Arabian Sands

by Wilfred Thesiger

  Homosexuality is common among most Arabs, especially in the towns, but it is very rare among the Bedu, who of all Arabs have the most excuse for indulging in this practice, since they spend long months away from their women. Lawrence described in Seven Pillars of Wisdom how his escort made use of each other to slake their needs, but those men were villagers from the oasis, not Bedu. Glubb, who knows more about the Bedu than any other European has ever known, once told me that active homosexuality among them was almost unknown. I myself could not have lived as I did with my companions and been unaware of it had it existed among them; we lived too close together. Yet during all the time I was with them I saw no sign of it. Nor did they talk about it. They sometimes joked about goats but never about boys. Only twice in five years did I ever hear them mention the subject. Once when we were staying in a town on the Trucial Coast, bin Kabina pointed out two youths, one of whom was a slave, and said that they were sometimes used by the Sheikh’s retainers. He evidently thought the practice both ridiculous and obscene. On the other occasion bin al Kamam described an execution which he had watched in Riyadh. The man, one of the Habab from the Hajaz, had been sentenced to death for raping a boy. None of my companions showed the slightest sympathy for him; instead they muttered, ‘It was a just sentence. God blacken his face! He deserved to die.’

  Bin al Kamam said: ‘We had come across to Riyadh from the Wadi Dawasir – Said was with me and Muhammad bin Bakhit’; and when I looked at him in inquiry he said, ‘No, you don’t know Muhammad. You have never met him. He spends his time in the Dakaka sands.’ He went on: ‘It was Friday and we had gone into the town to buy provisions, for we planned to leave next day for the Hasa. We had camped a little way outside the town. It was after the midday prayers and the market square was crowded. They brought the man out from prison, and as they led him through the crowd he chanted, over and over again, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” He was quite unafraid. He was a young man, very good looking, and dressed in freshly-washed white clothes. He had darkened his eyelids with kohl and stained his palms with henna, as we do for a wedding. In the centre of the square they told him to kneel, and the executioner, a large slave, very black, dressed in a robe – which, by God, was worth a camel – drew his sword, and fastened back his long white shirt sleeve to bare his right arm. Then his assistant pricked the condemned man in the side, and as he stiffened, the executioner cut off his head with one blow. The head jumped among the crowd and the blood spouted an arm’s length into the air as the body collapsed. They left it lying there till sunset for the crowd to look at.’

  I asked bin al Kamam what his feelings were as he watched, and he said, ‘It made me feel quite sick.’

  In the morning we gave the camels another drink. Several of them, accustomed to clean-tasting water in Dhaufar, refused to touch this bitter stuff. We held their nostrils but they still refused, and finally we poured it down their throats by force. It was the last water we should find till we reached Dhafara. Some of the skins had leaked a little. We filled them up and plugged the tiny dribbling holes. The Arabs said their midday prayers, and then we loaded our camels and led them away between the golden dunes. We went on foot, for the full skins were heavy on their backs. It was 29 November. We travelled north-east towards Ramlat al Ghafa, where we hoped to find the Bait Musan and to change the weakest of our camels. The going was easy, along gravel flats splashed with outcrops of white gypsum and fringed with bright-green salt-bushes. We camped at sunset, but there was nothing for our camels to eat. One of them cast a nine-month-old calf. They carry their young for a year. I noticed that Salim bin Turkia took water for the ritual ablutions before he prayed. I protested, saying he should use sand, as is the custom when water is short, and added that we should not have enough to drink if it was used for washing. He said, ‘It is better to pray than to drink.’ I answered that he would not be doing either in a week’s time if he wasted water. This incident worried me. It showed that some of the Bait Kathir had not begun to realize how narrow was our margin of safety. In the evening I warned them that Dhafara was twice as far from Khaur bin Atarit as was Salala. Sultan remarked gloomily, ‘In that case neither we nor our camels will ever live to see it.’

  The next afternoon we found a little parched herbage on the flank of a high dune. We let our camels graze for two hours and then continued until dark. Throughout the day my companions had gathered any plants they had seen, to feed their camels as they went along; it did not matter how high up on a dune a plant was growing, someone was sure to dismount, scramble up, and collect it. They always did this, however long or tiring the march might be. Where we camped, the dunes were very big whale-backed massifs, rising above white plains of powdery gypsum. There was no warmth in this sterile scene. It was bleak and cheerless and curiously arctic in appearance. Twice I woke during the night and each time I saw Sultan brooding over the fire. We did another long day’s marching, ten hours without a stop; there was nothing to stop for among these lifeless dunes. We had picked up the Bait Musan tracks and were following them. In the evening we found a little vegetation.

  We started again soon after sunrise. As Sultan seemed gloomy and little inclined for conversation I rode beside al Auf. He sat his restive, half-tamed camel with easy mastery, unconsciously anticipating her fretful movements, a confident, commanding figure, typical of a people whom no hardship can daunt.

  I asked him whether it rained more often in summer or in the winter, and he said: ‘It seems to have changed since I was a boy. Then I remember we got more rain in the summer; now we expect it in the winter, but as you can see there is not much at any time. The trouble is that when it does fall it is usually very local, and the grazing is difficult to find.’

  I asked how much rain was required to produce grazing, and he answered, ‘It is no use if it does not go into the sand this far,’ and he indicated his elbow.

  ‘How long does it have to rain to do that?’

  ‘A heavy shower is enough. That would produce grazing that was better than nothing, but it would die within the year unless there were more rain. If we get really good rain, a whole day and night of rain, the grazing will remain green for three and even four years.’

  ‘Do you mean without any more rain?’

  ‘Yes, without another drop. It depends of course on the sands; some are better than others. We divide all the sands into “red” and “white”. We should call these sands “white”. The “red” ones produce the best grazing. The “red” downs in Dakaka are the best of all, You ought to go and see them sometime, Umbarak, they are wonderful sands.’

  After a pause he went on: ‘We like winter rain best; it generally lasts longer. Summer storms, it is true, are often heavier, but the great heat at that time of year kills the seedlings, unless the rain has been heavy. However, praise be to God, rain is rain whenever it comes.’ He pointed to some dead tribulus: ‘Do you see that zahra? You would think it was quite dead, wouldn’t you? but it’s only got to rain and a month later it will be green and covered with flowers. It takes years of drought to kill these plants; they have such tremendously long roots. In a place where the plants really are dead, like the Umm al Hait, which we saw the other day, the vegetation comes up again from seeds when at last it does rain. It does not matter how long they have lain in the sand.’

  I said: ‘Take, for instance, these Bait Musan whose tracks we are following, how long will they be able to stay here without water?’

  Al Auf answered: ‘It depends on how good the grazing is. On good grazing they could remain here from the late autumn until the spring. Of course, when the weather gets hot they will have to move back to within reach of the wells.’

  ‘So they may be here for six or seven months without any water? What do they eat?’

  ‘Camel’s milk is their food and drink. As long as there is plenty of milk the Bedu want nothing more.’

  ‘Don’t the camels ever get thirsty?’

  He answered: ‘If
you loosed a camel that was dying of thirst on fresh green grazing, not only would she recover from her thirst, but she would be fat within two months. Sometimes a camel gets so fat that her hump splits, and then she dies.’

  ‘How do you know where you will find grazing?’

  ‘In the autumn while they are still on the wells the Arabs send out scouts to look for it. These scouts must be good men, accustomed to endure, and their camels must be the best. During the summer we may have seen clouds or lightning in the distance, or while we are searching the desert we may find tracks of oryx or rim all going in one direction and follow them. We may go back to look at the grazing we had been on the year before or other grazing we had found during the winter. If there’s grazing in the desert we probably find it. We are Bedu; we know the desert.’

  ‘How do you manage for grazing in the summer?’

  ‘Yes, that is the difficulty. Often there is none round the wells and we have to take the camels long distances to water them.’

  ‘How long will a camel last without water in summer?’

  ‘Again it depends on the grazing. They will last longer in the wadis where they can get some shade from the trees. Under those conditions they would go for a week without a drink. In the Sands we try to water them every two or three days. Life is hard for the Bedu in the summer, Umbarak. Sometimes we are camped on wells which are so bitter that we can only drink the water mixed with milk. We water the camels and cannot drink the water ourselves. We splash it over us to cool us while we work, and our bodies get covered with sores. Watering the camels is hard work. They are thirsty and drink a lot, and the sun is hot. It is worse when the wind blows; then it is like a furnace. Even when we stop to rest there is no shade on these wells in the sand. Only the Bedu could endure this life.’

  Four hours later we came to large red dunes set close together. There were green plants growing there as the result of heavy rain which had fallen two years before. A little later we saw camels of the Bait Musan and a herds boy who was tending them. We camped in a hollow and loosed our camels to revel among the juicy shrubs.

  Larks were singing round our camping place. Butterflies flitted from plant to plant. Lizards scuttled about, and small black beetles walked laboriously across the sand. We had seen a hare that morning, and the tracks of gazelle. The sand around us was still marked where jerboas and other small rodents had scampered about during the night. I wondered how they got here, how they had located this small green island, in the enormous emptiness which surrounded it.

  Sultan, Musallim, and several others had gone off with the herds boy to the Bait Musan encampment. AI Auf was herding the camels. Several people were sleeping, their faces covered with their head cloths. I climbed a slope above our camp and bin Kabina joined me. I was hungry; I had eaten only half my portion of ash-encrusted bread the night before. The brackish water which I had drunk at sunset had done little to lessen my nagging thirst. Yet the sky seemed bluer than it had been for days. The sand was a glowing carpet set about my feet. A raven croaked, circling round us, and bin Kabina shouted, ‘Raven seek thy brother.’ Then another raven flew over the shoulder of a nearby dune and he laughed, and explained to me that a single raven is unlucky, a bearer of ill-tidings. We sat there happily together, and he taught me the names of the plants which grow in the Sands. The tribulus was zahra; the heliotrope which grew on the hard sand in the hollows was rimram; and the tasselled sedge was qassis. The straggling bush under which we sat, its fragile branches bright with fluffy yellow balls, was abal, and was good food for a thirsty camel. He gave me the names of other plants and bushes: harm, the vivid green salt-bush; birkan, ailqi, sadan, and several others. He knew them all. Later when they were working out my collection in the museum in London they sometimes thought that bin Kabina had given me different names for the same plant, but nearly always when they examined them carefully they found that he was right.

  He talked about his mother and his young brother Said, whom I had not met, and about his cousin whom he hoped to marry. The distant camels drifted in greedy haste from bush to bush. Then we saw Sultan and the others returning. As they drew near, bin Kabina said, ‘Sultan will make trouble. He is frightened and does not wish to go on’, and I knew that bin Kabina was right. They brought a bag of sour milk with them. We drank it thirstily and it was very good. Then Sultan called the others and they went off and sat in a circle apart from me. I told bin Kabina to fetch al Auf. Later Sultan asked me to join them. He said that they had discussed the situation and agreed that the Bait Musan camels were all in poor condition, that neither they nor our camels were capable of getting to Dhafara, that we must therefore return to the others on the southern coast, where if I wished we could hunt oryx in the Jaddat al Harasis. He added that our food was insufficient and that we had not enough water to go on, even if the camels had been in good condition. I then suggested that six of us should go on with the best of the camels, and that the other six should go back. But Sultan said that six would be too small a party, since the country on the other side of the Sands would be full of raiders as a result of the fighting between the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dibai; to discourage me he said that the Bait Musan had told him that a party of Arabs, well mounted and with plenty of water, had tried to cross to Dhafara two years before, when the grazing was good, and that all of them had died in the Sands. He declared that we must either all go on or all go back. We argued for a long time but I knew that it was useless. His nerve had gone. He had always been the undisputed leader, with a reputation for daring. It was a reputation not easily acquired among the Bedu; but he had lived all his life in the mountains and on the steppes. In the Sands he was confused and bewildered, no longer self-reliant. He looked an old and broken man and I was sorry. He had helped me so often and I liked him. I asked al Auf if he would come with me, and he said: ‘I thought we came here to go to Dhafara. If you wish to go on I will guide you.’ I asked bin Kabina, and he answered that where I went he would go. I wondered if Musallim would come with us. The camel which I rode belonged to him; without it I did not see how I could go on. I knew that he was jealous of Sultan. I asked him, and he answered, ‘I will come.’ The others said nothing.

  Once again we divided up the food. We took as our share fifty pounds of flour, some of the butter and coffee, what remained of the tea and sugar, and a few dried onions. We also took four skins of water, choosing the best skins that did not leak. Musallim told me that the Bait Musan possessed a bull camel in good condition, and suggested that we should buy it and take it with us as a spare. He also said that Mabkhaut bin Arbain was his friend and would come with us if he asked him to. I thought that Mabkhaut’s camel looked thin, but al Auf replied that they knew about camels and that this one would stand much hard work. He was anxious for Mabkhaut to accompany us, for he said that it would be better if we had one more person with us and that Mabkhaut was the most reliable of the Bait Kathir. Musallim went off to see about this. Later Mabkhaut came over, carrying his saddlery, and joined us. In the evening bin Turkia asked if he too might come with us. He was a relation of Mabkhaut’s and wished to share with him the dangers that were ahead of us. Unfortunately his camel was one of the worst, so reluctantly we refused. I promised him instead that I would take him and his young son bin Anauf with me to Mukalla, when I travelled there from Salala on my return from my present journey. We bought the bull, a large and very powerful black animal, after much haggling and for a fantastic price, paying the equivalent of fifty pounds, more than twice what it was worth. I felt more confident than I had felt for days. I had with me chosen companions all mounted on good camels. We had a spare camel with us which was used to the Sands. If our food ran out we could kill one of our animals and eat it. Water was short. We should have to be careful with this, and ration ourselves to a pint a day. Bin Kabina, Musallim, and Mabkhaut each carried one of the service rifles which belonged to me. AI Auf had a long-barrelled .303 Martini, a weapon favoured by the Bedu. I carried a sporting model 303. We di
vided the spare ammunition between us. There was more than a hundred rounds for each of us. Next day after we had left the others, I told my companions that they could have these weapons as presents, and promised al Auf that he could take the pick of my remaining rifles as soon as we returned to Salala. Nothing that I could have given them could have delighted them more. Service rifles in good condition were unprocurable among these tribes. Even ammunition was scarce. All tribesmen like to wear a dagger or carry a rifle, even in peaceful surroundings, as a mark of their manhood, as a sign of their independence, but in southern Arabia the safety of their herds, even their lives, may at any moment depend upon their rifles. Bin Kabina had already confided to me that he hoped to buy a rifle with the money I gave him. He no doubt had visualized himself as the proud owner of some ancient weapon, such as he had borrowed when he accompanied me to the Hadhramaut, a fighting-man at last, envied by his young brother. Now he owned the finest rifle in his tribe. I watched the disbelief slowly fading from his eyes.