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Southern Arabia

<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> <h4>OUR DEPARTURE INTO THE INTERIOR</h4> Never shall I forget the confusion of our start. Mokaik and ten of his men appeared at seven in the morning of the day before in our rooms, with all the lowest beggars of Makalla in their train, and were let loose on our seventy packages like so many demons from Jehannam, yelling and quarrelling with one another. First of all the luggage had to be divided into loads for twenty-two camels, then they drew lots for these loads with small sticks, then they drew lots for us riders, and finally we had a stormy bargain as to the price, which was finally decided upon when the vizier came to help us, and ratified by his exchanging daggers with Mokaik, each dagger being presented on a flat hand. In the bazaars bargains are struck by placing the first two fingers of one contractor on the hand of the other. All that day they were rushing in and weighing, and exhorting us to be ready betimes in the morning, so we were quite ready about sunrise. We felt worn and weary when a start was made at two o'clock, and our cup of bitterness was full when we were deposited, bag and baggage, a few hundred yards from the gate, and told that we must spend the night amidst a sea of small fish drying on the shore, and surrounded on all sides by dirty Bedou huts. These fish, which are rather larger than sardines, are put out to dry by thousands along this coast. Men feed on them and so do the camels; they make[82] lamp-oil out of them; they say the fish strengthens the camel's back, and they consider it good for camels to go once a year to the sea. Large sacks of them are taken into the interior as merchandise; they are mixed with small leaves like box, and carried in palm-leaf sacks, about 3 feet wide and 1½ feet high, and the air everywhere is redolent of their stench. At this point we had the first of many quarrels with our camel-men; we insisted on being taken two miles farther on, away from the smells; nothing short of threats of returning and getting the sultan to beat them and put them in prison enabled us to break through the conventional Arab custom of encamping for the first night outside the city gates. However, we succeeded in reaching Bakhrein, where white wells are placed for the benefit of wayfarers, and there beneath the pleasant shade of the palm-trees we halted for the remainder of the day and recovered from the agonies of our start. Among the trees was a bungalow belonging to the sultan where we had hoped to have been able to sleep, but it was pervaded by such a strong smell of fish that we preferred to pitch our tents. Between this place and Makalla all is arid waste, but near the town, by the help of irrigation, bananas and cocoanut trees flourish in a shallow valley called 'the Beginning of Light.' There are numerous fortresses about Bakhrein, so the road is now quite safe for the inhabitants of Makalla; the sultan has done a good deal to repress the Bedouin who used to raid right into the town. He crucified many of them. We took a couple of hours over our start next day, the Bedouin again quarrelling over the luggage, each trying to scramble for the lightest packages and the lightest riders. They tried to make me ride a camel and give up my horse to my husband. As he was so tall, he could obtain neither a horse nor a donkey, so had perforce to ride a camel.[83] He had been able to buy a little dark donkey for Imam Sharif and the sultan gave me a horse, but all the rest were on camels. I thought I should enjoy riding by the camels and talking to everyone, but my hopes were not carried out. The difficulty of passing the strings of camels was enormous. The country was so very stony that if you left the narrow path it took a long time to pick your way. I used to start first with Imam Sharif, and then my horse, at foot-pace, got so far ahead that the soldiers said, 'We cannot guard both you and the camels.' I had then to pull in the horse with all my might. Sometimes I went on with Imam Sharif, one soldier and a servant carrying the plane-table. He used to go up some hill to survey, and I, of course, had to climb too for safety. I had to rush down when I saw our kafila coming and mount, to keep in front. If I got behind, the camels were so terrified that they danced about and shed their loads, and I was cursed and sworn at by their drivers. We stopped three hours at Basra (10 miles), where there are a few houses, water, and some cultivation, and where the camels were suddenly unloaded without leave, and there was a great row because we moved the soldiers' guns from the tree, the shade of which we wished to have ourselves. We again threatened to return, but at last, as Taisir fortunately could speak Hindustani, he could make peace, and they ended by kissing hands and saying salaam (peace). The sun was setting when we reached a sandy place called Tokhum (another 5 miles on), where we camped near some stagnant water. We had to wait for the moon, to find our baggage and get out the lantern. We had travelled over almost leafless plains save that they had little patches of mesembryanthemum, and the inevitable balloon-shrub (madhar). Rising and starting by moonlight on Christmas[84] morning, we stopped in Wadi Ghafit (madhar), a very pretty side valley, with warm water and palm-trees, and what looked like a grassy sward near the water, but which really consisted of a tiny kind of palm. The camel-men wanted to pass this place and camp far away on the stones, sending skins for water, but somehow my husband found this out after we had passed Wadi Ghafit, and managed to carry off the camels, tied tail after tail to his own camel, so the Bedouin had to follow unwillingly. We gave them some presents, saying it was not an everyday occurrence, but that this was a great feast with us; so we made friends. The Bedouin were very unruly about the packing. We could not get our most needful things kept handy, and they liked to pack our bread with their fish, and the waterskins anywhere among our bedding. Mokaik did not seem to have much authority over the various owners of the camels, and they were always quarrelling among themselves, robbing each other of light loads and leaving some heavy thing, that no one wished for, lying on the ground; this often occasioned re-packing. They had for each camel a stout pair of sticks with strong ropes attached, and having bound a bundle of packages to each stick, two men lifted them and wound the ropes round the sticks over a very tiny pack-saddle and a mass of untidy rags. When we arrived they liked to simply loose the ropes from the sticks and let the baggage clatter to the ground and lead away the camels. As they would not be persuaded to sort the things, and as twenty-two camels cover a good deal of space, it was like seeking the slain on a battlefield when we had to wander about having every bundle untied. Three days' camel-riding up one of the short valleys which lead towards the high table-land offered little of interest beyond arid, igneous rocks, and burnt-up, sand-covered valleys, with distorted strata on either side. Here[85] and there, where warm volcanic streams rise out of the ground, the wilderness is converted into a luxuriant garden, in which palms, tobacco, and other green things grow. One of the scrub trees which clothe the wilderness is called by the Arabs rack, and is used by them for cleaning their teeth. It amused us to chew this as we went along: it is slightly bitter, but cleans the teeth most effectually. There is also a poisonous sort of cucumber, called by the Arabs madakdak. They clean out the inside and fill the skin with water, which they drink as a medicine. At Sibeh, which we reached after a very hot ride of twelve or thirteen miles, we found water with scores of camels lying round it, for there were two or three other kafilas, or caravans, beside our own. It was dreadfully cold that night, and we could not get at our bag of blankets. Next we entered the narrow, tortuous valley of Howeri, which ascends towards the highland, in which the midday heat was intense; and at our evening halts we suffered not a little from camel-ticks, which abound in the sand, until we learnt to avoid old camping-grounds and not to pitch our tents in the immediate vicinity of the wells. We encamped in a narrow, stony river-bed, between walls of rock, near a little village called Tahiya. There is a good deal of cultivation about. The closeness of the situation made the smell of the dried fish we carried for the camels almost unbearable. These sacks are stretched open in the evening and put in the middle of a circle of camels, their masters often joining in the feast. One of the men was attacked by fever, so he was given quinine, and his friends were told to put him to bed and cover him well. When we went to visit him later we found him quite contented in one of these fish sacks, his head in one corner and his legs all doubled up and packed in; only a bare brown back was exposed, so[86] we had a few of the camel's rags thrown on his back, and he was well next day. We went on ten miles to Al Ghail, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet above the sea-level. This word ghail begins with the Arabic ghin, which is a soft sound between r and g. There are two villages near the head of the Wadi Howeri, where there is actually a ghail—that rare phenomenon in Arabia, a rill or running stream. Here the Bedou inhabitants cultivate the date palm, and have green patches of lucerne and grain, very refreshing to the eye. We had come up one of the narrowest of gorges, but with hundreds of palm-trees around Al Ghail, the first of the two villages, which is in the end of the Wadi Howeri. It is an uninteresting collection of stone huts, with many pretty little fields, and maidenhair fern overhanging the wayside. There are little enclosures with walls round them, and small stones in them, on which they dry the dates before sending them to Aden. The rocky river-bed itself is waterless, the ghail being used up in irrigation. At Al Bat'ha, which is just above the tableland, we actually encamped under a spreading tree, a wild, unedible fig called luthba by the Arabs, a nickname given to all worthless, idle individuals in these parts. Bedou women crowded around us, closely veiled in indigo-dyed masks, with narrow slits for their eyes, carrying their babies with them in rude cradles resembling hencoops, with a cluster of charms hung from the top, which has the twofold advantage of amusing the baby and keeping off the evil eye. After much persuasion we induced one of the good ladies to sit for her photograph, or rather to sit still while something was being done which she did not in the least understand. There is very good water at Al Bat'ha, and so much of the kind of herbs that camels like that we delayed our[87] departure till eight, shivering by a fire and longing as ardently for the arrival of the sun as we should for his departure. The road had been so steep and stony that the camel-riders had all been on foot for two days. I am sure that, except near a spring, no one dropped from the skies would dream he was in Arabia the Happy. It is hard to think that 'the Stony' and 'the Desert' must be worse. <hr /> [88] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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