We watered again at Haij near the southern coast. From there we should have been able to see Masira Island, by which I could have checked my position, but a gale was blowing and the air was thick with flying sand. We had bought a camel and had slaughtered her the previous evening. She had a large, suppurating abscess on one of her feet, but bin al Kamam assured me that this would not affect the rest of the meat. In any case, I was too hungry to be fastidious. We hung the strips of raw meat to dry in some bushes and I watched with rising ill-temper how the grains of sand formed an ever-thickening crust over them.
16. The Wahiba sands
From the southern coast I visit the
Wahiba sands, and then, with the
Imam’s permission, return through
Oman to Buraimi.
We had crossed southern Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, travelling along the edge of the Empty Quarter, but this was the sort of journey to which I was by now well accustomed. From here, however, we had to get back through Oman, a journey which, to be successful, would require diplomacy rather than physical endurance.
I explained to Ahmad that I wished to travel northwards to the Wadi Batha and then to return to Muwaiqih along the foot of the mountains. This route would take me across the Wahiba sands which I was particularly anxious to see, since they were separated from the Sands of the Empty Quarter by more than a hundred and fifty miles of gravel plain. Ahmad said, ‘I myself have never been in those sands; I am from the Yahahif and we live on the plains, but I can find a guide from the Al Hiya, the other branch of our tribe. They live in those sands.’
He went on: ‘You are free to go wherever you wish in the country of the Wahiba. We are your friends, Umbarak; none of us would try to stop you. But the tribes under the mountains are different; they will certainly make trouble if they find out who you are, just as the Duru did. Anyway, they are all governed by the Imam and they will be afraid to let you pass without his permission. It’s different in the desert; there we could perhaps take you through the land of our enemies, travelling as raiders travel and avoiding the wells. But that is impossible in the mountains; the country is too narrow; we should have to use the paths, and they go through the villages; we could never keep out of sight. I will take you as far as I can, but just you and one of your companions. We will get hold of good camels and keep ahead of the news. As a small party we may avoid attracting attention. We will leave the others in the Wadi Halfain and come back to them as soon as we have been as far as the Wadi Batha. But how you are going to get to Muwaiqih from here I don’t know. However, we can discuss that when we return.’
Next day we crossed into the Wadi Andam, which here was only a few miles from the Halfain, and followng it northward we arrived two days later at Nafi. The wide valley was well wooded and would have looked like a park had it not been for the drought. Ahmad now found us a man of the Al Hiya, called Sultan, who agreed to guide us across the sands to the Wadi Batha. I decided to take bin Kabina with me. Bin Kamam was anxious to come instead, but I persuaded him to remain in charge of the others, arranging to meet them a little farther to the north in the Wadi Halfain, where the grazing was said to be better.
I hired a fresh camel from Sultan; bin Kabina rode his own, and both Sultan and Ahmad were well mounted. We were riding four of the finest camels in Arabia and if necessary could travel both fast and far. At first we crossed a gravel plain, sprinkled with sand of a reddish tint, and broken up by small limestone tables among which we saw many gazelle, all very wild. Gradually, as we went farther, the sand increased until it entirely overlaid the limestone floor. On the second day we reached the well of Tawi Harian, which was about eighty feet deep. Several Wahiba were there with donkeys, but no camels. We left as soon as we had watered, for we wanted no awkward questions. We were now riding northward along valleys half a mile wide enclosed by dunes of a uniform height of about two hundred feet. A curious feature of these valleys was that they were blocked at intervals of about two miles by gradual rises of hard sand. The sand in the bottoms was rusty red, whereas the dunes on either side were honey-coloured – both colours becoming paler as we travelled farther north. In the evening, having climbed up to camp among the dunes, we looked across waves of sand and small crescent hollows dotted with abal bushes.
We had been going for three hours next morning when bin Kabina suddenly exclaimed, ‘Who is that?’ I glanced back and was relieved to see that it was only a small boy, hurrying along to catch up with us. We waited for him. He was dressed in a white shirt and head-cloth, and wore a dagger; he was little more than four feet high and perhaps eleven years old. After we had formally exchanged the news, he stopped in front of our camels, held out an arm and said, ‘You may not go on.’ I thought, ‘Damn, are we really to be stopped by this child?’ The others waited in silence. The boy repeated, ‘You may not go on’; and then, pointing to some dunes five or six miles away, added, ‘You must come to my tents. I will kill a camel for your lunch. I will give you fat and meat.’ We protested, saying that we had far to go before sunset, but the child insisted. Finally, however, he gave way, saying ‘It is all wrong but what more can I do?’ Then, as we were going on, he asked, ‘Have you seen an old grey camel in calf?’ Ahmad said ‘No:’ He thought a moment, and added, ‘We passed the tracks of a young camel a little way back, and of three camels before that, none of them in calf.’ Sultan asked, ‘What are her tracks like?’ The boy replied, ‘She turns her near fore-foot in a little.’ Bin Kabina exclaimed, ‘Yes! don’t you remember we crossed her tracks beyond that patch of light-coloured sand in the last valley? She had climbed the slope on our right and fed on some qassis. It was just before we came to the broken abal bush.’ The others agreed that these must be the tracks of the boy’s camel, and described to him where to find them. The place was about three miles away. Once again I was amazed at their unconscious powers of observation. They had been arguing the rights and wrongs of a recent killing among the Junuba, apparently paying no attention to their surroundings; yet they could now remember every camel-track that we had passed. Sultan said, ‘God willing, you will easily find her. The tracks we saw were fresh, made after the sun had risen.’ The boy thanked us and turned back down the valley. We watched him as he walked away from us, his clothes very white against the red sand, and Sultan said, ‘Ahmad, do you remember old Salih? He died last autumn. That is his son, a good boy.’
Two days later we camped on the top of the dunes, two hundred feet above the Wadi Batha. The valley was about six miles across and was bordered on the far side by a narrow belt of sand. Beyond this were low dark hills, and towering above these the stark range of the Hajar. In spite of the haze I could see the peaks of Jabal Jaalan near the coast at the eastern end of the range. I took bearings with my compass while Sultan pointed out to me the various villages, most of them surrounded by palms, and all easily visible on the yellow plain. I called out to bin Kabina to come and look, adding that I could see some Bedu encampments, but he was busy re-tying the pads on. his saddle and called back jokingly, ‘What do I want with those Bedu? They did not kill my father.’ I joined him where he sat beside the fire, and with his help listed the plants we had seen.
Ahmad and Sultan had brought me across the sands to the Wadi Batha as they had promised. I hoped that now they would not insist on going straight back across the desert to rejoin our companions in the Wadi Halfain, but would first take me westward through the villages that lay among the foothills. When I suggested this to them, Ahmad answered, ‘We will show you as much of the country as we can, but from now on no one must discover that you are a Christian.’
In the morning Sultan warned me as we started, ‘When we meet Arabs don’t say anything.’ I asked, ‘Who are you going to say I am?’ and he answered, That will depend on who they are.’ Bin Kabina pointed to my watch and said, ‘Take that off,’ and I dropped it inside my shirt.
As we went up the valley, which is here called the Batha Badiya, Sultan indicated a village h
alf-buried by sand at the foot of a dune, and said, ‘In time the sands will swallow this valley. A few years ago that village was inhabited.’ We passed several other villages, two or three of which were completely deserted and others partly so. Sultan explained that this was due to the drying-up of the aflaj, the underground channels which supplied water to the cultivations. These aflaj were probably introduced into Oman from Persia and they are made by sinking shafts every ten yards and joining them up with a tunnel. As they often run for miles, it must need skill to get the level right, working in the dark without instruments. I could see where several of them crossed the plain; the course of each one marked by the mounds of excavated earth.
We were still on foot when we met a party of Arabs, three men and a boy, all armed, leading a string of loaded camels. We stopped and spoke with them. I watched their dark gipsy eyes inspecting us, coming back to me each time, never dwelling on me, but missing nothing. One of them, a middle-aged man with a scar across his cheek, asked Sultan, ‘Is he a Baluchi?’ ‘Yes. He has come from Sur. He buys slaves and is going to Nazwa.’ Four pairs of eyes nickered over me again. It was the first of several such encounters, and each time I felt horribly conspicuous, standing there in silence, towering above the others, while they exchanged their news and the long minutes dragged by. Yet even as I waited for my identity to be discovered, I realized that for me the fascination of this journey lay not in seeing the country but in seeing it under these conditions.
Sultan insisted that we should avoid the Harth village which we could see farther up the valley. ‘We do not want to meet Salih bin Aisa,’ he said. ‘He is the Sheikh of the Harth and head of all the Hanawi tribes. He would soon discover who you are, and even if he were friendly the mischief would be done, for news of your presence here would get ahead of us.’ To avoid this village he led us round the northern tip of the sands into a maze of bare, broken hills, some of which were of reddish colour, while others were black, slate-blue, or a dirty white. After travelling for two days through these hills we reached the Habus villages in a tributary of the Wadi Andam. We had nearly finished our food, so Sultan and bin Kabina went into Mudhaibi, where there was a market, while Ahmad and I waited for them just outside the village. Several people passed along the track and called out a greeting, but I was thankful that no one came over and spoke to us. If they had done so they might well have remained until the others returned, and would probably have become increasingly inquisitive. Ahmad had told me that a representative of the Imam lived in this village, and I realized that if I roused suspicion here I should be arrested and sent to Nazwa. The others came back an hour later with dates and coffee. They said that there was nothing else to be had in the village, and grumbled that what they had bought had been expensive. We continued down the valley, passing several other villages. Along the edge of the wadi were scattered palm-trees and small gardens irrigated from rivulets bordered with flowering oleanders.
It was a clear day, the first one for weeks, and I could see the ten-thousand-foot summit of Jabal al Akhadar, and seventy miles to the north-west the familiar outline of Jabal Kaur. Around us were many other peaks and mountains. As we rode along I stopped at intervals to sketch their outlines and to take their bearings. Of all these mountains only Jabal al’ Akhadar was shown on the map.
Sultan told me that from here we must turn southwards to rejoin the rest of my party. Two days later, as we approached a well in the Wadi Andam, my eye was caught by an outstandingly fine camel, fully saddled. At the well a tall man, in a faded brown shirt with an embroidered woollen head-cloth twisted loosely round his head, was talking to two boys and a girl who were watering a flock of goats. I noticed that his dagger was elaborately decorated with silver. Ahmad whispered to me. ‘That is Ali bin Said bin Rashid, Sheikh of the Yahahif.’ After we had greeted him, he said, ‘So you have arrived safely. You are very welcome. Your companions are near my encampment; all of them well and waiting for you. We will go there tomorrow. Tonight we will camp with some Baluchi near here. You must be tired and hungry, for you have travelled far.’ Then, turning to Ahmad, he asked, ‘Did you have any trouble?’ He had steady, thoughtful eyes, a large, slightly crooked nose, deep creases down his cheeks, a straggling beard turning grey, and a closely clipped moustache above rather full lips. It was a good-natured face with no hint of fanaticism, but with unmistakable authority. A Bedu sheikh has no paid retainers on whom he can rely to carry out his orders. He is merely the first among equals in a society where every man is intensely independent and quick to resent any hint of autocracy. His authority depends in consequence on the force of his own personality and on his skill in handling men. His position in the tribe, in fact, resembles that of the chairman of a committee meeting. I had always heard that Ali possessed considerable influence, and looking at him now I could well believe it.
Ahmad fetched Ali’s camel, and the five of us rode over to the Baluch encampment near by, where we were to spend the night. It was four o’clock when we got there, but eleven o’clock before we sat down to a large platter heaped with tough meat and dates.
About twenty men and boys collected round our fire. All of them, even the children, wore shirts – for here, unlike Dhaufar, it is not the custom to dress only in a loin-cloth. Ali had told me that these people were in origin Baluchis from Persia, but that they had lived for so long among the Wahiba that now they counted as a section of that tribe. They spoke only Arabic, and I should not have distinguished them from other members of their adopted tribe.
Bin Kabina as usual kept his rifle always ready to his hand. Ali noticed this and said, ‘It is all right, boy, you can leave your rifle over there. Thanks to the Imam, God lengthen his life, we have peace here. It is not like the sands where you come from, where there is always raiding and killing.’
We rejoined the others late the next evening near Barida well in the Wadi Halfain, having ridden nearly two hundred and fifty miles since we had parted from them ten days earlier. Ali urged us to go on to his encampment a few miles farther down the wadi, but, instead, we persuaded Mm to spend the night with us. Bin al Kamam bought a goat; it was long after midnight before we fed. We spent the following day at Ali’s tent. This was only about twelve feet long, woven of black goat’s-hair and pitched like a wind-break under a small tree. Among these Bedu tribes there is no contrast between rich and poor, since everyone lives in a similar manner, dressing in the same way and eating the same sort of food, and the poorest of them considers himself as good as the richest.
Ali’s two wives, with whom, as is the custom here, we had shaken hands on arrival, joined us after we had fed, and sat talking with us while we drank coffee. Before we left the tent they produced a small dish filled with a yellow oil scented with amber and made (I was told) from sesame, saffron, and something called waris. We dipped our fingers in it and rubbed it over our faces and beards. I met with this custom only among the Wahiba and the Dura, but bin Kabina told me that he had been anointed with a similar oil before his circumcision.
Ali warned us that the Ghafari tribes to the north had heard of my arrival among the Wahiba and were determined to stop my going through their country. He said, ‘Don’t think you can slip past them unobserved as you have just done. They will be on the watch for you now. Why don’t you travel along the coast to Muscat and then go on through the Batina?’ But to do this meant giving up the main object of my journey, which was to explore the interior of Oman. In any case, I was not at all anxious to encounter the Sultan of Muscat. When I had met him in Salala after my first journey through these parts he had been charming. Now after another unauthorized journey I was sure he would be furious. I told Ali that Zayid had given me a letter to Yasir requesting him to help me, and asked him whether he thought Yasir would be able to take me back to Muwaiqih. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose Yasir could take you through, but I doubt if he will. He won’t wish to offend the Imam.’
There were several Wahiba camped here, some in tents, others in shelters made f
rom tree-trunks and branches. During the next three days we met many more of them watering their stock at the wells which we passed as we rode up the Halfain. The Wahiba seemed to me to be a finer people than the Duru, in the same indefinable way that the Rashid had impressed me as being superior to the Bait Kathir. The Rashid lived harder lives than the Bait Kathir, which perhaps accounted for the difference between them, but the Wahiba and the Duru lived similar lives in the same sort of country. I wondered if the contrast between these two tribes was due to some fundamental difference in origin far back in the past.
I sent Hamaid to Yasir with Zayid’s letter when we were near Adam, a small village lying in the gap between Madhamar and Salakh, two mountains which rise abruptly from the gravel plain and run westwards in the shape of a crescent for thirty miles from the Halfain to the Amairi. I had no instruments to calculate their height but guessed that Salakh was three thousand feet and Madhamar fifteen hundred. The limestone of which they are formed had been weathered to leave no prominent features, and no vegetation was apparent on the naked rock. Both of them were dome-shaped, and I thought regretfully that their formation was of the sort which geologists associate with oil. But, even so, I did not anticipate that eight years later an oil company would have established a camp, made an airfield, and be drilling at Fahud not more than forty miles away.
The following day we camped to the north of Madhamar at Tawi Yasir, where we had arranged for Hamaid to meet us. In the evening an elderly villager joined us. He had a disapproving face and an untidy beard, which, according to Ibadhi custom, had never been trimmed. We made coffee for him, and preceded it with a dish of dates. As soon as he had drunk the coffee he prayed interminably and later sat in silence fingering his beard. After dinner bin Tahi tried to enliven the evening by being funny. The result was not happy. Our visitor suddenly got to his feet and declared that bin Tahi was making a mock of him. Shocked, everyone vowed that this was not the case, that he was our guest and that our only wish was to please him. Bin al Kamam tried to mend matters by pretending that bin Tahi had never been right in his head since he had fallen off. his camel some years before. The man refused to be pacified, however, and finally made everyone angry by saying, This is what happens to Muslims when they travel with an infidel.’ Bin Tahi answered immediately, T may not be learned in religious matters, but at any rate I don’t spend the whole time I am praying scratching my arse.’ As the man rode off into the dark, the others said, Thank God he is gone.’ But I was anxious, and fearful that he would cause us trouble.
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