A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  I told Baaqil that I was looking for one of the desert Arabs to travel with me to Abu Tabara to visit the nomads encamped there. ‘Hah! You will not find many nomads willing to do that journey now!’ he said. ‘Most of them are coming from the opposite direction!’

  However, he promised to spread the word for me, and a little later, I was approached by a man who looked short, lean, and incredibly hard. He told me that his name was Jibrin Wad Ali and that he was of the desert Awlad Huwal. His dust-coloured jibba was ragged, but he moved with immense grace, almost like a ballet dancer. He wore a tightly bound headcloth, beneath which his face was a perfect oval of copper-bronze, inset with steel-grey eyes and a hooked nose. His expression was solemn and his features were lined with strain, yet there was an unmistakable air of silence about him, the true mark of a man who had spent his life in the desert.

  We shook hands and he invited me to his tent. It was pitched very near the market and was spacious inside. On a rope bed lay a youth covered in sweat and moaning with delirium. ‘He has measles,’ said Jibrin. ‘Upon us be the Prophet! We have been in this city for two weeks, and my cousin is ill and my wife is sick! See how dirty is the town and how clean the desert!’ I noticed that he spoke with the slow, measured voice and the clipped accent of the desert Kababish.

  We sat down in the shade outside and a woman brought us tea. ‘Have you been to Abu Tabara before?’ I asked him. ‘Yes; my father’s tent was pitched there when I was a boy. We used to go there in winter every year.’

  ‘Could you find your way there again?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was a long time ago and I only rode from there to Ed Debba once. You see, we had not much need to leave the desert in those days. Mostly, we came to Abu T abara from the south. But I was last there in the “Year of the Great Red Dust”. Let me see, that must be fifteen or sixteen years ago. The desert has changed a lot since then. I cannot promise to find the way.’

  I was convinced immediately that Jibrin was a suitable companion. His truthfulness was self-evident. Since navigation was a source of great pride amongst the Kababish, many Arabs would have tried to bluster. I told him that I should use a map and a compass. He looked at me blankly and said, ‘You mean that you know the way yourself?’ he asked. ‘No.’ I tried to explain. ‘It is a map. Some of my people came this way many years ago. They made a journey to Abu Tabara and they wrote down the directions. It is called a map.’

  He looked at me dubiously and said, ‘It is better to ask directions from someone who has been there recently. I have some relations who came that way a few days ago. We can ask them. Things have changed since the time of the Ingleez and anyway, only the desert Arabs know how to give directions properly.’

  I asked Jibrin why he had moved to Ed Debba. ‘I come from lided Ahmad in the Wadi al Milik,’ he said. ‘There has been no rain in that part of the wadi for five years. This year, there was nothing left to feed the animals. There was no growth to replace the old. The camels grew thin—some of them died—so we collected together what was left and sent them south. Of course not all of us could travel with the camels. I was left with a few goats and nothing to eat. One day, a lorry came along, so I loaded my goats aboard and brought them to market. The price of goats was so low that by the time I had paid the lorry fare, there was only enough money to buy one sack of sorghum. I was ashamed. That was all I had to take back to my wife!’

  ‘How long does a sack of grain last you?’

  ‘I have no children. It should last two months or more. But all our neighbours came to ask for some. Why not? They had nothing. They would have shared their food with us. Sharing is the custom of the Arabs. It would have been a disgrace to refuse. But the sorghum was finished in a month, and we had to make our way here. Now I don’t even have a camel to ride.’

  ‘Then how will you get to Abu Tabara?’

  ‘My brother-in-law has a camel. It is grazing across the river at Argi. I will ride it, and he and I will share the money.’

  ‘Are you sure this camel will make it to Abu Tabara?’

  ‘If it is well fed, it will get there, but we must take grain with us. There is nothing for the camels in the desert now.’ I asked Jibrin how he lived, and he told me that he had a job in the palm groves, watering the trees. ‘I work for a gypsy,’ he said. ‘But it pays me little and I hate the work, by God!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is not the work of an Arab! We are camel men. Our home is the desert. No Arab would do such work out of choice. No Arab would live here in the town except out of necessity. The town is a prison. The desert is hard, but no one who has tasted life there can forget it. In the desert, a man is free.’ I saw his metallic eyes flash with emotion, and was surprised by the sudden vehemence of his talk.

  ‘How much does your gypsy pay you?’ I inquired.

  ‘Fifty pounds a month.’

  ‘I will pay you ten pounds a day and free food.’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Agreed.’ We shook hands, and Jibrin said he would fetch his camel from Argi the next morning. I told him I would spend the day buying a camel and provisions. As we rose, I thought I saw on his face a momentary look of gratification. Then it was gone, and only the inscrutable desert-rock expression remained.

  ‘What about the gypsy?’ I asked.

  ‘Do not worry about the gypsy,’ he answered. ‘I am already back in the desert!’

  The next morning, I walked down to the market early and met the Kababish damin, Awad Wad Jibrin. He was a bulky, dark-skinned man, who belonged to the Awlad ’Ugba. As damin, he was responsible for all Kababish tribesmen who entered the area. After we had exchanged greetings, I told him that I wanted to buy a good desert camel. ‘You will have plenty of choice these days,’ he said. ‘All the Arabs are selling their animals. They know that they must sell them or let them die. The merchants are out like vultures, and the Arabs are almost giving the stock away. There are herds being sent to Egypt every day almost! Still, I hope the Egyptians will like their meat lean!’ I soon saw what he meant. Most of the camels in the market were pitifully thin, the ribs protruding through sagging skin. Others were grey and moulting from the effects of mange. There were several fine riding camels for sale. I knew that this was a sign of the Arabs’ desperation; in a good year, they would not sell their best camels at any price.

  I asked Awad to bid for one of the riding camels. It was a plump ashab with the classic light limbs and off-white colour of its race. The owner was a tall, rope-muscled old man with a mahogany face grained with meanness. Awad offered him 300 pounds for the camel. The man shrugged off the price with an expression of scorn. ‘May God open!’ he said.

  ‘350!’ Awad bid. As he did so, a group of Arabs came up to watch the fun. ‘May God open!’ repeated the seller. The Arabs who had gathered around began to squabble, shouting out and swearing. Several more wandered up to see what the noise was about, and joined in. Awad offered 400 pounds. There were jeers from the spectators and a babble of comment. Two or three more came up. ‘By God, it’s worth five times that!’ someone said.

  ‘Not worth a piastre more than 350!’ commented someone else.

  ‘May God open!’ said the seller.

  Now, the transaction was in earnest. There was much pawing and prodding of the animal. Someone pulled down its lower lip and examined the teeth, describing their characteristics to the world in general. Someone else poked it with a stick. Now, the bids went in tens, each one followed by a resolute ‘May God open!’ from the old man.

  Some of the spectators supported the seller and others the buyer. For them, it was a fascinating contest. The Arabs loved to watch other people’s business, and became as passionately involved as if it were their own. I imagined that many of them came to these markets for just such spectacles and went home empty-handed but with a satisified sense of having thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I, too, enjoyed cattle markets. I had been around them since I could walk with my father, who was a well-known auctioneer and she
ep expert in East Anglia. Like these Arabs, though, I enjoyed them a great deal more when it was not my money at stake.

  ‘500!’ declared Awad, taking a crisp ten-pound note from his pocket and thrusting it towards the seller. ‘Come on! Take it! It is a good price. God knows!’

  ‘Take it! Take it!’ repeated some of the audience.

  ‘Don’t take it!’ admonished others.

  With a reluctant smile, the old man took the note. We shook hands on the sale. ‘It is cheap, by God!’ someone cried. I agreed, thinking myself quite lucky to have acquired a thoroughbred at such low price. It was not until I had actually counted the money into the seller’s hand that I discovered my mistake. One of the Arabs watching couched the camel and another ran his hand along its withers.

  ‘It has got a gall!’ he shouted. ‘Look!’ Sure enough, there was a single fleck of puss oozing from an invisible wound on the camel’s back. ‘He has covered it with flour, the old devil!’ the Arab grinned, holding up his hand on which there were traces of yellowish powder. I examined the gall. It was tiny, but I knew that to take a camel like this into absolute desert would be disastrous. After two days of bearing a saddle, the animal would be in severe pain and would refuse to go further. In the desert around Ed Debba, that would mean death. I told the old man that the camel was no good for me.

  ‘You should have thought about that when you bought it!’ was his only comment. There was a surge of exclamation from the crowd. ‘Give him his money back, you old bandit!’ and ‘He is a rich khawaja, that is his lookout!’

  Now, the crowd became even bigger as the excitement grew. I looked at Awad, whose face had remained impassive. ‘Of course, he is not obliged to pay you the money back,’ he observed. ‘But as you are a guest in this country, it is only right.’

  He told the old Arab, ‘Don’t disgrace yourself, Uncle. This man is a guest.’

  ‘Guest or no guest, he does not get a piastre!’ said the man, and began to walk away. Two Arabs caught him playfully by the arms, but he pulled away from them, muttering angrily. A few moments later, he could be seen glowering on the edge of the square. Awad went off to see him again, and I saw the two men waving their arms about in discussion.

  Awad returned and went about some other business. Time passed. Several unofficial delegations went to the old man and returned. Everyone in the market passed an opinion, for or against. At last, Awad came back, saying, ‘He will return the money less thirty pounds for his trouble.’ I agreed, thinking that if not, I should never get away. Still, the matter was not finished. More delegations went to and fro. Another hour passed, then two hours. At last, Awad came striding back to where I was, holding the camel. He grabbed the headrope and began to pull the animal angrily out of the market. ‘I am taking this camel to the police station!’ he shouted, so that everyone could hear. ‘By God, it’s a disgrace! We have waited hours! Is there an honest man here?’ Several Arabs now held him by the arms as they had the old man. ‘Let go!’ he stormed. ‘I am taking it!’

  Then someone said, ‘He’s coming!’ Awad continued to march on adamantly. Even when the old Arab appeared out of the crowd and put a restraining hand on the headrope, he refused to stop. For a second, there was a struggle. Then, with an air of great reluctance, the damin let go. The Arab counted the money back into my hand and walked away with his camel. The crowd of onlookers laughed and cried out. Some patted me on the shoulder and others shook their heads. All in all, it seemed that my lost thirty pounds had paid for a good morning’s entertainment. Later, I bought a superb riding camel named Wad al Bahr. I paid Awad his commission and went off to find Jibrin.

  Jibrin’s camel was tethered to a post outside his tent, eating millet cane. It looked like a thoroughbred, but it was obviously undernourished. When I mentioned this to Jibrin, he said, ‘He has been too long in the wadi with poor grazing. But he will make it if we feed him grain.’ Later, we bought provisions in the market and assembled our equipment. We had decided to use pack saddles with crude, wooden frames for the journey; I had learned by experience that they were more comfortable than riding saddles over long distances. We filled our saddlebags with wheat flour, tea, sugar, some onions, seasoning, and dried milk. There was a half-sack of sorghum grain for the camels and a bundle of markh wood for fuel. Jibrin said that we should find very little in the desert. The most essential items were our waterskins. We had only two, and I worried that they would not be enough. ‘If the weather stays cool, they will get us there,’ Jibrin commented. ‘But it would be best to take a little more.’

  There were none available for sale in the town, so instead, we agreed to use a four-gallon jerrycan of light plastic. We filled all our vessels from a hand pump and slung them on a tripod outside the tent. Comparing the ancient and modern methods of water carrying, I realised that both had their advantages. The plastic jerrycan was tough and durable and less inclined to leak, yet the waterskin had stood the test of time. Rock pictures have been found in the Sahara showing cattle nomads using skins of the same type, some of them dating back to 5000 BC. The skins were comfortable for the camel, and even if they leaked, could easily be repaired with a tiny piece of wood, or a fragment of cloth inserted from the inside. They kept the water cool by evaporation, though by the same means, a hot wind would deplete them. When I remembered that they were one of the means by which men had survived in arid lands for millennia, I was loath to find fault with them.

  Later in the day, I changed into Arab clothing. Years ago on my first journeys with the nomads, even throughout my first sojourn with the Kababish, I had felt very self-conscious wearing local dress. I still disliked the long and elegant jallabiyya of the townsmen, but I had long ago realised that, like the waterskins, the short, Arab shirt and sirwal were far better adapted to the desert than anything Europeans had produced. The loose jibba and the baggy breeches protected the body from the severe radiation of the desert sun, at the same time allowing the air to circulate beneath so that evaporation of the sweat cooled the skin surface. My main reason for wearing Arab clothes, however, had always been psychological. While I lived with the Kababish, I wanted to be accepted as far as possible as one of them. Wearing European dress would have created an unnecessary cultural barrier.

  When everything was packed away, we began to load the camels methodically. The loads looked very heavy, but the animals were far from their full capacity. When we were ready, the women came out to wish us well. We led the camels out towards the desert.

  The town was still and silent at this hour. The market was empty and the Arabs had returned to their tents amongst the rocks. Girls with shimmering red dresses and long hair were collecting flocks of goats in bubbles of golden dust. We passed through rows of tents and makeshift shelters, some set in the sand beneath the rocky scars, and others pitched on the hard inclines. The first cooking fires twinkled in the mouths of the tents. A slight breeze drew itself across the rocks, carrying with it the scent of burning wood. The sky was grey and full of melting cloudlets.

  It was almost dark by the time we had climbed up to the lip of the rock wall, beyond which lay the mighty wasteland of the Libyan desert. It felt as if we were approaching the edge of the world. We mounted our camels and plunged over the ridge. The desert lay in dark relief. A last spill of scarlet flared far away on the western horizon. There was little wind now. The stars came out by the thousand and danced across the dark backcloth of the sky. We did not speak. The camels’ feet crunched on the stony ground. We went on for three hours before making camp in a wedge of soft sand between the gravel sheets. We piled up our equipment and hung the skins on the tripod. The animals growled hungrily. I fed them each a few pounds of sorghum, while Jibrin lit a fire. Then I sat down to watch my companion go through the ‘tea ceremony’.

  I looked forward to the ritual now. As I watched, Jibrin let the firewood burn down then scooped the charcoal embers together in a glowing mass. He filled a white enamel teapot with hot water from a pan, and then set it on the embe
rs, adding one mugful of sugar and a little tea. When the mixture was bubbling, he poured a cupful, examined it by the light of the fire, then poured it back in. There was a look of utter concentration on his face. I could see that his mind was focused entirely on the simple task before him. The sequence of the ritual never varied; it had to be carried out in precisely this way. This and the other rituals of desert travel were a powerful means of concentrating the mind into the three or four square metres of space around us. The small tasks that we performed each time we halted prevented our minds from wandering, from dissipating across the awesome emptiness that lay beyond the tiny perimeter of our camp.

  When the tea was ready, Jibrin poured us each a cupful and we drank in silence. We drank exactly two and a half cups each. Afterwards, he made kisri with the same air of absolute concentration. It was a process of the utmost gravity, not to be rushed. When it was ready, we crouched with the steaming pot before us. There was a pause. Everything had its propriety here in the desert. Then we caught each other’s eye in a kind of challenge, and Jibrin said, ‘Ah—say “In the name of God!”’ It was the usual exhortation to eat, and we plunged our hands into the food simultaneously. It was the first time we had shared food. This ritual somehow sealed the bond of our mutual responsibility. Now, we were companions in the Arab sense of the word.

  After the meal, we sat near the remains of the fire and talked. I noticed that a change had already come over my companion. In the flickering firelight, his face looked smooth and relaxed. It was as if being in the familiar surroundings and performing the familiar small rituals had restored his sense of equilibrium.

  ‘You feel better in the desert than the town?’ I asked him.

  ‘There is nothing better than the desert,’ he answered. ‘In a good year, it has everything you could ask. There is milk and meat, and the animals eat until they are fat. The Arabs are happy.’

  I asked him if he thought it a disgrace to settle down.