‘Right, got them,’ I said.
Without even a glance at the documents, the trooper began to say farewell to Ahmed, and a few moments later we started back together up the steep bank of the wadi. Not for the first time I thanked providence for the closeness of tribal ties in the Sudan.
Back at the police post, the captain and another officer examined the papers sternly, asking questions about places I had visited and dates.
They seemed amazed that I had managed to get so far without being stopped by the police. I did not explain that I had only managed to evade them by subterfuge on two occasions. Eventually, the captain closed the book and laid it on his desk. He drew his hands together and regarded me rather as I might have regarded a wayward pupil.
‘In this country we respect our teachers,’ he began. ‘We think you are telling the truth. We could punish you for having no papers,’ he paused to let this sink in, ‘but I have decided not to.’
A flash of relief shot across my brow. After all, there was to be no humiliating repatriation, as I had feared. But he continued, ‘But listen to me well. You must give up these foolish ideas of travelling in the desert on a camel. What can a khawaja know of the desert? You will die of thirst. Or the Arabs will get you, them or the Bedayatt. There are men who will kill anyone for a camel.
‘Yes, I understand,’ I said, as meekly as possible, not wanting to endanger my position by explaining that I had already crossed thousands of miles of desert with the Arabs, or that the Bedayatt, with whom I had travelled, had been my means of escaping the police only a few weeks before. I stood up and prepared to leave, but the captain waved me back.
‘And one more thing,’ he said. ‘There is a lorry going to El Fasher the day after tomorrow. Be on it!’
I realised then that there was to be no triumphant return to Gineina on my camel. I must sell the animal and go back by detested motor transport. The police, after all, had laughed last. I walked out feeling disconsolate, trying to gauge the import of my punishment. As I left the police building, my eyes settled again on the old house of Thesiger and Moore, crouched fortress-like in the sloping sand. I felt a sudden surge of envy for them. In their day, the world had been different, a simpler world with fewer borders or restrictions. Or had it? Had the government, now in the 198os, any greater hold on the desert than they had had in the 193os? The world I had seen out there was one where the law was the law of the tribes, where the people acknowledged not overlords but God and the desert itself. I determined merely to make sure I avoided the police more efficiently on my next journey into the sands.
12. THE HUNDREDTH NAME
Only the camel is great.
Arab saying
FOR THE FIRST MONTHS OF 1981 I chafed at my tether in Gineina. I felt like a captive in my classroom, itching to escape once again to the more primitive world I had discovered out in the qoz. My only contact with this other world was the cattlemarket, out on the very edge of the town, where each day Arabs of the nomadic tribes—the Mahamid, Mahriyya, Awlad Rashid, Bani Halba, and others—congregated with their animals.
They mixed with camel-breeders from Chad—the Gor’an, and the Bedayatt, who ran their small herds in from across the border, where the country was in chaos.
These two elements, the Arabs and the Saharans, with their traditional rivalries, gave the market an atmosphere which was vibrant with electricity. Usually a truce was declared on this neutral ground, though occasionally there were fights and verbal exchanges. It was there that I felt most strongly the sense of timelessness which was now a familiar sensation to me, and which I had come to crave like some narcotic, and I arranged my work so that I could visit the place as often as possible.
My old acquaintance, Shaykh Rashid Omar, was the dominant figure in the market. With the other shaykhs and umdas or senior shaykhs of the nomadic tribes, he controlled much of the sale of camels, horses, cows, and sheep. When I met him there, about a week after returning from El Fasher, he embraced me as if I were a prodigal, and led me off to an enclosed shelter, where eight or nine other distinguished-looking Arabs were sitting cross-legged on the floor. Rashid introduced them to me as the shaykhs of the Umm Sayf Al Din, Awlad Iid, Awlad Zayd,and Shenabla sections of the Mahamid, and the umdas of the Bani Halba and Messeriyya. After we were seated, he told me that he had heard about my arrest by the Camel Corps, and questioned me carefully about all I had seen and done in dar Zaghawa and the desert.
‘By God, but you were lucky to reach Tina!’ he said. ‘Just after you left some Gor’an came across the border and attacked the Messeriyya, as Shaykh Abdallah Janumma will tell you.’ He gestured to a rather mischievous-looking man with over-large ears, who took up the story.
‘Yes,’ he began. ‘We made a big camel-camp near Wadi Sirba. The Gor’an came by day, about forty of them, riding camels. They all were armed with automatics, by God, and you know where those came from! What could we do? They lifted a hundred camels, and took them off into Chad.’
‘Didn’t you send a search party?’ I asked.
‘Yes, by God, we picked up their tracks at once and went after them on horses, twenty of us armed with rifles. They were travelling fast, but the herd slowed them down, and we caught up with them after a few hours. We could do nothing, though, for their rifles were better, and they knew how to fight. Only eighteen of us returned. And no camels. Two of my brothers died.’
‘God have mercy upon them.’
‘The Gor’an are strong,’ Rashid continued. ‘Many of them fought with the French Camel Corps. They steal camels because they love it, and they fear no one.’
It seemed that these raids across the border were increasing. The Gor’an and Bedayatt, dislodged from their homelands by government forces, were finding the Sudan easy prey, and they could pillage herds and even villages without fear of retaliation from any forces on their own side of the border. The reports I had heard suggested that anarchy was the order of things inside Chad, and that each tribe, now armed to the teeth, was vying with the others for dominance. Beneath these raids, though, lay the ancient feud between the Saharan nomads and the Arabs which had affected this area for generations.
Rashid Omar told me that he himself had recently returned from a journey ‘to the south, on business’. I guessed, partly from the stories I had heard, that he had been into Chad, where it was reputed that he had dealings with the government defence minister, Asiil, who was himself an Arab. The nomads on this side of the border favoured Asiil, simply because he stood against the Gor’an and Bedayatt who were harassing them with increasing force.
In such a lawless situation, tribal damins such as Rashid and his friends were extremely important. If any tribesman wished to sell an animal, he must first ask his damin, a kind of guarantor, who then recommended the tribesman’s character to the buyer. The damin was then responsible, should the stock turn out to be stolen, for finding the vendor and bringing him to justice. His authority depended on the consent of the tribe, and therefore his position was strong only as long as he did his job well. Each damin had a signet ring, with which he endorsed the certificate of sale. The ring was a symbol of his position, and was handed down from father to son, unless the rest of the tribe disagreed. Some damins such as Rashid were famous all over the region, and were responsible for many tribes, although often I heard it said that the damins were far more dishonest than any of the people they were asked to represent.
Later the same day, Rashid invited me to eat at his house. The house was full of people who had come to consult the shaykh about disputes over the ownership of animals and debts. Many nomadic families profited by herding camels which belonged to rich merchants, farmers of the settled tribes or townsmen. The Arabs were not paid in cash, but in animals: a certain number of camels each year in proportion to the number they were herding. This often went on for many years. The problem was that the herdsmen could easily claim that a camel had been sto
len, or died, or simply that a female had not given birth, when in fact she had. It was difficult for the owners to prove that the nomads were lying, though the custom was that if a camel died, its skin, with the appropriate brands, should be shown to the owner. This then absolved the herdsman from blame. Thus, although a townsman might expect his herd to increase over the years, more often it became depleted, and I heard of one case in which Rashid’s own family had herded a mob of three hundred camels, which over fifteen years had been reduced to no more than twenty.
At his house Rashid asked me about the two camels I had bought from him and sold in Tina. I told him that I had not been happy with them. ‘They were badly behaved,’ I said, ‘and the large bull kept trying to bite me. I lost money on them in Tina.’
‘It is not possible for a camel to be badly behaved,’ the shaykh told me. ‘They are not humans. They don’t have manners! No, the rider is to blame if the camel is uncontrollable.’
Although I respected the shaykh, I knew that this was partly to defend himself from any suggestion that he might have caused me to buy bad camels. I knew from talking to other Arabs that some camels were more badly behaved than others, for there were even special words for their different traits. I knew too that the Arabs were honourable men in almost every sphere but that which lay closest to their heart: camels. I was no longer the gullible khawaja I had been when I had first met the shaykh, and now I felt angry, because I could see that the Arabs took advantage of their special knowledge of animals to defraud not only strangers like myself, but also anyone who was not a nomad as they were. I did not blame them for this: it was their livelihood. But I was determined that I should never again be cheated over a camel.
This meant that I should have to set myself the task of learning everything I could about these odd animals, which, like the Arabs, I had come to love.
Some weeks later, I watched one of the damins selling a camel to a Mesalit tribesman. The prospective buyer was a small man with the good-humoured, rather childlike features of his tribe. The little man stood amongst a jostling crowd of Arabs, all talking at once to him and to each other about the superb qualities of the camel he was considering, which of course belonged to their family. The damin, Amir Ahmed, a young man with fair skin and smooth features, was examining the camel.
‘By God, brother, he’s strong,’ he was saying. ‘Look at his legs, no extra fat on them. And isn’t his hump fat? He doesn’t look too old, either. Let’s see the teeth.’ He parted the animal’s jaws with a deft movement. ‘Look! Not got his upper teeth yet! Plenty of work left in him!’
The little Mesalati seemed unimpressed by the flow of rhetoric.
‘Let’s see him walk,’ he said.
Amir called to an Arab lad in the crowd, and the youth came forward. He was as lightly boned as a bird, with handsome, delicate features. He took the headrope and stepped easily on to the camel’s bare back, seating himself just behind the hump. He flicked the animal’s flank with the end of the rope and sent him into a sharp trot, cleaving a path through the nodding heads of the tribesmen, bringing the animal round in a tight circle, and couching it at the Mesalati’s feet. He jumped off lightly, as Amir said, ‘How’s that?’, a question which brought murmurs of approval from the onlookers.
‘Seems all right,’ said the Mesalati. ‘How much?’
‘No, you name it,’ said one of the Arabs. ‘The buyer must name it.’
The little farmer looked at the damin. ‘A hundred and fifty!’ Amir said.
‘May God open!’ declared the owner.
‘A hundred and fifty-five!’
‘May God open.’
So it continued in the customary way, Amir offering prices and the owner praying God would open. At two hundred, the negotiations suddenly broke down. The owner flung his arms in the air, and shouted in a high-pitched voice: ‘By God, Amir! You are trying to cheat me! This is a fine camel! Look at it. Is it not fine? How can you offer such a low price?’
Amir regarded the owner with a trace of aggression. ‘It’s a good camel. But this man wants it only to carry his goods. He is not a rich man. And is not two hundred a good price?’
‘Never! May God open!’
Amir touched the little Mesalati cordially on the arm, and led him a little way from the crowd. I could not hear what was being said, as they spoke in whispers, but I could guess. The Mesalati had previously told the damin to bid up to two hundred pounds for him. Now Amir was ‘advising’ the farmer to increase the bid. I knew by now that this whole process of offer and rejection, the righteous anger, the small conference, were all part of the same practised performance which I had seen enacted over and over again. I myself had been caught out many times by the same conspiracy. Amir, supposedly buying the animal for his ‘customer’, was actually receiving a commission from the vendors. I saw the farmer nod; the damin walked over to the owner, and led him away for a similar conference. I guessed that a good price had been agreed upon. Judging by previous performances, there could at this stage have been another burst of angry talk from the owner, and another round of negotiations. This time, it seemed, a good price had been reached quickly, or Amir had decided that the Mesalati had no more money.
‘How much?’ someone shouted.
‘Two hundred and twenty!’ the owner cried. ‘By God, I’m letting it go for nothing!’
Indeed, it did seem cheap for its age and size, and immediately I suspected that there was something I had missed. I watched as the damin urged the buyer to present the Arab with a ten-pound note, the customary pledge of good faith, which he did. Then as the Arabs led the camel away towards the hut of the clerk, I saw what I and the Mesalati had missed. On the animal’s left side, just above the gristly chest-pad, was a small patch of dry skin, with the slightest trace of blood upon it. It was the telltale sign of what the Arabs called zabata: a condition in which the camel’s foreleg rubbed against one side of its chest, making it a little slow in walking, and unable to carry the heaviest loads. The Mesalati was obviously a stranger to the camel-market.
I knew about this ailment of camels simply because I myself had once owned a beast which had been suffering from it, and had only found out when the time had come to sell it. In fact I had lost money on many of the camels I had bought, generally because there was something wrong with them. I had learned the hard way.
My first task was to learn the considerable terminology of the camel. There is a different name for the animal in every stage of its life, for females in different stages of pregnancy and motherhood, for different colours, traits, states, and conditions. The age of the camel is judged by the development of its teeth, and the Arabs can read a camel’s mouth as perfectly as I can read a book. As I slowly began to master these terms, I turned my attention to being able to distinguish between a good camel and a bad one. There are certain defects for which one had to be vigilant: flaps of useless fat on the legs, a drooping neck, bad joints at the knee or ankle, blindness in one eye, or disease in the skin or chest-pad. Once aware of these, spotting them became easy, but what was far more difficult to assess in the confines of the market was the temperament of the camel. A good temperament is essential for a riding-camel, but the great problem is that the Arabs and other tribes refuse to sell any but their inferior animals, for obvious reasons. Some camels look powerful, but are ‘lazy’, others are highly strung and might throw their rider. Camels reared in the qoz are often terrified of buildings, streets, and crowds, while those accustomed to human habitation are often uncontrollable outside the town. One of the most dangerous types is the sharaat, the camel which fears human beings and is likely to run away at any opportunity.
Camels generally do not bite their riders, which is fortunate because their powerful jaws and sharp teeth can easily kill or maim. It is said, however, that camels remember those who have done them harm and will strike back when they are least expecting it. A close friend of mine in Ginei
na once told me of an instance witnessed by his father, who had been a Camel Corps trooper escorting a dispatch rider through the Libyan Desert between Dongola and Khartoum. The dispatch rider had beaten his camel severely during the day, but after sunset the animal had gone well, and the man loosened his grip on the headrope and was talking amicably with his companion. Suddenly, the camel turned its head and seized him by the arm, dashing him from its back against some rocks. My friend’s father had at once shot the berserk animal in the head, but on examining the dispatch rider, he found him already dead. I heard dozens of stories of this kind during my years in the Sudan.
The most dangerous time for a bull camel is when he is in season, which is usually in the rainy season or in winter. At this time, the bull blows from his mouth a bulbous pink bladder, like the one I had seen on the camel which had attacked me near Malemal Hosh. When in season, the camel is likely to attack any human being who gets in his way, and I saw this myself during 1982, in Gineina market.
It was January, and the weather was still relatively cool, and some Bani Halba had brought in a large bull camel from the qoz. He was one of the biggest camels I had ever seen, and from his superb condition I judged that he had been kept as a stud. I walked past the place where he had been couched and hobbled, and remember noticing the strange gurgling sound which he made and the froth which dripped from his jaws, a sure sign that he was about to inflate his mouth-bladder. I had gone over to greet some Mahamid Arabs whom I knew when I heard a piercing scream and a great commotion around the area of the great bull. Turning to look, I saw a crowd of Arabs gathered and some sticks flailing in the air. Dashing over, we were just in time to see a young Mesalit tribesman being dragged from the dripping maw of the camel. His sirwel was torn and bloody, and the curious angle of his leg suggested that it had been crushed. As the Bani Halba pulled the victim clear, they beat the bull ferociously on the head and neck with their staves. He heaved and roared, trying to dodge the blows, and at the same time to sink his teeth into his assailants. I hoped sincerely that his hobbles would not snap, for he was a mighty creature, and could have done a great deal of damage amongst us. Eventually, though, the Arabs managed to fix a rope over his head, and then a silsil chain.
In Search of the Forty Days Road Page 17