Later that day we arrived at some boreholes in the wadi bed, where a group of Mahamid were watering horses. They greeted us warmly and immediately invited us to stay at their camp, which lay in a nearby thicket of thornbush. It was the largest camp I had seen, consisting of twenty or thirty tents divided into family groups. Each family seemed to have its own small area. Our host, Abdal Kariim, was shaykh of one of the families. He and his relatives helped us to unsaddle our camels and showed us to an area of rugs and canvas sheets, at some distance from the tents.
As we sat, drinking water flavoured with buttermilk, many men and youths came up to greet us with tremendous grace. They were obviously unaccustomed to seeing skin as fair as mine, and many jokes were bandied around about my having come to collect taxes or to take someone away. It always seemed curious to me, on my travels, to be associated with the government—a leftover from the days of Turkish, Egyptian, and then British rule when the government had been in the hands of white men. Some of the tribesmen I met in remote areas of the Sudan seemed quite unaware that the government had changed hands.
Soon, however, the attention of the Mahamid was turned to Mohammed Hissein. They questioned him closely about his origins, in a rather suspicious way. Luckily, although he normally spoke in the standard dialect of the towns, as I did, he was able to switch to the distinctive patois of the nomad, and I saw that they were soon satisfied with his Arab status. Mohammed himself was intensely proud of his Arab background, and regarded the Mahamid as being related to the Zayadiyya.
As this was my first experience of a camp of this size, I was interested to see how the Arabs arranged their lives. The tents which they used were elaborate affairs, consisting of thick sheets of canvas hoisted over wooden frames. In the past they had used skin tents, but this canvas had become available due to recent trade with Libya, and had replaced the old-style shelters. I admired the way in which the Arabs had only accepted that facet of progress which was adaptable to their way of life, rather than adapting their culture to new developments.
At sunset the camels were brought in from the fringes of the wood and gathered around the tents, where they were hobbled. Mohammed and I brought in our own camels and hobbled them by the fire in the men’s area, the dara, couching them with their heads towards the fireplace.
‘They always like to see what’s going on,’ Mohammed told me. ‘And it’s the custom to let them face the fire.’
After dark we ate more ’asida, and the Mahamid gathered in the dara to talk. They were discussing the next day’s move, and though Abdal Kariim was the head of the family, the decision as to where and when to move seemed to be taken communally. Even small boys aged no more than nine or ten had a part to play in these discussions, and were listened to politely when they spoke.
Amongst these nomadic Arabs, a boy became an adult at his circumcision, which might be performed at the age of eight or nine. The event was marked by a great celebration, for which all the relatives and friends would gather. Animals would be slaughtered, and all the children would be dressed in new clothes. Usually the operation would be performed on a group of boys, who would be brought forward in turn to sit on an upturned water-container. The cutting was usually done with a sharp knife by a skilled man of the tribe, though the process could be long and painful, taking up to thirty minutes. During this time the boy was expected to remain mute, and to encourage him the girls and youths of the family would sing traditional songs such as, ‘Ox, son of the ox, an ox remain!’ It was considered a great disgrace to cry out, and the boy who let his parents down in this way would be shunned and branded a coward. With such a social stigma at stake, of course, it was rare for a child to break down. After the operation had been successfully completed, the Arabs would fire off their rifles and celebrate with a great feast. From that moment on there would be a change in the boy’s status in the tribe. He would be considered capable of defending the tribe’s camels and womenfolk, and as a sign of his manhood he was allowed to wear a dagger.
Amongst these tribes there was a tremendous feeling of family unity, each man being considered an important part of the workforce of the tribe. Old men were respected for their age, but generally a man’s standing in the tribe depended on the number of camels he owned.
The women were considered to be inferior and were not allowed a part in the decision-making of the tribe. In practice, however, most of the men listened closely to the advice of mothers and wives. A wife could be chosen for a boy soon after his circumcision, and it was customary to choose a first cousin. The marriage would be celebrated, and consummated several years later, by which time the boy would be in a position to pay the bride-price. Traditionally amongst the Arabs this was one female camel, though in recent years even camels, it seemed, had been subject to inflation, and up to nine or ten camels might now be paid.
When the Mahamid had finished their discussions that evening, they began to talk to Mohammed and me. They were interested to know why I had come to see them, and why I was riding a camel.
‘Why don’t you work in an office?’ asked one of the younger men.
I grinned to myself, and wondered what this young man with thousands of acres of desert and semidesert in which to roam would think of spending his life in a few square feet of stifling space, crowded with millions of other humans within a few square miles of ground. I was tempted to say that the Arabs had everything in their lives, though they did not know it. Then it suddenly struck me that perhaps they were quite aware of the quality of their lives.
I learned later, indeed, that the Arabs called their migrations ‘the glory of the Arabs’, and considered them to be an important part of their lives. Before each move, they would meet as they had done on this night, to discuss future moves. They told us, though, that as the next day was a feast day, the ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’, they had decided to postpone the move for two days.
That night we slept in the dara, and woke in the morning to the sound of roaring camels and bleating goats. Already, the sunlight was tilting through the trees, and the horses of the tribesmen were stamping impatiently at their tethering-posts. Soon Abdal Kariim’s son, Hassan, a lad of about twenty, lit a fire; the morning was cool and crisp and it was a pleasure to stretch our limbs before the blaze. One by one, those Arabs who had spent the night in the tents came to join us, and since today was a feast day, they greeted us with a special formula, ‘May goodness be with you all the year!’, to which we answered, ‘And may you have health and peace!’ Apart from this, however, the day seemed no different from any other. We ate ’asida from a wooden bowl, and I watched as Hassan milked a female camel and brought us the milk still warm from the udder.
Amongst the tents, I could see the women moving around in their brightly coloured dresses, and a little later Hassan called one of them over and introduced her as his wife, Zirqa. She was a beautiful, plump girl who looked no more than sixteen, her hair braided in the Arab style, known as mashat. As I had expressed an interest in seeing the women’s area, Hassan escorted me around the family tents, where more women were making buttermilk in large urns slung on short tripods, which they swung to and fro. Another woman, Hassan’s grandmother, with skin like dried and wrinkled leather, was grinding corn between two flat stones.
‘This is the Arab mill,’ Hassan told me. ‘We carry the grindstones with us when we move.’
Later, the men of the camp took the herds off to the wadi for watering, and left Mohammed and me in the camp. Although I had heard stories of the Arabs’ jealous regard of their women, they obviously had no qualms about leaving us alone with them. Zirqa came to ask Mohammed Hissein if he would slaughter one of their camels for the feast. Arabs will not eat meat killed by a woman or an uncircumcised boy, and since none of their men were in the camp, Mohammed had to perform. He took my dagger and we walked over to the tents where some girls were holding the doomed animal, a young camel which was suffering from some illness. The Arabs r
arely slaughtered their camels unless they were worn out or ill. I watched as Mohammed stabbed the calf in the shoulder, letting the blood spurt from the main artery, then making a clean cut across its neck.
‘We’re honoured,’ he said to me, wiping the blade of the knife. ‘This camel is for us. I’ve never had a camel killed for me before. It is written, “If you live long you will see the camel slaughtered!” I never thought I’d be doing the slaughtering!’
We ate the camel that afternoon: the meat had been cut into strips and roasted over woodchips in a brazier. After we had eaten, Abdal Kariim called together some youths and dispatched them as scouts to survey prospective sites further on. Grazing in this area, Abu Wishdera, had become sparse, and a move was needed very soon. Then Mohammed and I accompanied Abdal Kariim on a tour of the camp, greeting members of each household. I was reminded of a military commander inspecting the state of his troops before a push.
At night, after the herds had been brought in, we again sat in the dara, and were joined by many visitors who wanted to meet us, the guests. Night clouded over the spiky canopies of the trees, and Hassan built up a fire against the chill. I sat contentedly amongst the Mahamid as they crouched by the hearth in their woollen tobes and furled headcloths, recounting tales in the customary way. Hassan said that he had heard some strange stories about Mohammed’s tribe, the Zayadiyya.
‘For instance,’ he began, ‘I heard that there is a Zayadiyya woman who dresses like a man! It is true, brother?’
‘Yes,’ replied Mohammed. ‘But there’s a good reason. She was once young and beautiful. One day two men, they were from the Berti, zurqa, they tried to rape her. Her father and brother caught the Berti, and they killed them there in front of her. Stabbed them to death with their daggers, which was only just, was it not? From that day she wore a man’s clothes.’
‘By God, a strange story! But they were just, they were just!’
By way of return, Mohammed said that he had heard about the trouble between the Mahamid and the Bedayatt on their recent migrations.
Hassan answered, ‘One of my uncles was herding some camels with his son, a boy of not more than ten. They were north of Tina. Some Bedayatt came on them suddenly and demanded his camels. He refused, so they beat him with clubs, and when he was lying senseless on the ground they took the boy and broke his arm. Then they escaped with the camels. But they are animals, by God! We soon made up a search party, though!’
The other Arabs present shook their heads in remembrance of the deed.
Hassan continued, ‘We made them regret it, we killed two of them!’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, brothers …’
As the Arab spoke, I could imagine how it had occurred. Six or seven Mahamid on their finest horses, with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, tracked the Bedayatt for miles across the open qoz, through acacia groves, into gullies and over rocky escarpments, pushing deep into Chad. Just before sunset, they spotted a long blue wisp of smoke which marked a campfire. Hidden by thorn trees, the Arabs dismounted and saw their own camels grazing near the fire. The Bedayatt, deep within their own land, seemed to believe themselves safe. But as the Mahamid moved nearer, the crack of an automatic rifle rang out across the qoz, then another. The Bedayatt had posted a sentry.
The Arabs opened fire with chilling accuracy: the sentry fell dead, his skull crushed by a 7.62 millimetre round from an Arab Kalashnikov.
The other Bedayatt leapt on to their camels and dashed away, but one of the Mahamid brought down a Bedayatt with a single shot, fired from almost three hundred metres, and the man crashed into a cairn of boulders and lay still. The stolen camels scattered at the sound of gunfire, and while some of the Arabs rode off to round them up, the others went to inspect the dead.
I tried to picture the scene as Hassan spoke, imagining the Arabs standing silently around the limp, bloody figures of the fallen raiders, as the flies settled in swarms on the open wounds and the blood slowly coagulated in pools in the grey sand.
As I gazed round at the pacific, nodding heads of the Mahamid, I found it difficult to imagine that these generous, hospitable people could kill with such merciless abandon. Yet, savage as these laws of retribution seemed, such deaths were the price of freedom in a world without a date or time, where no policeman or soldier had real jurisdiction, and men considered themselves free of interference from any except their own kinsmen.
The next morning Abdal Kariim’s scouts returned on their horses and reported a good patch of grazing about five hours away. The Mahamid began to saddle their stallions and to round up the camels and goats. About an hour later the animals began to trickle out of the thorn groves towards their new camp site. The remaining men and the women then started to dismantle the tents, which gave me a chance to examine the Arabs’ possessions. Their beds were constructed of wooden laths, bound together by uncured hide, which could be easily rolled up and tied on to the camels. The food and cooking gear was packed into a variety of containers made of straw and leather, often brightly decorated, and the unmilled grain was carried in bulging leather saddlebags. All the household items, the millstones, the carved wooden mortars, the utensils, and the furnishings were carried on the howdaj, which the Mahamid called the ’utfa. The water was carried, not in skins, but in great pots mounted on wooden frames and carried either side of the ’utfa.
While the beautiful Zirqa collected the household goods, Hassan began loading the tent-poles and posts on to a large camel fitted with a special saddle, known as a jongola. Suddenly the camel lurched up, roaring and spitting. It threw off its load and scattered lengths of wood everywhere, causing us to dodge and duck out of the way. I watched as Hassan grabbed the animal’s headrope and tied it to a tree. Then, to my surprise, he picked up a tent-pole and began beating the camel savagely on the neck, hitting it so hard that it collapsed. I had never seen an Arab mistreat a camel before, but Hassan said that occasionally an animal must be taught a lesson so that it would not repeat the felony in future. I noticed, however, that Mohammed Hissein shook his head in silent disapproval.
When the howdaj was prepared, Zirqa brought down the great camel’s head with a tug of the bridle, and stepped lightly on to its neck. As the animal lifted its head she twisted herself effortlessly into the litter. It was an impressive picture with its black plumed headdress and its rich tassels of leather tumbling from its throat, neck, and flanks.
The nests of basketwork vessels presented a brilliant display of colours, and the litter itself was draped with costly materials: silk veils and thick handmade carpets with intricate designs. Hassan and the remaining men then mounted their little stallions, slinging their rifles across their shoulders, and urged on the baggage-camels, now laden with tent-frames, boxes, and equipment. The old woman whom I had seen grinding corn climbed into the saddle of another bull camel, but without the colourful trappings. The ’utfa was evidently reserved for the young married women and tiny children.
As we broke from the trees, many other families emerged from their camps, as if on some unconscious signal. There were a dozen litters containing women and children, which now formed into a caravan, a dazzling pageant of colour and ostentation. The baggage-animals followed on, and within an hour we had caught up with the herds and flocks, which were now driven behind the caravan. The occasion took on the quality of a formal procession, each link of which had its individual splendour as it moved grandly across the plain. Mohammed and I rode behind the women, and as far as we could see was a coiling serpent of finery. Ostrich plumes were ruffled in the slight breeze, the ornate leather strands fluttered. The sunlight gleamed along the furrowed ridges of the men’s headcloths, glittered on the tips of the javelins which they carried, and sparkled on the jewellery of those women who rode without shelter. Behind us the camels rippled forwards, shuffling through a smokescreen of dust, and behind them a wall of sound from the goat fl
ocks seemed to force them onward. I was overwhelmed with the grandeur of this sight, for I knew that I was witnessing one of the world’s last nomadic Arab tribes moving with all their possessions and livestock on their annual migration. I felt intensely privileged to be here, seeing an event whose historic continuity was unbroken, and whose roots probably went back to the legendary sons of Qahtan who had migrated in just such a manner before the time of Mohammed, or Jesus, or Moses, or even Abraham.
Some time later we moved into a valley, where the way was obscured by thorn scrub. The procession was forced to break up, and we lost sight of Abdal Kariim and his family, travelling for a while next to an old man with a flock of goats. Further still we came to a wadi, where some Mahamid girls were filling water-pots. Mohammed and I stopped to water our camels, and we helped the children to lift the heavy jars from the boreholes. Then we took it in turns to stand ankle deep in the muddy borehole water and fill a dish for our own animals.
In the afternoon, we returned to the acacia thickets, which were full of Mahamid. We were unable to find Abdal Kariim, so we spent the night at the tents of an older man, Amin Yusif. His tents were pitched on a rocky shoulder overlooking the scrub, and he arranged a dara for us outside the perimeter of the camp, as was the custom, and lit a fire.
After we had drunk tea and camels’ milk, we settled around the fire for the usual storytelling and exchange of news, and several young men came up to hear the talk.
On this night it was Mohammed Hissein who held the floor spellbound with his comparison of the customs of the Mahamid and his own people, the Zayadiyya. It was when he began to compare methods of camel-rearing that the others became really interested. As I had remarked on my journeys in Zayadiyya country, that tribe had some fine herds, far out of proportion to its population. Mohammed explained that this was because the desert fringes where the Zayadiyya lived were far better suited to camel-rearing than the sub-Saharan zone of the Mahamid.
In Search of the Forty Days Road Page 19