A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  The day was baking hot. I noticed that in the heat, the women never ventured from the tents without their headwraps and would not allow the children to run about outside. ‘This simoom will kill them!’ the woman said.

  She told me about Wadi Howar as it had been in the past. ‘There was no talk of governments then!’ she said. ‘Sometimes, the men would lie in the sand all night, waiting for the Gur’an. They would come looking for Kababish camels. But the Arabs were ready for them, by God! Theywould shoot them down like dogs if they came near our camps!’

  We watered our camels in the afternoon and rode south to Tagaru. For four days, we followed the shimmering rock wall, and on the fifth, we passed Qalb al Ba’ir. Two days later, we were camping on the heights above Khitimai with some ’Atawiyya. Their camps were pitched in clusters above the pool, where we had once collected camels for the Requisition. There was nothing there now but a disc of dry, red soil circled by a spinney of dead acacias. The ’Atawiyya welcomed us and brought us a bowl of clear water from the borewell. It tasted sweet and delicious, the first untainted water we had drunk for weeks. It reminded me once again that we were out of the desert and back in the Sudan.

  Our host brought us kisri and sat with us as we ate. ‘The desert is finished,’ he told us. There is no rain in the south. Now, the grazing that came a few years ago has all gone. I am an old man. I have never been south of Hattan. But now, we have no choice. There is water in the borewell, but water in the wells cannot bring grazing.’

  Two days later, we were crossing Hattan. It was now a dead, dry world. There was no trace of the camps we had seen on the way north. The siyaal trees had fallen and turned over, lying on their sides like giant porcupines. There was nothing to see but hardened earth and piles of rocks, rust-red and black, and hidden dry washes, where water once ran. At sunset, we made camp by a mukhayyit bush. We had just brought our camels in and hobbled them, when we heard a scuffling not far away. Juma’ picked up his club and went to investigate. A few moments later, he was back, whispering, ‘It is the Meidob! They are here!’

  A minute later, eight scrawny camels moved past our camp. Some of them were suffering from mange and all of them looked half starved. With them were two black youths, the oldest about twenty. They were clad in ragged clothes and had no headcloths or camel whips. As they walked past, they wished us, ‘As salaam ’alaykum!’ and they couched the camels about thirty metres away.

  ‘Are they bandits?’ I asked Juma’.

  ‘They are too poor,’ he said. ‘Those camels are on their last legs!’

  At close quarters, the boys seemed even less ferocious, and it was obvious that they were hungry. We made kisri and tea and invited them to join us. The youths told us that the grazing in Jabal Meidob had failed almost completely this year and that many head of livestock had died. ‘I have just been to Libya,’ the older boy said. ‘I wanted to get a job to earn some money, but they sent me back. That is a bad road at this time of year. You cannot guess what I found there! The bodies of three men. They were just skeletons with a little dried flesh on, and their clothes in tatters. They were lying in a line, each man on his canvas with his saddle at his head. In front, were three camels kneeling just as they had sat down, all stiff and dead. They must have lost their way in the simoom and just gone around in circles until they ran out of water. Then they just lay down and waited to die!’

  The vivid picture sent a sudden chill down my spine. I could imagine the scene well. The horror of their lonely death plagued me. I thought of the roasting simoom and the boundless eternity of rock and sand we had ridden through for two thousand kilometres, and I thanked God for our safe return.

  A week later, we were back in Umm Sunta. We came in through the thick siyaal trees of the wadi and couched our camels outside Juma”s tent. A plump, black woman with a full, rounded face welcomed us. Juma’ was pounced upon by four or five tiny children, yet the homecoming seemed without emotion. There was nothing but the stiff, unyielding acceptance that the nomads showed to the world.

  At once, we were made comfortable. A goat was slaughtered, and we ate until we could eat no more. I felt Juma’ easing himself back into position as master of the house as the life of the little camp flowed around him. The story of our journey began to unfold a little at a time.

  The news from the south was bad. No rain had fallen and the cattle and sheep had already begun to die. The desert Arabs were moving further south than ever before, and many Kababish had been obliged to sell their stock at the lowest prices they had ever accepted. The bottom had fallen out of the livestock market, and sorghum was up to £5150 a sack. It was that night, perhaps, when the flush of the homecoming had evaporated, that I realised the facts.

  The rains had diminished over the past few years, and this year they had failed completely. The desert and the steppe were no longer inhabitable. The Ambs I had seen out in the desert, the Awlad Huwal, the Sulayman, and the ’Atawiyya, were the last survivors of an age that was now ending.

  I was filled with sadness. At last, after five years of struggle, I had forged a real link with someone who knew nothing of my people or my environment. Together, we had seen the horror and the glory of the lonely sands and skies. Yet in the very moment of my success came the brutal realisation that from this land through which I had journeyed by camel for seven thousand miles, life would soon be gone forever.

  Part 5

  The Death of Earth

  _____15._____

  The Desert Dies

  The Sphinx spoke only once, and the

  Sphinx said, ‘A grain of sand is a desert

  and a desert is a grain of sand. Now, let us

  be silent again.’

  Jibran Khalil Jibran, Sand and Foam, 1926

  AT THE END OF MAY, a little rain had fallen in the wadi of Umm Sunta. Within days, a carpet of tiny, green shoots was hopefully pushing up through the hard-packed dust. Then the sun turned its flame on them and seared them until they withered and died. That was the last of the rain and the last of the pasture.

  The cattle had already begun to die, and those that were left were quickly sold at low prices. Then came the turn of the sheep. The cost of sorghum and millet had soared, and the price of livestock fell daily. There had been a poor harvest the previous year, and this year, the main grain-producing areas along the Blue Nile had not even been planted, because the river was too low. At the damars in Kordofan, the nomads began selling off their livestock and moving east to the city of Omdurman or to the Gezira. Those in the northern end of the Wadi al Milik moved to the town of Ed Debba on the Nile, and many more settled near El Obeid.

  In June, the chiefs of the Kababish reported to the regional government that they were facing the worst drought in memory. The regional governor, Al Fatih Mohammid Bishara, continued to advise the central government that all was well. The capital had troubles of its own. President Nimeiri had tried to bolster up his failing regime by declaring martial law. Military courts of ‘instantaneous justice’ were busy condemning citizens for suspected adultery and holding public mutilations in Omdurman. Occasionally, the President himself was to be seen, walking through the market and supervising the wrecking of unlicensed street stalls.

  There were clashes on the borders of Darfur and Kordofan. A police patrol confiscated forty-three firearms from the herdsmen of the nuggara, and a local police chief stated that he would arrest any Kababish found in his territory. In Darfur itself, a third of a million people left their villages and moved south. It was estimated that a further 300,000 would follow them before the year was over. In the east of the Sudan, 10,000 nomads of the Beja tribes came down from the Red Sea hills, where they had lived for millennia, their livestock dead and their lands devastated.

  In Khartoum, the government blocked a proposal by the United Nations to make an international call for help. There was, they said, no problem. If there was a food deficit, they claimed, it was due to the thousands of Ethiopians pouring across their borders; everyone
knew that the Ethiopians could not manage their country.

  In Kordofan, the Kababish pressed Al Fatih Mohammid Bishara for help. Bishara, later arrested for involvement in massive corruption, did not make his official report until October, by which time thousands of head of livestock had died or been sold off, and thousands more had been eaten. Children and old people perished of starvation, and tens of thousands of nomads were displaced.

  The panic selling in the markets went on, and livestock prices plummeted to an all-time low. Those who still had camels packed them and went south. Often, there were not enough camels and goats to support the entire family, and the families were forced to split up. Women took the children to the cities, while the men took the remainder of the herds into Central Kordofan or South Darfur, where they found the farmers and the cattle Arabs waiting for them. The farmers guarded wells and sealed off grazing land. They seized stray animals, and the nomads were obliged to pay ransom for them. Often, they refused, and there were ugly clashes. Tempers flared, guns came out. Men and boys died or never returned from the south. In the Nuba mountains, the Arabs encountered new grasses that they did not understand; their animals contracted diseases that they did not recognise. A new and virulent strain of mange appeared and resisted all methods of treatment.

  Back in Kordofan, lorry owners were transporting Arab families to the cities. The price of transportation doubled, trebled, and then quadrupled. Eventually, nomads were being asked for staggering sums for their tickets. Many despaired of finding transport and began to walk. Some of them, especially children, never made it. Outside Omdurman, at Abu Zayid and Mwellih, a village of ramshackle tents grew up.

  Groups of nomads organised themselves into raiding parties and plundered what was left. They took camels and goats from the fleeing people and slaughtered them there and then. They attacked lorries carrying grain and ruthlessly murdered the drivers. The merchants who had lived under Kababish protection for so long were often forced to move. Raiders from the Sarajab attacked and pillaged the stores at Sawani and at Umm ’Ajayja. Men wandered the ranges hungry and desperate, foraging for their dying children. If caught, they had little to lose. The merchants who had built up export dabuukas at low prices were continually troubled by attacks on their herds. In the Wadi al Milik, the Sarajab lay in wait for them, and in the north, they were forced to run the gauntlet of the Umm Mattu. The dabuukas ceased racing and began to move in large groups, with many hundreds of camels and scores of men.

  By November, the Sudan had still not appeared on the UN’s list of countries affected by drought.

  In September, the livestock market collapsed completely. The Kababish were destitute. For the first time in memory, they could no longer rely on their innate toughness and their ability to endure. For the first time, they were afraid. Animals could not be given away. Sorghum rose to £S200 a sack. The trickle of displaced persons became a flood. Helicopter patrols reported thousands of nomads and villagers moving towards Omdurman. Two major camps were established, at Mwellih and Abu Zayid, holding more than 40,000 people. In other camps, there were estimated to be as many as 60,000.

  Suddenly, the world of the desert and the world of the city were in collision. It had been the policy of the government to pretend that nothing was amiss in the ranges of Kordofan. In the cities, life for the affluent had gone on as normal. Now, there were fuel shortages and a deficit of bread. There were thousands of displaced people on the city’s doorstep. It was a potentially explosive situation. There were protests about food shortages, and in November, police used teargas to disperse rioting school children in El Obeid. At the beginning of December, the president visited Mwellih and Abu Zayid, and was visibly shocked at the extent of the problem.

  For the first time, the Kababish saw the twentieth century. They saw the cars and the factories, the shops and the cinemas. For the first time, the urban population saw proud Arab nomads begging in the streets, and beautiful Kababish girls working as prostitutes. For the first time, destitute Arab children foraged in the dustbins of the hotels and hustled along the taxi ranks, sleeping in the gutters and stealing fruit from the markets.

  I spent part of that summer travelling up the Wadi al Milik, as far as Ed Debba. The wadi was silent and grey as a grave. In some places, there had been no rain for five years. Everywhere I halted, those Arabs that were left begged me for news of the south. I had no good news to bring them.

  I camped for a week at lided Ahmad with some Sarajab, and spent another week travelling across the desert to Ed Debba. I travelled with a dabuuka of a thousand camels and a score of men from the Kawahla and Awlad Rashid. In Ed Debba, I found dozens of desert families: from Rahib, El ’Atrun, and Wadi Howar. They had pitched their tents along the cliffs overlooking the palm groves. There were many familiar faces.

  As I walked in the market, someone touched me lightly on the arm. I saw with a shock that it was Mohammid Wad Fadlal Mula. He looked older, and there were lines around his eyes. He seemed out of place in this bustling marketplace. We embraced warmly and exchanged a greeting. I asked him what he was doing here.

  ‘Our camels have died,’ he told me. ‘And our goats and sheep are finished. We lost everything. My sister died. She said she could not go on. Two of her children died with her. My cousin died and his wife too. Our family is finished, by God!’

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I am working in a palm grove for one of these ’Awwala. My little brother is working in a slave’s house, as his servant. They don’t give him money, only food! This is no life for us, Omar. We are Arabs of the desert!’

  ‘Then why do you do it?’

  ‘Because the desert is dead, There is nothing else.’

  _____16._____

  Journey through a Dead Land

  The Saraha is getting bigger …

  but not only is it getting bigger now, it

  must have been growing in extent for a very

  long time.

  Maurice Burton, Deserts, 1974

  I SPENT A SHORT TIME in Britain and in December, I was back in the Sudan. The government had still not declared an emergency in Kordofan. The presence of 100,000 displaced people in Omdurman was an embarrassment to the government, and at the end of December, they began to ship the nomads back to the ranges in a fleet of trucks, decorated with banners, proclaiming the ‘Glorious Return!’ I happened to be there as the officials began herding the people towards the trucks. When I tried to photograph the incident, I was arrested and my film confiscated.

  A week later, I was back in Ed Debba on the Nile. I had been away only a few months, but in that time, the atmosphere had changed dramatically. Before, there had been a few Arab tents pitched in clusters on the rocky shoulder that marked the fringes of the desert. Now, the escarpments were packed with shelters and the Arabs had moved into the town itself, camping around the market square and the mud-brick streets. It was the first time in living memory that they had been forced out of the desert to seek refuge here on the banks of the Nile.

  I arrived in Ed Debba on market day. The place was crowded with mobs of thin camels and knots of squalling sheep and goats. A raw wind whipped in from the desert. The Arabs were wrapped up in tobes and threadbare overcoats, their headcloths twisted across their faces. Horse-drawn carts lumbered across the square, carrying loads of fresh clover, kicking up a trail of dust that layered the air like a fog. I watched a caravan of twelve camels stalking through the sand mist, led by walking men who were muffled in white hoods. The animals carried loads of firewood.

  As I edged my way through the animals and the crowds, an Arab stopped me. His face was shrouded by his headcloth and his body by an army overcoat that was buttoned up to the neck. He loosened the headcloth and I recognised the guide Baaqil, whom I had last seen storming off in a rage one night in the dikka. That night was forgotten, and he greeted me with the warmth Arabs always reserved for old acquaintances.

  I recalled that Baaqil belonged to the Sulayman and that his
tent was pitched in Wadi Howar. When the greetings were finished, I asked him what he was doing in Ed Debba. ‘The grazing in Wadi Howar is almost over,’ he said. ‘Just like everywhere else. There is hardly a tundub in leaf between here and Rahib. Even the Arabs of the desert are moving from their homes. Everyone is in Debba.’ Then he described how they had waited for news of the rains week after week, but how the rains had not come. He told me how the trees had shrivelled and turned grey, and how the scorched earth had turned to powder. Even the tussock grass had become woody and useless, and the arak trees that had grown in the Wadi for years had turned to brittle fibre. The camels and goats had become living skeletons before their eyes, and the females had gone dry of milk. Men had come wandering out of the desert like ragged ghosts, thin and sick and grey with hunger. The scouts had ridden South and returned with their bodies racked and trembling with weakness. The rains had still not come. Soon, the camels had begun to die, lying down on the bleak sands. The men had started to move either into the semidesert or east to the Nile with those of their animals that were left. I asked him if there were any families left in the desert west of the Nile. ‘Yes, there are a few ’Atawiyya and some Awlad Huwal in Abu Tabara. Apart from that, the desert is empty.’

  I decided that I must go back to these families, and see how they had managed to survive in this most devastating of droughts. The government had forbidden me to visit Kordofan. I decided that I should travel into the desert, to the wells at Abu Tabara to see how the Kababish who had remained there were faring.