I tried to explain that I was an English teacher, but it seemed that these Arabs were so cut off from that world that they had no concept of what I was saying.
‘What’s in your saddlebags?’ asked the elder.
‘Food, cooking things, that’s all.’
‘Show us,’ the younger boy snapped, and suddenly I found myself looking straight into the yawning jaws of danger, just such a danger as I had been warned about. A clot of adrenalin liquified in my bloodstream, my breathing became more rapid, my dry mouth tripping up the foreign words which I struggled to pronounce.
‘Show us!’ the youth said again.
‘Why should I?’ I said, my right hand fingering the grip of the pistol in my pocket.
‘What are you afraid of? We want to see what you’ve got. Come to our camp and show us.’
‘No, I’m in a hurry.’
‘He doesn’t want to go to a camp,’ the young one said.
‘He’s come to spy out the land for others!’
And just then I noticed that he was cradling something beneath the folds of his shirt. It could only be a weapon. In those spinning seconds I was faced with the two choices with which a man in danger is always faced: fight or flight. If I fought, then someone would be hurt or killed.
Then I saw a way out. A few yards to my left was the edge of a deep gully with a steep, sloping side which was covered in loose gravel, held in place by clumps of bush. Without considering it twice, I thwacked my camel on the shoulder. He plunged across the edge of the gully, slithering and sliding on the loose stone, his legs trembling in an effort to stay upright. Miraculously, he did so, and skipping over the last two metres of gravel, bounded across the flat bottom in two steps, letting his momentum carry him up the lower bank on the other side.
My mind dimly registered the Arabs shouting ‘Stop, stop!’, and then I was racing through the bush in full flight, weaving in and out of the trees, zigzagging behind outcrops of rock, expecting a shot to crack out at any moment. I took a quick glance behind. The Arabs were not following, but I noticed that the younger boy was holding what could only have been the shiny black mass of a pistol. Another shock of ice-cold fear snaked down my spine, and I whipped the camel again, clinging on desperately as he plummeted through the bush, swerving behind some rocky outcrops, which gave me temporary shelter from view. I looked back again, and wondered how I had escaped. I could not believe that the Arabs did not trust themselves to the steep gully I had plunged into like a suicide-jockey. But perhaps they were more solicitous of their camels than I. I shook when I thought of how the camel’s legs had almost given way.
I slowed down to a trot as the minutes passed. Then with another burst of adrenalin, I saw about a hundred metres away to my right, two shadowed heads bobbing up and down above the thornbush tops. The Arabs were circling around, keeping me in their sights. In a moment I was riding at a fast trot again, cutting away from those bobbing heads.
I knew that I could not evade them for long. Eventually I should have to stop. Their camels were fresh, and they knew the country. Then, in the distance, I saw a collection of grass huts. To my right, the ominous, disembodied heads were still moving up and down. I changed course towards the settlement, galloping so that the scrub whirled past in a green blur, until minutes later I found myself coming down a slope towards a zariba of thornbush, where a young boy was herding some sheep. I halted my camel, trying to suppress my heavy breathing, and greeted the boy politely. Then I asked, ‘What’s your tribe?’
‘Awlad Diqqayn, Zaghawa,’ he told me.
Before the words had even registered, I found myself saying, ‘Is this your village?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Welcome there!’
Without another word, I trotted towards the huts. They were built in typical Zaghawa fashion, though they were unkempt and derelict.
Once inside the rough oval of the place, though, I felt a current of warm relief. At once a ragged old man came out saying ‘Welcome!’ shaking hands and leading me into the rough compound, which surrounded his two huts. He instructed two plump girls and a young boy to unload my camel and set it out to graze. The old man spread out some mats for me in the shadow of the compound fence, and brought me water.
‘Are you from the Gor’an?’ he asked me. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘I’m English.’
‘Is that a tribe from Chad?’
‘No, I’m a teacher from Gineina. I …’
The words froze on my lips, as through a hole in the fence I saw the two Arabs who had been following me. They were riding slowly and nonchalantly through the narrow street, outside, looking left and right. At once the old man noticed my expression.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Those men,’ I gasped. ‘Who are they?’
‘Umm Jallul,’ he told me. ‘They’re herding camels near here.’
‘I think they’re bandits,’ I said. ‘They stopped me about half an hour ago. Now they’ve followed me here!’
The old Zaghawi chuckled to himself. ‘They’re not bandits,’ he said. ‘They have a camp near here. Were you travelling on the track? No, I thought not. That’s why they stopped you. They thought you were a bandit, after their camels, heh, heh, heh!’
As the words of the Umm Jallul replayed themselves in my head, I saw at once that he was right. They had been afraid of me, and my reaction to their aggressive manner had made them even more suspicious. A simple misunderstanding, but one which could have been extremely dangerous. I could not, at first, join in the old man’s mirth.
Only later, when it registered that I had actually fled from Rizayqat Arabs and taken refuge with my old enemies, the Awlad Diqqayn Zaghawa, did I raise a smile at the irony of the situation.
The next morning, I gave the old man a present of sugar, and he led me about three miles across the qoz, back to ‘Mr Moore’s Road’.
‘Don’t lose the way again,’ he said severely, ‘or you may find worse than the Umm Jallul!’ I thanked him, and bade him go in peace, watching the spare-framed athletic figure as he disappeared into the bush.
Then I began to follow the ‘road’. It was a narrow swath of brown and red, where the ground had been churned up by the feet of a million camels, horses, donkeys, cows, goats, and sheep. I followed it eastwards as it wound into a lush green valley, thick with vegetation. Later I came across an area where the ground was blackened with fire, the trees cut and mutilated, many of the fallen trunks still smouldering. I guessed that the local Fur farmers had done this in an attempt to clear some fertile ground, but the sight saddened me. The ground might produce a good crop for a few years, but afterwards the sparse topsoil would be leached away by the rains, giving way to useless, sterile sand, another forward push for the relentless creep of the desert.
I ascended the steep incline of the mountain wall I had seen the previous day, a tortuous track between the lumps of hills, which led me down into another richly decorated gorge. I found some Arabs watering a flock of sheep from a deep well, and stopped to beg a drink. They were Awlad Rashid, and they told me to follow the wadi up into the mountains, where I would find a large encampment of their tribe.
In the hour before sunset I was still following the empty watercourse.
It snaked down from the hills through groves of heraz and hejlij, which pressed against its sheer, rocky sides. Its bed was a mosaic of blue stones and boulders, machined by the seasonal flow of water into all shapes and sizes. Suddenly, I was shaken by the sound of a piercing whistle which rang across the wadi, and rounding a twist in the bank, I saw an Arab herdsboy with fifty or sixty camels. Obviously the whistle had been a warning to someone further up the watercourse.
I murmured a greeting to him as I passed. As I rounded yet another convolution of the wadi, a magnificent sight lay before me. I could see along the whole dappled length of the creek as it climbed away from me, an
d all along its banks, on both sides, amongst the thorn thickets, scores of tents were being erected by hundreds of Arabs, men, women, and children. In every patch of hard ground between the trees lay piles of saddlery, the frames of litters, folded rugs and blankets, leather and straw vessels. There were tents in various stages of construction, some already covered with canvas sheets, others no more than a wooden frame, the bare skeleton of a shelter.
Women in their rainbow-coloured dresses swarmed excitedly around the camp, while men and boys herded the hundreds of camels which stomped around in the bushes. It was the largest camp I had ever seen, an entire Arab clan camping together.
As I made my way towards the first tents, a bullet-headed Arab with a clean-shaven face, a large pointed nose and piercing eyes called to me, ‘Welcome, stranger! Come and drink!’ I couched my camel amongst the piles of household effects, and squatted down with six or seven tribesmen drinking tea.
‘You must stay with us,’ said the bullet-headed man.
He ordered the younger lads to strip my camel, and the men piled up the luggage beneath a tree, in my own private dara. I asked the Arabs which tribe they were and my host, the father of this particular section of the camp, introduced himself as Esa Ibrahim of the Awlad Rashid.
‘We’re the Zabob clan,’ he told me. ‘We’re camel-men.’
‘This is the entire clan?’ I asked.
‘Yes, this is all of us. We have come from near Kutum. The grass is worn out over there, and we’re travelling south to better grazing. We stay here tonight, and maybe tomorrow, then we travel on.’
As the sunset wore on, the tents sprang up like mushrooms, blossoming amongst the trees. Twilight brought new shadows along the banks, but the shadows were cast back at the night by the glitter of fires which came to life all the way up the length of the wadi. The smell of woodsmoke drifted down to me as I watched the women moving about like graceful gazelles and the tiny children chasing the camel, which must have seemed like mountains to them. Strings of camels brought water up the tracks and men stalked the creek bed on young calves. It was a scene of utter peace, soothing after the excitement of the previous day. Within twenty-four hours I had experienced both sides of the Arab coin: raw aggression—the volatile face of unrestrained energy; and total trust—the more authoritative power of complete stability. It was this stability and aggression which had sustained a society for millennia. These paradoxical qualities embodied in one spirit made, and still make, the Arabs a great people. In this ancient scene, the people had no expectations of me except that I should observe the rights and limitations of a guest. They were a self-sufficient people, and they had something more: contentment.
The sun of a new day was a golden globe, crisscrossed by the black fingers of the thorn trees, as I set off with Esa Ibrahim up the twisting track which led into the silver mysteries of the hills. At a tiny well we stopped to draw water, and Esa helped me lift the heavy waterskin on to my saddle. As we clasped hands, the Rashidi fixed me with his glittering eyes and said, ‘Khawaja, you’ve come far, but you have a long way to go. By the will of God, you’ll get there.’
I mounted my camel and urged it forward, up the track, willing it into a slow, steady trot. I was setting off to another horizon, another noon, another sunset. I had come far, but the road ahead was longer. By the will of God, I should arrive.
15. A ROAD BEFORE ME
I have come, I know not whence, but I have come,
And I have seen a road before me, and I have taken it.
Eliya Abu Madi, I do not know
IN MELLIT I WAS INVITED to a banquet in the house of a rich merchant. It was a housewarming, and open to all comers, and we sat on plush carpets while servants brought in weighty trays of food of all kinds.
After we had completed our ‘shift’ we removed ourselves to make room for others. Just as I was leaving, I heard a voice calling, ‘Hey! Khawaja!’
I turned to see the broad face of a rotund gentleman, and for a moment, recognition swam in my mind. Then I remembered him as one of the people who had witnessed my humiliating interview with the governor of Mellit. I had stood before them, eager and bedraggled,while four portly gentlemen in spotless jellabiyyas had laughed at my keen questions about the Forty Days Road.
The big man motioned me towards him, pulling me close, and said conspiratorially, ‘You still want to kill yourself in the Libyan Desert?’
‘I still want to go, yes, but …’
‘Right! In El Fasher you will find a merchant called Osman Hasabullah. Some Arabs are taking his herd to Egypt in a few days’ time, Rizayqat Arabs. Go to Fasher and contact him at once, if you still want to go.’
I walked away slightly dazed; I wondered if this large old man was trying to mock me. I said to the person next to me, ‘Who’s that big man over there?’
He squinted across the room, then said, ‘Him! He’s Mohammed Musa. The most important camel-merchant in Mellit. Why do you ask?’
‘I think I’m going to El Fasher,’ I said.
I felt now that I was ready to take on the challenge of the Libyan Desert proper. From the encounters I had had with the authorities in Mellit, I sensed that if the authorities in Fasher, the provincial capital, got to hear of my plans, they might prevent me from travelling, so I did not report to the police on my arrival there. Instead, I used a letter of introduction I had been given in Mellit to some members of the veterinary department, at whose mess in the Awlad Ariif quarter of the town I stayed. It was one of the veterinary surgeons, Awad Al Kariim, who put me in touch with the camel-merchant, Osman Hasabullah.
I first met him in Awad’s office. He was a small, austere man, clean-shaven and with the brusque, no-nonsense manner of the uneducated rich. He wore a dazzling white jellabiyya, a costly silk headcloth and a woollen tobe, and he carried a walking stick of shiny black babanoss with a carved handle. He greeted me in a rather peremptory way, telling me that his Rizayqat would be leaving after a few days, and inviting me to come to his house the next day to meet them.
When I arrived there the next day, there were six of the Rizayqat sitting with the merchant. They were dark-skinned with sharply defined features, as if their faces had been carved from some heavy wood. All wore calf-length Arab shirts of varying shades, and ragged ’immas in twisted helixes across their close-shaved hair. They carried daggers, the telltale sheaths of which bulged under their sleeves, and most of them wore thin moustaches and curls of beard sprouting from their chins, in the style of nomadic Arabs. These men looked formidable and unfriendly, and I wondered how much they would accept me on such a difficult journey.
Osman Hasabullah introduced me to a short, thickset man with very bright, penetrating eyes. This was Ibrahim Hamed, the desert guide, known by his nickname ‘Abu Sara’, after his firstborn child.
His face was weathered and ageless, and he looked very powerful. As I seated myself amongst them, the merchant told me the names of the other Arabs, who glared at me fiercely as they were named. The last to be introduced stood out from the rest. They were short, lightly built, and delicate, but he was heavy and broad-shouldered, with a wide, cheerful face and longish, curly hair. The others referred to him disparagingly as ‘the Hamedi’, since he belonged not to the Rizayqat, but to a nomadic tribe in Kordofan, the dar Hamed. He was the youngest of the group, I thought, about my own age, and he seemed a little ill at ease among the glowering Rizayqat, whom I suspected regarded him as something of an outsider. This held an important lesson for me: if they did not accept this man, whose only distinction was that he belonged to a different, though related Arab tribe, how much more difficult would it be for them to accept me, who did not share their language, their religion, or their cultural background.
Tea was served by the merchant’s assistant, another Rizayqi called Juma. He was dressed in a fine shirt and a lace skullcap, but the expensive clothes did not disguise the deeply carved features o
f his tribe.
Abu Sara stared at me constantly as he drank his tea, and as he set the glass down, he said, ‘Khawaja, the way across the desert is hard. It is summer, there will be thirst, severe thirst; there will be heat, there will be fatigue: do you understand that?’
‘I understand,’ I answered seriously. At least this was a positive attitude: it called for no fanciful explanations, merely the fact of acceptance.
‘And you still want to go?’
‘I want to go.’
Abu Sara explained that they would be taking a herd of a hundred and forty camels to the markets of Egypt, crossing the desert and touching the Nile near Dongola. From there they would follow the river to Egypt. However, he refused to take me further than Dongola, and it was some time before I discovered why. I agreed to meet some of the Rizayqat at the wells of Awlad Ariif the next day.
I arrived at the Awlad Ariif wells early the next morning, to find the Hamedi and three other Arabs watering about eighty camels of all sizes. One of them, Adem Mohammed, stood up to his calves in the muddy water around the troughs. He was a slim greyhound of a man, with silver in the stubble of his hair, which had been shaved close to the skull; he wore nothing but an old sirwel and a dagger in a sheath, and in his hand he held a long whip of hippopotamus hide with which he kept the camels in place at the troughs. Another, Saadiq Idriss, was crouching over a fireplace of three stones, making ’asida.
Saadiq and the Hamedi called me over to eat, and as we settled around the pot, Adem came up with a fair-skinned lad called ’Ali. I sensed immediately that Adem was hostile, for he avoided looking at me and began to talk about me to the others as if I were not present.
‘Is he a Muslim?’ he asked.
‘No, he’s a Christian, of course, all khawajas are Christian!’
‘Then he’s an unbeliever!’
‘Christians know God.’
‘But he doesn’t know Arabic. How can he travel with us?’
‘He knows Arabic.’
In Search of the Forty Days Road Page 21