by Norman Lewis
These Yemeni folk were strikingly handsome, with the refined features of a people locked away in their deserts for thousands of years. I was to notice that they seemed sometimes to respond to questions that were not asked, as if with our increasing familiarity they were mysteriously able to read my mind.
It was the practice on dhows like ours to carry a ‘fortunate lady’. That night I was to catch my first glimpse of her. When the families were asleep the nakhoda summoned her for a tour of the deck, and as she stole past trailing an aroma of jasmine blossom. I was astonished by how much beauty the faint gleam of her torch revealed in her face.
This young Somali girl was rarely mentioned in conversation. In Europe she would have been called a prostitute; here she was respectfully referred to as ‘Sa Mabruka’ (the Fortunate One). A few days later I asked through a crew member if she would permit me to photograph her, to which she agreed. She proved to be as charming and beautiful as the sailor had suggested. But as she could not appear on deck I had to take the picture in the dim light of her windowless cabin; the result was poor.
The moon came up; the breeze died away, and we lay motionless on a sea that glistened with phosphorescence, white as a frost-flecked desert. The sail stretched above us like a dark wing, cancelling out the stars. Sometimes it gave a single flap and the mast creaked faintly. A stifling exhalation rose from the bowels of the ship and filled it to the brim, and the chanting of the Hadrami died away as if oppressed. Against the silence that followed could be heard the strong hum of mosquitoes, which the dhow harboured by the thousand. We soon found that protecting our exposed flesh from their torment meant unmaking our improvised beds and covering ourselves completely with our blankets.
The morning brought no freshness. Aching and sticky with heat we climbed to the side and looked around us. We were adrift in an expanse of steaming silk. Just over the stern, unexpectedly, the rocks of Aden were still imminent and huge after the night of travel. The harbour from which we had sailed the day before was only two or three miles away, but the short distance that separated us from the city’s ash-heaps had wrought a change. The rocks had lost their sharp outlines and become pale and spectral, as if on the point of floating away.
As the sun rose higher, a canvas awning was unrolled and stretched over part of the ship to afford shade to the passengers. This was a doubtful blessing, because the awning held in the intolerable odour of staleness and decay which the sun seemed to scorch away wherever it was allowed to penetrate. We felt greatly tempted to cool ourselves by swimming in the sea around the ship, but on attempting to climb over the side, we were held back by the Arabs, who showed their alarm and pointed meaningfully at the water. We saw no sign of sharks, but the general nervousness impressed us and we abandoned the project.
For half the day we stayed motionless. Then a faint breeze began to blow from the shore, and to make the most of it the nakhoda had the sail changed for a larger one, and at last we moved again.
The Arabs began to prepare the main meal of the day. The cook was of slave origin and almost pure African in type. He was heavier, more thickset and more muscular than the average Arab, and his voice was deeper and more melodious. His face was pock-marked and twisted into an almost permanent grin. He prided himself on his professional artistry, and spent a great deal of time pounding and blending the ingredients for each meal. He filled in the intervals between his work by dancing and, as far as was possible, he used to dance even while the cooking went on. Up in the bows he kept an open fire on which he baked unleavened bread. The fire used to menace our lives by throwing out sparks which the breeze took and spread among the cargo. We were thankful that this was not especially flammable. Until recently, kerosene and petrol had often been carried by our dhow. This practice had been discontinued when four petrol-laden dhows in succession set sail from Aden for Madagascar and never reached their destinations.
VII
A feeling of unity and fellowship quickly sprang up. Chance had brought together on this ship some thirty men of different tribes and social classes, coming from places in Arabia as far apart as Athens is from London. Their bond was the common compulsion that had sent them out from their own people to travel to a far country. They were all intensely religious, and it was clear that practically all their actions were carried out in accordance with the precepts of the Koran. We found ourselves part of a community in which the issues of life were suddenly simplified and the essential virtues became of importance once again.
The moral atmosphere was perhaps similar to that of a medieval pilgrimage. Divisions between passengers and crew ceased to exist. On the rare occasions when there was work to be done everyone joined in, and at mealtimes all hands were dipped into the common dish. Arabs press food on those who eat with them. Ashore, sometimes, when we ate at table our host would become impatient of our mincing manners and, snatching our plates away, heap them with mutton and rice, strewing the food all over the table in his prodigality. The same spirit was present here, but we found kishr—a drink made from coffee husks—and unleavened bread like lead on the stomach.
Supreme command of all those gathered together on this ship was vested in the person of the nakhoda, who was tall, lean and grave. His beard was dyed red, but his eyebrows and eyelashes were long and white. His hands were so thin and long that they looked like the hands of a skeleton. His eyes were clouded and tired-looking, but he frequently screwed them up and shaded them with his arm, pointing out some elusive, half-obliterated landmark on the distant shore. Five times a day the nakhoda gave the call to prayer in his old, croaking voice. The first time he called ‘Allah akbar’, the words came falteringly and could hardly be heard up in the bows, but he cleared his throat and started again and, by the time he reached the ‘Haya ala’l falah’, his voice was strong. Besides the call to prayer, the nakhoda led the chanting at night, and sometimes when we were all resting he would tell a tale of the wit of some merry thief of old or the wisdom of a great king.
The nakhoda lived aft on a little platform from which the dhow was steered. This was as sacred to him and his officers as is the bridge to the captain of a ship. Out of respect it was usual to offer him the first piece of unleavened bread and to give him the first cup when the kishr was poured out. He always accepted it gravely, saying ‘May God increase your blessing’, or ‘God be pleased with you’. When there was work to be done such as hoisting or changing sail, the nakhoda hauled on the rope with the rest, but he always maintained the dignity that became a man of his position. When something went wrong and damage was done, as was to happen later in the voyage, he did not raise his voice or wave his arms; instead he displayed the self-possession and restraint expected of an Arab gentlemen.
Our steersman was from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf. He was a young man who had once been a trainer of falcons and he still looked like one. He had also been a fisherman and he claimed to know the names of all birds and fishes. He used to point to the seabirds flying overhead, naming those that were good to eat. These, he said, he could attract by a certain call before flying his falcon against them. He told us of strange animals that his falcons had killed, including a bird that was larger than a man. He boasted that he possessed abnormal strength of vision—he used to point over the sea to towns and villages that remained invisible to us. To his credit it must be said that when we were on the lookout for a landmark or an island he was always the first to see it; often a man had to be sent up the mast to confirm the sighting.
Our sailors for the most part came from Bahrain, where they had originally been pearl fishers. They were not paid wages but received their food and a very small percentage on the sale of the cargo. One of them was keen to try his luck with the Italians in Abyssinia, and another had saved a little money and hoped to become a trader in Jeddah, where he had relatives. The experience they had gained as fishermen came in useful, for they trailed lines behind the dhow at certain times of the day, particularly towards the evening, to catch barracudas and rock cod.
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As for our fellow passengers, these were people drawn from a variety of walks of life. As well as a restaurant owner with his family, we carried a man who sold masks and magical cures, a pearl merchant, and a circus performer who was to demonstrate how to ride a unicycle. Not everyone, however, travelled with such peaceable motives. On the deck just behind us sat a tribesman of the Beni Zaranik who was on his way to fight for what was left of free Abyssinia. These people lived in the coastal region of the Yemen, south of Hodeidah. Until a few years before they had been indomitable sea pirates and slavers, who had fought off invaders so successfully that they had always managed to retain their independence. Thus they were to prove one of the greatest impediments to Imam Yahya’s campaign to rule the whole of the Yemen. Yahya’s method of keeping these tribesmen in order was to take the sons of chiefs hostage, and of these he eventually had several thousands. But even with his hostages the system failed to work. Finally, in December 1929 Ahmed Seif-el-Islam, the Imam’s son, had marched against them, and after a short but bloody war the Zaranik were exterminated.
Our Zaranik friend was not the only would-be soldier travelling with us. We also carried a Yemeni Bedouin without a penny to his name, but full of hope for the future. This Bedouin had been a shepherd, but his ambition was to become a military man in some country where soldiers wore imposing uniforms and did not have to buy their own rifles. After emigrating from the Yemen, he had worked for a short time as a coolie in Aden. There he had lived in one of the caves in the rocks to keep his expenses down. He had bought himself a shirt and an old black coat with his savings, with the idea of impressing future employees. He still darkened his eyelids, however, with antimony powder and bound his calves and his hair with sprigs of sweet basil.
One of the most likeable characters on the dhow was Sheikh Said. He was dark-skinned and slender with an expression of fierceness tempered with melancholy, and he spent much of the time standing in the bows staring out to sea, as if brooding over his troubles. When anyone approached him, however, natural courtesy made him cast off his moodiness and silence, and he smiled and held out his hand in greeting. Sheikh Said was from the remote interior of the Hadramawt, a country of blood feuds and civil war. It remained a land of fortified villages and towns, like the medieval Italian states of old, engaging in everlasting wars. These towns were built in fertile valleys and were often—unfortunately for them—within rifle shot of one another. Farmers would travel to their fields through networks of communicating trenches in order not to expose themselves to the eye of a sniper.
The sheikh spoke of feudal lords who built strong towers at strategic points from which they preyed upon the land. The townships employed mercenary troops and laid siege to each other with a few hundred men, an old cannon and an occasional imported armoured car. It was these conditions, he told us, that had driven him from his country. As a sheikh he was debarred by custom from bearing arms in such conflicts, but he had been involved in a blood feud and then in a war in which he had chosen the losing side. A truce had been negotiated, but Sheikh Said, erring on the side of caution, had decided to emigrate.
Often to be found with Sheikh Said was an officer of the Ibn Saud’s army who was returning home from a mission in the Hadramawt. He had brought along his bed, consisting of the usual framework and string netting, and lay on this most of the day reading passages from the Koran. Like the sheikh, he was lithe and slender, but his skin was as fair as a Scandinavian’s. He was a man of education, and could write a few words of English. It was with his help, and with painstaking reference to dictionaries and our phrase book, that we were able to carry on halting conversation with our fellow travellers.
VIII
The more than leisurely progress of the dhow came as a surprise. Occasionally a breeze tightened the sails, but by the end of the first full day at sea we were to learn that we had covered only ten miles, and by the next morning we were in a flat calm. It was a situation accepted almost with jubilation both by the male passengers and several members of the crew. Many of the passengers had brought fishing tackle along, in readiness for forced inactivity, and now they baited their hooks and lowered them into the sea. Within minutes the first catch had been landed. The shores of the Red Sea were devoid of human population, and the fishing boats of Aden needed to go no further than the Gulf. Thus the Red Sea abounded in fish.
To the fishing enthusiasts who travelled with us only a few kinds were acceptable. Barracudas, which flourished in these waters, were caught at intervals of a few minutes without showing fight. But rock cod and big rays, the other favoured catches, put up a great struggle. These and a few lesser kinds free of suspicion were handed over to the cook, the rest being immediately thrown back. Occasionally a shark took the bait, usually snatching the line from a surprised fisherman’s hand.
At this moment I was made aware of a new facet of Ladislas’ personality. Someone had offered him a line to join in the fishing, but this he refused with a shake of his head. I was surprised. Why not join in with the others? His reply was to stagger me. This was a man who had spent his life as a witness and reporter of so many terrible scenes. ‘I find fishing cruel,’ he said, and I knew he meant just that.
After supper that evening we settled under a hurricane lamp for a discussion of the events of the day. Some reference to meals consumed in barbarous circumstances prompted me to mention an episode in Abyssinia on the Eve. There Ladislas had described a banquet, claimed to have been the biggest in national history, given by Haile Selassie on the eve of the outbreak of the war with Italy. Among those who took part were 2,000 accredited beggars and the main tent in which Ladislas found himself held 4,000 guests. As a matter of etiquette the Emperor himself and the dignitaries of the nation squatted on the ground with the rest of the invitees.
‘And they actually threw food about the place?’ Stevens asked.
‘In a ritual way, yes. At the end of the tent newly slaughtered oxen were hung up and the servants cut off slices of the warm flesh and threw them to the guests.’
‘To the Emperor as well?’
‘Of course. A great shout went up when he caught a slice of meat and tore a strip off with his teeth. They drank a kind of alcohol called tetsh, and spat it out of the corners of their mouths so that it would mix with the blood.’
Next day the sea was as flat as ever, with all lines in the water and a massacre in process of so many beautiful fish. Several passengers including myself were on deck at first light, prey to a compulsion only to be satisfied by coming to terms with the dhow’s ‘place of ease’. This proved an atrocious experience when it could finally no longer be avoided. It was hard to believe that a contraption of this kind should be so difficult to gain access to. For technical reasons it swung loose on its ropes, thus partially freed from the wallowings of the ship; but for this reason only a calm sea permitted easy access and reduced feelings of extreme insecurity. Whatever the weather it was difficult for a European, buttoned up in his garments, to make use of the contrivance without loss of dignity, and in a period of storms which could last up to a week the problems involved became acute. We were to discover that in rough weather the victim would be lowered by the wallowing dhow at one moment into the cavernous belly of a wave, and thereafter hoisted high into the air over the cargo.
Three days later we were almost opposite the ancient town of Al Mukha, which once, under the name of Mocha, claimed to produce the world’s finest coffee. We had to deliver two heavy beams for use in dhow-building to a small Yemeni village a day’s sail further on. The nakhoda, who, so far as we were concerned, had remained somewhat aloof, suggested that we might care to go ashore. He warned us, however, not to get ourselves arrested, foreigners being rigorously excluded from even this minimally commercial area of the Yemen. Next morning the ship’s boat was placed at our disposal for this interesting trip and we were put ashore on the beach, although, to be on the safe side, out of sight of the village itself.
It was the moment for several of
our Arabs to play truant, slipping away quietly on an expedition we learned of only when they reappeared. It turned out that the exceptionally dense vegetation of a nearby wood provided cover for a large population of pigeons. The crews of passing dhows, who knew all about this, went pigeon-shooting there whenever they had an excuse to go ashore. Being almost pure white, the pigeons provided easy targets against the dark foliage, and although the Yemeni government sent the odd policeman to the area, these sporting expeditions had so far gone on with impunity.
In the village Ladislas and I listened to the popping of guns and an occasional faint shout of triumph. An hour passed before the sportsmen returned, some carrying pigeons, but all showing signs of alarm. It turned out that a member of the party had pushed his way a little further into the woods than the rest, and disappeared. The chances were that he had lost his way, but there was always the possibility that he had been captured and dragged off by a member of the Yemeni police. A horn blown on the dhow signified the nakhoda’s order for our return, and after an assurance that the villagers would send out a search party for the missing man we went down to wait for the boat. Within minutes we saw white sails spread at a half-dozen places as skiffs raced over to meet us. A villager explained that all the boys in them were slaves. Only slaves worked here, he said. He roared with laughter, because as we could see, he added, there was no work to be done. The slaves played tricks on each other, laughed and joked and pushed each other into the sea. It would have been hard in fact in this particular village to decide who was the slave and who was free.