Mark Stanley-Price and the bedouin shouldered the first crate from the plane and carried it to the edge of a nearby fenced enclosure, the holding area for the animals until they were turned loose in the desert. Dave Malone scrambled up onto the crate and unlatched its sliding door. Mark nodded, Dave pulled up, and the first oryx flew out of the crate. We cheered. He slowed to a trot and circled, not the least bit the worse for wear. The bedouin broke into a tribal chant. The two other oryxes repeated the performance.
In honor of the occasion—or so we assumed—the Harasis prepared a favorite meal: Take one whole, tokenly eviscerated sheep, add rice. Cook. Flavor with half a case of La Ranchita taco sauce. From the day I had been given the okay to go to Arabia, I dreaded what I was sure was going to happen next. The sheep's eyeballs, I had read, were traditionally offered to honored guests. Kay had a plan, at least for herself. She would lower her eyes, and murmur words never to be breathed outside of Arabia: "Oh, how kind, but I'm not worthy, for I'm just a woman." Inevitably, an orb (perhaps two?) would be in my court. Were they viscous and slimy? Crunchy?
I was relieved when, apparently unaware of this tradition, the Harasis bedouin unceremoniously dug in, the dread orbs disappearing in a melee of hungry hands. The bedouin were fast eaters—to avoid surprise attack, it's been said, but also, I suspect, to get the best parts and leave the gristle to the poky. When they rose from the feast, they were in an exceptionally good mood. They unsheathed their daggers and broke into a wild impromptu dance that somehow turned to terrorizing zookeeper Dave. He was a good, if nervous sport. As knives swiped within an inch of his nose, he pleaded to little avail, "Why me? I'm from New York."
"They're a little cranked up today," observed Mark Stanley-Price.
"It's a big event, the oryxes coming in," I added.
"The oryxes? Oh my, no, dear me. These chaps came back this morning from raiding their rivals, the next tribe off into the interior. Dynamited their best well, I hear."
"Oh..." And I got a glimmer that even if ecology was not a major part of the Harasis ethic, it wouldn't be a very good idea to lay a hand on the oryxes they were now charged to protect.
Late that afternoon, when Camp Yalooni's drab plain turned fleetingly golden, Kay and I walked over to visit the oryxes. And we saw that myths could be real. Here it was the myth of the unicorn.
Though unicorns appear in Persian and biblical chronicles, their heyday was in medieval Europe. It has been suggested that a lone traveler to Arabia spied an oryx in profile, with one horn masking the other. On his return home, he entranced his friends and ultimately all of Europe with the vision of a magnificent one-horned creature. This seems unlikely, though, for even minimal and distant oryx-watching will be rewarded by a flick of the head and a view of the animal's two long spiraled horns. It is much more plausible that a single horn (minus oryx) made its way to Europe, and a horselike creature was dreamed up to go with it.
Either way, the Arabian oryx appears to have been the inspiration for the legendary unicorn. As described in a medieval book of beasts, he has "one horn in the middle of his forehead, and no hunter can catch him....He is very swift because neither Principalities, nor Powers, nor Thrones, nor Dominations could keep up with him, nor could Hell maintain him." Only a fair virgin could approach a unicorn and hear him say: "Learn from me because I am mild and lowly of heart."1
Two of our oryxes were quietly foraging. The third was silhouetted against the setting sun. At a glance, the animals looked too delicate, too ethereal to survive in a land as harsh as this. They were certainly graceful, but they were also incredibly rugged. Sixty hours in a box was nothing. They could go days—a lifetime, if need be—without water, getting all the moisture they needed from scant forage. Comfortable in searing days and freezing nights, the oryx survived as if by magic. It was hard to imagine this lifeless landscape nurturing a mouse or a bird, but nevertheless...
This was where unicorns lived.
2. The Sands of Their Desire
"THE ODYSSEY OF THE ORYX" proved to be a popular segment of the television series Amazing Animals. Bert, George, and I were now dispatched to do a series of domestic stories, some more edifying than others. We covered Bart the Kodiak Bear and Buster the Wonder Dog. "The wonder of that dog Buster," noted cameraman Bert, as Buster demurred at walking his tightrope, "is what that dog doesn't, can't, or won't do." Yet with prompting and patience, Buster finally teetered across his tightrope, jumped through a flaming hoop, and dove from the Malibu Pier, demonstrating his prowess should he ever be called upon to aid a sinking swimmer.
Over the next few months, Kay and I thought often about Arabia. As was our custom, we dined frequently at the El Coyote Spanish Cafe, known for its margaritas and motherly waitresses, got up in beehive hairdos and fuchsia hoop skirts ample enough to conceal steam tables. A conversation between Kay and me would go: "How about trying a number-six special for a change?"
"You can. I'm sticking with a number one. Nice to see all the regulars." (We had passed Ricardo Montalban on our way in and were seated across from the Twins, two elderly, nattily attired gentlemen who dined at El Coyote every single night.) Then, with no transition, "How do you think the oryxes are doing?"
We talked of them and of their keepers, the Stanley-Prices. We remembered that Camp Yalooni had been buggy. The next day Kay purchased a case of Cutter insect repellent and sent it off to them. A week or two later, back at El Coyote, we further wondered: if the oryxes could survive in the interior of Oman (which they did, spectacularly), what other wonders might the Arabian desert hold? What would it be like to venture into the Rub' al-Khali?
"A reason," Kay said. "We need a reason, a way to go back."
We read up on the Arabian peninsula, its natural history, its geography, its exploration. Within walking distance of the Amazing Animals editing rooms, I discovered Hyman and Sons, a bookstore specializing in Egyptology with a scattering of books on Arabia. I quickly came to appreciate how fortunate we had been to set foot in the peninsula's interior, to even glimpse the sands of the Rub' al-Khali.
For centuries Arabia had been terra incognita, a mysterious medieval land out-of-bounds to Western exploration. What little had been written discouraged outsiders. In the 1400s Sir John Mandeville characterized the Arabian bedouin as "right foul folk and cruel and of evil kind." A1612 account elaborated: "The people generally are addicted to Theft, Rapine, and Robberies; hating all Sciences Mechanicall or Civill, they are commonly all ... scelerate and seditious, of coulour Tauny, boasting much of their triball Antiquity, and noble Gentry."1
But then, beginning in the early 1800s, a succession of adventurers penetrated Arabia, concealing their identities by donning native costumes and creating elaborate cover stories. We don't know how Ulrich Seetzen, a Swiss biblical scholar, disguised himself, but whatever it was, it didn't work. At some point in his 1806 journey, he was set upon and murdered by fierce bedouin, their suspicions possibly aroused by his interest in ancient ruins. Wishing to avoid a similar fate, his countryman Johann Burckhardt darkened his face and hands with the juice of the betel nut and adopted the guise of a wandering physician from India. But when he opened his mouth, bedouin eyes narrowed. His Arabic was strangely accented. Of course it was, he responded, and unleashed a volley of guttural German. Perhaps the bedouin were unaware, he glibly explained, but this was how the Muslim faithful conversed in India. It was only in Cairo—after discovering the lost city of Petra and even entering forbidden Mecca—that Burckhardt's ruses reportedly failed, and he was poisoned or beheaded. Or he may have died of fevers contracted in his Arabian journeys; accounts vary.
Others, against considerable odds, lived to tell their tales. In Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land (1837) the American John Lloyd Stephens gave a hilarious account (not so hilarious at the time) of the down side of his elaborate getup. His magnificent turban, long red silk gown, and curly-toed yellow satin Turkish slippers were distinct liabilities when, his infidel iden
tity suspected, he had occasion to flee, on foot over rocky terrain, a band of irate bedouin. He "dashed down the mountain with a speed that only fear could give. If there was a question between scramble and jump, we gave the jump."2
I really admired Stephens. Imagine a New York lawyer in failing health who was advised by his physician to seek a cure in travel and rest—and chose to venture across the Sinai and the deserts beyond, where no American had ever set foot. Certainly the desert Arabs had a weakness for brigandage, Stephens noted, but also they valued poetry, and they had a streak of chivalry that, if need be, dictated sharing their waterskin with their worst enemy. They believed that all others, like themselves, were guests of God in the wilderness and should not be denied God's gifts of sustenance and shelter.
What comes across in this and other accounts is that the Arabs of the desert were perhaps excitable and hot-tempered yet, surprisingly, not that intolerant of adherents of Western religions. They may have been riled more by deception than by infidelity. Englishman Gifford Palgrave journeyed deep into Arabia, freely admitting that he was a simple "Jewish Jesuit."3 And his countryman Charles Doughty persistently chided his Arab hosts for their lack of Christian charity (which they confirmed by throwing him in jail with predictable regularity). Even so, they allowed him to travel back and forth along the northern reaches of the Rub' al-Khali.
Anxious to obtain a copy of Doughty's masterpiece, Travels in Arabia Deserta (1868), I stopped by Hyman and Sons bookshop on a Saturday morning. A bell tinkled as I stepped inside, and I found myself the sole customer amid a jumble of books shelved, stacked on the floor, piled on tables. One table had been cleared off and was set with a pitcher of milk, glasses, and a plate of cookies. The door to a back room swung open.
"Go ahead. Somebody's got to eat them." It was Virginia. Though I never saw anything of Hyman, much less his Sons, I had gotten to know and respect Dr. Virginia Blackburn, who was clearly in charge here. She was in her late sixties, and if there was a word to describe her it was "formidable." "Gruff" also comes to mind.
"Charles Doughty," I inquired. "Travels in Arabia Deserta. Have it by any chance?"
"No," said Virginia.
"Well, then, maybe..." I started to say, wondering if the book could be tracked down.
"No," repeated Virginia, peering over her steel spectacles. "You wouldn't like it. Not at all." Then, hesitating not a second, she rounded the counter, marched across the shop, ran her finger across a shelf, and removed a modest worn blue volume. "Read this."
"Well, no, what I really..."
"Blowhard. Full of himself, I'll tell you," Virginia proclaimed, coming down pretty hard on poor Doughty. "Tried to reinvent the English language, making it courtly like classical Arabic." By way of contrast she held out the blue volume. On its cover was a lone, faded golden figure riding a camel and the title Arabia Felix. "Read this."
"Well, well I'm not sure ... but okay." Having sampled the cookies, it seemed impolite to leave empty-handed.
"Good. You'll like it. He had red hair, like you," she said, referring to the author of the book, Bertram Thomas.
Bertram Thomas, I soon learned, was an amazing, tenacious, extremely likable fellow. But for his refreshing lack of self-promotion, he would be counted among the greatest of Arabian explorers. He writes nothing of his life prior to the day in the late 1920s that he set foot in Arabia Felix ("Happy Arabia," the old Roman name for southern Arabia), where he had accepted an offer to become the wazir, or financial adviser, to the sultan of Muscat and Oman. It was hardship duty. For the better part of the year, the small coastal city of Muscat baked and sweltered like no other place on earth. Nighttime temperatures refused to drop, as they did inland in the desert. At two o'clock in the morning, the temperature was as high as 124 degrees Fahrenheit, the humidity an unbearable 100 percent.
Thomas's Muscat days were spent managing, as best he could, the accounts of a court and country that exported only firewood, rotting sardines (for fertilizer), and slaves. Every day at sunset, a cannon was fired, and the gates of the walled medieval city swung shut. Until dawn the next day, everyone was confined to their dwellings, with the exception of the chosen few to whom the sultan had issued a special identifying lantern.
As wazir, Thomas had a lantern, and at night he could roam the fitfully sleeping city. He could climb its medieval mud-brick walls and gaze away to the north. Beyond the coastal mountains, he knew, the moon that shone on Muscat shone also on the dunes of the Rub' al-Khali. The desert was the secret reason Thomas had come here: he had long wanted to be the first Westerner not only to venture into its heart but to actually cross it—even though T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had determined that "nothing but an airship can do it."4
In his time in Muscat, Bertram Thomas changed. A photograph taken early on shows him posed in front of a crumbling doorway, incongruously dressed in a wool suit and felt hat. But soon the hat was replaced by a jaunty turban, the somber suit by a flowing robe. He raised a beard and carried a camel stick. And Thomas found excuses to venture away from Muscat. On his travels he got along famously with desert tribesmen. In their company he rode by camel to the edge of the Rub' al-Khali and saw for himself that (as a bedouin saying went), "Where there is no water, that's the Empty Quarter; no man goes thither."
Back at the sultan's court, Thomas was asked a question:
"Why aren't you married, O Wazir?" was fired off at me by an uncomprehending Arab.
I expatiated on the difficulties under which a Christian labored, especially one serving in the East, and pointed to the comforting doctrine that for a man it was never too late.
"Ah!" said the Sultan, knowing of my secretly cherished desire, "quite right. Insha'allah, I will help to marry you one of these days to that which is near to your heart— Rub' al-Khali. Insha'allah!"
"A virgin indeed," quoth Khan Bahadur, his private secretary.
"Amin!" I muttered to myself. "So may it be."5
But to Bertram Thomas's increasing dismay, the sultan was reluctant to let his wazir go roaming north across the great desert. And a rival now threatened Thomas's dream. In Riyadh, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Harry St. John Philby, a flamboyant Arabist late of the British Foreign Service, was poised to attempt a crossing of the Rub' al-Khali in the opposite direction, north to south.6 The two men knew each other. Earlier in the decade, Thomas had spent some time working for the British Foreign Service in Transjordan. Harry Philby had been his superior and had advised Thomas to take the Muscat and Oman assignment, confiding that Muscat was "the best starting point for crossing the Empty Quarter." There's a hint of duplicity here. Did Philby make the suggestion out of the goodness of his heart? Or did he see this as an opportunity to get Thomas out of the way, to put him in the clutches of a possessive and paranoid sultan, so that he, Philby, could claim exploration's last great prize?
The rivalry was heightened by a strange shared vision. Both Thomas and Philby saw the Rub' al-Khali as a beckoning yet veiled virgin. Thomas called the Rub' al-Khali "the sands of my desire." Philby called the same sands "the bride of my constant desire."7 But, though there were two suitors, there could be only one husband.
On an October night in 1930, unbeknownst to his sultan, Bertram Thomas stole away from Muscat with the anticipation that "tomorrow, the news of my disappearance would startle the bazaar and a variety of fates would doubtless be invented for me by imaginations of oriental fertility."8 He rowed to a rendezvous with a passing oil tanker and "ere four bells had struck" was on his way by sea to the southern Omani town of Salalah. There he would find guides and outfit his expedition.
Thomas liked Salalah. The place had a cheerful African air. He was particularly amused by the unusual fate of the town's black slaves. Their Arab masters led grim, obsessive lives, forever worrying over the shame that would fall upon them if any of their veiled, sequestered wives or daughters took a wayward turn. By contrast, a household's slaves enjoyed a happy-go-lucky freedom unimaginable to their masters.
And, dancing and singing in the dirt streets of Salalah, they saw Thomas off on December 10, 1930, as he headed north with a train of fifteen camels and a rascally band of bedouin of uncertain repute. Salalah's wali, or mayor, had warned Thomas, "If there is a thing they do better than lying, it is stealing."
Far to the north, in Riyadh, Harry Philby was informed that this year, at least, he would not be granted permission to travel south across the Rub' al-Khali. If he would like, the following year he could again petition the king, 'Abdul 'Aziz ibn Sa'ud.
Crossing the Dhofar Mountains, which abruptly rise beyond Salalah, Thomas displayed a fine eye for geographic and ethnographic detail. In Arabia Felix he noted that the mountain tribesmen spoke a strange, non-Arabic language and considered themselves descendants of a mythical race known as "the People of'Ad." He witnessed blood sacrifice and an exorcism performed with frankincense and fire. All the while, he charted his progress with an accuracy that is amazing considering that he had to make his navigational sightings in secret, "lest I be suspected of magic or worse."9
Beyond the mountains lay a "barren plain, sun-baked and filmy with mirages," desolate but for occasional sightings of Arabian oryxes, running wild and free. Five waterless days took Thomas to the remote waterhole of Shisur, the site of an abandoned "rude fort," a last, forlorn trace of civilization. A day beyond Shisur, Thomas sighted "the sands of my desire." But his little band did not immediately plunge into the Rub' al-Khali. They skirted its southern edge, on the lookout for the first of a series of wells they hoped would see them safely across the dunes.
The Road to Ubar Page 2