by John Keay
All this was arranged; at break of dawn Aboo-’Eysa took his leave, and Barakt, Mobeyreek, and myself, were once more high perched on our dromedaries, their heads turned to the south-east, keeping the hillock range between us and Ri’ad, which we saw no more. Our path led us over low undulating ground, a continuation of Wadi Haneefah, till after about four hours’ march we were before the gates of Manfoohah, a considerable town, surrounded by gardens nothing inferior in extent and fertility to those of Ri’ad; but its fortifications, once strong, have long since been dismantled and broken down by the jealousy of the neighbouring capital. In point of climate this town is preferable to Ri’ad, because situated on higher ground, and above the damp mists which often gather in the depths of the Wadi; but in a military view it is inferior to the capital, because in a more exposed and less easily guarded position. Passing Manfoohah without entering it, our road dipped down again, and we found ourselves in Wadi Soley’, a long valley, originating in the desert between Hareek and Yemmah, and running far to the north.
After winding here and there, we reached the spot assigned by Aboo-’Eysa for our hiding-place. It was a small sandy depth, lying some way off the beaten track, amid hillocks and brushwood, and without water: of this latter article we had taken enough in the goatskins to last us for three days. Here we halted, and made up our minds to patience and expectation.
Two days passed drearily enough. We could not but long for our guide’s arrival, nor be wholly without fear on more than one score. Once or twice a stray peasant stumbled on us, and was much surprised at our encampment in so droughty a locality. Sometimes leaving our dromedaries crouching down, and concealed among the shrubs, we wandered up the valley, climbed the high chalky cliffs of Toweyk, to gain a distant glimpse of the blue sierra of Hareek in the far south, and the white ranges of Toweyk north and east. Or we dodged the numerous nor over-shy herds of gazelles, not for any desire of catching them, but simply to pass the time, and distract the mind weary of conjecture. So the hours went by, till the third day brought closer expectation and anxiety, still increasing while the sun declined, and at last went down; yet nobody appeared. But just as darkness closed in, and we were sitting in a dispirited group beside our little fire, for the night air blew chill, Aboo-’Eysa came suddenly up, and all was changed for question and answer, for cheerfulness and laughter.
DESERT DAYS
Charles Montagu Doughty
(1843–1926)
During two years (1875–7) wandering in Central Arabia Doughty broke little new ground; dependent on desert charity, his achievement was simply to have survived. Yet his book, Arabia Deserta, was instantly recognized as a classic. Its eccentric prose proves well suited to that minute observation and experience of Bedouin life which was Doughty’s main contribution to exploration. T. E. Lawrence called it “a bible of a kind”; both syntax and subject matter have biblical resonances, as in this description of a day’s march, or ráhla.
If the ráhla be short the Beduw march at leisure, the while their beasts feed under them. The sheykhs are riding together in advance, and the hareem come riding in their trains of baggage-camels; if aught be amiss the herdsmen are nigh at hand to help them: neighbours will dismount to help neighbours and even a stranger. The great and small cattle are driven along with their households. You shall see housewives dismount, and gossips walk on together barefoot (all go here unshod,) and spinning beside their slow-pacing camels. But say the Beduin husbands, “We would have the hareem ride always and not weary themselves, for their tasks are many at home.” The Fukara women alighted an hour before noon, in the march, to milk their few ewes and goats. Every family and kindred are seen wayfaring by themselves with their cattle. The Aarab thus wandering are dispersed widely; and in the vast uneven ground (the most plain indeed but full of crags), although many hundreds be on foot together, commonly we see only those which go next about us. The Beduins coming near a stead where they will encamp, Zeyd returned to us; and where he thought good there struck down the heel of his tall horseman’s lance shelfa or romhh, stepping it in some sandy desert bush: this is the standard of Zeyd’s fellowship, – they that encamp with him, and are called his people. Hirfa makes her camel kneel; she will “build” the booth there: the rest of Zeyd’s kindred and clients coming up, they alight, each family going a little apart, to pitch their booths about him. This is “Zeyd’s menzil” and the people are Zeyd’s Aarab. The bearing-camels they make to kneel under their burdens with the guttural voice, ikh–kh–kh! The stiff neck of any reluctant brute is gently stricken down with the driving-stick or an hand is imposed upon his heavy halse; any yet resisting is plucked by the beard; then without more he will fall groaning to his knees. Their loads discharged, and the pack-saddles lifted, with a spurn of the master’s foot the bearing-camels rise heavily again and are dismissed to pasture. The housewives spread the tent-cloths, taking out the corner and side-cords; and finding some wild stone for a hammer, they beat down their tent-pegs into the ground, and under-setting the tent-stakes or “pillars” (am’dàn) they heave and stretch the tent-cloth: and now their booths are standing. The wife enters, and when she has bestowed her stuff, she brings forth the man’s breakfast; that is a bowl of léban, poured from the sour milk-skin, or it is a clot of dates and buttermilk with a piece of sweet butter. After that she sits within, rocking upon her knees the semîla or sour milk-skin, to make this day’s butter.
Sketch of the tents used by the desert people, the Sehamma Aarab. From Travels in Arabia Deserta, London, 1943.
As Zeyd so is every principal person of these Beduins, the chief of a little menzil by itself: the general encampment is not disposed (as is the custom of the northern Aarab) in any formal circuit. The nomads of these marches pitch up and down in all the “alighting place” at their own pleasure. The Fejîr or Fukara never wandered in ferjàn (j for k guttural) or nomad hamlets, dispersedly after their kindreds, which is everywhere the nomad manner, for the advantage of pasture; but they journey and encamp always together. And cause was that, with but half-friends, and those mostly outraged upon their borders, or wholly enemies, there were too many reckonings required of them; and their country lies open. Zeyd’s Aarab were six booths: a divorced wife’s tent, mother of his young and only son, was next him; then the tent of another cast-off housewife, mother of a ward of his, Settàm, and by whom he had himself a daughter; and besides these, (Zeyd had no near kinsfolk,) a camel-herd with the old hind his father, of Zeyd’s father’s time, and the shepherd, with their alliance. Forlorn persons will join themselves to some sheykh’s menzil, and there was with us an aged widow, in wretchedness, who played the mother to her dead daughter’s fatherless children, a son so deformed that like a beast he crept upon the sand [ya latîf, “oh happy sight!” said this most poor and desolate grandam, with religious irony, in her patient sighing] – and an elf-haired girl wonderfully foul-looking. Boothless, they led their lives under the skies of God, the boy was naked as he came into the desert world. The camel upon which they rode was an oblation of the common charity; but what were their daily food only that God knoweth which feedeth all life’s creatures. There is no Beduwy so impious that will chide and bite at such, his own tribesfolk, or mock those whom God has so sorely afflicted; nor any may repulse them wheresoever they will alight in the common wilderness soil. Sometimes there stood a stranger’s booth among us, of nomad passengers or an household in exile from the neighbour tribesmen: such will come in to pitch by a sheykh of their acquaintance.
Hirfa ever demanded of her husband toward which part should “the house” be built. “Dress the face, Zeyd would answer, to this part,” showing her with his hand the south, for if his booth’s face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his coffee-drinkers. Since the sheukh, or heads, alone receive their tribe’s surra, it is not much that they should be to the arms coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid as he saw them approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men�
��s presenting themselves, (the half of every booth, namely the men’s side, is at all times open, and any enters there that will, in the free desert,) and they murmuring he tells them, wellah, his affairs do call him forth, adieu, he must away to the mejlis, go they and seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any sheykh with them, a coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any sheykhly man coming to a sheykh’s tent, coffee must be made for him, except he gently protest, “billah, he would not drink.” Hirfa, a sheykh’s daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to Zeyd in all his sparing policy.
Our menzil now standing, the men step over to Zeyd’s coffee-fire, if the sheykh be not gone forth to the mejlis to drink his midday cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the hearth: with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder, he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some dry camel-dung, sets the burning sherd under dry straws, and powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the sheykh reaches for his dellàl, coffee-pots, which are carried in the fatya, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow each thing of theirs in a proper beyt, it would otherwise be lost in their daily removing. One rises to go fill up the pots at the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from the woman’s side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her little palm-full of green coffee-berries. We sit in a half ring about the hearth; there come in perhaps some acquaintance or tribesmen straying between the next menzils. Zeyd prepared coffee at the hours; afterward, when he saw in me little liking of his coffee-water, he went to drink the cup abroad; if he went not to the mejlis, he has hidden himself two or three hours like an owl, or they would say as a dog, in my little close tent, although intolerably heated through the thin canvas in the midday sun. It was a mirth to see Zeyd lie and swelter, and in a trouble of mind bid us report to all comers that ’Zeyd was from home’: and where his elvish tribesmen were merry as beggars to detect him. Mukkarîn el-Beduw! “the nomads (say the settled Arabs) are full of wily evasions.”
The sheykhs and principal persons assemble at the great sheykh’s or another chief tent, when they have alighted upon any new camping-ground; there they drink coffee, the most holding yet the camel-stick, mishaab, mehján or bakhorra, as a sceptre, (a usage of the ancient world,) in their hands. The few first questions among them are commonly of the new dispositions of their several menzils: as, “Rahŷel! (the sheykh’s brother), fen ahl-ak? where be thy people (pitched)? – Eth-Therrŷeh (the sheykh’s son), fen ahl-ak? – Mehsan (a good simple man, and who had married Zeyd’s only sister,) – Khálaf and the rest, where be your menzils? – Zeyd is not here! who has seen Zeyd? – and Mijwel, where are his Aarab?” for every new march displaces these nomads, and few booths in the shortness of the desert horizon are anywhere in sight. You see the Beduins silent whilst coffee is being made ready, for all their common talk has been uttered an hundred times already, and some sit beating the time away and for pastime limning with their driving-sticks in the idle sand. They walk about with these gay sticks, in the daytime: but where menzils are far asunder, or after nightfall, they carry the sword in their hands: the sword is suspended with a cord from the shoulder. The best metal is the Ajamy, a little bent with a simple crossed hilt (beautiful is the form), wound about with metal wire; next to the Persian they reckon the Indian blade, el-Hindy.
In nomad ears this word, Aarab, signifies “the people”. Beduin passengers when they meet with herdsmen in the desert enquire, Fen el-Aarab? “where is the folk?” Of the multitude of nomad tribes east and west, they say in plural wise, el-Arbân. This other word, Beduin, received into all our languages, is in the Arabian speech Bedùwy, that is to say inhabitant of the waste, (bâdia,) in the plural Bedaùwy (aù dipth.), but commonly él-Bèduw. As we sit, the little cup, of a few black drops, is served twice round. When they have swallowed those boiling sips of coffee-water, and any little news has been related among them, the men rise one after other to go home over the hot sand: all are barefoot, and very rarely any of those Aarab has a pair of sandals. So every one is come again to his own, they say the midday prayers; and when they have breakfasted, they will mostly slumber out the sultry midday hours in their housewife’s closed apartment. I have asked an honest wife, “How may your lubbers slug out these long days till evening?” and she answered, demurely smiling, “How, sir, but in solace with the hareem!”
The héjra, or small flitting-tent, laid out by the housewife, with its cords stretched to the pins upon the ground, before the am’dàn or props be set up under, is in this form: to every pair of cords, is a pair of stakes; there are three stakes to every pair of cords in the waist of the tent. Greater booths are stayed by more pairs of waist-cords, and stand upon taller staves. The Aarab tent, which they call the beyt [pl. byût] es-shaar, “abode, booth, or house of hair,” that is of black worsted or hair-cloth, has, with its pent roof, somewhat the form of a cottage. The tent-stuff, strong and rude, is defended by a list sewed under at the heads of the am’dàn, and may last out, they say, a generation, only wearing thinner; but when their roof-cloth is thread-bare it is a feeble shelter, thrilled by the darting beams of the Arabian sun, and casting only a grey shadow. The Arabian tent strains strongly upon all the staves and in good holding ground, may resist the boisterous blasts which happen at the crises of the year, especially in some deep mountainous valleys. Even in weak sand the tents are seldom overblown. Yet the cords, tunb el-beyt, which are worsted-twist of the women’s spinning, oft-times burst: who therefore (as greater sheykhs) can spend silver, will have them of hempen purchased in the town. In all the road tribes they every year receive rope, with certain clothing and utensils, on account of their haj surra. The tent-stuff is seamed of narrow lengths of the housewives’ rude worsted weaving; the yarn is their own spinning, of the mingled wool of the sheep and camels’ and goats’ hair together. Thus it is that the cloth is blackish: we read in the Hebrew Scripture, “Black as the tents of Kedar.” Good webster-wives weave in white borders made of their sheep’s wool, or else of their gross-spun cotton yarn (the cotton wool is purchased from Medina or the sea coast).
When the tent-cloth is stretched upon the stakes, to this roof they hang the tent-curtains, often one long skirt-cloth which becomes the walling of the nomad booth: the selvedges are broached together with wooden skewers. The booth front is commonly left open, to the half at least we have seen, for the mukaad or men’s sitting-room: the other which is the women’s and household side, is sometimes seen closed (when they would not be espied, whether sleeping or cooking) with a fore-cloth; the woman’s part is always separated from the men’s apartment by a hanging, commonly not much more than breast or neck high, at the waist poles of the tent. The mukaad is never fenced in front with a tent-cloth, only in rain they incline the am’dàn and draw down the tent eaves lower. The nomad tents are thus very ill lodging, and the Beduins, clothed no better than the dead, suffer in cold and stormy weather. In winter they sometimes load the back-cloth ground-hem with great stones, and fence their open front at the men’s side with dry bushes. The tent side-cloths can be shifted according to the wind and sun: thus the back of the Beduin booth may become in a moment the new front. A good housewife will bethink herself to unpin and shift the curtain, that her husband’s guests may have shadow and the air, or shelter.
Upon the side of the hareem, that is the household apartment, is stored all their husbandry. At the woman’s curtain stand the few tent-cloth sacks of their poor baggage, él-gush: in these is bestowed their corn and rice if they have any; certain lumps of rock-salt, for they will eat nothing insipid; also the housewife’s thrift of wool and her spun yarn, – to be a good wool-wife is honourable among Aarab women; and some fathoms perhaps of new calico. There may be with the rest a root of er’n or tan wood, the scarlet chips are steeped in water, and in two or three days, between ráhlas, they cure therein their goat-skins for girbies and semîlies, besides t
he leather for watering-buckets, watering-troughs, and other nomad gear. The poorest wife will have some box, (commonly a fairing from the town,) in which are laid up her few household medicines, her comb and her mirror, mèrguba, her poor inherited ornaments, the earrings and nose-ring of silver or even golden (from the former generations); and with these any small things of her husband’s, (no pockets are made in their clothing,) which she has in her keeping. But if her good-man be of substance, a sheykh of surra, for his bundle of reals and her few precious things she has a locked coffer painted with vermilion from Medina, which in the ráhla is trussed (also a mark of sheykhly estate) upon her bearing-camel. – Like to this I have mused, might be that ark of things sacred to the public religion, which was in the nomad life of B. Israel.
Commonly the housewife’s key of her box is seen as a glittering pendant, upon her veil backward; and hangs, with her thimble and pincers, (to pluck the thorns out of their bare soles,) by a gay scarlet lace, from the circlet of the head-band. Their clotted dates, if they have any, are stived in heavy pokes of camel-hide, that in the ráhla are seen fluttering upon the bearing-cattle with long thongs of leather. This apparel of fringes and tassels is always to the Semitic humour; of the like we read in Moses, and see them in the antique Jewish sculptures. Of their old camel sack-leather, moisty with the juice of the dates, they cut the best sandals. The full-bellied sweating water-skins are laid, not to fret at the ground, upon fresh sprays of broom or other green in the desert; amongst all stands the great brazen pot, jidda, tinned within by the nomad smith, or by the artificer in their market village. They boil in it their butter, (when they have any, to make samn,) and their few household messes; they seethe the guest-meal therein in the day of hospitality.