carried a camel-stick. He had nothing else with him. He sat down beside me, and I asked him where he had come from.
‘We were near Mudhail, in the wadi where you stopped on your way to Mukalla,’ he said. ‘I and my brother were herding our camels when one of the Wali’s slaves arrived. You remember him, Abdullah, the young one who went with you to Jabal Qarra. The slave said that you had arrived, and that the Wali had sent for me; so I told my brother to take the camels back in the evening and to tell my father I had gone to
Salala. When I got there I went in to see the Wali in the palace; he said to me, “Umbarak is in the Hadhramaut and has sent for you; an aeroplane is going there tomorrow. Will you go there in it?”’
I interrupted to ask what his answer had been.
He replied: ‘I said, “Why would I not go in an aeroplane?” The Wali then sent me to the Christians’ camp. The Christians gave me food – horrid stuff; I did not like it, I slept there and next afternoon the aeroplane arrived.’
I asked: ‘Had you ever seen an aeroplane before?’ and he answered, ‘Yes, on my way back from Mukalla last year; it was very high up but it made more noise than this one. When I got into the aeroplane the Christians tried to tie me with a rope. I would not let them.’
I asked him how he had liked flying.
He said: ‘It was all right when we flew over the ground. I could see the wadis and hills – I knew where I was. By God, Umbarak, once I saw men and camels, very small like ants ! I was frightened when we flew over the sea. When it got dark I thought the Christians had lost their way. They all began to chatter and wave their arms about. When we arrived at Riyan an Arab interpreter said that I was to go to Aden in the morning. The man was a fool, so I went to one of the Christians who had driven the aeroplane. I told him you were in the Hadhramaut. At first none of them could understand me, but at last they said “
Aiwah! Aiwah!
Umbarak – Hadhramaut,” and hit me on the back and then gave me tea and bread. They had put milk in the tea and I would not drink it. This morning they mounted me on a lorry and now I am here.’
He asked me where I was going, and I told him that I planned to cross the Empty Quarter to the Wadi Dawasir and to go from there to the Trucial Coast. All he said was, T have not got a rifle, so I took him into my room and told him to choose one of the five rifles there. When he had chosen one I told him it was a present.
We spent two days in Shibam, the most interesting of these towns. Built on the edge of the dry river-bed, on a low mound in the middle of the valley, it had a population of about seven thousand. The town is surrounded by a high wall, but this is
dwarfed by the close-packed houses, which rise inside it to seven or eight storeys. Whenever I was in the silent alleyways under the sheer walls of these houses I felt as if I were at the bottom of a well. Here Amair and bin Ghabaisha arranged with the Saar for camels to take us to the Raidat and bought such things as we still required. I had brought flour, rice, sugar, tea, and coffee from Mukalla, and we now purchased dried shark-meat, butter, spices, saddle-bags, ropes, and water-skins. I bought the water-skins myself, and among them I was palmed off with several sheepskins which invariably sweat when filled with water. This would not have happened if Amair or bin Ghabaisha had been with me, but they were busy elsewhere.
We left Shibam on 17 December and went up to Raidat. Ali bin Sulaiman of the Hatim section of the Saar who was with us was to be extremely helpful. The land was filled with rumours and alarms. Abdullah bin Nura, usually known by his family name of bin Maiqal, had recently arrived at Manwakh with the bin Maaruf Saar. Although these bin Maaruf belong to the Hatim section of the Saar, they no longer lived upon the Saar plateau but in the sands and steppes to the north, and for a dozen years had acknowledged Ibn Saud as their overlord and paid him tribute through the Amir at Najran. They were grazing their herds in the desert south of Najran when word reached them that the Yam and Dawasir were massing, having been authorized by Ibn Saud to attack the Saar and other Hadhramaut tribes in retaliation for the recent raids in which some of them had been implicated. They therefore fled southward to seek refuge among their kinsmen.
We now heard that advance parties of the Yam had already entered the Karab country to the west of us, lifting several hundred camels and killing any Arabs whom they met. Some Saar women with whom we spoke had seen them and described their clothes, saying that they wore trousers ‘like women‘. This was convincing proof that they were from the north. The Saar had evacuated the country between Al Abr and Zamakh, and it seemed probable that they would also abandon Manwakh and withdraw into the broken country
along the middle Makhia. It was important for me to reach this well before they deserted it if I was to find guides and camels for my journey across the Sands.
I left the Raidat at once and arrived at Manwakh late in the evening of 28 December. There was no one near the well. As we had had a long day we decided to camp near by. At sunset six bin Maaruf came past. They were all young men and rode magnificent camels. They were worried by some camel-tracks which they had found farther up the valley. These they had been unable to identify, and they feared they might be tracks of Yam scouts, for Bedu push scouts out far ahead to locate an encampment and then after an all-night march fall on it at dawn. They told us that bin Maiqal was two hours away, and advised us not to camp where we were. We did not wish to arrive at the Saar encampment in the dark, so we decided to move into a side valley and spent the night there. I sent Amair to tell Muhammad and bin Kabina that we had arrived. Having camped, I think we all wished we had gone on after all, for the low rocky bluffs and empty plain looked menacing in the dying light and made us feel very lonely. We cooked a quick meal and then put out the fire; Ali advised us not to talk. In the night one of our camels suddenly got to its feet. I had been lightly asleep and in a second was awake. The others crouched about me, their rifles pointing into the darkness. Ali said, ‘It is only the camel,’ and seizing its head-rope jerked at it until the grumbling animal subsided once more upon its knees. We lay down again, tense after this alarm.