A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  I had long ago decided that should I need a companion from these men, I would choose either Wad Siniin or Wad Tarabish. Both were experienced, trustworthy, and resilient. Wad Tarabish was occupied with his duties as court bailiff and could not travel with me. Wad Siniin’s official position was ‘forest ranger’, which meant that he was not tied down to any specific duties. When I asked him to go with me in search of Zarzura, he agreed at once.

  The day after I arrived in the dikka, there was a wedding. Hassan, the son of Sheikh Musa, and Salim’s half brother, was to be married to his cousin. The periods of mourning for Sheikh Hassan and al Murr were over, and there was a great celebration. Amongst the nazir’s people, weddings were far more lavish than amongst the desert Kababish.

  Marriage with first cousins was the rule rather than the exception in Kababish families. A Kababish boy always had first claim on his uncle’s daughter, closest to him in age. The girl had no right of refusal. If any other suitor wished to marry her, he first had to secure the permission of her cousin. In general, the arrangement worked well; it prevented the dispersal of the herds and flocks.

  I slept in the guest tent near the nazir’s new house, and the next morning, was woken by the bridegroom himself. There were several other guests, sleeping there, and after we had splashed water over our hands and faces, we walked to Sheikh Musa’s tent, where a she-camel was being slaughtered. The slaves and servants began to peel away the skin of the animal, revealing a mass of gelatinous fatty flesh flecked with red, and beneath it, the crimson seams of solid muscle.

  A little later, the meat was taken to the family tukul, where the women cooked it in oil over a wood fire. Meanwhile, the guests began to arrive, hobbling their camels and donkeys by the tents and saluting the bridegroom and his father. Soon, the delicious smell of cooking meat filled the air, and Sheikh Musa invited us into his tent. It had been extended and was decked out with drapes of magenta and white cotton. The ground was spread with hand-stitched carpets. One by one, the sheikhs of the Kababish joined us. Amongst them were many familiar faces.

  Soon, the platters of raw hump and liver were brought in, with dishes of onion, lemon, and red pepper. There were bowls of steaming porridge served with milk and chunks of cooked meat with delicious gravy. After everyone had eaten, the slaves poured water over our hands and we milled around in the desert outside. A cold wind blew from the north and the tents billowed slightly amongst the sharp claws of the siyaal trees.

  All day, meal followed meal. There was more raw liver, lights, and hump; more porridge and roast meat. Sheep and goats were slaughtered to keep up with the scores of guests who came and went. Just before sunset, the bridegroom appeared from his father’s tent. He was a dark Arab, clad now in ajibba of almost luminescent white, with a brilliant white-lace headcloth and cotton sirwal. He wore a woollen tobe coiled around the pit of his back, with the ends thrown over his shoulders in the Kababish style. In one hand, he carried a camel whip, and in the other, a silver-hilted sword in a scabbard of leather. On his left wrist, he wore a piece of silk, and on the other, a heavy bracelet of silver. As he emerged, someone brought up a black mare, caparisoned with a high wooden saddle and decorated with a rich saddlecloth. He mounted the horse, and his sword and whip were passed up to him. Many people called out encouragement, but he maintained a deadpan expression, laying the sword across his pommel and keeping the whip stiff in his hand as if he were riding out to battle.

  As soon as the servants led the mare off, everyone scrambled madly to get on their donkeys and camels and follow the procession. The men cheered and raised their whips, and the boys wove playful circles around the groom on their small donkeys. The women poured out of the tents dressed in their wedding finery: long swirling dresses of scarlet and blue, tobes of purple and lime-green, thick nose rings of gold, chunks of amber and ivory, and torques of silver, their fine black hair cascading over the neck in plaited mashat newly smothered in butter. They chanted and clapped, letting forth shrill ululations as they went, and the serpent of Arabs wound on towards the globe of the dying sun.

  Our destination was the hajil, the tent specially erected for the newly wedded couple. It was pitched an equal distance between the tents of the groom’s family and the bride’s.

  The bride was still in her father’s tent, where she had been confined for the past seven days. During this time, her female relations would have prepared her for the marriage. First, they removed all her body hair, using a mixture of sugar, lemon, and water as a depilatory. Then they would annoint her with an exotic perfume called dilka, made of a mixture of spices and sandalwood. The bride would have been made to squat over a hole in which a fire of sweet-smelling herbs and incense had been lit. The woman’s hair would be carefully plaited in the mashal style and hung with pendants of gold. The Kababish women wore gold in the form of nosebands and necklaces, but never on their hands. The bride might also be decked in bracelets of twisted silver or ivory and necklaces of amber and cornelian. The nomad women despised the practice of using henna, and never stained their hands and feet as the townswomen did.

  When the woman was prepared, she put on her brightest dress, and over it, her most costly tobe, so that she was covered from head to foot. Finally, she donned a small apron of woven leather called a rahal, which had a symbolic function in the marriage. Once ready, the bride was carried to the hajil by her male relatives.

  While we were waiting for the bride to arrive, Hassan took up his position outside the door of the new tent. He was still mounted, though everyone else had dismounted from their animals and stood watching silently. It was just after sunset; there were streaks of gold painted at angles across the sky in a swelter of lacy, grey clouds. The wind had dropped; there was a peaceful silence. Someone brought up the green branch of a tree and planted it in the ground as a symbol of good fortune.

  One by one, Hassan’s closest relations stepped forward, beginning with his father, Sheikh Musa. They touched him ritually on the hand, pledging a number of camels, cattle, goats, or sheep as wedding gifts.

  After the pledging, the bride was carried up like a parcel, completely wrapped in her lobe. Her relations carried her around the tent, circling it three times before she was taken inside. Only then did Hassan dismount. As he entered the tent, the crowd surged forward to see what followed. I was just in time to see the bride and groom standing shyly together. Hassan reached out and snatched away the leather rahat, which was held in place by a flimsy thread. He cast it out through the door gap. At once, the people around me dodged out of the way and scattered frantically. One young lad of about twelve was not quick enough, and the leather apron struck him. The others began to jeer and point, laughing loudly. Salim Wad Musa told me, ‘The Arabs say that anyone hit by the rahat will never marry!’

  Afterwards, we crowded into the tent. It was lit by an oil lamp but was otherwise stark and bare, devoid of furnishings except for a thick carpet. The bride and groom sat next to each other on the floor near the back of the tent. As the Arabs gathered around them, the women began to sing:

  Make your tentpoles steady as iron!

  Make your house full of wealth and abundance!

  Someone brought in a dish of milk. It was placed between the couple, and at once, they dipped their toes into it, then their fingers. The milk was symbolic of the abundance they hoped for. I could hardly make out Hassan’s face in the flickering light, but his body was rigid and his attitude formal. The woman remained covered and the pair did not speak.

  Then a strange thing happened. An invisible gap in the back of the tent opened suddenly, and three or four men came through it, seizing the bride and making off with her abruptly. I wondered what it meant. The celebrations seemed to have been brought to an unexpected end. Salim Wad Musa said, ‘Tonight is only the first part of the wedding. The consummation will be in a week’s time.’

  For the rest of the week, Hassan would sleep in the new tent, which would gradually be decorated by the rich leather work I had seen
in other tents. A double bed of palm stalks would be introduced, surrounded by an alcove of woven gazelle hide. By the end of the week, the shelter would be transformed from an austere dwelling into a comfortable home for the married couple. The fine leatherwork was made by the women of the bride’s family, who were also responsible for making the bridal litter, the ’utfa, out of light, flexible wood.

  During the week, the groom would feed well on meat, milk, and sorghum beer. On the last day, he would lunch with his father, then return to the hajil by sunset. On this occasion, the bride would arrive on foot, with only a few female relatives. They would enter the tent and sit with the groom. The relatives would flirt, and laugh together, while the bride would maintain a reserved demeanour, making a great show of modesty and reluctance. Eventually, the relatives would leave. The bride would rise and try to leave with them, and the man would be obliged to grab her tightly to prevent her. Often, there was quite a struggle and the groom might even be pulled across the tent. If he were too slow, she might actually escape and run off into the night. Then he would be forced to chase her, to the great amusement of the onlookers.

  Once all the guests had left, it was time to consummate the marriage. But even then the couple were not left alone. Friends and relations would remain outside the tent as spectators, shouting bawdy encouragement and beating the tent with their whips. They would even peek under the tent flap to see how things were progressing. The irritation might last for hours, sometimes until dawn. ‘The first night is like a battle!” Salim Wad Musa said. ‘You have to fight the people outside, chasing them away with your whip, and at the same time stop your bride from escaping. And after all that, you have to do your duty!”

  Sex was performed without any foreplay or kissing, which the Kababish considered degenerate; there was no touching other than the sexual act itself. The groom was expected to enter the woman in a single act of penetration, and if he failed in this he would be open to ridicule, for the bride would certainly reveal it to her female relatives. It was difficult for both partners because of the custom of female circumcision, which reduced the vagina to a tiny hole.

  After the consummation, the bride and groom were not supposed to leave the tent for a period that varied from fifteen to forty days, and during that time, they were not supposed to wash their clothes. After this, they would slaughter an animal and have another celebration. From then on, they would live as an ordinary married couple. Generally, they would start life with the bride’s family, perhaps until the time of the migrations, when they would shift to the groom’s people. The man would bring a camel especially to carry his new wife’s litter, and it would be decked out with ostrich feathers and leather hangings decorated with cowrie shells. The bride would put on her finest clothes and ride in splendour to the new location.

  Amongst the Kababish, women had a freedom not found amongst some other Arab tribes. The tent was not divided into male and female parts as those of the Arabian bedouin, and the women were never veiled. It was no disgrace for a woman to be alone in a tent with a male guest, except after dark.

  I often wondered if circumcision was the price they paid for this freedom. It was practised on girls between the ages of about four and ten. The operation was done by traditional midwives and the men were never present. They used a sharp razor or a knife and removed the clitoris and the flesh surrounding it. After the operation, the sides of the wound were brought together and covered with animal dung. The legs would be tightly bound at the ankle, knees, and thigh, and would remain so for up to a month.

  The origin of this type of circumcision is unknown. It was practised in ancient Egypt, as certain mummies of the New Kingdom era testify. Though it is still widely practised in the Sudan and Egypt, it is unknown amongst bedouin of Saudi Arabia, Libya, and northwest Africa, whose ancestry is cognate with the Kababish.

  The day after the wedding I rode to the wells at Umm Sunta with Salim Wad Musa. A large herd belonging to some ’Atawiyya was being watered there, and I wanted to buy from them a good desert camel that Juma’ Wad Siniin would ride on our forthcoming journey. It was soon after dawn and the dust was still grey in the air. The iron troughs were already filling up and the ’Atawiyya herdsmen were lining them with salt. These men were from Wadi Howar in the north and had the chiselled-stone look of desert Arabs, their garments soiled yellow with wear and their headcloths tied flat in the Kababish manner.

  One of them showed us a gigantic male camel that was almost red in colour. It was enormously fat and powerful, the best camel in the herd. I agreed to buy it at once, knowing that it was unusual for an Arab to sell his best camel. It was the most expensive camel I had ever bought, and almost the most troublesome.

  Later, I rode into the market to buy provisions. Umm Sunta had the same bleak look about it with its verandas and hitching posts, each the centre point of a circle of camels with saddlery dumped around them. Here, the nomads stood shoulder to shoulder in the tiny stores, confronting the merchants and clamouring for attention. The Arabs observed no rules of queuing, nor were they slow to criticise the merchants. The merchants never seemed to mind. The nomads had no choice but to buy from them.

  There were some new faces in the marketplace—men and women of the Gur’an tribe from the Ennedi hills in Chad. It was the first time I had seen them in the dar. The men were tall and black with long narrow faces and fine features. They dressed in shirts slashed at the sides, with their headcloths tightly bound over the lower parts of their faces. The women were small and friendly and brimming with confidence. Two of the men had been employed as herdsmen by the nazir’s people. One of them told me that they had migrated from the Ennedi hills as the grazing there had failed.

  The Gur’an were the eastern branch of an ancient desert people, known in the north as Teda and in the west as Daza. They were black nomads, and until the 1930s, a group of them had been the scourge of the Libyan desert. In small, mobile parties, they had sallied forth from their mountain strongholds, using oases and secret wells as stepping stones and covering vast distances. They had raided oases in the western desert of Egypt and had often attacked the Ga’ab oases near Dongola. I guessed that many of the old legends of giants and mysterious black warriors were connected with the Gur’an.

  The Kababish regarded the Gur’an as equals, despite the fact that they were black. This was possibly because they belonged to an aristocratic society consisting of a warrior nobility, with all the chivalry which that implied; the Kababish also saw themselves as natural aristocrats and recognised the same qualities in this other race. Kababish men said that Gur’an women made excellent wives because they were aggressive and self-reliant, capable of herding camels and defending them against attack. Gur’an women carried daggers like men and were not afraid to use them.

  In the dikka that afternoon, I had a longer talk with Juma’ Wad Siniin. He told me frankly that he had never heard of Zarzura, but that he was willing to trust my navigation. I knew that I could ask no more of him. I tried to trace the old man who had first mentioned Zarzura to me, thinking that he must be a survivor of Newbold’s expedition. No one seemed to know him, and Salim Wad Musa could not remember who he was. While Juma’ and I were talking, Wad Tarabish came up with an Arab of the Awlad Sulayman, called Baaqil. He was from Wadi Howar and claimed that he knew the desert beyond El ’Atrun better than anyone else. He said that he had once driven some camels to Kufra alone. It soon became clear that he was jealous of Juma’ and was trying to persuade me to employ him instead. He had not heard of Zarzura, nor of any of the other remote oases, and he failed to answer several of the questions I asked him. Then he grew angry and said, ‘Have you been to Nukheila before? No? Then you will be greeting my mother. And she died ten years ago!’ Then he stalked off.

  I was up very early the next morning, releasing my camels from their hobbles and letting them browse in the siyaal trees. As I watched, the sun came up. Framed in the spiked branches, it lingered for a moment, a great orange globe on the edge of
the world. Two old women in black cloaks came hobbling out of the nearby tukul. One began to beat at a siyaal tree with a long pole, knocking down the pods so that the goats could feed; the other began to collect bits of firewood.

  It was almost noon when Juma’ came out of the thorn groves on his emaciated donkey. Together, we assembled our food and equipment. A host of people from the dikka gathered around to wish us well. Before we mounted, someone said ‘AI Fatih’ and we presented our hands in supplication. Then we swung into our saddles and rode off at a fast trot towards the wadi.

  _____13._____

  The Last of the Desert Arabs

  If a man were to leave the river, he might

  journey westward and find no human

  habitation, except the lonely tent of a

  Kababish Arab or the encampment of

  a trader’s caravan, until he reached the

  coast of America.

  Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899

  THE LAND NORTH OF UMM Sunta was deserted except for some scattered families of ’Atawiyyi. They had learned to blend in with the arid environment like desert foxes, but many other Arabs had poured out of the steppes and gathered around the wells in the wadi of Abu Bassama. As we rode north, we saw many camel hair tents pitched in the siyaal groves on the wadi banks. Clouds of dust rose from the animals being watered at the wells.

  At noon, we halted in the wadi and let the camels browse in the inderab leaves that lay like gold flake on the banks. We laid out our equipment and examined it carefully. I was using a riding saddle that I had bought in El Fasher, while Juma’ was using a pack saddle. ‘You should have changed your saddle,’ Juma’ said. Those riding saddles are no good for the open desert. They put more strain on the camel. We will try to exchange it ahead.’ We inspected our water containers. We had four girbas, each carrying about five gallons of water. Two of them were full, but the others were new and leaked badly where the stitching was not properly waterproofed. Juma’ cut some strips of green inderab bark and carefully sealed the leaks one by one. ‘The inderab is the prince of trees after the date palm,’ the Arab declared. ‘The wood is hard and flexible, the bark is strong, and the leaves are nutritious. Abu Bassama is well known for its inderab.’ When the waterskins were ready, he took out some old sacks and split them, covering the skins one by one. ‘These keep the water cool,’ he said. ‘And they stop the wind drinking it.’