In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  ‘What is your people?’ asked one of the Kababish, when he had finished giving us information about the route ahead. ‘Zayadiyya,’ replied Abu Sara, without batting an eyelid. I was astonished that he should have lied to them. I kept quiet, however, and took no part in the conversation, letting it flow to its natural conclusion, while I sat well back in the shadows.

  When I awoke the next morning, the Kababish had gone. I asked Abu Sara why he had lied to them.

  ‘I told you before,’ replied the guide. ‘The Kababish have no love for the Rizayqat. There is hostility between them. Only a few years ago my cousin was killed by Kababish near Jebal Esa on the way to Libya. They took his camels, and left his body in the desert. They are dangerous men and they are the law here. They have weapons, we don’t. We can’t defend ourselves. The Kababish are friendly with the Zayadiyya, but their accent is close enough to ours for the Kababish not to know the difference.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring weapons?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s difficult enough to get past the police on the Egyptian border, even without weapons,’ he explained. ‘We’d never get through if we were armed.’

  That day we moved slowly so as to spare the herd, but the way was difficult, up and down depressions littered with loose shale and dominated by great brown dolmens of rock which broke the surface of the ground, some shaped like upturned pudding-bowls and others like the vertebrae of some giant, half-buried fossil. We passed over dried-up watercourses with soft, sandy beds, scattered with cowrie shells. We moved towards a line of mountains, the colour of which changed from grey to scarlet as we approached. The sky was onyx-blue, blemished only by a tall wisp of bluer smoke from an Arab campfire, which appeared in the distance. We left the bush land far behind and moved on to a tilting slope of sand, fringed with the crags of jutting hills. With startling force a haboob began, lashing our faces like a leather-thonged whip. I bound my headcloth tightly around my face so that only the eyes showed. Suddenly, over the wind, I heard the Hamedi shout from behind me, ‘One of the camels wants to die!’

  I wheeled around to see a young animal lying on the ground and shivering in pain. Quickly, Abu Sara halted the herd, and I watched as he and Adem poured out the last of our water into a dish. Instead of letting the camel drink, they poured a little of the water over its nostrils.’

  Still it shivered silently, as the haboob blasted by. Abu Sara suddenly drew his dagger, and began to make small, deft slits around the camel’s nostrils. He cut until the blood ran down its jaw, mixing with the fine sand borne on the wind. Then Adem poured more water over its head.

  Miraculously, it stopped shaking. Adem allowed it to drink the remains of the water, then he, the guide and the Hamedi began to kick and tug at the beast, until finally it staggered to its feet, its legs trembling unsteadily like those of a newborn calf.

  ‘Come on! Mount up!’ bellowed the guide. ‘We’ve got to get to Umm Badr today, or they will all go like this.’

  Now there was a new atmosphere of desperation as we pushed forward into the evening. All of us knew that if we failed to reach Umm Badr that night, we would be lost. The desert lay before us, pale as paper, seemingly without landmarks. But I knew that if there was anyone who could find water in this wilderness, it would be Abu Sara.

  Sunset came as we descended a great dune, leaving a trail of colours in the sky, prussian blue, magenta, and scarlet. In the darkness which came down like a blind, Adem and Saadiq began a faltering camel chant, ‘weh weh oooh weh’, and I tried to join in, but our mouths were so rasped with dust and dryness that the effort soon failed and we rode grimly on. Even Abu Sara rode without speaking, and I caught myself thinking, over and over again, ‘It can’t be far now!’ But the hours passed blindly on, as featureless and empty as they had been on the way from Umm Sunta. Then, just as I was starting to think that perhaps Abu Sara was lost, after all, he called to Adem. ‘Go over that ridge and see if there’s water.’

  Adem broke from the ranks of the herd, urging his mount into a trot, a shadowy figure, undulating silently over the hard sand, until he was swallowed up whole by the predatory darkness. We continued for a silent lifetime. Then Adem reappeared suddenly out of the blackness like a figure from a pop-up picture book. As soon as he drew near, Abu Sara shouted, ‘Is there water?’

  ‘By God the Great, brothers, there’s a sea!’

  ‘Praise be to God!’

  Everyone blessed the Almighty and the Prophet repeatedly. One more night, we all realised, and half the herd would not have been able to carry on. Within minutes we were over the ridge, and I saw the dim reflection of the starlight in the pool. The camels plunged in, smashing the mirror image, slurping up the water noisily, gagging and heaving in their efforts to push their way through the crowd.

  Saadiq filled a bowl and handed it to Abu Sara. ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,’ he whispered and took a long draught. Then each of us drank in turn: the liquid had the consistency of weak glue and approximately the same taste but none of us complained.

  ‘God is Generous!’ said Abu Musa.

  ‘Amen!’ echoed the others.

  We sank back into the soft sand, catching a few moments’ respite while the camels drank. My mind drifted off. All I knew was that I was here, and that somehow by this experience, I had transcended the life I might have lived. For I knew instinctively that this experience was going to be a seminal one in my life, that a serious and fundamental change had taken place within me, and that I should never, as long as I lived, be quite the same again.

  17. A SMALL NEST OF LIVING CREATURES

  Life here evaporates like a vapour.

  Antoine de St Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

  THE POOL SEEMED A MIRACLE when I awoke the next morning. It glistened like glass as the first ruby fingers of the dawn kindled its fire. I ran down to the water’s edge and plunged in; it was so cold that it stung.

  Afterwards I sat in the sand for some time, admiring the beauty of the place. It was a desert-man’s heaven: a cool, shaded oasis, surrounded by crusty terraces of sand. The water was as smooth as marble, skirted by grey cliffs on one side and ivory beaches on the other. There were groves of nim trees on the open side, and above the cliffs a hundred black eagles played around each other in spiralling flight paths. It was a vision of paradise that one could keep in one’s heart always in the oven of the Libyan Desert.

  A bevy of Arab women came down to the water driving a score of donkeys carrying empty goatskins. They were Kababish women with coffee-coloured faces and shoulder-length hair, as black as jet. They began splashing about in the water, floating the skins and filling them, and the sound of their cheerful, feminine laughter drifted up to me like music after the tensions of the journey.

  Already in the distance I could make out the minuscule shapes of camels being watered, and as time passed more and more were brought out of the desert for the nomad’s perennial task of watering. The camels were accompanied by ragged, biblical-looking figures: old men with Santa Claus beards of ash grey and younger ones with long straggly mops of hair who walked barefoot in the hot sand. Very soon, there were camels as far as the eye could see. I had never imagined that there were as many camels in the world as I saw at Umm Badr that morning.

  When I returned to the camp, I found the Rizayqat in conversation with two Kababish tribesmen. They were lean wolves of men with thick black beards, who seemed outwardly friendly. Yet I sensed tension as I shook hands with them and answered the usual catechism about my background.

  ‘Which way are you going to the river?’ one of them asked.

  ‘By the black mountain, Jebel El Ain,’ Abu Sara said.

  ‘We could travel with you,’ said the Kabbashi. ‘We’re from the Ruwahla, and our country lies in that direction.’

  ‘Well, we’re leaving at dawn tomorrow,’ Abu Sara said. ‘You can meet us here.’

&nbs
p; The Ruwahla agreed, and walked off towards the pool. As soon as they were out of sight, the guide turned to us and said, ‘Get the camels ready, we’re going as soon as possible.’

  ‘But what about them?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not travelling with them, by God!’ the pilot said. ‘I don’t trust them at all. They’re bandits. Didn’t you see the way they looked at our camels? And the way they asked us about our tribe? They didn’t believe we were Zayadiyya. Curse their fathers, these Kababish miss nothing!’

  The guide seemed really nervous, and I knew that to have deceived the Ruwahla like this, he must be convinced of the danger. Luckily they did not return, and we prepared the camels as quickly as we could for departure.

  We left the rainwater pool a few hours later, moving behind the camels, whose bellies were now bloated with water. As we climbed one of the ivory-coloured dunes which swept down to the lake, I realised that we were leaving the last ‘civilisation’ of any kind between here and the Nile. What lay ahead of us was five hundred miles of almost waterless desert, inhabited only by a few scattered families of Arabs.

  Now something had changed in our relationship. I felt proud and happy to be riding with the Rizayqat. For their part, their treatment of me had become no more indulgent, but I sensed a new current of acceptance under the rugged surface of their manner. I knew that I could never be totally accepted by the Rizayqat: the linguistic and cultural barriers were too great, but I was pleased with the melting of the initial aura of suspicion.

  The first afternoon out of Umm Badr was like riding in a furnace, the sun out like a scythe slashing at its flesh-and-blood chaff. The Rizayqat called an exceptionally hot day such as this abufarrar, ‘father of axes’, since they said it was able to strike a man down with a single blow. I estimated that the temperature was about 45° Centigrade, which made this one of the hottest places on earth. We climbed up and down dunes and into dry watercourses, passing huts and tents of the Kababish stuck on the bald contours of hills without any protection from the sun. I found it incredible that anyone could live in these conditions.

  We were travelling towards a wedge of grey mountains, which seemed mystic and eerie beyond the pale sands, and the desert itself displayed a palette of colours: orange, scarlet, and brown, ornamented by rock of ivory and silver. We rode slowly, until sunset came like a blessing, and camped in a watercourse.

  That night as usual we took turns to watch the herd. Abu Sara seemed particularly restless on this occasion, and I knew he was still thinking of the Ruwahla. I realised that it was quite a strain on him and the others to lie about their origins in this way, especially for the sake of someone else’s camels, for they were proud of their tribe. I wondered how Abu Sara felt about Osman Hasabullah, and asked if the merchant ever rode with the herds.

  ‘Him!’ scoffed the pilot. ‘By the life of my father, he’s a zurqi! He Wouldn’t know the camel’s head from its tail! Perhaps he might do it on a donkey!’

  This was rather unfair, for Osman’s tribe, the Berti, had camels, though they were not of Arab ancestry. I saw that the Arab idea of superiority also applied to the merchants.

  ‘That man’s nothing but a robber!’ the guide went on. ‘They’re all bandits that lot! How much does he pay me for this journey? Three hundred pounds, that’s all! And one hundred for the others. Look at the work we do! Is it easy? And he sitting in his big house sipping coffee! We should let the Ruwahla take everything, by God!’

  The Arabs’ wages were certainly meagre. For what amounted to a three-month round journey in atrocious conditions, the herdsmen received the equivalent of fifty pounds sterling, and the guide with all his responsibility only a hundred and fifty. When I thought of those I had heard disparaging the Sudanese for their laziness, I had to smile to myself. These Arabs worked like ants from dawn far into the night, an endless cycle of toil in merciless temperatures, which alone were enough to cripple lesser men. It seemed to me that rarely had I seen so little reward won with so much hardship.

  However, Abu Sara and Saadiq both owned a camel in the herd, by which they hoped to gain a little extra on their mean wages. Saadiq pointed out his camel to me; it looked weak and I hoped it would reach the market. I noticed that he was worried about its condition.

  After supper that night I sat and talked to the Hamedi. The journey had taken its toll on him and he looked thin and tired, hardly able to stay awake. I asked him if he liked travelling in this way.

  ‘There’s great fatigue here,’ he said. ‘Heat and thirst. This isn’t like the land of the dar Hamed, by God. In our land there’s plenty of grass and trees and water, the camels thrive. Here there’s nothing but sand and dead trees.’

  I asked what he would do after the journey and he told me, ‘I’ll go back to my camp in our dar. I’ll spend my money in Egypt on camel-whips and pans and canvas, then I’ll sell them to the nomads.’

  I wanted to ask how he felt about the Rizayqat, but it would have been impossible in the close confines of the camp, where every word was a public announcement. This was a good thing, for the constant sharing of information gave the group a muscular unity and prevented fragmentation, which would have been disastrous under these conditions. The Arabs talked from the moment they woke up, until they went to sleep, and at night, after we had eaten, the time would be filled in by endless rounds of storytelling. Often the stories were repeated over and over, though no one objected much.

  Adem was the best storyteller, though Abu Sara had the most interesting tales, especially of his adventures as a young man, and about inter-tribal battles and incidents. It was from him that I learned that the governor of Mellit had not been entirely correct when he had told me that the Forty Days Road was no longer in use. He claimed that he had come down from Egypt that way as a young man, though he called it the White Mountain Route.

  ‘Of course, no one goes that way except the bad ones,’ he said, his eyes glittering in the firelight. ‘They go that way to avoid the police and the customs. No honest man would use it.’

  ‘Then you’re a bandit, by God!’ said Adem.

  ‘Listen, brothers, I was a youth then. We were bringing weapons down from Egypt. They were rifles, English I think. I remember they were beautiful weapons, by God, packed in boxes. But that way was hard, believe me. Where was the water? Where was the food for our camels? There was none. After seven days we arrived at the oasis of Selima, and thought we were safe. We had to get water there, but it was bad, and there were some Kababish. They came into our camp, talking and drinking tea. Then they said, “Show us your rifles!” “How do you know we have rifles?” we said. “No one comes by this way unless they have rifles,” they said. “It would be better to give us some of these rifles, then no one will know which way you are going.” You understand, brothers? They wanted payment for silence.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘How could we refuse? How could we fight the Kababish in their own land? We gave them a box and left the next morning. By God, but these Kababish miss nothing!’

  ‘Why then,’ I asked Abu Sara, ‘if the Kababish were so rapacious, did they not just take our camels?’

  The old guide laughed and said, ‘Maybe they will, by God. God only knows what they will do! But Jebel El Ain is the dangerous area. Once we are in the land of the Nuba no one will touch us, by the will of God!’

  Another story which Abu Sara told was about how the war between the Mahriyya section of the Rizayqat and another Arab tribe, the Bani Halba, had begun in the late seventies.

  ‘It was like this,’ he said. ‘One day three camels belonging to a young man of the Mahriyya wandered into some sorghum belonging to the Bani Halba. The Bani Halba captured them and took them to their camp. Then the owner came along on his riding-camel, with his rifle, to get them back. “By Almighty God,” he said, “those camels are mine, give me them.” “By God,” they said, “those camels belong to us, for we
found them in our fields!” “Then I will buy them from you!” said the Mahri. “What is your price?” “Never,” they said. “They will stay here!” “Then I’ll fetch my family, and we will see, you sons of dogs!” The Mahri rode away on his camel, but as he did so, one of the Bani Halba women, who had been angered by his last remark, said to her sons, “If you are men you will take his rifle, and I will use it to stir the ’asida!” Then one youth from the Bani Halba ran after the Mahri and stopped him. “Give me your rifle!” he said. “You’ve had my camels,” said the Mahri. “Now if you want my rifle you must pay for it!” And he shot the youth dead. Then two of the boy’s brothers came running, and he shot them too. That was how the war started. After that there was much killing.’

  ‘How did it all end?’ I asked.

  ‘They held a great meeting, the government, the elders, and the tribesmen. Fourteen of the Bani Halba had died, by God! And six of the Mahriyya. It was decided that the Mahriyya should pay twenty thousand pounds to the Bani Halba. But even to this day, the Bani Halba hate us!’

  Old Abdallahi rarely told stories, but on several occasions he spoke about his younger days during the time of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. He spoke of Guy Moore in the thirties and forties: ‘Sultan Moore was a generous man! By God I’ve seen him throw money to the people, so that they scrambled for it like chickens! But he was a man who did not play. There were no bandits around when he was Sultan. It was the whip or the rope for anyone who was dishonest!’