Arabian Sands (45 page)

At Farai there was a busy crowd of Wahiba, Junuba, and
Harasis watering their camels and donkeys, and flocks of sheep and goats. I had an anxious moment when a Wahiba boy recognized bin Kabina’s camel as one which had been stolen from him a few months earlier, but bin al Kamam reassured me, explaining that by tribal custom the boy now had no claim to it since bin Kabina had bought it. The lad was, however, anxious to get it back as it was his favourite, and after a little haggling bin Kabina handed it over in part exchange for a far finer animal that he had just been admiring. The boy came back a little later with a young fennec fox, which he had caught that morning, and which he now offered to me as a present. It was an engaging little animal, about nine inches long, almost white, and with very large ears. I did not want to take it, thinking we should have difficulty in feeding it, but al Jabari, one of the two Awamir who was with us, assured me that he could find enough mice and lizards for it to eat. Two days later when we stopped at midday the sack in which we carried it was empty. Al Jabari insisted on riding back as far as our last camping place to look for ‘our little companion’, and when he came back without it the others were strangely upset. I was surprised, for Bedu are seldom sentimental even about human beings.

The evening that we were at Farai an old man came up to us. He was one of the two delightful old Wahiba who had spent the night with us at Haushi two years before when we had slaughtered the
hazmia.
He invited us to his encampment, but as this was some way up the Wadi Halfain and as we intended to travel down it to the coast, we declined his invitation. He offered to accompany us, but was old and frail, and so we suggested that his cousin Ahmad should come with us instead. Ahmad was the same age as bin al Kamam and rather similar to him in appearance. He had recently been to Riyadh with a large party of Wahiba to sell camels. His party had suffered severely from fever and eleven of them had died on the way home. He told us later that the funeral feasts had lasted for many days and that a very large number of animals had been slaughtered. I liked Ahmad as soon as I saw him. Not only was he welcoming and friendly, as were all the Wahiba we met, but he had great personal charm. My Rashid liked him too,
and bin Kabina said, ‘Let us try to persuade him to stay with us until we get back to Muwaiqih.’

We watered again at Haij near the southern coast. From there we should have been able to see Masira Island, by which I could have checked my position, but a gale was blowing and the air was thick with flying sand. We had bought a camel and had slaughtered her the previous evening. She had a large, suppurating abscess on one of her feet, but bin al Kamam assured me that this would not affect the rest of the meat. In any case, I was too hungry to be fastidious. We hung the strips of raw meat to dry in some bushes and I watched with rising ill-temper how the grains of sand formed an ever-thickening crust over them.

From the southern coast I visit the
Wahiba sands, and then, with the
Imam’s permission, return through
Oman to Buraimi.

We had crossed southern Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, travelling along the edge of the Empty Quarter, but this was the sort of journey to which I was by now well accustomed. From here, however, we had to get back through Oman, a journey which, to be successful, would require diplomacy rather than physical endurance.

I explained to Ahmad that I wished to travel northwards to the Wadi Batha and then to return to Muwaiqih along the foot of the mountains. This route would take me across the Wahiba sands which I was particularly anxious to see, since they were separated from the Sands of the Empty Quarter by more than a hundred and fifty miles of gravel plain. Ahmad said, ‘I myself have never been in those sands; I am from the Yahahif and we live on the plains, but I can find a guide from the Al Hiya, the other branch of our tribe. They live in those sands.’

He went on: ‘You are free to go wherever you wish in the country of the Wahiba. We are your friends, Umbarak; none of us would try to stop you. But the tribes under the mountains are different; they will certainly make trouble if they find out who you are, just as the Duru did. Anyway, they are all governed by the Imam and they will be afraid to let you pass without his permission. It’s different in the desert; there we could perhaps take you through the land of our enemies, travelling as raiders travel and avoiding the wells. But that is impossible in the mountains; the country is too narrow; we should have to use the paths, and they go through the villages; we could never keep out of sight. I will take you as far as I can, but just you and one of your companions. We will get hold of good camels and keep ahead of the news. As a small
party we may avoid attracting attention. We will leave the others in the Wadi Halfain and come back to them as soon as we have been as far as the Wadi Batha. But how you are going to get to Muwaiqih from here I don’t know. However, we can discuss that when we return.’

Next day we crossed into the Wadi Andam, which here was only a few miles from the Halfain, and followng it northward we arrived two days later at Nafi. The wide valley was well wooded and would have looked like a park had it not been for the drought. Ahmad now found us a man of the Al Hiya, called Sultan, who agreed to guide us across the sands to the Wadi Batha. I decided to take bin Kabina with me. Bin Kamam was anxious to come instead, but I persuaded him to remain in charge of the others, arranging to meet them a little farther to the north in the Wadi Halfain, where the grazing was said to be better.

I hired a fresh camel from Sultan; bin Kabina rode his own, and both Sultan and Ahmad were well mounted. We were riding four of the finest camels in Arabia and if necessary could travel both fast and far. At first we crossed a gravel plain, sprinkled with sand of a reddish tint, and broken up by small limestone tables among which we saw many gazelle, all very wild. Gradually, as we went farther, the sand increased until it entirely overlaid the limestone floor. On the second day we reached the well of Tawi Harian, which was about eighty feet deep. Several Wahiba were there with donkeys, but no camels. We left as soon as we had watered, for we wanted no awkward questions. We were now riding northward along valleys half a mile wide enclosed by dunes of a uniform height of about two hundred feet. A curious feature of these valleys was that they were blocked at intervals of about two miles by gradual rises of hard sand. The sand in the bottoms was rusty red, whereas the dunes on either side were honey-coloured – both colours becoming paler as we travelled farther north. In the evening, having climbed up to camp among the dunes, we looked across waves of sand and small crescent hollows dotted with
abal
bushes.

We had been going for three hours next morning when bin Kabina suddenly exclaimed, ‘Who is that?’ I glanced back and
was relieved to see that it was only a small boy, hurrying along to catch up with us. We waited for him. He was dressed in a white shirt and head-cloth, and wore a dagger; he was little more than four feet high and perhaps eleven years old. After we had formally exchanged the news, he stopped in front of our camels, held out an arm and said, ‘You may not go on.’ I thought, ‘Damn, are we really to be stopped by this child?’ The others waited in silence. The boy repeated, ‘You may not go on’; and then, pointing to some dunes five or six miles away, added, ‘You must come to my tents. I will kill a camel for your lunch. I will give you fat and meat.’ We protested, saying that we had far to go before sunset, but the child insisted. Finally, however, he gave way, saying ‘It is all wrong but what more can I do?’ Then, as we were going on, he asked, ‘Have you seen an old grey camel in calf?’ Ahmad said ‘No:’ He thought a moment, and added, ‘We passed the tracks of a young camel a little way back, and of three camels before that, none of them in calf.’ Sultan asked, ‘What are her tracks like?’ The boy replied, ‘She turns her near fore-foot in a little.’ Bin Kabina exclaimed, ‘Yes! don’t you remember we crossed her tracks beyond that patch of light-coloured sand in the last valley? She had climbed the slope on our right and fed on some
qassis.
It was just before we came to the broken
abal
bush.’ The others agreed that these must be the tracks of the boy’s camel, and described to him where to find them. The place was about three miles away. Once again I was amazed at their unconscious powers of observation. They had been arguing the rights and wrongs of a recent killing among the Junuba, apparently paying no attention to their surroundings; yet they could now remember every camel-track that we had passed. Sultan said, ‘God willing, you will easily find her. The tracks we saw were fresh, made after the sun had risen.’ The boy thanked us and turned back down the valley. We watched him as he walked away from us, his clothes very white against the red sand, and Sultan said, ‘Ahmad, do you remember old Salih? He died last autumn. That is his son, a good boy.’

Two days later we camped on the top of the dunes, two hundred feet above the Wadi Batha. The valley was about six miles across and was bordered on the far side by a narrow
belt of sand. Beyond this were low dark hills, and towering above these the stark range of the Hajar. In spite of the haze I could see the peaks of Jabal Jaalan near the coast at the eastern end of the range. I took bearings with my compass while Sultan pointed out to me the various villages, most of them surrounded by palms, and all easily visible on the yellow plain. I called out to bin Kabina to come and look, adding that I could see some Bedu encampments, but he was busy re-tying the pads on. his saddle and called back jokingly, ‘What do I want with those Bedu? They did not kill my father.’ I joined him where he sat beside the fire, and with his help listed the plants we had seen.

Ahmad and Sultan had brought me across the sands to the Wadi Batha as they had promised. I hoped that now they would not insist on going straight back across the desert to rejoin our companions in the Wadi Halfain, but would first take me westward through the villages that lay among the foothills. When I suggested this to them, Ahmad answered, ‘We will show you as much of the country as we can, but from now on no one must discover that you are a Christian.’

In the morning Sultan warned me as we started, ‘When we meet Arabs don’t say anything.’ I asked, ‘Who are you going to say I am?’ and he answered, That will depend on who they are.’ Bin Kabina pointed to my watch and said, ‘Take that off,’ and I dropped it inside my shirt.

As we went up the valley, which is here called the Batha Badiya, Sultan indicated a village half-buried by sand at the foot of a dune, and said, ‘In time the sands will swallow this valley. A few years ago that village was inhabited.’ We passed several other villages, two or three of which were completely deserted and others partly so. Sultan explained that this was due to the drying-up of the
aflaj
, the underground channels which supplied water to the cultivations. These
aflaj
were probably introduced into Oman from Persia and they are made by sinking shafts every ten yards and joining them up with a tunnel. As they often run for miles, it must need skill to get the level right, working in the dark without instruments. I could see where several of them crossed the plain; the course of each one marked by the mounds of excavated earth.

We were still on foot when we met a party of Arabs, three men and a boy, all armed, leading a string of loaded camels. We stopped and spoke with them. I watched their dark gipsy eyes inspecting us, coming back to me each time, never dwelling on me, but missing nothing. One of them, a middle-aged man with a scar across his cheek, asked Sultan, ‘Is he a Baluchi?’ ‘Yes. He has come from Sur. He buys slaves and is going to Nazwa.’ Four pairs of eyes nickered over me again. It was the first of several such encounters, and each time I felt horribly conspicuous, standing there in silence, towering above the others, while they exchanged their news and the long minutes dragged by. Yet even as I waited for my identity to be discovered, I realized that for me the fascination of this journey lay not in seeing the country but in seeing it under these conditions.

Sultan insisted that we should avoid the Harth village which we could see farther up the valley. ‘We do not want to meet Salih bin Aisa,’ he said. ‘He is the Sheikh of the Harth and head of all the Hanawi tribes. He would soon discover who you are, and even if he were friendly the mischief would be done, for news of your presence here would get ahead of us.’ To avoid this village he led us round the northern tip of the sands into a maze of bare, broken hills, some of which were of reddish colour, while others were black, slate-blue, or a dirty white. After travelling for two days through these hills we reached the Habus villages in a tributary of the Wadi Andam. We had nearly finished our food, so Sultan and bin Kabina went into Mudhaibi, where there was a market, while Ahmad and I waited for them just outside the village. Several people passed along the track and called out a greeting, but I was thankful that no one came over and spoke to us. If they had done so they might well have remained until the others returned, and would probably have become increasingly inquisitive. Ahmad had told me that a representative of the Imam lived in this village, and I realized that if I roused suspicion here I should be arrested and sent to Nazwa. The others came back an hour later with dates and coffee. They said that there was nothing else to be had in the village, and grumbled that what they had bought had been expensive. We
continued down the valley, passing several other villages. Along the edge of the wadi were scattered palm-trees and small gardens irrigated from rivulets bordered with flowering oleanders.

It was a clear day, the first one for weeks, and I could see the ten-thousand-foot summit of Jabal al Akhadar, and seventy miles to the north-west the familiar outline of Jabal Kaur. Around us were many other peaks and mountains. As we rode along I stopped at intervals to sketch their outlines and to take their bearings. Of all these mountains only Jabal al’ Akhadar was shown on the map.