Arabian Sands

by Wilfred Thesiger

  A hare jumped out from under a bush, and al Auf knocked it over with his stick. The others shouted ‘God has given us meat.’ For days we had talked of food; every conversation seemed to lead back to it. Since we had left Ghanim I had been always conscious of the dull ache of hunger, yet in the evening my throat was dry even after my drink, so that I found it difficult to swallow the dry bread Musallim set before us. All day we thought and talked about that hare, and by three o’clock in the afternoon could no longer resist stopping to cook it. Mabkhaut suggesed, ‘Let’s roast it in its skin in the embers of a fire. That will save our water – we haven’t got much left.’ Bin Kabina led the chorus of protest. ‘No, by God! Don’t even suggest such a thing’; and turning to me he said, ‘We don’t want Mabkhaut’s charred meat. Soup. We want soup and extra bread. We will feed well today even if we go hungry and thirsty later. By God, I am hungry!’ We agreed to make soup. We were across the Uruq al Shaiba and intended to celebrate our achievement with this gift from God. Unless our camels foundered we were safe; even if our water ran out we should live to reach a well.

  Musallim made nearly double our usual quantity of bread while bin Kabina cooked the hare. He looked across at me and said, ‘The smell of this meat makes me faint.’ When it was ready he divided it into five portions. They were very small, for an Arabian hare is no larger than an English rabbit, and this one was not even fully grown. AI Auf named the lots and Mabkhaut drew them. Each of us took the small pile of meat which had fallen to him. Then bin Kabina said, ‘God! I have forgotten to divide the liver’, and the others said, ‘Give it to Umbarak.’ I protested, saying that they should divide it, but they swore by God that they would not eat it and that I was to have it. Eventually I took it, knowing that I ought not, but too greedy for this extra scrap of meat to care.

  Our water was nearly finished and there was only enough flour for about another week. The starving camels were so thirsty that they had refused to eat some half-dried herbage which we had passed. We must water them in the next day or two or they would collapse. AI Auf said that it would take us three more days to reach Khaba well in Dhafara, but that there was a very brackish well not far away. He thought that the camels might drink its water.

  That night after we had ridden for a little over an hour it grew suddenly dark. Thinking that a cloud must be covering the full moon, I looked over my shoulder and saw that there was an eclipse and that half the moon was already obscured. Bin Kabina noticed it at the same moment and broke into a chant which the others took up.

  God endures for ever.

  The life of man is short.

  The Pleiades are overhead.

  The moon’s among the stars.’

  Otherwise they paid no attention to the eclipse (which was total), but looked around for a place to camp.

  We started very early the next morning and rode without a stop for seven hours across easy rolling downs. The colour of these sands was vivid, varied, and unexpected: in places the colour of ground coffee, elsewhere brick-red, or purple, or a curious golden-green. There were small white gypsum-flats, fringed with shanan, a grey-green salt-bush, lying in hollows in the downs. We rested for two hours on sands the colour of dried blood and then led our camels on again.

  Suddenly we were challenged by an Arab lying behind a bush on the crest of a dune. Our rifles were on our camels, for we had not expected to meet anyone here. Musallim was hidden behind mine. I watched him draw his rifle clear. But al Auf said, ‘It is the voice of a Rashid’, and walked forward. He spoke to the concealed Arab, who rose and came to meet him. They embraced and stood talking until we joined them. We greeted the man, and al Auf said, ‘This is Hamad bin Hanna, a sheikh of the Rashid.’ He was a heavily-built bearded man of middle age. His eyes were set close together and he had a long nose with a blunt end. He fetched his camel from behind the dune while we unloaded.

  We made coffee for him and listened to his news. He told us that he had been looking for a stray camel when he crossed our tracks and had taken us for a raiding party from the south. Ibn Saud’s tax-collectors were in Dhafara and the Rabadh, collecting tribute from the tribes; and there were Rashid, Awamir, Murra, and some Manahil to the north of us.

  We had to avoid all contact with Arabs other than the Rashid, and if possible even with them, so that news of my presence would not get about among the tribes, for I had no desire to be arrested by Ibn Saud’s tax-collectors and taken off to explain my presence here to Ibn Jalawi, the formidable Governor of the Hasa. Karab from the Hadhramaut had raided these sands the year before, so there was also a serious risk of our being mistaken for raiders, since the tracks of our camels would show that we had come from the southern steppes. This risk would be increased if it appeared that we were avoiding the Arabs, for honest travellers never pass an encampment without seeking news and food. It was going to be very difficult to escape detection. First we must water our camels and draw water for ourselves. Then we must lie up as close as possible to Liwa and send a party to the villages to buy us enough food for at least another month. Hamad told me that Liwa belonged to the Al bu Falah of Abu Dhabi. He said that they were still fighting Said bin Maktum of Dibai, and that, as there was a lot of raiding going on, the Arabs would be very much on the alert.

  We started again in the late afternoon and travelled till sunset. Hamad came with us and said he would stay with us until we had got food from Liwa. Knowing where the Arabs were encamped he could help us to avoid them. Next day, after seven hours’ travelling, we reached Khaur Sabakha on the edge of the Dhafara sands. We cleaned out the well and found brackish water at seven feet, so bitter that even the camels only drank a little before refusing it. They sniffed thirstily at the water with which al Auf tried to coax them from a leather bucket, but only dipped their lips into it. We covered their noses but still they would not drink. Yet al Auf said that Arabs themselves drank this water mixed with milk, and when I expressed my disbelief he added that if an Arab was really thirsty he would even kill a camel and drink the liquid in its stomach, or ram a stick down its throat and drink the vomit. We went on again till nearly sunset.

  The next day when we halted in the afternoon al Auf told us we had reached Dhafara and that Khaba well was close. He said that he would fetch water in the morning. We finished what little was left in one of our skins. Next day we remained where we were. Hamad said that he would go for news and return the following day. AI Auf, who went with him, came back in the afternoon with two skins full of water which, although slightly brackish, was delicious after the filthy evil-smelling dregs we had drunk the night before.

  It was 12 December, fourteen days since we had left Khaur bin Atarit in Ghanim.

  In the evening, now that we needed no longer measure out each cup of water, bin Kabina made extra coffee, while Musallim increased our rations of flour by a mugful. This was wild extravagance, but we felt that the occasion called for celebration. Even so, the loaves he handed us were woefully inadequate to stay our hunger, now that our thirst was gone,

  The moon was high above us when I lay down to sleep. The others still talked round the fire, but I closed my mind to the meaning of their words, content to hear only the murmur of their voices, to watch their outlines sharp against the sky, happily conscious that they were there and beyond them the camels to which we owed our lives.

  For years the Empty Quarter had represented to me the final, unattainable challenge which the desert offered. Suddenly it had come within my reach. I remembered my excitement when Lean had casually offered me the chance to go there, the immediate determination to cross it, and then the doubts and fears, the frustrations, and the moments of despair. Now I had crossed it. To others my journey would have little importance. It would produce nothing except a rather inaccurate map which no one was ever likely to use. It was a personal experience, and the reward had been a drink of clean. nearly tasteless water. I was content with that.

  Looking back on the journey I realized that there had been no high moment
of achievement such as a mountaineer must feel when he stands upon his chosen summit. Over the past days new strains and anxieties had built up as others eased, for, after all, this crossing of the Empty Quarter was set in the framework of a longer journey, and already my mind was busy with the new problems which our return journey presented.

  8. Return to Salala

  To avoid crossing more sand we

  return over the gravel plains

  of Oman, a long detour made difficult

  by the distrust of the tribes and

  our lack of food.

  We were across the Empty Quarter, but we still had to return to Salala. We could not go back the way we had come. The only possible route was through Oman.

  I tried to work out our position on a map which showed Mughshin and Abu Dhabi but nothing else, except from hearsay. It was difficult to plot our course with no firm surface larger than my notebook on which to work. Bin Kabina held the map while the others sat and watched, and all of them distracted me with questions. They could never follow a map unless it was orientated, though curiously enough they could understand a photograph even when they held it upside down. I estimated that we should have between five hundred and six hundred miles to travel before we could rejoin Tamtaim and the rest of the Bait Kathir on the southern coast, and then a further two hundred miles to reach Salala. I asked al Auf about water and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that, there are plenty of wells ahead of us. It is food which is going to be our trouble.’ We went over to the saddle-bags and Musallim measured out the flour. There were nine mugfuls left – about seven pounds.

  While we were doing this, Hamad came back, bringing with him another Rashid, called Jadid. ‘Another mouth to feed’, I thought as soon as I saw him. Bin Kabina made coffee for them, and we then discussed our plans. Hamad assured us that we should be able to buy plenty of food in Liwa, enlarging on what we should find there – flour and rice and dates and coffee and sugar – but he added that it would take us three, perhaps four, days to get there. I said wryly, ‘We shall be as hungry as the camels’, and al Auf grunted, ‘Yes, but the sons of Adam cannot endure like camels.’ Hamad, questioned by Mabkhaut and Mussalim, said that as long as we remained to the south of Liwa we should be outside the range of the fighting on the coast, and insisted that all the tribes in the south, whether they were Awamir, Manasir, or Bani Yas, were on good terms with the Rashid. He said, ‘It will be different when you reach Oman. There the Duru are our enemies. There is no good in any of the Duru. You will have to be careful while you are among them for they are a treacherous race.’ Al Auf laughed and quoted, ‘He died of snake-bite’, a well-known expression for Duru treachery.

  He was tracing patterns on the sand with his camel-stick, smoothing them out and starting again. He looked up and said thoughtfully; ‘The difficulty is Umbarak. No one must know he is here. If the Arabs hear that there is a Christian in the sands they will talk of nothing else, and the news will soon be all round the place. Then Ibn Saud’s tax-collectors will hear of it and they will arrest us all and take us off to Ibn Jalawi in the Hasa. God preserve us from that. I know Ibn Jakwi. He is a tyrant, utterly without mercy. Anyway, we don’t want the news about Umbarak to get ahead of us among the Duru. We shall never get through the country if it does. If we meet any Arabs we had better say that we are Rashid from the Hadhramaut, travelling to Abu Dhabi to fight for the Al bu Falah. Umbarak can be an Arab from Aden.’

  Turning to me, he said, ‘Keep quiet if we meet anyone. Just answer their salutations, and, what is more, from now on you must ride all the time. Any Arab who came across your monstrous footprints would certainly follow them to find out who on earth you were.’ He got up to fetch the camel, saying, ‘We had better be off.’

  We went down to Khaba well. It was three miles away in a bare hollow, among a jumble of small, white crescent-dunes. The water was ten feet below the surface, and it took us a long time to water the camels, for we had only one small leather bucket, and each camel drank ten to twelve gallons. Bin Kabina stood beside Qamaiqam and whenever she stopped he scratched between her hind legs and crooned endearments to encourage her to drink again. At last all of them were satisfied, blown out with the water which they had sucked up in long slow draughts. Al Auf dashed a few bucketfuls against their chests, and then started to fill the water-skins. The sun was very hot before we had finished. We mounted. My companions had wrapped themselves in their cloaks and muffled their faces in their head-cloths till only their eyes showed. I remembered a Bedu I had once seen in Syria. It was noon on a blazing midsummer day and he was trudging across the desert, travelling apparently from nowhere to nowhere, enveloped to his feet in a heavy sheepskin coat. Arabs argue that the extra clothes which they put on when it is hot keep the heat out; in fact, what they do is to stop the sweat from evaporating and thereby build up a cool layer of air next to the skin. I could never bear this clammy discomfort and preferred to lose moisture by letting the hot air dry my skin. But if I had done this in summer I should have died of heat-stroke.

  Next day we had difficulty in avoiding several inquisitive Awamir, who at first took us for raiders and gave the alarm. Hamad got in touch with them and said that we were a party of Rashid going to Abu Dhabi. They then invited us to their encampment, saying that they would slaughter a camel for us. Hamad made excuses and this again aroused their suspicions, but when we camped Hamad, al Auf, and Mabkhaut went back to their encampment and spent the night there in order to reassure them. When they returned in the morning they brought us a goatskin full of milk. Three days after leaving Khaba we reached the Batin, and lay up in the dunes near Balagh well. Next morning Hamad, Jadid, and bin Kabina went to the settlements in Liwa to buy food. They took three camels with them, and I told bin Kabina to buy flour, sugar, tea, coffee, butter, dates, and rice if he could get any, and above all to bring back a goat. Our flour was finished, but that evening Musallim produced from his saddle-bags a few handfuls of maize, which we roasted and ate. It was to be the last food we had until the others returned from Liwa three days later. They were three interminable nights and days.

  I had almost persuaded myself that I was conditioned to starvation, indifferent to it. After all, I had been hungry for weeks, and even when we had had flour I had had little inclination to eat the charred or sodden lumps which Musallim had cooked. I used to swallow my portion with even less satisfaction than that with which I eventually voided it. Certainly I thought and talked incessantly of food, but as a prisoner talks of freedom, for I realized that the joints of meat, the piles of rice, and the bowls of steaming gravy which tantalized me could have no reality outside my mind. I had never thought then that I should dream of the crusts which I was rejecting.

  For the first day my hunger was only a more insistent feeling of familiar emptiness; something which, like a toothache, I could partly overcome by an effort of will. I woke in the grey dawn craving for food, but by lying on my stomach and pressing down I could achieve a semblance of relief. At least I was warm. Later, as the sun rose, the heat forced me out of my sleeping-bag. I threw my cloak over a bush and lay in the shade and tried to sleep again. I dozed and dreamt of food; I woke and thought of food. I tried to read, but it was difficult to concentrate. A moment’s slackness and I was thinking once more of food. I filled myself with water, and the bitter water, which I did not want, made me feel sick. Eventually it was evening and we gathered round the fire, repeating, ‘Tomorrow they will be back’; and thought of the supplies of food which bin Kabina would bring with him, and of the goat which we should eat. But the next day dragged out till sunset, and they did not come.

  I faced another night, and the nights were worse than the days. Now I was cold and could not even sleep, except in snatches. I watched the stars; some of them – Orion, the Pleiades, and the Bear – I knew by name, others only by sight. Slowly they swung overhead and dipped down towards the west, while the bitter wind keened among the dunes. I remembered how I had once awakened with hunger during my
first term at school and cried, remembering some chocolate cake which I had been too gorged to eat when my mother had taken me out to tea two days before. Now I was maddened by the thought of the crusts which I had given away in the Uruq al Shaiba. Why had I been such a fool? I could picture the colour and texture, even the shape, of the fragments which I had left.

  In the morning I watched Mabkhaut turn the camels out to graze, and as they shuffled off, spared for a while from the toil which we imposed upon them, I found that I could only think of them as food. I was glad when they were out of sight. Al Auf came over and lay down near me, covering himself with his cloak; I don’t think we spoke. I lay with my eyes shut, insisting to myself, ‘If I were in London I would give anything to be here.’ Then I thought of the jeeps and lorries with which the Locust Officers in the Najd were equipped. So vivid were my thoughts that I could hear the engines, smell the stink of petrol fumes. No, I would rather be here starving as I was than sitting in a chair, replete with food, listening to the wireless, and dependent upon cars to take me through Arabia. I clung desperately to this conviction. It seemed infinitely important. Even to doubt it was to admit defeat, to forswear everything to which I held.

  I dozed and heard a camel roaring. I jerked awake, thinking, ‘They have come at last’, but it was only Mabkhaut moving our camels. The shadows lengthened among the sand-hills; the sun had set and we had given up hope when they returned. I saw at once that they had no goat with them. My dream of a large hot stew vanished. We exchanged the formal greetings and asked the formal questions about the news. Then we helped them with the only camel which was loaded. Bin Kabina said wearily, ‘We got nothing. There is nothing to be had in Liwa. We have two packages of bad dates and a little wheat. They would not take our riyals – they wanted rupees. At last they took them at the same valuation as rupees, God’s curse on them!’ He had run a long palm-splinter into his foot and was limping. I tried to get it out but it was already too dark to see.