Quest for Adventure

by Chris Bonington

  Thesiger spent the end of 1945 and the early months of 1946 travelling on the southern edge of the Empty Quarter. He was getting to know the land and its people, finding the travelling companions for his ambitious, still secret plans. On arrival, he found that he had been apportioned a retinue of the Bait Kathir tribe, on the pretext that he would need a large party both for safety and also as a recognition of his importance. He soon realised that he was regarded as ‘the rich infidel milch cow’ to be milked to the very limit. Thesiger commented: ‘At first glance they seemed little better than savages, as primitive as the Danakil, but I was soon disconcerted to discover that, while they were prepared to tolerate me as a source of welcome revenue, they never doubted my inferiority.’

  To the Bedu, he was an Infidel or Christian; the fact that he was English had no relevance. The world beyond their arid mountains and the sea that bounded them was of little importance. They had never been colonised or conquered, though the Aden levies had made the occasional and comparatively ineffective punitive expedition against inland tribes in the Hadhramaut. As far as they were concerned this represented the total might of the Infidel, and they were not impressed. Thesiger quickly realised that he would have to capture their respect and friendship if he wanted to get away from the beaten trails and venture into the Empty Quarter.

  ‘Anxious to prove their equal, I wanted no concessions and was irritated when pressed to ride while they still walked, or when they suggested I was thirsty and needed a drink. I wore their clothes – they would never have gone with me otherwise – and went barefooted as they did. In camp, especially when we had visitors, I sat in the formal way that Arabs sit, and found this unaccustomed position trying. I thought many of their formalities irksome and pointless. Sometimes we shot a gazelle or oryx and then fed well, but our usual fare was unleavened bread, brick hard or soggy, depending on how long it had lain in the embers of the fire. On the gravel plains the water from the infrequent wells tasted of camel’s urine, but it was even worse when we reached the Sands, where it resembled a strong dose of Epsom salts, fortunately without the same effect.’

  At the end of this period he had earned the respect of his travelling companions and had begun to master the dialect of the Bait Kathir and other tribesmen of southern Arabia. He had also started to build up the strong friendships which were to play an important part in his travels later on. Particularly important was his meeting Salim bin Kabina, a younger member of the Rashid tribe, who lived on the edge of the Empty Quarter and were familiar with its sands.

  ‘He was to be my inseparable companion during the five years that I travelled in southern Arabia. He turned up when we were watering thirsty camels at a well that yielded only a few gallons of water an hour. For two days we worked day and night in relays. Conspicuous in a vivid red loin-cloth, he helped us in our task. On the second day he announced that he was coming with me. I told him to find himself a rifle and a camel. He grinned and said he would find both, and did. He was sixteen years old, about five foot five in height and lightly built. He was very poor, so the hardship of his life had already marked him. His hair was long and always falling into his eyes, especially when he was cooking, and he would sweep it back impatiently with a thin hand. He had very white teeth which showed constantly, for he was always talking and laughing. His father had died years before and it had fallen on bin Kabina to provide for his mother, young brother and infant sister. I had met him at a critical time in his life. Two months earlier he had gone down to the coast for a load of sardines, on the way back his old camel had collapsed and died. “I wept as I sat there in the dark beside the body of my old grey camel, the only one I had. That night death seemed very close to me and my family.” Then he grinned at me and said, “God brought you. Now I shall have everything.” Already I was fond of him. Attentive and cheerful, anticipating my w ants, he eased the inevitable strain under which I lived. In the still rather impersonal atmosphere of my desert life his comradeship provided the only personal note.’

  Thesiger had to return to Britain to report his observations on the movement and habits of the locusts. Dr Uvarov, the head of the Locust Research Centre, wanted to know more about locust movement in Oman, at the south-east end of the Arabian peninsula, but the Sultan of Oman had already refused permission for Thesiger to enter his country. He immediately saw the chance of slipping illicitly into Oman by the backdoor and, at the same time, realising his ambition of crossing the Empty Quarter, and returned to Salala in October 1946, to find twenty-four of his former companions of the Bait Kathir waiting for him.

  The problem, however, was that the Bait Kathir were not really suited to the Empty Quarter, for they rarely ventured into its vastness. The Rashid were much more at home in the desert and would have been ideal companions for Thesiger’s scheme, but somehow he had to get a message to them. It was no use asking the Bait Kathir to do this, for they were jealous of the Rashid and wanted him to themselves. He was shopping in the bazaar one day when he met a young Rashid who had travelled with him the previous year; he sent a message for bin Kabina to meet him at Shisur, on the edge of the Empty Quarter, though he had no way of knowing if it would be delivered. A few days later he set out with his party of the Bait Kathir.

  Thesiger, in Arab dress, was an impressive sight. After a few weeks under the desert sun, he was nearly as bronzed as an Arab; his beard was dark and his curved, slightly fleshy nose had a Semitic look to it, but there the resemblance ended. His eyes are a pale, greyish blue and at six-foot-two inches he towered above his companions with a natural air of inbred authority.

  With their camels they trekked through the foothills, at first through grazing downs, green jungles and shadowy gorges on the southern side and then, as they passed through the mountains, it changed to a lunar landscape of black rocks and yellow sands. The inhabitants were as hard and wild as the land itself. Government control barely reached beyond the bounds of the towns on the coastal strip. Here, in the desert, every man went armed; disagreements were settled with the gun and tribe fought tribe in an endless circle of feud and counter-feud.

  They reached Shisur without incident and began watering the camels. It was a bleak, ominous spot. The ruins of an old fort, perched on a rocky mound, guarded the well which was at the back of a large cave that undercut the mound. It was the only permanent water to be found in the central steppes and consequently had been the scene of many a savage fight, when rival raiding parties had surprised each other. They left a sentry high on the mound while they went to work, under the blazing sun, watering the camels:

  ‘When we arrived at the well, the water was buried under drifted sand and had to be dug out. I offered to help but the others said I was too bulky for the job. Two hours later they shouted that they were ready and asked us to fetch the camels. In turn they scrambled up the slope out of the dark depths of the cave, the quaking water-skins heavy on their shoulders. Moisture ran down their bodies, plastering the loin-cloths to their slender limbs; their hair, thick with sand, fell about their strained faces. Lowering the water-skins to the ground, they loosed jets of water into leather buckets, which they offered to the crowding camels, while they sang the age-old watering songs. Showers of camel droppings pattered on to the ground and rolled down the slope into the water, and small avalanches of sand, encrusted with urine, slipped down to add more bitterness to water that was already bitter.’

  The sentry, just above them, gazing over the shimmering plain, caught sight of distant, dark shapes moving across the sand, and called the alarm. No one could ever relax in the desert; the approaching riders could be a hostile raiding party or members of a tribe with an age-old blood feud. Quickly the camels were herded together and the Bait Kathir, rifles ready, crouched behind rocks around the well. The other party approached cautiously; there were seven riders. A couple of shots were fired over their heads; they came on steadily, waving their head cloths. Then someone called out, ‘They are Rashid – I can see bin Shuas’s camel’. Everyone relaxed
, coming out into the open and forming a line to greet the newcomers. Thesiger’s message had reached bin Kabina and he had come with six other members of his tribe.

  That evening he told bin Kabina of his ambition to cross the Empty Quarter, to which Kabina replied that he thought the Rashid would go with him and that Al Auf, who was one of their number, was the best guide in the tribe. It was an eight-day ride to Mughshin the last sizeable oasis before the sands of the Empty Quarter, and the journey went without incident until the day they arrived there; the camels suddenly bolted and Mahsin, one of the Rashid, was thrown to the ground. He already had a damaged leg and this was broken in the fall as it twisted under him. Fortunately, Thesiger carried with him a small first-aid kit, gave Mahsin an injection of morphine, straightened the leg and made a rough splint for it. They were close to the shelter of the few trees grouped around the well, so that they could at least take stock of the situation. Suddenly, Thesiger’s scheme was threatened. There was no question of Mahsin being able to go with them. The Rashid were equally unwilling to leave him because of the risk of hostile tribesmen hearing of his predicament and coming to finish him off. He had killed many men and made many enemies in the course of his life. The Rashid said they could not move Mahsin and they would have to wait there until he either recovered or died.

  After a night’s sleep, however, they became more optimistic and agreed that Al Auf and bin Kabina should go with Thesiger, provided he loaned the others two of his modern service rifles to guard their friend. Thesiger was delighted, and promised to stay until Mahsin’s recovery was assured. He was quite glad at the reduction in the party. The fewer they were, the more unobtrusive they would be and small numbers give a greater feeling of adventure. It is perhaps a similar feeling to that of the climber who prefers to climb in a small compact party, which brings him that much closer to the mountains than he would be as a member of a massive expedition. Thesiger assumed that the Bait Kathir would not want to accompany him into the desert, but was immediately engulfed in protests. Whether it was pride or the thought of what wages they might miss, they did not want to be left out. After a lot of argument, spread over the next nine days while they waited by the well, it was decided that ten of the Bait Kathir should accompany the two Rashid and Thesiger across the Empty Quarter, while the remainder would head for the coast and meet them on their return.

  At last, on 24 November, they set out from Mughshin to cross the eastern end of the Empty Quarter. They had 400 miles of trackless, unmapped desert before them. If they ran out of water, or if the camels collapsed and died, they also would almost certainly perish. And even if they succeeded in making the crossing and reaching the wells of Liwa on the other side, they might well be attacked and killed by the tribes who lived there, particularly as Thesiger was unmistakably an Infidel. The problem was compounded by the fact that the Bedu, improvident with their food as they always were, had eaten most of the rations for the crossing.

  The Bait Kathir were now frightened at the prospect of venturing into the Empty Quarter and were looking for an excuse to withdraw. Four days’ march took them to Khaur bin Atarit, the last well they would encounter on the southern side of the Empty Quarter. There were no trees to give them shelter from the sun, and the well itself, little more than a depression in the sand, had been drifted over. Despite this, there was good grazing; it had rained there two years before and there was still a low ground covering of green plants providing some succulent forage for the camels. Because of this, a group of Bait Musan, a friendly tribe, were encamped nearby. That afternoon they dug out the well and watered the camels. The water was brackish, almost undrinkable, but this was something that Thesiger was now learning to accept.

  The next morning he could see that something was wrong. The Bait Kathir had gathered into a circle, arguing and talking, for decisions among the Bedu were always reached democratically with everyone from the youngest lad to the oldest having his say. The leader of any group was informally recognised because of his experience and personality rather than by appointment or birth. In this case a Bedu called Sultan was the undoubted leader. He had served Thesiger well on their previous trips, was courageous and wise, but he was uncertain of himself in the empty expanses of the deep desert and told Thesiger that it would be lunacy to go on; their camels were not up to it; there was insufficient food and water.

  Thesiger sympathised, understood his feelings and knew how to handle the delicate politics of this little group of tribesmen. He was still dependent on the Bait Kathir since they owned the camel he was riding, and anyway, even though Al Auf and bin Kabina had expressed their determination to take him across the Empty Quarter, he now realised they would be better off with a slightly larger group. Thesiger knew that Musallim, who owned the camel he was riding, was jealous of Sultan’s position in the group. He therefore asked Musallim if he would be prepared to go on with them. Musallim agreed and suggested that as Mabkhaut bin Arbain was his friend he should come too. And so the team was now down to the compact size that Thesiger had wanted at the very beginning. His role had been not so much that of leader as a catalyst whose presence and will kept the venture on its course, though it was the leadership and skill of Al Auf that would take them across the Empty Quarter.

  They divided the food and water once again, keeping four of the best waterskins for the journey. They also bought a powerful bull camel from the Bait Musan, to help carry their supplies and act as a spare. The little party set out into the rolling dunes of the desert the following morning. They had not gone far before Al Auf suggested that they halt at the last vegetation to give their camels a final strengthening graze. That night they stopped with some camel herders of the Bait Imani tribe and benefited from the chivalrous hospitality of the desert. Their hosts had nothing but the milk of their camels, and little enough of that, but they insisted on Thesiger’s party having it all, going without themselves, for they were the hosts.

  They would meet no one else until they reached the other side of the sands. The Bait Kathir had been full of stories of parties that had vanished, never to be seen again, but Al Auf was quietly optimistic. When asked by Thesiger how well he knew the sands, he simply replied, ‘I know them’. He had no map or compass, had only crossed the sands on two previous occasions, each time incredibly on his own, but in his mind was a sense of direction, a recognition of tiny landmarks that no one who had lived outside the sands could ever have. He knew where to find grazing for the camels, knew the whereabouts of the few waterholes on which their lives would depend.

  The sands were like a petrified ocean of great waves that marched haphazardly from the one horizon to the next. There were stretches of calm, of flat level salt flats, and there were storm-wracked dunes that towered 600 feet into the sky, each one of them with a long even slope on one side leading up to the crest, which then dropped away steeply into the next trough. The little party was dwarfed by its gigantic scale, creeping so slowly across its vast expanse.

  At night it was bitterly cold; on his first trip Thesiger had brought three blankets with him, but the Bedu share everything and, since his companions had only a few rags to wrap round them at night, he had ended up surrendering two of the blankets and shivering through the night with them. This time, therefore, he brought out a sleeping bag which he could keep to himself so that at least during the night he was warm and comfortable.

  The party began to stir at the first glimmer of dawn, anxious to push on while it was still cold. The camels would sniff at the withered branches of the tribulus shrub which was their main forage and which grew in hollows of this seemingly dead land, nurtured by rains that might have fallen some years before. As the journey went on they would become too thirsty to eat and once this happened their strength would wane rapidly. The men had nothing to eat or drink, just crept from under tattered blankets, saddled the camels, fastened in place their few belongings, the fast-shrinking sacks of flour and the vital, life-preserving waterskins, and set out across the desert. At first
it was bitterly cold; the sand chilled their bare feet, causing the soles to crack –a source of pain and irritation, particularly when the sun heated the sands to an almost unbearable heat. Pain and discomfort filled their bodies through the day, the blazing sun being a harsher tormentor than the cold of the dawn. Thesiger could see the dew-covered bags full of water – water that was being lost by condensation, as the bags heated in the sun. He longed for the one moment in the day that he could take a drink, tried to ignore the length of time that he would have to wait for the evening meal, as he plodded through the sands, leading his camel or, after a few hours’ walking, mounting it and swaying to the ungainly rhythm of its progress.

  ‘We went on, passing high, pale-coloured dunes, and others that were golden, and in the evening we wasted an hour skirting a great mountain of red sand, probably 650 feet in height. Beyond it we travelled along a salt flat, which formed a corridor through the sands. Looking back I fancied the great red dune was a door which was slowly, silently closing behind us. I watched the narrowing gap between it and the dune on the other side of the corridor and imagined that once it was shut we could never go back, whatever happened. The gap vanished and now I could see only a wall of sand. I turned back to the others and they were discussing the price of a coloured loin-cloth which Mabkhaut had bought in Salala before we started. Suddenly Al Auf pointed to a camel’s track and said, “Those were made by my camel when I came this way on my way to Ghanim”.’