A Winter in Arabia

by Freya Stark

  The Sultan himself was away with Harold, carried off like Elijah in the fiery chariot under the fascinated eyes of his people and harim. But all his relatives were drawn up in a line to receive us with their body-guard behind them.

  “Go first,” murmured the headman’s uncle to ’Ali. “The camel must not go behind the donkey.”

  The sayyid, who had now reappeared, pushed on too, so as not to be seen behind a woman.

  But ’Ali solved the matter tactfully by dismounting and let me ride on alone, until, near the group, I too dismounted and shook hands.

  They were handsome people—their hair tied back with bands of yellow leather, their eyes straight and fearless like the beduin. They had grace and colour about them; the Sultan’s brother Ahmed might well have been a Malatesta of Rimini, so aquiline was his profile, so fine his thin-lipped mouth. He wore a purple silk turban, folded in a point on the forehead, and falling down his back; his European shirt, striped green and white, was covered by a yellow-and-black-striped coat of silk, his skirt was purple and his smile like that of the Gioconda. Beside him were two uncles; Husain, dim and tired with flat and straggly hair, and an old deaf man called the Wolf, full of spirit, with two handsome sons beside him. At the head of this little procession, varied and gay, we turned and entered the high, dust-coloured doorway of the fort.

  Chapter XIII

  NAQB AL HAJR

  “Qui, dentro ad una gabbia

  Fere selvaggie e mansueto gregge

  S’annidan si che sempre il miglior geme.”

  (PETRARCH.)

  THEY TOOK ME TO A WIDE ROOM WITH MANY LATTICED windows. There were two carved columns on a magenta matted floor and niches all around, and a table and two chairs which no one ever used. Here I rested for some days, visited at intervals by the Sultan’s uncles and by the two young men, Nasir and Mutlaq, Sons of the Wolf, who more particularly looked after me. I was glad to rest; and wondered what new disease approaching made me feel so tired, but it was only the heat, pouring full upon us in that low wadi open to the sea.

  In the cool of sunset we strolled down into the Wad below, where a great boulder scrawled over with Arabic letters lies in the dry bed of the stream. And I sat peacefully through the evenings, sewing at my embroidery, with the Sultans and a few old servants of the fort around me, listening to the troubles of that weary land.

  It was perhaps like some rough little court of the early Carlovingians, helpless among their turbulent unlettered men. So the Sultans of ’Azzan lived, holding the beduin precariously at bay, paying out blackmail and clinging, with desperate and unsuccessful effort, to the safety of their only remaining source of income, their trade-route to the sea. That too for many months had been endangered, and merchants took the long way round by eastern foothills, through the unbuilt lands of the Beni Nu’man under the range of Aswad, since the tribes on the main road were raiding, just as they had been doing twenty years ago when Colonel Lake came riding by that way.

  Harold now with his visit had brought new hopes, all centred on the R.A.F., but as yet little good had come of them; truces had been made, but no means were at hand to enforce them; the raiding continued. Four tribes were busy at the moment: and the lawful beduin suffered, disarmed by the truce. When I returned to Aden I asked if it would not be possible to punish at least one of these plunderers of peaceful caravans, so that the land, now restive and doubtful, might settle down to a reality of peace: but though everyone agreed with the necessity, there was a great reluctance—after the Se’ar and Humumi troubles of the winter—to send out another R.A.F. police force, owing to the constant burden of criticism at home. And I could not help thinking how strange it is that a twist of sentimental ignorance in England should cause so much misery in Arabia, should keep the quiet labourer from his fields and wells and the peaceful merchant from the road of his traffic, and encourage the reckless beduin to trample on their slaves. Despite setbacks this is at present being gradually altered; the Wadi Meifa’a is now within government range; but when one compares the firm safety of Saudi Arabia or Yemen with the recent precariousness of life in British South Arabia, one should remember that the chief, indeed the only cause of it, has lain in the ignorant dogmatism of uninformed critics at home.

  Not the fear of the beduin alone hung like a shadow in the fortress of ’Azzan. All sorts of domestic dramas hovered there. There was jealousy, I soon discovered, between the house of the Sultan and that of his cousins, the Sons of the Wolf. Ahmed, the handsome brother, never asked anything for himself; he had indeed the manners of a prince; but his cousin Nasir was twice as clever as anyone else there, it was he alone who could manage the unruly bodyguard and the beduin, who could mend a lamp or a saddle if they collapsed, and whom I found sitting on the floor sewing at my embroidery with tolerable success one day when I entered my room. He wanted to learn English and to travel, and had one of those adventurous minds that rise naturally to the top of circumstance wherever they may be.

  These young men, brought up in their sociable hard life together, were, in spite of all, friendly with each other, in and out of each other’s houses all day long. But there was another brother who “had taken sides with the beduin,” and who had been “hidden” in a tower in Bal Haf for two and a half years, and his small son of ten wandered about in the house of his uncles, a sad little air of exile about him. I made friends with him by the present of a penknife, and he would come with the servants, hovering silent and aloof, until, one day, he cried suddenly: “I would like to fly, to fly away with my father,” with all the agony of hidden feelings that filled his childish years. His father had tried to shoot the old Wolf, my host, through a window; the bullet had been intercepted by a daughter, who caught it in her arm, which hung now withered and useless from the wound.

  I went to call on these ladies, and on the Sultan’s harim, who lived in the tallest of the fortresses, beside whose ibex-decorated doorway the single cannon of the kingdom stands. Having asked ’Ali what he thought I should wear for the occasion, he pitched without hesitation on my dressing-gown, a flimsy yellow silk garment in which I sallied under the battlments in the wind and dust. The ladies too had dressed to receive me—they had indeed taken several hours about it and sat in a sphinx-like row, with yellow faces, and busts encased from head to waist over the shoulders in silver necklaces and bells. They wore the kadida of ’Amd, the coral head-dress with its crown of amulets and tinkling mane. The front of their heads were shaved, and the empty space decorated with a beading of black and scarlet lacquer, one line down nose and eyebrows (also shaved), and patterns on the temples, with a star made of sequins bought in Aden, or even a piece of tin-foil stuck in the middle of the forehead every day. The Sultan’s wife wore thirty necklaces from chin to waist, silver and amulets, with coral in between. Her forearms were hidden in bracelets, and the first joint of every finger was made immovable with rings. And on their heads they wore, above the coral and bells and the broad ribbon of silver that hung on each side of their face—a wide-meshed net of black stiffened with scarlet lacquer, charming to look at. Having so decorated themselves, they sat and made no other effort at conversation, while we sipped glasses of spiced tea, until I asked to see the babies, whose heads, completely shaved, give a wonderful scope for decorative zigzag patterns, red and black, with red nostrils and a star on their brows. I believe that these patterns are very ancient, for an alabaster pre-Islamic head I bought in Shibam has runnels cut in the cheek and forehead, to be filled, I think, with coloured material representing the female decoration of that time.

  On the second day of my stay I asked to see the fortress of Naqb al Hajr, the greatest of all pre-Islamic ruins in this land. It is little more than an hour’s ride down the valley on a low rise of the western bank of the Wd. ’Ali, of course, was nowhere to be seen when wanted, so I started off on his camel with the sun low already in the afternoon. An old man, wrinkled like the bark of a tree, with white and straggly hair, held the rope. He was one of the Beni Himyar f
rom whom the beduin suppose that the English are descended. “I am your maternal uncle,” said he. He said it as a joke, but I took him at his word and called him Uncle, amid the cheers of his friends, and this small matter stood me in good stead a day or two later.

  We trotted to arrive before the sunset, with the saw-like edges of the Dhila’ range distantly parallel beside us, glowing flame-like and smothered to their last steepness in a wind-blown blanket of sand; all this wide Meifa’a valley is persecuted by sea-winds that seem to blow, hot and tiring, throughout the afternoons. The bodyguard of ’Azzan had turned out behind me, indistinguishable to all outward appearance from the enemies they were supposed to deal with: in these beduin crowds it was always difficult to tell one’s own protectors from one’s foes. They gave unexpected whacks to my camel with their rifles, which sent it hurrying with an outraged expression, while the beduin of the district came running towards us from all the small villages that lay on our left hand. Across the flat wadi-bed they poured in dark-blue companies, hand in hand, cheerful and determined to get money if they could; a crowd of three hundred or so were soon upon us, clutching to draw attention, pressing questions and blackmail in one continuous stream. To lose one’s temper or gaiety is fatal on these occasions; I was thankful to be among them alone; and even ’Ali, who now had come up, did little good. Over the ruins they rolled like smoke, parting reluctantly when I asked to take a picture, anxious above all to be told where the buried treasure lay. I realized why, with the visit of four parties here before me, no photograph had yet been taken of the inscription of Naqb and its walls.

  It is a huge citadel, nearly a mile in length I should guess, on a low and stony ridge going east and west, and the town was once upon its eastern end. A deep ditch cuts the western isthmus, and another ditch, now filled in, ran down outside the wall which there is ruined. To north and south, where the two gates are, and to the east, where the peninsula ends, the walls remain sufficiently to show the good blocks of their building, and the shallow square buttresses that flank them all around. They are cut in yellow stone, a little darker than the landscape. Within the northern gate in a hollow was a well, and an Arab town must have been built on the earlier site, for it has used the pre-Islamic stone promiscuously, and left bits of glazed medieval ware lying about the ground. But pieces of pre-Islamic building remain here and there, carefully dressed and smooth outside and rough within—and on the highest point are the blocks of a square foundation laid with huge boulders. The inscription is inside the southern gateway and tells how the governor of the fortress rebuilt the wall with stone and wood and binding (mortar), and calls it by the name of Meifa’a, which has not changed. I sat and copied and kept a running flow of conversation to hold my crowd in hand, telling them the Arabic names of the letters as I wrote them down. Various travellers had been here before me: the young lieutenants, Wellsted and Cruttenden, who rode up, roughly handled by their beduin, from the Palinurus in 1839 and first discovered the fortress to the world; and Captain Miles in 1870, who continued overland to Aden, with less trouble than anyone else before or after; and in 1896 Count Landberg with the South Arabian Expedition from Vienna to collect inscriptions; he too was harassed by the beduin who prevented his progress from ’Azzan and extorted enormous sums. No one, as far as I know, came after him except Colonel Lake from Aden, who is still remembered affectionately here, as he is indeed wherever he has been.

  With the exercise of a very exhausting amount of tact I kept my crowd friendly for an hour and twenty minutes, with ’Ali, unhappy and anxious, champing to be off. There is no doubt that ’Ali is not nearly so successful with beduin as I am. We had a moment of slight scuffle at departure; I handed my notebook quickly to one of the bodyguard before the beduin snatched it; my old Uncle gave a whack to the camel, and the crowd seeing me well away and out of reach above them, made up their minds to the loss of bakhshish and shouted the most amiable farewells; they had had a good afternoon; it was they, I said over and over again, who ought to pay me and not I them; and the bedu is civilized enough in his heart to prefer entertainment to money. The bodyguard, now increased to about thirty volunteers, took me back at a trot, shooting rifles into the sunset. They sang alternate verses as they ran. One man gave the verse; it would be sung twice over by a line of men on the right hand, then twice by an equal number on the left, and so on till another verse was given. In the centre, Uncle, pulling the camel rope, his white hair flying, trotted and sang and changed his heavy gun from one shoulder to the other, to shift the camel rope to his other hand. They sang one verse a hundred and fifty times, and repeated the next eighty times with never a pause in their running or their breath, and they call this a Zamil. When we reached the palace door I took my Uncle and the head of the bodyguard in with me and gave them some dollars to divide among their beduin and their men; a foolish thing to do, for, needless to say, they went quietly away with it all, and Nasir had to struggle next day from six in the morning onward with a besieging crowd. A European visitor is no joke for these Sultans: it means a continuous series of small popular tumults to quell.

  Chapter XIV

  JEBEL KADUR

  “Then what a rough and riotous charge have you

  To rule those whom the Devil cannot rule?”

  (SIR THOMAS MORE, M.S.)

  THE SULTANS OF ’AZZAN, SITTING OVER THEIR HOOKAHS IN unending family consultations, determined to make the best use they could of my presence by showing me off to their rebellious subjects as a visible symbol of the friendship of Britain behind them. So they said they would take me down to the coast themselves by the dangerous but inhabited way in a strongly-guarded caravan.

  I was pleased, for I hoped to find traces of antiquity if I travelled by the main road to the sea. But the plan began to show every symptom of delay and I grew impatient; and it was chiefly, I believe, to keep me quiet, that they drew my attention to some ruins in the heart of the country of the Beni Himyar, and offered Sultan Husain’s own camel and silver-pommelled saddle to take me to the mountains of Kadur.

  Nobody knew how far these mountains were; they were in the west, some said three hours, some said two days. Times vary according to whether you travel on a donkey, a camel or your own feet, and no one ever seemed to know to which of these methods of progression they were referring when they talked of a distance in hours. But I was now used to this; and set off in a faintly pessimistic spirit with a last recommendation from Sultan Husain to keep away from villages if I wished to be safe. He gave me four of his soldiers and a donkey for restful riding, and we started at seven-forty in the morning.

  All went pleasantly for two hours. We followed a wadi that divides in the north and leads by forked ways to Amaqin and Habban. Water flowed in its bed, sparse villages screened in palms lay safely on the other side, across our way a ruined narrow channel, carved in the red sandstone, still showed the ancient labours of the land. But at ten we came to where our tracks turned left towards the mountains, where the village of Lamater—a few houses with minaret and palm trees—lies in a hollow near the stream. If we had turned here, few would have noticed our going; but ’Ali, deaf to expostulation, now pushed on and in no time forced us, with a crowd about us, into the headman’s house ’Ali had, he explained, forgotten the dates and rice in ’Azzan: he hated lunching out among the beduin: why not sit in the pleasant crowded darkness of the headman’s room while his women cooked a meal?

  This was just what I had been telling him to avoid; an angry feeling, like suffocation, seized me, and the four soldiers, and the Sultan’s warning, were this time on my side. No sooner had the dates arrived, wrapped in plaited palm leaves, than—without further argument—we set off.

  But it was too late. The whole village swarmed about us, and the goal of our journey, which we had been told to conceal, was perfectly obvious to all, since the left-hand track led solely to the mountains of Kadur. These, the people shouted, are the strongholds of Himyar; they had no wish to see a stranger there. The headman was
friendly, but not so his flock. They surged with waving arms round ’Ali, and I was beginning to despair of the whole attempt when my maternal Uncle of the day before appeared and took my donkey by the rein. He too belonged, he said, to the village, and promised to lead me by a secluded pathway to the jl. We slipped away; in the turmoil no one noticed our departure, and we had climbed a small ’aqaba and already saw the level lands before us and the foot-hills beyond, when ’Ali and the soldiers appeared, emerging by the regular pathway. Eight or ten of the villagers were behind them, and—seeing us—made straight for my old man.

  He went down like a swimmer, struggling, with floating white locks and scrabbling arms, and

  “Old Coligny’s hoary hair

  All dabbled with his blood,”

  came, unpleasantly vivid, to my mind; but the group, like a football scrum, was too close-packed for shooting, or even for the effective use of knives. I reflected that when there is trouble the nearest woman is generally the cause of it; the best thing she can do is to remove herself—and I continued to ride towards the hills.