Hashish

by Henry De Monfreid

  As soon as we began to move, I could not resist replying, for nothing is more irritating than to be used as a target. With the back-sight at eighteen hundred yards, we kept firing off our six rifles. The boutre was soon smoking like a crater; the noise of the shots excited us, we had not had such a good time for long. I knew very well that at this distance my shots were harmless, and so were those of the Italians. We rounded off the fête by an imitation of heavy cannon. This was done by throwing a dynamite cartridge, duly attached and with the wick alight, into the water. This apparatus floated, and when it exploded it made as much noise as a forty-pounder. From a distance it must really have been terrifying.

  Soon the dialogue was cut short by increasing distance, and we had a hearty laugh over our battle. On counting the empty cartridge-cases, I found we had fired a hundred and twenty-five shots. A genuine battle, and no mistake. What I didn’t know, and what I was to learn only on my return, was that the Italians did not treat it as a laughing matter at all, and that the whole colony of Eritrea was in a ferment over it.

  I consulted my chart to see where this henceforth historic battle had taken place, and found that the spot was called Takalaï. Quite near there was an Italian military post, occupied by a detachment of Tigrean guards. Needless to say I hadn’t known this.

  Much smoke had resulted from this visit, but no fire, for we had not got a single stick of wood, and I didn’t think it would be prudent to put in again until we had passed the Italian frontier. I stood out to sea at once to make the people on the coast think I was making for Arabia, so that they would not follow me overland, which they would not have failed to do if I had continued on my way directly northwards. I was far from suspecting how this very decision was to render this adventure still more complicated. While I was struggling with the askari, or perhaps as I fled, I had lost a slipper, like Cinderella, or, strictly speaking, one of my Catalan sandals. This sandal was to appear as evidence against me later on, and it, too, led to complications.

  It had been very lucky for me that I had obeyed my impulse and left my ship outside the anchorage, for if I had been inshore I should have been caught like a rat in a trap, and should have fallen into the hands of the Italians. The misunderstanding provoked by my landing might have been cleared up easily enough, but I should have had to explain the nature of my cargo, and there’s no saying how the affair would have ended. Often in my life I have been stopped on the edge of disaster by some such impulse.

  For two days and nights after this adventure at Takalaï I was obliged to beat about in bad weather. Our position at midday two days later indicated that we had only got forty miles farther north. There was a strong southerly current against us.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Miraculous Cisterns

  On consulting the book of words I found there was mention of ruins and cisterns on the island of Errich. This island was supposed to be the antique Pharos of the Ptolemies. Perhaps there would be water there, since they spoke of cisterns. We drank terribly in this sultry weather. We had to allow ten litres of water per man per day, for drinking only, for we washed with sea water.

  This evening, threatening storm clouds were once more massed on the mountains, but I was not to be caught a second time. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon; I had plenty of time to find an anchorage behind the island of Seïl Bahar before nightfall. There was a vast emeraldgreen bay there, sheltered from every wind that blows, a mute invitation to sailors to spend a peaceful night. The water in it was clear, calm and deep, and the passage leading to it was wide. A boutre was moored at the end, surrounded by pirogues like a hen surrounded by chickens. I decided to join her. But no sooner had we entered this pretty lake than on all sides I saw the yellow splotches denoting submerged rock. If the light had been bad and we hadn’t noticed them, we should inevitably have been ripped up. By keeping a look-out from the mast-head, we were able to reach the healthy, clear water where the other boutre was anchored, but it was only after much meandering.

  They were Sudanese who were fishing for a kind of sea slug in order to secure the horny membrane which the animal uses as a peduncle to help him to move about, and as a lock when he is resting or when danger threatens. This organ looks like a plectrum of a mandolin, so you can understand what enormous quantities of them are needed to make up an appreciable weight. This substance is very expensive, and is used in India as an aphrodisiac. When it is burned over live coals the smoke, which is strongly ammoniacal, is considered a sovereign remedy for colics, fevers, etc.

  The two crews were soon bartering fish for tobacco and exchanging news. Suddenly the khamsin began to blow with terrific violence. What a delight it was to listen to it whistling harmlessly through our rigging, while the boutre sat comfortably astride on her two anchors, and think what unholy weather it was outside

  The nacouda of the other boutre was a very old Sudanese, who had been sailing these waters for forty years. He said that it was quite true that there was drinkable water in an island to the north. Naturally, he could not indicate it on my chart, which was a complete puzzle to him. He carried his charts in his head, and looked with some contempt on the piece of parchment by which I set such store. The explanations he gave me were perhaps quite clear to him, but I didn’t follow them very well, especially as he answered yes to all the questions he did not understand. However, I concluded that the island he referred to must be the island of Errich, which was marked on my chart as having cisterns.

  Next morning, there was a good land breeze blowing, and we soon reached the bay to the north of this island. There was a shallow lagoon which we had to cross in the pirogue. I landed at the foot of a hillock on which, sure enough, there were remains of walls. These must be the ruins my chart mentioned. They were on the highest point of this flat and barren island. There must have been a town there in olden days; one could still see traces of foundations and lines marking out streets and squares. The sun was beating vertically down, and the ground was so hot that we could not put our bare feet on it, but were obliged to wear thick-soled shoes. Mhamed Moussa, who had no shoes, walked cautiously in the shadows of stones or on tufts of grass. Suddenly he vanished from sight as if the earth had swallowed him up. But almost immediately his head reappeared above the ground. He had merely fallen into one of the famous cisterns. I then discovered several of them, all exactly alike. I explored them, not that I hoped to find water – I saw how ridiculous that would be – but out of that curiosity that old things never fail to excite.

  These cisterns were in the form of amphorae, ten feet in diameter. The walls were of baked clay, all in one piece. They were in a perfect state of preservation, without a single crack. The clay for these Cyclopean potteries had probably been fired on the spot. They were three-quarters full of sand, and of course there was not the faintest trace of water in them.

  It became so unbearably hot that in spite of my desire to potter about among the ruins, I was forced to go back to the ship to quench my thirst. The climate of this island must have changed considerably, for a city could never otherwise have been established in this desolation of burning plains, which stretched as far as the eye could reach, unbroken by a human habitation, a herd of goats, or even a tree. Archaeologically speaking, this excursion had been very interesting, but as far as getting water was concerned, I was no farther on. I-had just time before nightfall to get to the Kohr Nowarat, in the middle of which was the island of Badhour.

  The Kohr Nowarat was a sort of large lake, conneded with the sea by a very deep strait which, unfortunately, was barely eighty yards wide and strewn with rocky islets. In the middle of this stretch of water was the island of Badhour, like a fortress surrounded by moats. On the most southerly point of the island, a small village of half a score of huts could be seen. We anchored near it and I went ashore to see if there was any chance of getting water.

  We did not meet a single man on the way, only women. They were dressed in ample black robes, of much the same style as those worn by the
women of Upper Egypt. They were very Arabic in type, but nearly as brown-skinned as the Dankalis. The children, not at all shy, played round us; the boys were naked, while the little girls wore a loin-doth. All the men were away fishing for trocas (sea snails) or mother-of-pearl. There were no old men, for the men who follow those occupations die long before they reach old age, generally blind. I saw two or three blind men crouching at the doors of their huts. Their blindness was in the early stages, when the eyes become opaque like those of a boiled fish. This disease of the eyes is due to their work as divers in waters infested by a sort of jelly-fish to which I have already referred when describing the trocas fishers. But hereditary syphilis may also have something to do with it. To even up the balance, the women live to be incredibly old. They looked as if death had forgotten to call for them. The Arab proverb that cadis and old women have to be beaten to death with sticks must have some truth in it.

  I learned that there was still water on Badhour from the year before. This year’s water had not yet arrived. They spoke about water exactly as if it were a crop that ripened at a given season, and indeed their water did come rather in that way, as you will see. The inhabitants of this island bore no resemblance to those of the adjacent coast. On the mainland, the natives were Sudanese with an admixture of Egyptian blood. In the old days, in the time of the Khedives, they were slaves; today they are to be found among the lowest classes in the towns. In Cairo and Alexandria they fulfil the functions of porters, night-watchmen, orderlies and so on. They are magnificent specimens of male perfection with their coal-black skins and beautifully muscled bodies, and dressed in Oriental garb they are most decorative as they stand at the doors of the big hotels. Nowadays they are also in great demand in the dancing establishments from Khartoum to Cairo. But the inhabitants of Badhour are very different, and have the most profound contempt for their neighbours on the continent, as Arabs have for everything that is African.

  For a long time this island was the port of concentration for the caravans coming from the Sudan, and it was from here that they set sail for Arabia. Badhour was the central market for working slaves as Tajura was for luxury slaves. This traffic was openly carried on until the making of the Suez Canal, and continued for some time after that. Indeed, it is said to flourish to this day, although it is now forbidden.

  There were about twenty huts all told in the village, all belonging to the same family. The ‘ancestor’ was a woman so incredibly ancient that she might have represented a statue of old age. She was very tall, and generally walked nearly bent double, but when she drew herself to her full height, she was terrifying. She did not look at all like a woman, but like a man, a man who resembles a horse. Her immense eyes were further lengthened towards the temples. Strange fires must have burned in those eyes many, many years before. Now they were blurred, the pupils covered with a bluish film, as if they had ceased to look on anything living, or show interest in any human being. Before me I felt I had the spectre of a dead world, with a withered heart incapable of any emotion, a creature older than time, which had lost all its instincts and forgotten all its affections. The others addressed her with great respect, in some unknown tongue in which were mingled a few words of Arabic They explained to her that we wanted water, for this life-giving element belonged to her. The fleshless spectre was the guardian of the treasure.

  Without a word she got up, leaning on her two sticks, and we followed her towards a sort of amphitheatre hollowed out in the centre of the island. It looked like a disused quarry, with vertical sides about twenty-five feet high. At the foot of this circular wall, little heaps of stones like tombs were arranged. There were nearly two hundred of these heaps, a few yards apart.

  A flock of white goats was drinking from little clay troughs filled by women who drew the water in leather bags from a deep hole. This water was brackish and had a strong magnesia content; it was undrinkable. This, we were told, was only for the cattle; there was much better water. Salah had a smattering of the language of Badhour, for he had lived for a long time in the Sudan. He acted as interpreter and arranged the price. After long palavers, during which the old woman did not move a muscle, it was agreed that I should pay a thaler arid a half for the right to take water from one of the cisterns closed by the heaps of stones. There were different qualities, it appeared, and this price was for one of the best.

  The old woman went up to one of the heaps, bent down and with careful gestures removed the stones one by one, while we formed a respectful circle round her. We felt a sort of awe, as if it were a magic ceremony, and she was going to mutter an incantation so that the clear water might gush forth. One has to be in this arid country, burnt by the leaden sun and dried by fiery winds, to understand the emotion we felt at the sight of those rocks which were to give us water. At last all the stones were removed, and a screen of branches appeared. Under it was the mouth of a hole twenty inches in diameter. This was the cistern. A hollow about seven feet deep stretched in a vault under the rock. In the foot of this hole was a sheet of water, so clear that I had to drop a pebble into it to convince myself that it was really there.

  A man lowered himself into the hole and drew some water. It was very good, pure as the water of a mountain spring. We had the right to take all we wanted, until the cistern was empty. It appeared that when these cavities were emptied, they gradually refilled, the water oozing out of the rocky sides. However, at this time of year many were dried up. So it really was water of the previous year we had taken, for the next rains would not fall until September, when they would refill the mysterious reservoirs which fed these miraculous cisterns.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Legend of Cheik Badhour

  The night of the Friday on which the body of the Prophet (on whom be prayer and peace) was brought to rest in the Kabba in Mecca, the Holy City where he had been born, a miraculous star waved its golden hair across the sky. The constellation of the Lion was completely covered by it. Led by this divine sign, two hundred pilgrims set out for Mecca across thé murderous deserts of Nubia. Two moons had waxed and waned since they had left their villages, when they stopped on the shores of an unknown sea, where blue fishes flew through the air like the birds of heaven. Before this stretch of water with its limitless horizon from under which the sun rose each morning, they gave themselves up to discouragement, and for the first time lost faith in their celestial guide. And that night, the miraculous star failed to appear.

  The oldest of them, Cheik Badhour, realized the sin they had committed in letting insidious doubts filter into their hearts and destroy their faith, and he decided they must do penance. Perhaps Allah in his mercy would take pity on them and send them help. He led his companions on to a peninsula in the form of a plateau which jutted like an immense nave into the sea. There, all swore to await death in unshakable faith in him who had no ancestors and who will have no descendants, in Allah, for there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. In vain the burning heat of the sun and the devils of thirst tortured them; not one, not even the youngest, uttered a single complaint.

  When Friday evening came, the sun set in a welter of crimson and, their minds already a little crazed with the approach of death, they thought they saw the orb of day expiring in his blood, like the lamb whose throat is cut on the day of sacrifice. However, they said the prayer of El Acha, just as usual, all lined up behind Cheik Badhour, who conducted the ritual Raka, reciting verses from the Koran. Suddenly, the sky was rent asunder by bands of jagged fire, the earth trembled and the sea lashed itself into tremendous waves. But the faithful remained prostrate, humbly waiting for Allah to work his will.

  In the morning, a radiant sun rose over a glassy sea, but the peninsula on which the faithful had been kneeling had broken off from the mainland and was now entirely surrounded by water. They understood that God had pardoned them by saving their bodies from the loathsome beasts that crept, howling, round their retreat every night. So they all forced themselves to a supreme effort, and started to hol
low out their tombs. In them they would lie and await death, since such was the will of Allah. Hardly had they scratched the stony soil with their bleeding nails than it became softer, and little pools of clear water formed. This miracle saved their lives. They were able to subsist until a vessel came one day and took them to Djeddah.

  And from that day the cisterns have remained, one for each tomb. Down the centuries they have given the water which is life to those who passed through this thirsty land, and never once have they all dried up. Their lesson to men is that faith is precious to believers as the spring in the desert, and that by faith one can move mountains.

  NINETEEN

  The Hand of Destiny

  One can look to the future with a lighter heart when one knows that the water-barrels are full. The miraculous cisterns of the island of Badhour had taken a weight off my mind, and since our call there we had tacked night and day, with the tenacity of an insect which keeps doggedly climbing up a slope, heedless of the fact that it always falls back to the bottom again. In spite of this, we were all in high spirits. Perhaps the water of Badhour inspired in us some of the faith to which it owed its origin, and we did advance, though with maddening slowness.

  I ventured into the Bay of Berenice, which is noted on my chart ‘unhealthy bay’, which in naval terms means strewn with uncharted rocks. Nevertheless, I crossed it without encountering a single obstacle, and reached the end of the bay, where I anchored on the sandy bottom. There were plenty of rocks under the water in the natural harbour where in days of old had stood the town of Berenice, to which came the caravans from Upper Egypt, with merchandise for export to Arabia and Persia.