In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  It had taken me some time to realise how famous Moore was in Darfur. Many people, even those who were too young to remember him, were familiar with his name, and some of the Arab tribes had oral poetry about him. They often referred to him as ‘Sultan’ almost as if he had been an independent ruler of North Darfur rather than just a district administrator. Evidently he had been a most unusual character, and I wished I could have met him. Abdallahi asked me if I knew him, and I told him that I didn’t, though I thought he had died recently.

  I asked the Arabs if they had heard of Wilfred Thesiger, who had been Moore’s assistant in Kutum. At first no one seemed to know what I was talking about, then suddenly Abdallahi said, ‘You mean Sejjar! Of course I remember him! He was a big, tall man. Very young and strong, and always killing lions. One day a lion came charging at him out of the bush. His men wanted to kill the lion with spears, but he said, no, let it come. Just as he fired, his foot trembled, but he hit it right between the eyes. Afterwards he took off his shoes and threw them away. “Why did you do that?” someone asked him. “Because they’re no good,” he said. “They let my foot tremble!”’

  The Arabs connected me with Moore and Thesiger simply because these were the only other Englishmen they knew of, and imagined that we were from the same ‘tribe’. During other journeys in Darfur, when meeting people who had difficulty in understanding that I was an Englishman, I referred to myself as being the Awlad Moore (‘Children of Moore’) tribe. I rarely found anyone over forty who did not grasp this immediately.

  The second day after leaving Umm Badr, we camped for the night on a plain of hard, flat sand. Shortly after we had made camp, two camel-riders arrived. As they came out of the shadows to greet us, we saw immediately that they were the Ruwahla we had met in Umm Badr.

  After shaking hands with each of us, they came to join us at the fire, their angular, hawkish faces turned to Abu Sara.

  ‘You left without us!’ one of them said.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Abu Sara, unflinchingly. ‘We decided that it would be better to move on as quickly as possible. We didn’t know where to find you.’

  ‘Never mind. God is generous.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which clan of the Zayadiyya did you say you belonged to?’

  ‘I didn’t say, but we’re the Awlad Jerbo.’

  ‘Do the Awlad Jerbo take their camels to Egypt in summer?’

  ‘These camels aren’t ours. They belong to Osman Hasabullah in El Fasher.’

  ‘Which way did you say you would take to Egypt?’

  ‘By Jebel El Ain.’

  ‘That way is dangerous. There are many bandits. It is better to go another way.’

  The air was suddenly charged with pressure. I scanned the faces of the Rizayqat. They were impassive, yet something about their composure suggested a taut string, ready to snap.

  Then Abu Sara said with slow authority, ‘There is no other way. There may be bandits in the desert, but does Arab rob Arab as dog eats dog? God will reckon their sins.’

  ‘But some of these men are wild, and don’t know God.’

  ‘But God will go with us.’

  I looked at the Kababish. Their predatory eyes were now wide open and staring at our guide.

  ‘Some of your camels have Ruwahla brands. Perhaps they are stolen.’

  ‘I have papers for each one of them.’

  ‘They might have been stolen before you bought them. By the law of the Arabs the original owner may take them back. Suddenly Abu Sara’s eyes opened wide. The slow, easygoing manner dropped from him as if it had been a mask, and he fixed the Ruwahli who had spoken with a glare like a knife-thrust. ‘Are any of these camels yours?’

  The other man seemed hesitant for the first time, ‘Well … no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you?’ said Abu Sara to the other Kabbashi.

  ‘No, they are not mine.’

  ‘Good.’ It seemed at once that Abu Sara had grown in stature, his true being showing through in its hardest, most uncompromising aspect: he looked, as he was, a man who had grown strong from a lifetime spent in the world’s most severe school. ‘Then it is better not to say that they are stolen. For anyone who tries to take camels by force must answer for it.’

  ‘God is generous,’ said one of the Kababish.

  ‘Amen,’ agreed Abu Sara.

  Without another word the tribesmen rose and mounted their camels. A few moments later they were nebulous, ghostly figures in the moonlight. Then they merged with the thicker strains of the shadows and were gone.

  ‘We might have trouble with them,’ Abu Sara said, finally.

  ‘They’re treacherous those Ruwahla, by Almighty God!’ said Saadiq.

  ‘They may come back at any time, brothers, and they may bring others. This is their country, don’t forget. We must watch the herd all the time,’ said Abu Musa.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Abu Sara. ‘We’d better move on as quickly as we can to the wells at Rameiti. Then we’ll be in Handab country. I have friends there who will help us if there is trouble.’

  ‘They won’t come back now,’ said Adem. ‘You scared them off.’

  ‘By the will of God you’re right. But only God knows.’

  Later, as we lay down to sleep, there were flashes of electricity in the depth of the sky; veins of metallic yellow, which split and branched as they ripped the night’s velvet. Far away I heard the soft boom of thunder, and I thought of Eliot’s ‘Dry sterile thunder without rain’ from ‘The Waste Land’. And in that thunder, it seemed, lay a profound warning from nature about the gathering storm, which lay coiled and waiting across our future.

  There were purple streaks in the sky as I awoke and went to join the others at the fire. In minutes the streaks had grown blue and brilliant, and I watched the familiar dark-swathed figures moving around the circular mass of the herd, hearing the clink of the ’uqals as the camels were freed. The day was humid and uncomfortable, and my palms sweated as we moved off that morning. The clammy atmosphere depressed me, so that even the beauty of the landscape, the vacant miles of sand, the crusted mountains in the distance failed to stir me. As the temperature dropped in the evening, however, my spirits soared, and we moved on mile after mile in the inky darkness, which was so thick that we could hardly make out the camels before us. The darkness drew the camels together with an instinct as old as time, and the Arabs sang and shouted relentlessly as if to remind each other of their own existence. On and on we travelled, going always a little to the east of the pole star, which Abu Sara kept at his left shoulder. To the west I could see the golden asterisk of Venus—which the Arabs called zahra—by whose slow descent Abu Sara judged the time.

  Later we made camp, and as I drifted off to sleep after the meal, I was woken suddenly by a yell from Saadiq.

  ‘What is it?’ I gasped, as the others started up.

  ‘Two riders!’ he said, pointing. ‘There!’

  For many minutes we sat straining our tired eyes in the darkness, but we saw nothing but the eternal stars littering the silk screen of the night, and heard nothing but the rhythmic mastication of the herd.

  ‘You imagined it, by God!’ declared Adem, always ready to ridicule Saadiq.

  ‘Never!’ replied the other. ‘I saw them. They passed over there.’

  No one commented further. All of us had in mind the menacing figures of the Ruwahla whom we had met the previous night. Abu Sara detailed a strict watch on the camels, but so exhausted were we from the day’s ride that none of us was able to stay awake for long.

  The next day we moved across trackless nothingness, which stretched to every horizon. Occasionally jagged necks of hills raised themselves from the hard, flat sand, and I was sure that Abu Sara was navigating on these, having memorised the exact shape, colour, and texture of each. I tried to do this myself, but after a short while I found th
at my mind was only able to retain a blurred, imperfect image. Before the sun’s heat came out like a spear from its housing, a haboob set in with devastating force. We covered our faces and battled on towards the horizon, the Rizayqat bent forwards over the horns of their saddles, accentuating the strange jutting profile which walking camels present.

  The landmarks were lost in the chalky mist of the storm and I felt entombed in this infinite place, lost with a group of mortals, surging on some incomprehensible compulsion to the bounds of the earth and its wilderness.

  It was a relief when Abu Sara called a halt, but as we crouched in the lee of the camels we were immediately covered by sand. The water, already foul and greasy, was laced with sand as soon as it was poured, and we could do nothing but cover our faces and wait till the storm passed. As the force of the wind began to drop, a figure appeared out of the nothingness: it was a bent old man, like a haunting leprechaun.

  ‘Welcome!’ shouted Abu Sara, and the figure advanced towards us.

  After we had greeted him and given him some of our gritty water, he said, ‘You’re near the well of Ruweiba. What is your people?’

  ‘Arab, Zayadiyya.’

  ‘There are some Ruwahla at the well. They said that some zurqa were bringing a herd up this way. They must have spoken of another herd.’

  ‘Either that or they’re lying. We’ve seen no one else.’

  When the wind had dropped enough, we lit a fire, and the old man stayed to eat some of our ’asida, before heading off back to the wells, which were in a nearby wadi. Abu Sara decided that we would press on to Rameiti, but when the time came to count the herd, we discovered that one animal was missing. This time it was Abu Sara who blamed the Hamedi for supposed idleness, and cursed him loudly.

  Adem said, ‘He’ll make for the well.’

  It was decided that Saadiq should go off and search for the animal, but before he mounted Abu Sara said, ‘Watch out for those Ruwahla, brother.’

  We waited for his return. Half an hour passed, then an hour. Abu Sara fidgeted nervously. Then Saadiq appeared on the skyline and we saw immediately that the camel was with him. He arrived in the camp mumbling disgruntledly to himself, ‘Curse their fathers, those Kababish!’

  ‘What is it?’ Abu Sara asked.

  ‘The camel was at the well and it had drunk. The devils made me pay fifty piastres for the amount of water. Fifty!’

  We laughed uproariously when we thought of what might have happened. Saadiq, however, refused to see the funny side. ‘They cheated me!’ he said. ‘No camel can drink fifty piastres’ worth of water! Money is money!’

  ‘Did you see the Ruwahla?’ Adem asked.

  ‘Yes, they were there but they didn’t speak zurqa! I’d like to zurqa them, by the life of the Prophet!’

  For the next three days we moved deeper and deeper into the wasteland, beyond tracks, beyond the stark huts of the Kababish. All around us was nothing except an endless beach of flat, featureless sand, a monotony unbroken even by a rock, a blade of grass, or a dead tree.

  The environment both humbled and exalted. It seemed that the stature of the Rizayqat increased steadily in proportion to the severity of the surrounding landscape, and I never ceased to be amazed by their hardiness. At the same time the vast emptiness of the desert reduced our tiny, struggling world to absolute insignificance: a small nest of living creatures with no more permanence than a gust of wind playing across the face of the ocean. A haboob blew almost constantly, and each day was a quarterless battle against an alliance of unbeatable foes: thirst, heat, and exhaustion. During the lulls in the battle, I discovered that my surroundings were having a strange effect. My mind became unusually clear and lucid, and I found myself following logical trains of thought for several hours without losing the thread. I was able to think more profoundly about myself than I had been for years, to examine my motivations, aims, and objects in a new and surprisingly fresh light. This was totally unexpected, and I guessed that it was a result of the low sensory input one experiences in the desert.

  In our normal environment, our thoughts are constantly bombarded by information gathered from our surroundings, which are in a state of perpetual change. In the desert, though, the surroundings are static and featureless, liberating the mind and allowing strings of ideas to run and develop in logical chains. I had read about the effects of sensory deprivation, and even experienced them during a Special Air Service ‘resistance to interrogation’ exercise. In this, though, the situation had been induced artificially and in a deliberately unpleasant way, so that the principal effect had been disorientation. In the desert I experienced it as something valuable and satisfying. I wondered if the Arabs were experiencing it too, or if perhaps their minds were constantly on this level. It might help to explain why they were customarily so keen and observant.

  By day we rested in our tent of canvas and wool, and after sunset we laid our bedding in the sand. We awoke to find ourselves half-buried in drifts, which had piled up in the night. We had loaded the pack-camel with firewood, since none was to be found in this quarter, and we used it very sparingly. Our greatest problem was water: although we had enough to drink, what we had was filthy and fetid with a nauseating smell, and even strong Arab tea could not disguise its rankness.

  One evening, after the meal, I got out my Michelin map in order, purely for the sake of interest, to make a rough estimate of our position.

  This was a new diversion for the Arabs, who jeered and laughed when I tried to explain it to them, and Adem asked me if I thought the map better than the guide. For a long time afterwards I considered the skill of Abu Sara. It seemed quite remarkable that this man could navigate so accurately without instruments, except those he was born with. For him the desert was a familiar place, and what seemed so difficult for me was second nature to him. His proficiency was a simple necessity for survival: from an early age he had learned that it was a matter of life and death. The pilot was the pivot of the herd both physically and mentally; he knew the water sources, the grazing areas, the places to find shade and firewood. Already I had doubted whether the survival of man in such conditions was possible without the camel; now I wondered how long any of us would have survived without the expertise of Abu Sara.

  I once asked him his opinion of the desert, having explained my own impressions of its beauty and grandeur. He looked at me uncomprehendingly, then said, ‘The desert! The desert is a bitch!’ After three days of backbreaking toil against head wind, a vague black line of what appeared to be jagged rocks, shimmering like a mirage, appeared on the horizon. As we approached, the nebulous shapes materialised into the form of trees. This was the wide, empty watercourse of Wadi al Milik. During the autumn it transferred water from the damp lands of the sub-Sahara into the Nile near Ed Debba, but its trees, kitir, sayal, hejlif, and heraz, were now dry and lifeless, and the wadi bed nothing but sand and rock-hard, cracked mud.

  We camped for the afternoon amongst the bare trunks, grateful to have found some respite from the ceaseless haboob. For moments after we had unsaddled we lay there, our minds drifting, enjoying the rare luxury of shelter. All of us were exhausted, and even Abu Sara was less bubbling with energy than usual. Suddenly, Saadiq let out a subdued cry which cracked the pleasant cosiness of the afternoon rest and set us scrambling to our feet to see what was happening.

  ‘It’s them!’ Saadiq yelled. ‘They’ve followed us here.’

  This time there was no mistaking it. Not more than a few hundred yards away, two riders approached at a jaunty, walking pace. I could already make out their pale faces and the distinctive yellow tint of their shirts.

  ‘It is them, by God the Great!’ said Abu Sara. ‘And we can do nothing but sit!’

  Although the shrubbery in the wadi was quite thick, no Arab could have failed to notice the herd spread out under the trees. We watched as the riders came nearer. On the faces of the Rizayqat, beneath the
fatigue, I saw that sudden terrifying alertness, a bowstring taut and ready to fire. If the Rizayqat had been armed, those two Ruwahla would have been dead men. The riders came within a hundred yards of the trees, then turned northeast at an oblique angle, following the line of the wadi. We watched silently, until they went out of sight.

  ‘They must have seen us,’ agreed Abu Sara, ‘but it’s a strange thing—if they want something why don’t they make a move?’

  For some time we turned the matter over in our minds, all of us disturbed by this latest development, which had come so unexpectedly. It was just possible that the Ruwahla were following us by pure chance.

  Somehow, though, I doubted this, and I remembered Ian Fleming’s quip about chance encounters: ‘Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, and the third time is enemy action.’ It seemed to us all that this third meeting heralded enemy action.

  As soon as the sun had passed its zenith, we moved away from the grey-green vein of the wadi. The camels were now travelling slowly, for the pangs of thirst had once more tightened their grip upon them. I will never forget the sunset of that evening. The sky was a loose, billowing cloth, the sun drenched in golden liquid; all around us on the endless proscenium arch of the desert, a free film show was in motion.

  The clouds carried sparklers of colour—crimson, salmon pink, and burnt sienna—lying across beds of turquoise and prussian blue. Momentarily our world was washed in a glaze of gold, and everything passed into the dimension of the surreal: the impossibly elongated spider-legged shadows of the camels, the sickly pale sheet of the desert floor, the Arabs slumped towards the arched necks of their camels. Abu Musa rode sage and timeless with his great whip held over his shoulder, with Adem and Saadiq in perfect cameo against the skyline, Abdallahi and the Hamedi, angelic with light on the other side, and Abu Sara occupying his usual position, showing nothing but the determined set of his shoulders, rocking slightly with the unfaltering motion of his mount. Then without further warning, the sun was gone, leaving only the dying tracers of fire in the sky to tell of its going.