Next day we crossed the Kismim pass and camped once more by the pool of Aiyun. Bin Kabina was accompanied by the boy I had noticed the night before. They were about the same age. This boy was dressed only in a length of blue cloth, which he wore wrapped round his waist with one tasselled end thrown over his right shoulder, and his dark hair fell like a mane about his shoulders. He had a face of classic beauty, pensive and rather sad in repose, but which lit up when he smiled, like a pool touched by the sun. Antinous must have looked like this, I thought, when Hadrian first saw him in the Phrygian woods. The boy moved with effortless grace, walking as women walk who have carried vessels on their heads since childhood. A stranger might have thought that his smooth, pliant body would never bear the rigours of desert life, but I knew how deceptively enduring were these Bedu boys who looked like girls. He told me that his name was Salim bin Ghabaisha1 and he asked me to take him with us. Bin Kabina urged me to let him join us, saying that he was the best shot in the tribe and that he was as good a hunter as Musallim, so that if he was with us we should feed every day on meat, for there were many ibex and gazelle in the country ahead of us. He added, ‘He is my friend. Let him come with us for my sake. The two of us will go. with you wherever you want. We will always be your men.’ I told bin Ghabaisha that he could come, and later when we camped I gave him one of my spare rifles to use until we reached Mukalla. Next morning he went off at dawn to hunt for ibex and he came back in the evening carrying across his shoulders a large ram which he had shot. I met few good hunters among the Bedu – only an occasional one of them possessed the necessary enthusiasm – but bin Ghabaisha was one of these, and Musallim bin Tafl was another.
After dinner bin Kabina got up from beside me, saying that he was going to fetch his camel. Suddenly someone called out, ‘Bin Kabina has fallen down.’ I looked round and saw him lying in the sand. He was unconscious when I reached him. His pulse was very feeble and his body cold; he was breathing hoarsely. I carried him to the fire and piled blankets on him to warm him. I then tried to pour a little brandy down his throat but he could not swallow. Gradually his breathing became easier and his body a little warmer, but he did not recover consciousness. I sat beside him hour after hour wondering miserably if he was going to die. I remembered how I had first met him in the Wadi Mitan, how he had come to Shisur to join me, how he had unhesitatingly remained with me at Ramlat al Ghafa when the Bait Kathir had deserted me. I remembered his happiness when I gave him his rifle, and I knew that whenever I thought of the past months I should be thinking of him, for he had shared everything with me, even my doubts and difficulties. I remembered with bitter regret how I had sometimes vented my ill-temper on him to ease the strain under which I lived, and how he had always been good-tempered and very patient. The others crowded round and discussed the chances of his dying, until I could scarcely bear it; and then someone asked where we were going tomorrow and I said that there would be no tomorrow if bin Kabina died. Hours later as I lay beside him I felt him relax and knew that he was sleeping and was no longer unconscious. He woke at dawn and at first could hear but could not speak, and signed to me that his chest was hurting. By midday he could speak and in the evening he was all right again. The Rashid gathered round him, changing incantations and firing off their rifles; and then sprinkled flour, coffee, and sugar in the stream-bed to appease the spirits which they had exorcized. Later they slaughtered a goat, sprinkled him with its blood, and declared him cured. I have often wondered what was wrong with him and can only think it was some kind of fit.
Next day we travelled slowly to Mudhail, where a trickle of water seeped out from beneath a low cliff, but the trunks of fifty dead palms proved that this water had been more abundant in the past. We camped under some low cliffs where an overhang gave us a little shade. Here I picked up a small, well-burnished, neolithic axe-head, similar to one I had been given by a Kathir who had told me that he had found it on the Jarbib plain. Both the axes were made of jade, which is unknown in Arabia.
There were two Muslim tombs in the valley, fifteen feet square and seven feet high, crowned with plaster-covered domes. My companions could tell me nothing of these tombs except that someone called Sheikh Saad was buried there, and this was confirmed by a well-executed Arabic inscription on the stele of one of the three graves inside the tombs, but unfortunately his father’s name was obliterated. One section of the Bait al Sheikh, a religious tribe, is called the Bait Sheikh Saad. Near the tombs was a small graveyard, no longer in use because of the Bedu belief that the ancient dead would not tolerate intrusion. There were many trilithon monuments in the valley and tumuli on the nearby hills.
My companions had already told me about buildings and ‘writings’ at Mudhail. I had hoped I might discover another Petra, and had at any rate expected to find something older and more interesting than these Islamic tombs. The civilizations of southern Arabia had been situated farther to the west, but for fifteen hundred years they had depended for their prosperity on frankincense gathered on the mountains of Dhaufar. I knew that the best frankincense was collected on the northern slopes of this mountain and that the gum from the other side of the mountain was of poor quality. Near Aiyun I had seen a grove of brittle bushes with small crumpled leaves which the Arabs told me produced frankincense, but there seemed to be few of these groves. I saw only this one.
It seems strange that there are so few ruins on the northern side of the mountain, considering the great length of time during which this region was of vital importance to the successive civilizations of southern Arabia. I had expected to find the remains of forts or block-houses which had been made to defend these priceless groves against attack from the desert. But apart from crude tumbledown sangars of indeterminate age above many of the wells, it was only at Andhur that I found the ruins of a well-constructed building. This, which was on a ridge above the palm grove, seemed to have been a storehouse rather than a fort. The walls were built of cut stones set in mortar, and were half buried in rubble. Along the top of the low outer wall were some mortar-lined stone troughs, about five feet in length and two feet in width and depth, similar to others which I had seen among the ruins near Salala. I had already been told of the buildings at Mudhail and the ruins at Andhur before I visited them; I never heard of any others.
On my way back from the tombs I saw a young man sitting under the cliff near our camping-place. I noticed that his wrists were shackled with a short length of heavy chain. I greeted him, but he did not reply, though he turned his head and looked at me. He had a striking face, but there was no intelligence in his eyes. His hair was long and matted, and the rag that he wore did not cover him. He stood up, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, and then walked away muttering to himself. I asked bin Kabina who he was and he told me that he was Salim bin Ghabaisha’s brother, and that he had lost his reason three years earlier; before this happened he had been one of the friendliest boys in the tribe. I asked why he was shackled, and bin Kabina answered that two years ago he had killed a boy who had been his special friend by smashing in his skull with a rock while he slept. The dead boy’s family had accepted blood-money.
Bin Ghabaisha returned later carrying a buck which he had shot. Bin Kabina told him that his brother had turned up, and without a word he went off to find him, taking a dish of dates. Later he came back depressed and unhappy. He took me aside and said: ‘Have you no medicine, Umbarak, that will cure my brother? I beseech you if you have to give it to me. I loved my brother. We used to be inseparable. We did everything together; we went everywhere together. I was like his shadow. Now he hardly knows me. He wanders round like an animal and is less responsive to me than a camel. Give me medicine to cure him, Umbarak, and all that I have is yours.’ I told him sadly, ‘I have no medicine that will do your brother any good. Lies are no use to you. Only God can cure him.’ He answered resignedly, ‘The praise be to God.’
We travelled slowly, for I was in no hurry to reach Mukalla. After the slogging effort of the past mo
nths it was sheer enjoyment to dawdle along, on the watch, almost from the moment when we started, for somewhere to stop again. We would choose a spot in the cool shadow of a cliff, or else under some trees, where the tracery of branches threw a net of shade across the sand. There we would remain for the rest of the day or move on again in the evening, as the fancy took us. We had plenty of food and water, and there was acacia to feed our camels. Almost daily bin Ghabaisha shot ibex or gazelle, and then bin Kabina cooked the meals of which he and I had dreamt when we had starved together in the sands.
The intimacy which had characterized our small party on that journey was impossible in these crowded camps. I was especially sorry that I never really got to know bin Duailan, the famous Cat, as he fed with another group. Sometimes he came over to us, bearing a battered brass coffee-pot. He would carefully unwrap from a dirty rag a small cracked cup, dark with stains, and serve us with coffee, explaining to me with a twinkle that he was the only person in camp who knew how to make it properly. He would then squat down and sooner or later lead the conversation round to rifles, expressing the hope that I would give him a service .303. How, he would ask, could a man raid effectively armed only with an old single-shot Martini? I would counter by saying that he at least seemed to have managed very successfully.
We remained for three days at Habarut, where families of Mahra watered their camels at the shallow wells beside the tangled palm groves. At dawn, on our first day there, I heard one Rashid ask another, as they washed before they prayed, ‘Is he dead yet?’ and the other answered, ‘No, not yet, but he soon will be.’ Startled, I sat up and asked, ‘Who is dying?’ and one of them said, The old Afar who is travelling with us. He fell down when he got up to pray. He is over there.’ I knew the man; he came from the east, from somewhere near the Wadi al Amairi, and had attached himself to us two days before, for the food and protection which we afforded him whilst he travelled in our company. The night before, bin Kabina had told me that this man was sick, and had shown me where he lay behind a rock, a desiccated bundle of skin and bones, shivering under the goatskin which he had wrapped about his head and shoulders. I had given him some tablets, and he had clasped my hand and murmured a blessing, grateful for this light attention in an indifferent world. Now he lay where he had fallen, and no one heeded him. I could not feel his pulse. I called to bin Kabina, and together we lifted him on to a rug and covered him with blankets; the others took no notice, being either busy with their prayers or frankly indifferent. We then lit a fire beside him and I poured some brandy down his throat. He spluttered and recovered consciousness. I gave him more brandy and soon he was a little tipsy from the forbidden spirits. Three days later he parted from us, quite recovered.
This incident impressed upon me the Bedu’s indifference to human life. The man was sick and if God ordered it he would die. He was a stranger who came from a tribe unrelated to theirs. None of them felt an interest because he was a human being like themselves. His death would in no way affect them. Yet their code demanded that, however unwanted he might be, they should fight in his defence if he were attacked whilst with them.
There was a constant passage of visitors to our camping place while we were at Habarut. A woman came over to us and I recognized her as Nura, whom I had met the year before. Her three small children were with her; only the eldest one, aged about nine, wore any clothes. She told me that they were camped four miles away, and that the children had insisted on coming to see me again when they heard I was here. I gave the children dates and sugar to eat, while I talked to Nura. She was unveiled, and like most of the women in this part of Arabia was dressed in dark blue. She had a strong, square, weather-beaten face, and wore a silver ring through her right nostril. I thought she was surprisingly old to have three small children. She talked in a rather husky voice, telling me how she was going down to Ghaidat al Mahra on the coast to get a load of sardines. As bin Ghabaisha had shot an ibex we had meat and soup for lunch. The children fed with us, but Nura was given a dish by herself. Arabs will not feed with women. Later, however, she returned and, sitting a little back from the circle, was given coffee and tea which she drank with the rest of us.
The general belief among the English people that Arab women are kept shut up is true of many of the women in the towns, but not among the tribes. Not only is it impossible for a man to shut up his wife when he is living under a tree, or in a tent which is always open on one side, but he requires her to work, to fetch water and firewood, and to herd the goats. If a woman thinks she is being neglected or ill-treated by her husband she can easily run away to her father or brother. Her husband has then to follow her and try to persuade her to come back. Her family will certainly take her part, insisting that she has been monstrously ill-treated. In the end the husband will probably have to give her a present before he can induce her to return. Wives cannot divorce their husbands, but the husband may agree to divorce his wife if she has refused to live with him, on condition that he recovers the two or three camels which he gave as the bride-price. If, however, he divorces her of his own accord he does not get back these camels.
In the evening someone mentioned Nura. I asked if her husband was dead, and al Auf said, ‘She has no husband. The children are bastards.’ When I expressed my surprise he said that bin Alia; who was one of our party, was also ‘a son of unlawfulness’. I asked if there was any slur attached to being a bastard, and bin Kabina said, ‘No. It is not the child’s fault,’ and added jokingly, ‘Next time, Umbarak, you see a girl that pleases you, sit down next to her in the dark, push your camel-stick through the sand until it is underneath her, and then turn it over until the crook presses against her. If she gets up, gives you an indignant look, and marches off, you will know that you are wasting your time. If she stays where she is, you can meet her next day when she is herding the goats.’ I said, ‘If it is as easy as all that there must be plenty of bastards,’ and someone answered, ‘Not among the Rashid, but the Humum near Mukalla have a whole section composed entirely of bastards.’
I knew that elsewhere in the Arab world a girl who is immoral, or indeed in many places even if she is only suspected of immorality, will be killed by her relatives in order to protect the family honour. An Englishman told me of a tragic case that occurred on the Lower Euphrates while he was serving there as a Political Officer after the First World War. An Arab boy and his sister, who were orphans, lived in a tent outside his house and were close friends of his. One day his servants rushed into his house and told him that the boy had stabbed his sister and that she was calling for the Englishman. He went to their tent where the girl was lying fatally wounded. She said, ‘I am dying and I have a last request to make of you.’ He asked her what it was, and she said, ‘Grant it before I ask you.’ The Englishman hesitated, and the girl became so upset that he granted her request. She said, ‘Tell my brother that I was innocent and that I never did anything to shame him. I swear this as I die. But you have promised me my request and you are not to punish him, for I know that I was talked about and by our custom he did right to kill me.’ Later, when the Englishman told the tribal sheikhs what had happened, they all said, ‘But of course the boy was right to kill her. She brought shame upon her family because she was talked about.’ I told my companions this story, and they shook their heads, and old bin Kalut said it was barbarous to kill a girl even if she had been immoral, and that among them such things would never happen.
From Habarut we climbed up on to the Daru plateau, a featureless gravel plain which drains to the sea. We came across some crude shelters with walls of rock and roofs of branches overlaid with earth and supported on pillars of piled stones. But they were all empty, since seven rainless years had driven the Bait Khawar down into the valley of the Kidyut, which starts here as a deep sheer-sided canyon. I climbed down into this with some of my companions, while the others took the camels round by an easier route. A small spring trickled out from among the limestone slabs which had fallen from the precipices above. Some
Mahra were watering camels and filling goatskins. One of their women had stained her face green, and another had blue and green stripes painted down her nose and chin, and across her cheeks. The effect was not only weird but repulsive. I was on the point of suggesting to bin Kabina that both of them would be more alluring if they were veiled, when a small boy about ten years old darted over to us. He was Said, bin Kabina’s brother. He had large sparkling eyes, very white teeth, and a face as fresh as a half-opened flower. He was trying desperately to be dignified, but could not hide his excitement. He assured me at once that he was coming with us, and pointed to the camel which I had given to bin Kabina the year before, saying, There is my mount.’ I asked him where his rifle was and he waved his stick and said that this would have to do unless I gave him one. Suddenly we heard many voices shouting on the cliff above us. A party of Bait Khawar were refusing passage to our camels, saying that the Christian might not pass through their valley. A scuffle had started, and it looked as if there might be a fight, until our rabia drove his tribesmen back, and the camels came lurching down the steep path to join us in the valley-bottom. Said said scornfully, ‘They are only Bait Khawar,’ and went on to tell me how he had heard that we should pass this way and had ridden for two days to meet us. I asked him who would look after his mother and sister if he came with us to Mukalla, and he assured me that they were with his uncle and that they would be all right without him. I decided to let him come and he trotted happily off to tell bin Kabina.
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