CHRISTMAS IN THE DESERT
The oasis of Jalo contains two villages a few hundred yards apart. El
Erg is the seat of the Government and contains the Kasr, or Government
Office, the kaimakaan’s house and a new zawia with some forty ekhwan.
The belad rambles by circuitous narrow lanes, bordered by windowless
walls, pierced by low doorways, over a rise and down the farther side to
the foot of a large dune, from the top of which one sees mile after mile
of scattered palms, with here and there a well, its mouth strengthened
by palm trunks. Generally a group of picturesque figures surrounds it
and gossips while the day’s water supply is drawn. An effective contrast
to the glaring white sands are the indigo and royal blue tobhs with
which the black slave-women mingle the orange and reds of their more
barbaric taste. At the door of every mosque one finds a group of swathed
white figures, sunk in contemplation or in sleep, yet mechanically
flicking away the ever-attentive flies.
I rode across the hollow to Lebba on a big white donkey lent by Homeida
Bey Zeitun. It is a twin village except that the streets are broader and
straighter, and the whole place is dominated by the square tower of
Sayed Hilal’s house. As I passed below its latticed windows a very
pretty face, framed in its sapphire veil, peeped out. It was olive-
skinned and round, with dark kohl blurred round darker eyes, long-lashed
and misty. The blue tattoo marks on chin and lips but served to throw up
the gleam of pearl-white teeth, and great silver ear-rings, red-studded,
swung against plait after plait of midnight hair.
Lebba possesses a very old zawia, founded by Sidi Mohammed ben Ali. I
went through its palm-filled yard to the court of the mosque, where I
was warmly greeted by Sheikh Omar, who told me he was happy to meet
anyone with English blood. He introduced me to all his teachers and his
most intelligent pupils, who wanted to show me there and then how well
they could write. “You are cleverer than I, for I cannot write Arabic,”
I said, and a murmur of surprise and scorn ran through the group. “She
cannot write and she is big, so big! I believe she is older than Fatima,
or Ayisha!” or any other female relative of advanced years! There are a
hundred and fifty boy students at the Lebba zawia and about eighty
ekhwan. The long, low mosque is very small, clean and white, with its
sand arches and palm walls—a few palm mats on the floor and a little
painted “mihrab,” fragile and bent. “It cost two hundred mejidies to
build,” said the sheikh proudly; and again, as I left, he spoke kind
words about my country, which were balm after the censure of the
previous evening.
On our last afternoon we had a council in the house of the kaimakaan. We
left our shoes outside his door and sat cross-legged round the walls of
a room, empty save for a packing-case which carried little-used writing
materials. “Now is everything ready to start to-morrow at dawn?” I asked
briskly. A most dubious “Inshallah” came from Yusuf. I have always
thought it rather hard that the Deity should be made responsible for the
whole doubt of the East! The question repeated, each produced a pet
difficulty. “The oil has not come,” said the portly sergeant, Moraja.
“Take two soldiers and get it,” ruthlessly replied Hassanein. The man
relapsed into prompt silence lest he should really be obliged to leave
before the arrival of delicious hot sweet milk flavoured with cinnamon.
Mohammed wanted to write letters for Jedabia. Abdullah pointed out that
some of the girbas were new and smeared with oil instead of tar, which
would melt in hot weather and make the water nauseous. Yusuf frankly
wanted to stay under a roof where he could eat and sleep all day. His
fat face had assumed an expression of habitual discontent, and through
much yawning his eyes had almost disappeared in two narrow slits. All
the retinue had donned their best clothes in Jalo. Abdullah retained his
snowy woollen jerd and burnus, with scarlet belt supporting his huge
old-fashioned wooden pistol inlaid with much silver, but Mohammed and
Yusuf wore short embroidered jackets of green and blue and striped silk
jerds crossed with gay agals worn like aiglets.
We alone could not change and I wondered how long I should have to
appear in the same unwashed red tobh and chequered barracan. There is no
good water at Jalo, so the washing is always sent a day’s journey to
Buttafal. This is the last well on the route to Kufara and Taiserbo.
Therefore, we decided to depart thither on the morrow and camp for a day
beside its sweet waters before starting on our stern journey south. When
they saw that we meant to insist, the retinue became almost brisk and to
my great surprise even the lazy Yusuf was up the next morning at 4
o’clock busy with preparations. Nothing ever arrives till the last
moment in the East, but one must always be prepared for it to come just
when one has made up one’s mind to do without it. Thus, when everything
was packed, the hard-boiled eggs and bread, ordered twenty-four hours
before, made their appearance and had to be dumped into the first
available sack.
It is no easy matter loading a caravan that has got to travel two
hundred and fifty miles with a seven days’ waterless stretch. I looked
at our eighteen camels with much anxiety. Some of them were small and
weak. One of them was a living picture of all that a camel should _not_
be. He might have been used successfully by the Khartoum Camel Corps as
an example to enthusiastic young officers of what _not_ to buy. His feet
were worn, his hump was soft, his elbows rubbed together as he walked,
his chest pad was insufficient, and he had sores under his shoulders.
Besides this, many of the nagas were in foal. However, it was no use
worrying in advance. Long ago I had realised that we should get to
Kufara only if Allah so willed, and the farther we moved into the desert
the more I felt impelled by some ulterior force. I was never surprised
when difficulties piled themselves up and then vanished without reason
at the last moment. I began to feel a fatalistic trust in the destiny
that had dragged me from hunting and hunt balls and sent me out into the
white Sahara to find the Holy place which had been a secret for so long.
The feeling of Kismet was so strong that it prevented my troubling
excessively over our weak camels, even though I felt that they were
dangerously overloaded. Our party had increased to nineteen by two black
slave girls in vivid barracans and little else, property of one of the
Sayeds, who wished them sent to Kufara.
In spite of the utmost exertions the caravan was not ready to start till
11.30, when, amidst a chorus of kindly wishes, regrets and blessings, we
plodded slowly out of the hospitable town into a raging north-westerly
wind. We meant to march on into the night and reach Buttafal about 10
P.M., but fate decided otherwise, for almost before the walls of Jalo
had disappeared the wind strengthened into the worst gibli I have ever
encountered. It was behind us, for we were heading south-east, yet the
camels staggered and swung round, huddling against each other for
shelter. I was nearly swept off the back of my blond beast. Every loose
mat and blanket flapped in wide circles and loads began to sway
dangerously. On all sides palms were bending and cracking in the sudden
gale, while great leaves were torn off and whirled whistling above our
heads. The air became a thick sheet of sand. Sun and direction were
blotted out. Screaming gusts stung our faces and blinded us. It was the
most extraordinary sight, for one minute camels and figures would be
blotted out in a whirling white fog; then a head or a wildly gyrating
blanket or a portion of a labouring camel would appear for an instant
through the shroud and vanish again in the smarting dusk. We stumbled
and choked and fell through the storm till even Abdullah saw it was
useless. In an instant’s lull a palm tree fence appeared to our left,
with a small boy crouching beside a garden plot of onions, radishes and
pumpkins. We turned our camels towards the low shelter and they sank
heavily to their knees beside a clump of the grey, nameless trees. The
boy gave our guide some radishes as he passed, and in spite of the agony
of flying sand the Beduin turned to me with a smile. “It is a blessed
journey,” he said. “Look at the green which has been given us!” It is
proof of how far one had wandered from the mentality of London and Paris
that his words gave me great comfort.
I gathered the thickest blanket round me and dug myself into the sand,
while a hail of dust and grit beat upon me. Through a narrow slit I saw
the blacks, with kufiyas tied across their mouths and noses, staggering
about with sacks and boxes. They appeared like phantasmic figures on a
lantern screen, to vanish in the next strong gust of wind. It was
impossible to put up a tent. The camels were barraked in a semicircle,
where they lay groaning but not attempting to move. The baggage was
piled to form zaribas, and in the lee of these we crouched for four or
five hours, blankets covering our faces, handkerchiefs wound over our
mouths. I thought the retinue would look upon the storm as a bad omen,
but Mohammed only smiled with dust-parched lips. “This will be a
successful journey. We shall have good luck,” he said, “for when the
Sayed travels there is nearly always a gibli thus!”
Once when I tried to change my cramped position I felt something soft
huddled against me. I peered out of my wrappings cautiously and found
the black face of Zeinab, the prettiest slave girl, almost on my
shoulder. She seized my hand and kissed it devoutly, while her
companion, Hauwa, drew closer. Their thin, gaudy barracans were no
protection against the madness of the sand, so I offered them a share in
my blanket and we made friends under the sheltering thickness. Zeinab
was young, about sixteen, and round-faced, with curved full lips and big
velvet eyes modestly downcast. Hauwa looked ancient with her wrinkled
skin and yellow, uneven teeth, but her years were only twenty-four. The
Sudanese marry, if the parents have money, when the girl is nine and the
boy thirteen. Therefore these ebony slaves may be grandmothers at the
age when an English girl is wondering whether she is old enough to wed!
My little companions were full of questions and comment, mixed with
praise of Sayed Rida. They wanted to give me the eggs they had brought
for themselves, and it is almost impossible to refuse a gift in the
East. It is accepted as a matter of course without expression of thanks.
It used to surprise me at first that if one gave a man a watch or
revolver he took it without comment, but gradually I realised that they
give and they receive with the same simplicity.
Zeinab wore huge silver ear-rings and bracelets and an embroidered
leather belt carrying a dozen gay little pouches for her toilet
necessities, while Hauwa had tied her barracan into a sort of hood, with
a strip of crimson leather bearing some “hejabs” (charms) in tiny
wallets. Both had broad sticks of scarlet coral stuck through holes in
their nostrils. When the storm abated, about 5.30 P.M., they emerged
from the blanket and busied themselves, briskly preparing the Beduin
evening meal.
By this time there were always two rival camps in neighbouring zaribas.
Behind one wall of heavy sacks the soldiers cooked their savoury flour.
Within another semicircle Mohammed and Yusuf, with the guide and a black
camel-boy, brewed strong sweet tea, while the two girls were provided
with a little camp beside the Arabs’ shelter. Mohammed was always kind
to them, providing them with some of his own flour and dates, together
with the occasional loan of a blanket, but otherwise nobody troubled
about them except when it was a question of cooking or washing clothes.
True, when the length of our stay permitted the pitching of tents, the
Beduins always contented themselves with the zariba, leaving to Zeinab
and Hauwa the use of their tent, but the girls accepted as a matter of
course that, after riding all day, they should cook and wash and clean
and generally see to the comfort of the Arab retinue.
We wanted to break camp after the evening meal, but though the sandstorm
had abated the wind was still cold. Abdullah pointed out that we should
walk all night and arrive too tired to work in the morning, which would
be waste of energy, as all the firewood for the journey had to be
collected in the vicinity of Buttafal. We therefore crawled into our
sleeping-bags under the shelter of the palm fence at 7 P.M., and were up
again while it was still dark. The same cold wind stimulated the blacks
to brisk action, and there was a great deal of running about and
singing, but the sun rose while the camels were still being loaded and
we did not start till seven.
We had camped on the very edge of the Jalo oasis. The last palms were
behind us, and in front lay the flattest country I had ever seen. To the
rim of the near horizon stretched an unbroken expanse of yellowish,
gravelly sand. We thought we had crossed flat, monotonous country
before, but on December 23 we rode across a drab-coloured billiard table
whereon was not a blade of grass, a bird, an insect or a mound. It was
as if we were at the end of the world and the round horizon the edge off
which we should presently fall! The only objects that marred the
extraordinary monotony were a few scattered skeletons of camels which
had died at the end of a long march from Kufara or Taiserbo.
Occasionally a bleached thighbone had been stuck upright in the sand to
mark the direction.
It was a cool, bright day with a north-west wind. Persistent neglect had
practically cured my foot, so I was able to walk for a couple of hours
with Abdul Rahim. He waxed enthusiastic over the extent of the Senussi
influence in Bornu, Senegal, the Sudan and Wadai, giving me a list of
the principal zawias. “Only in Wadai there is none,” he said, “for the
Sultan said to Sidi Ben Ali, ‘We will always be your friends and allies,
but if you build a zawia here the next thing you will do will be to come
and conquer us!’” The commandant was in a loquacious mood and
reminiscences flowed from his lips. It was he who had been sent by Sidi
Ahmed to kill Mukhtar, the Senussi officer in the pay of Turkey, who had
attacked Bomba in Egyptian territory without direct orders from his
master. He was at Jaghabub when Sidi Hilal quarrelled with his uncle
and, under sentence of death, fled to Tobruk in forty-eight hours. The
young Sayed had described the horrors of the 250 kilometres ride to me
at a dinner in his house at Jedabia when, amidst his rich carpets and
brilliant clothes, he could laugh at the memory of aching bones and
failing strength.
Abdul was conversant also with the doings of Ramadan Shetewi, the great
Arab leader who for many years held the Italians at bay in Tripolitania,
but who was killed a few months ago in a fight with the Orfella. It
appears that his alliance with Sayed Ahmed was but lukewarm, for on one
occasion, when he provided a bodyguard for a German mission which was
taking a large sum of money to the Sayed in Cyrenaica, his men had
orders to kill the unfortunate Teutons as soon as they were out of sight
of Misurata. Ramadan Shetewi took the official gold and the mission’s
private wealth was divided among the murderers.
At noon Yusuf pointed to the faintest rise in the distance. “Behind that
hill is Bir Buttafal,” he said, and with visions of another green spot
on our wonderful map, we hoped to see at dusk one palm and a few tufts
of brushwood. Not a single blade of grass marks the slight hollow. There
is not a stone nor a stick nor a tuft of green sage in all the wide
expanse of thick, soft sand. The day we arrived there was not even a
hole. Before we had time to ask where was the well, Abdullah and two of
the blacks apparently went mad. They flung themselves on their knees and
with rhythmic cries began burrowing rapidly, flinging the sand
vigorously over their shoulders. Only when they had sunk to their waists
and the heap around them began to grow dark and moist did we realise
that they were actually digging out the well, which had been entirely
filled in by the gibli of the previous day.
On Christmas Eve the whole party devoted themselves to washing their
clothes, with surreptitious drinks of the sweet Buttafal spring, the
first good water we had tasted since we left Jedabia. Zeinab and Hauwa
laboured patiently to reduce the retinue’s flowing garments to their
pristine whiteness. I had to disguise myself in a jerd while my own red
tobh was in the tin pan that served as a laundry. The blacks, stripped
to the waist, their top-knots bobbing above their shaven heads,
pommelled and pounded beside the well. By the afternoon the desert was
spotted with patches of white, whose snowiness rapidly disappeared
beneath stray drifting sand. However, there was a general feeling of
cleanliness in the air, and we were glad when Musa She-ib appeared from
the direction of Jalo, with three donkeys and a camel in search of the
waters of Buttafal which could be sold in Jalo, where the wells are
brackish and salt, for half a mejidie a girba. We are glad to have an
excuse for “fadhling,” so we pressed the kind old man to stay for a
midday meal and, sitting round the fire in the largest zariba, we made
green tea while Abdullah cut goat-hide thongs for a new pair of sandals,
Hassanein mended the watches of the party, all of which had stopped in
the sandstorm, and Mohammed made primitive rope out of the palm fibre.
That night we watched the camels being fed by moonlight. It struck me at
the time that it was a stupid plan to put all the dates in one large
heap, as the greediest camels devoured more than their share and the
slowest eaters got little. However, I daren’t argue with Abdullah about
what was obviously his own job. After the animals had eaten there was a
great argument as to whether they should be watered that night or the
following morning. Finally it was decided to let them drink at once and
it was amusing to see the way they rushed to the well. Only two at a
time could approach the shallow pan, which the Beduins kept filling and
refilling, shouting monotonously, “Come and drink—then you will be
strong! Come and drink—then you will be strong!” which changed when the
camels became violent into a chanted, “See how your drinking splashes
me! See how your drinking wets me!”
One realised the loneliness of the desert that night. The four tents and
the animated group at the well were infinitesimal specks on the
desolate, limitless waste, silvered by moonlight into an unbroken sea
without ripple or bourne. How easily even a mighty caravan might vanish
in the Libyan desert and no more trace be left of it than of a few ants
crushed under foot on a sandy court. I longed for even one lonely palm
to break the awful monotony. It was the aching solitude of Nature pitted
against the pathetic energy of man and Nature had no need to fight. She
could leave the struggle and the stress to the human midges who would
traverse her trackless silences, and when their pitiful vitality and
force were spent in battling with her winds and her droughts she could
bury them “noiselessly in her fathomless drifts beneath the white
serenity of her moons.” First the fuel failed. Then the food failed.
Then the last water dried.
“With the faith of little children we laid us down and died,
Follow on! Follow on! By the bones upon the wayside
Ye shall come into your own!”
On Christmas Day the camp was astir by 3 A.M. Everybody was prepared for
prodigies of endurance in the way of an immensely long march. Therefore,
when I plunged briskly out of my tent while the moonlight was still
clear, I could not understand why there were no chants or shouts, no
cheerful rushing about with the cumbersome bales. Arabs and blacks alike
were standing about in sorrowful groups. Mohammed, with a plaid rug
wound over the fleece-lined mackintosh, was cleaning a ruthless-looking
knife. Even the camels had the most depressed possible expression. One
of the nagas lay beside the fire with drooping head. It appeared that
she was the direct cause of the agitation, though most of the animals
were suffering severely from their unaccustomed date meal followed by a
heavy drink. The naga appeared to be _in extremis_. Foam frothed from
her mouth and nostrils, her neck was twisted into a stiff distorted
curve, her sides were labouring painfully. I could not have believed
that even the most acute indigestion could reduce an animal to such a
state after so few hours. “She is going to die,” said Yusuf. “Prepare
the knife!” “Wait! Wait!” exclaimed Abdullah. “I will try burning her
first!” Apparently there are but two remedies in the desert, bleeding
and firing. They had already tried the first without effect, as it was
too cold for the blood to run. They now pushed the unfortunate animal on
its side and laid a hot iron on its abdomen. It protested much less than
it usually did at being loaded, but the warmth presumably galvanised it
into action, for it managed to struggle to its feet and wander off with
the others, a sorry-looking, hunched-up group, one of which appeared
dead lame.
During a wasted morning the friction between the two hastily formed
zaribas became intense. The blacks, incensed at the abuse which had been
showered upon them for riding the camels between Aujela and Jalo, now
got their own back. They said that the Arabs knew nothing at all about a
caravan and could not even feed the animals properly. At noon the
miserable naga got much worse, and Mohammed, Abdullah and I spent the
whole afternoon sitting by her side, trying desperate remedies from
massage to soap! When we left at 5 P.M. she was obviously dying and we
prepared to face the problem of the seven days’ waterless journey with
one camel the fewer. We argued about what luggage we could best dispense
with until Yusuf calmly announced that, as we had waited an extra day at
Buttafal, there would not now be sufficient dates to last a week.
Mohammed said that we must announce the death of the Sayed’s camel to
the kaimakaan at Jalo, which meant an extra two days’ wait.
We held depressed councils, at which I insisted on an immediate start,
but apparently the camel shared the sacredness of its master, and even
its body could not be left at Buttafal. “Very well,” said I. “We will
send someone back with the news, but we must leave here at dawn. We will
give all our eating dates for the camels and that will make up for to-
day’s rations.”
Then the real difficulty appeared. The friction between blacks and
Beduins was so strong that both parties feared that it would eventually
come to a fight, and neither wished to decrease their number. When I
suggested a Sudanese going, Abdullah showed his hand. “Yes, yes, send
back four or five,” he said eagerly. “The journey will be easier without
them,” but Abdul Rahim refused point-blank to dispense with one of his
soldiers. “The night we thought we were going to be attacked, on the way
from Jedabia, Abdullah left us and slept with some kinsman near by,” he
remarked shrewdly. The whole party was sunken in the deepest gloom, we
because the camels were already overloaded, the retinue because each
side feared to endanger its power by the loss of a fighting man, when a
black form appeared on the faint rise beyond which we had left the dying
camel. “Mashallah!” exclaimed Mohammed. “It is the influence of Sidi
Idris! A miracle! A miracle!” And two minutes later the source of all
our woe walked calmly back into camp. Its reception must have surprised
it considerably, for everyone rushed out to meet it, firing revolvers
and rifles into the still, starlit air, after which the blacks performed
a wild fantasia to the music of a tin pan beaten by Abdullah’s sinewy
fingers. So ended the most unpleasant Christmas I have ever known!