THE LAKE IN THE DESERT
When we drew level with the hills Abdullah decided to go on ahead and
explain our harmless design and see if it would be possible for us to
camp in the oasis. I was amused to see that even he would not go into
the belad without his rifle, while the rest of the retinue implored me
to take only food for the camels and then go on to Kufara, but I was not
going to be cheated of my lake and my mountain, the first I had seen in
Libya! I drove them protesting down the stony slope to where the
desolation ended in a little sandy wadi full of huge palm clusters and
coarse brown vegetation, half grass, half moss. While Abdullah tested
the feelings of the two villages, one at either end of the long strip of
palms that border the lake, we set up our tents in the usual camping-
ground and I turned the opening of mine to face the mountain, now purple
and ruddy in the afternoon sun.
The soldiers, still overwhelmed with visions of a night attack, urged us
to avoid the green clumps, to whose welcome shade we clung, and pitch
our tent in the open on the edge of the stony waste, but we refused, and
soon Abdullah returned with news that the brother of the sheikh el zawia
at Taiserbo lived in Buseima and was coming to see us. Our guide brought
with him a pale-faced sister with great velvet eyes, and heavy silver
necklace mixed with many leathern amulets. She gave us a kid-skin full
of very good large dates, for her husband owned palms and gardens in
Buseima, and the retinue began to cheer up.
We were just preparing coffee and rejoicing in our first really clean
date—for up to then all we had eaten had been plentifully flavoured with
sand—when Sidi Mohammed el Madeni, the brother of the Taiserbo sheikh,
with Sidi Omar and Sidi Bu Regea, arrived, prepared to welcome us most
hospitably in the name of the Sayed. It appeared that the brother of the
former was in Kufara at the moment, so we should have missed him had we
arrived in Taiserbo. Abdullah made tea and I made coffee, and we all sat
round a little zariba with our backs to the sun and our feet to the
startling cliffs. “Fadhling” had begun again, and this time we learned
many things, all because when we asked if the water were good, Sidi
Mohammed said, “In the Nasrani well it is very sweet!” “Nasrani? Did a
Christian make it?” “Yes; many years ago a Christian came here, flying
from Kufara, where he had lost all his belongings, and he dug that
well.” At last we had found Rohlfs’ traces! In great excitement we
followed the lead the sheikhs had unwittingly given. After an hour’s
conversation we discovered that a man called Korayim Bu Abd Rabu had
protected Rohlfs in Kufara and saved his life by escaping with him to
Benghazi, and that his son, Hamid Bu Korayim, was then in Kufara. They
recognised the name of Bukr Bu Guettin as the man who wished to murder
Rohlfs and said that his son, Mansur, was now living in Jedabia. They
knew nothing of the German’s southern journey, but with regard to his
statement that he had gone from Jalo to Taiserbo in four and a half
days, they said it was quite possible, as in olden times the Zouias
always used to ride the waterless stretch without stopping and eat their
meals on their camels. Sidi el Mahdi and the Senussi family had started
the fashion of travelling more slowly and camping by the way.
The curious thing was they all said that when Rohlfs escaped from Kufara
and passed through Buseima in his flight, he was alone with Korayim,
whereas he speaks of having three Germans with him. The name by which
they recognised the Teuton explorer was Mustapha Bey. Oddly enough, Sidi
Omar and Bu Regea proved to be nephews of Haballah el Abed, mentioned by
Rohlfs as the head of the Ait Anira, part of the Zouia tribe at Kufara,
and a descendant of the last Tebu sultan, while Abdullah turned out to
be a near relation of the same chief.
We tried to discover where in the Kufara oasis the fight had taken
place. “There was no fight,” they said. “The man was a Nasrani. He came
without the permission of Sidi el Mahdi, who was then at Jaghabub. He
deserved to die. His caravan was eaten up by Bu Guettin and the Zouias
and he did not go to the belads at all.” “Where did he camp, then?” I
asked. “We do not know,” they said. “We were young then. Senussi
influence had only just started. There were but four ekhwan in Kufara,
but the Nasrani did not go into the country.” It was impossible to pin
them down to details, but they evidently believed that the gallant
Teuton had camped on the outskirts of Kufara and been obliged to retire
after the loss of his caravan. To our amusement neither Abdullah nor our
two visitors were proud of their connexion with the Tebu sultan. “It was
before Islam,” they said. “The Tebawiya were infidels—Kufara!”
We asked if there were any of these savages left in Buseima and were
told that the Tebus were rapidly dying out and while some had been
converted to Islam and continued living in Kufara and Taiserbo, the
remainder had ensconced themselves in Ribiana. Our informant added that
when the Zouias made their voluntary submission to Sidi Ben Ali es
Senussi the Tebus were already their servants or slaves, for they had
been originally conquered by the Fawai tribe, who had been forced to
give way to the Ghawazi, who in their turn had fallen before the prowess
of the fighting Zouias. This tribe originally came from the Fezzan,
where some of the stock still exist in the Aulad Bu Hassan.
We went to bed that night feeling really triumphant, for the shadows
that for so long had veiled the strange Libyan oasis were being
gradually rolled away. At the same time we realised how difficult it is
to dig out even recent history from the cautious Arab brain. We were
anxious to open a Tebu tomb, but in order to do so we had to talk for
nearly an hour about Egyptian mummies, so that we could ask if perchance
the infidels who used to live in Buseima had buried their dead in the
same way. I must acknowledge that Sidi Mohammed el Madeni was the most
intelligent and broad-minded Arab whom I have met. From him we learnt
much of the history of the spread of the Senussi influence through the
Sahara, and he offered to show us all over the oasis on the following
day.
We woke late on January 6 and found both our watches had stopped, but
the sun was strong, so we imagined it must be about 8, and hurried
through a breakfast of coffee, dates and unleavened bread in order to
begin our voyage of exploration. Our start, however, was delayed by a
furious quarrel between the blacks and the Beduins as to whose duty it
was to re-make the baggage saddles and fetch water for the camp. For
once I discarded soothing words and rated them all so soundly that in a
few moments the toothless Farraj was creeping off in one direction with
a girba and Shakri positively running to the wadi in search of “leaf.”
Earlier in the morning there had been another squabble as to who should
go to the village for the festal sheep. We now learned that the Sudanese
dared not approach the village singly. They had spent most of the night
on sentry duty of the most primitive kind. They had made a fire and sat
well within its light, so that no lurking marauder would have had the
slightest difficulty in shooting them at all. They also talked at the
top of their voices, which disturbed our sleep and naturally after such
unusual energy they were feeling cross and tired. The arrival of the
black and white sheep, led by the undismayed Omar, cheered them up
somewhat, and we left them already making plans for its division.
It is generally impossible to buy food in the desert oases. There are no
regular customers and no suq. Each family produces enough for its own
consumption only. Thus neither bread, eggs nor milk were forthcoming,
though we were reported rich. Dates are always an exception to the rule.
A mejidie buys a great sackful and though Buseima and Ribiana do not pay
taxes in money, they feed the Sayed’s camels free when they happen to
pass through. They also pay a percentage of sacks of dates yearly to the
Government. An official comes from Kufara to collect them. Faqrun
offered us some of those that were stored ready for removal. “You are
the Sayed’s guests. You have a right to them,” he said. Though there was
no fodder or grass for our beasts, there were plentiful date rations. We
had bargained endlessly over the sheep with a strong-minded female in
the attractive Buseima dress—white tobh with scarlet girdle, a black
cloth wound closely round the face like a nun’s coif and the barracan of
rose and saffron just doubled and flung over her head like a great
shawl. Finally, we bought it for fourteen mejidies, and a small boy
suddenly appeared with ten eggs, for which he asked a mejidle
(fivepence) each! Abdullah contributed the most bitter goat’s milk I
have ever tasted, mixed with fresh laghbi—the juice of the palm, which
ferments after twenty-four hours and makes a very potent liquor. The
stern Senussi law decrees that anyone getting drunk on laghbi shall be
flogged and fined.
After all disputes were settled we mounted the two least weary camels
and started picking our way across the waste of salt that lay between
our camp at one end of the semicircular strip of palms and the village
at the other. It was difficult going, because the salt was caked in hard
and uneven formation, but it was a wonderful morning, vividly clear and
cool in spite of a brilliant sun. To the east of us lay the chain of
cliffs, no longer black, but purplish red, against the pale dunes
beyond. To the west was an iridescent blue lake about eight kilometres
long, very salt, so that no fish can live in it, but exquisitely
translucent. Beyond it was the border of massed palms and the faintly
coral sands, for the reddish dust from the gebel tints the neighbouring
country.
Half-way across the salt waste we were met by Sidi Mohammed, and before
we left it the whole male population of Buseima had joined us. Our
amusement may be imagined when we discovered that it numbered about a
score! Including men, women and children, I don’t believe that there
were more than fifty human beings in the danger spot that all our fully
armed retinue were mortally afraid to approach! Thereafter we had the
profoundest distrust of the far-spread tales of marauding bands and
murdered caravans.
I also came to the conclusion that the Senussi influence was much more
firmly established in the smaller oasis than is generally supposed. Sidi
Mohammed had kissed the Sayed’s letter and touched his eyelids with it
and the important Faqrun family, about whose loyalty our retinue had
entertained the gravest doubts, had only waited to welcome us until they
were certain we were under the protection of Sidi Idris. Once assured of
this, the two brothers Faqrun, Maihub and Salah, met us most amicably
and showed us the ruins of a Tebu village on the north-west shore of the
lake. The Tebawiya must have led cramped existences, for their houses
are tiny and of an odd formation, a series of small, round constructions
like immense native ovens. Some of them had three or four of these round
“rooms” clustered together without regular order, like the cells in a
honeycomb. They were made of stones and quite hard mortar, and were
windowless unless there had originally been some windows higher up.
Unfortunately they were all roofless, the highest walls being about 15
feet 8 inches. Only one door gave access even to the biggest clusters.
Before we came to these ruins we passed east of one of the smaller round
hills of the Gara and faint traces of a Tebu fort were pointed out to
us. There had been another on the main cliff of the gebel opposite, so
the Tebu must have been a warrior race. These forts would have been
impregnable, situated on the top of almost perpendicular rocks,
commanding a view of the surrounding country 50 kilometres on every side
and, moreover, showing a very good idea of defence, for they must have
utilised various ridges of rock as walls and barricades. On the main
gebel are some Tebu tombs, but they are difficult to find among the mass
of stones. These primitive people were buried in a sitting position
exactly as Rohlfs describes the one he saw in Taiserbo, but generally
they have sheepskins wound round them. Apparently they had no knowledge
of textiles and wore only skins.
The main village of Buseima, at the north-west end of the lake, with
well-kept and well-fenced date gardens, in which grow a few vegetables
and fig-trees, stretching to the water’s edge, was another surprise to
us, for it contained but six houses, square buildings with solid, well-
constructed walls, and regular, neatly finished yards, with strong
wooden doors. They looked neat and comfortable, and had none of the
crumbling aspect so common to Arab villages. Here we left the men of
Buseima after they had promised to come and share our woolly sheep with
us in the evening. Sidi Mohammed continued the tour of the lake to show
us the Bir Nasrani, a tiny hollow at the roots of a great clump of
palms. We had brought our fanatis to fill, as this was supposed to be
the best water in the oasis and, while two blacks were slowly scooping
up the cold liquid, we “fadhled” in the shade and drew maps in the sand,
locating the elusive Taiserbo where “each man sticks to his village and
never goes beyond it; so no one meets them or hears about them.”
Ribiana, we found, lay a day and a half’s journey due south, through bad
sands, which put it in the middle of Kufara (Kebabo) according to our
map.
After leaving the well we skirted round the whole of the outer shore of
the lake and wondered if we had wandered into fairyland by mistake. It
seemed incredible that after fourteen days in the intolerable sands,
unchanging and characterless, we should be in an iridescent setting of
turquoise, emerald and amethyst. Buseima is the loveliest oasis I have
ever seen, with its strange, ruddy hills—jewels purple and crimson
reflected in the silver salt mirage which girdles the bluest lake in the
world. All this colour is clear-cut against the soft, pale dunes. It is
seen through a frame of drooping palm branches with perhaps a rose-hued
figure, scarlet sashed, guarding a flock of goats by a dark pool among
high green rushes. Time stood still for us that day as we wandered
slowly on from green of the palms to gold of the sands and so back to
our tents in the wadi. We had eaten nothing since the date and damper
breakfast, so we urged Faraj to cook some part of the sheep—which now
hung in neat portions in the thickest palm clump—as speedily as
possible, but certainly our day was out of gear, for the sun set as the
smiling black triumphantly produced our lunch—a raw-looking leg of
mutton in a small frying-pan with two minute, sandy, poached eggs
balanced on top of it!
Later the two Faqruns, Sidi Mohammed, Sidi Omar and Bu Regea, came to
partake of our sheep flanked by two enormous bowls of rice. Everybody
ate out of the same dish with their fingers, scooping up the food
swiftly, without speech, but with loud sucking noises. Afterwards we
drank so much green tea that sleep became impossible, and with the stars
for lamps and the palm clumps for walls, we sat round a little fire and
talked slowly with long pauses. We were told that when Sidi Idris passed
through the oasis he camped for two days under an immense cluster of
palms within six feet of the blue lake and the spot was now regarded
with awe and reverence. We informed our guests that the Emir had lately
gone to Italy to visit the King. Sidi Mohammed seemed puzzled that the
Holy One should have established such a precedent. “Why did not the King
come to see the Sayed?” he asked, “for it is the visitor, not the host,
who confers honour in Arab land.”
Finally the question of departure arose and we discussed the possibility
of going to Taiserbo first, thinking from Rohlfs’ description that there
must be some interesting Tebu ruins there. Taiserbo was supposed by the
adventurous German to have been the seat of the Tebu sultanate and he
suggested that some ruins at Diranjedi might have been the stronghold of
the reigning potentate. For this reason we were anxious to see the
second largest of the desert oases, in spite of the fact that
geographically and commercially it was described as uninteresting.
Kufara is the centre of the Sahara world; Buseima produces the finest
dates in Libya and caravans come from Jalo to fetch them; Ribiana is
apparently the haunt of the most lawless human element in the
neighbourhood. We were told that there were five hundred Tebu there, but
it was probably incorrect.
Taiserbo is outside the trade circuit and contents itself with a
peaceful, self-centred existence. We heard the number of its inhabitants
put as low as fifty and as high as two hundred. With regard to its size,
it was generally supposed to be between 25 and 30 kilometres long and
about 10 kilometres in breadth. It lies from north-west to south-east,
with its northernmost end but a point or two west of due south of Jalo.
It comprises eleven so-called villages of which the largest is Gezira,
containing ten houses. The traveller from the north should arrive at Ain
Jelelat or Ain Talib, within a kilometre of each other. Two kilometres
south of these wells is Gezira, where there is the Senussi zawia, whose
sheikh is Sidi Mohammed el Madeni, brother of our friend with the same
name. South of Gezira lies Mabus el Awadil and Mabus Gaballa, some 2
kilometres apart. Sixteen kilometres east of Gezira is Kusebeya, the
most easterly point in the oasis. Eight kilometres west of Ain Jelelat
is El Wadi and a kilometre farther on is El Abd. On the extreme West is
Tunisi. At El Wadi is the Kasr Diranjedi, where there are some old Tebu
buildings, one of which might have been a castle or a palace. El Wadi is
the most populated part. There are other Tebu ruins at Dahwa, Ain
Jelelat and Gezira.
There are clusters of palms round all the villages, with patches of
“halfa” (half grass, half moss) in between. A band of “hattab”—small
mounds with some brushwood and fodder—surrounds the whole oasis. Some of
the smaller villages contain but two or three houses. The larger
dwellings are made of sand and stones, and the poor ones are merely
shelters of woven palm leaves with small, square courts of palms.
Most of this information came from the Sheikh el Madeni, whose people
had originally lived in Jaghabub, where they had a violent quarrel with
another family of ekhwans. Blood had been shed and Sayed Ahmed Sherif
had arbitrarily ordered the emigration of the Madeni to Taiserbo, where
two brothers now lived. The one we met had quarrelled with them, and
been banished to Buseima. It speaks well for the prestige of the Senussi
family that the Madeni are still their loyal adherents, though poor Sidi
Mohammed spoke of Kufara and Jaghabub as centres of civilisation and
culture and Buseima as the back of beyond.
We spent hours drawing sand maps in the firelight, while a waning moon
gleamed pale in the amazing sky of Africa, sapphire blue, yet soft as
the azure veils of a Circassian bride. Occasionally the toothless Farraj
challenged an imaginary passer-by with a sharp “Min?” Occasionally there
was a rustle in the palms, which Shakri said was a cat who wanted to
investigate our temporary larder. Before that night I had no idea how
exciting it was trying to make geography. For a year I had worked and
plotted to reach Kufara because the thought of this holy oasis, nucleus
of the greatest Islamic confraternity, rigidly guarded from every
stranger, the centre of the mighty influence against which every
European Power has battled in turn, stirred my imagination. As I
gradually learned more about this group of desert cities, Hawari, Jof,
Boema, Tolelib, Tolab, Zuruk and the holy Taj, and realised how they
represented the spider at the heart of the web, whose threads were the
long caravan routes spreading out in every direction from Tripoli to the
Sudan, from Lake Chad to Egypt, the commercial side of the problem
fascinated me. Kufara controls the desert trade of half the Sahara. So
few of the old routes are open now and others are almost impracticable
for lack of wells, but there are infinite possibilities in the future.
Camels need not remain for ever the only means of transport in Libya.
Cisterns of water might be stored at various known posts, as is done
between Jalo and Jaghabub, where the Sayeds have caused water to be kept
in great stone jars for the use of travellers.
That night at Buseima, when our guests departed, we returned to the tent
athirst for map-making. We shut the flaps and drew out our secreted
apparatus. We ruined many sheets of paper and lost our compass in the
sand a dozen times before we produced the first rough chart of the
desert oasis, but we felt the effort was worth while when we saw the
wells we had added to the 1915 Egyptian Survey map. “Let us hope we
shall have saved the next European quite a lot of trouble!” said
Hassanein, unconsciously adding sand to his already ruffled hair.
Sidi Mohammed spent the night in our camp. I thought it was to avoid the
long walk back in the dark, for he lived in the farthest away of the two
villages. In the morning I discovered he had done it as a precaution.
Apparently the tales of danger were not so absurd as we had thought. The
Faqrun men had said to Mohammed, “Wallahi! If it had not been for Sidi
el Madeni, we would have killed you all!” It remains a complete mystery
how they proposed to do it, but there could be no further doubt about
Buseima’s dislike of strangers. A pale-faced woman had slipped out of
the bushes to talk to Moraja as he went out of the camp. The sergeant
had Arab blood mixed with his Sudanese and the figure in blurred reds
and fawns was of his kin. “Why did you bring these Egyptians here?” she
asked angrily. “We do not want strangers. Make them go, or they will
suffer!” The morning of January 7, therefore, everyone had a new panic.
It was in vain that we asked them if they were afraid of a mere handful
or of shadows. They resurrected all the old stories and, with frantic
glances at the deserted dunes, they implored us to depart at once.
The pitiful thing was that Mohammed’s spirit was utterly broken by the
last three days of thirst. “Allah has given me a new life,” he said. “I
dare not risk it again.” We were quite used to the cowardice of Yusuf
and Abdul Rahim, a pathetic little wisp of a man who had no physique and
no fighting spirit, but I was very sorry for Mohammed. He had been my
greatest ally, always ready for work or for risk. Now his mind seemed to
have suffered as well as his body. I wondered whether he would be of
much use to us in the future. As I poached eggs on a sweet-smelling fire
and made coffee in the “Nasrani water,” which tasted so sweet but which
made one’s mouth terribly dry, I wished the retinue could absorb a
little of the scene. The only things that moved in the purple and gold
of rock and dune were the little grey and black birds, like water-
wagtails—the “abu fasada” of Egypt. I suppose one should make an
exception for the insects, for there were several kinds of beetles, as
well as long, sandy locusts and actually mosquitoes, though the latter
were either particularly merciful or abhorred the European as much as
did the other inhabitants of Buseima.
[Illustration: CARAVAN ON THE MARCH BETWEEN BUTTAFAL AND TAISERBO]
[Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS OF BUSEIMA]
After breakfast we climbed to the top of one of the rocky cliffs. Moraja
assured us that it would take the whole day. We completed the ascent in
three-quarters of an hour, probably about 100 metres. Our camp level in
the wadi was just under 380 metres. The view was marvellous. The whole
oasis spread below us, with the great gap in the cliffs through which we
had come two days before and beyond, on every side, were the waving
lines of creamy dunes, growing steeper as we looked south to Ribiana or
south-east to Kufara. Two spots of black broke the monotony of pale
curves—outlying blocks of the Buseima Gara.
[Illustration: CARAVAN IN DUNE COUNTRY NEAR BUSEIMA]
[Illustration: THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN THE FAQRUN FAMILY AND OUR PARTY
AT BUSEIMA]
On our way back we explored a good many ruined Tebu houses scattered
here and there on the rough salt waste between our camp and the cliffs.
The walls were still in good condition and the houses were larger than
on the farther side of the lake. The biggest round beehive room measured
8 feet 6 inches in diameter. I left Hassanein to tell the retinue that
we would start the next morning and to listen to their elaborate plans
for defence upon the way, while I went with Abdullah to visit his
relations in the neighbouring village. His sister lived in a low hut
made of palm branches and a little square court in front, with a wall of
the same waving leaves. There was nothing inside the one room except
some mats of plaited fronds, a few woven grass bowls full of dates, a
couple of yellow gourds, a kid-skin of water, and some rather doubtful
blankets. The whole life of these people depends on the palm. Their
houses, mats, bowls, food, drink, baskets, string, shoes, stuffing for
camel-saddles, all come from it.
Several women gathered round me in the cool darkness. Most of them were
pretty, with pale olive faces and pointed chins. The dark eyes of a
Latin race looked out between heavy, black-fringed lashes, their
features were finely cut and they had the most beautiful pearly teeth I
have ever seen. They told me it was the effect of dates and the thing
that most interested them in me was a gold stopping! They thought it was
a new form of jewellery and everyone in turn was called upon to inspect
and poke my unfortunate tooth. “If we have gold,” they said, “we make it
into necklaces and ear-rings. Why do you wear it in your mouth?” They
insisted on unwinding my cumbersome red hezaam, which I had always
rolled round my waist, and swathing it very low on my hips, which gave
me the immensely long-bodied effect of all Arab women. They showed me
all their jewellery—huge silver ear-rings, necklaces and amulets—and
asked me why I had no tattoo marks to show my tribe. Altogether we spent
an amusing hour in the dark palm-room, varied by drinking sour goat’s
milk out of bowls made of palm wood, and eating dry, black dates almost
too hard to bite.
From Buseima there are two routes, one due south to Ribiana, described
as a day and a half through very big dunes, a hard road that no guide
likes to face, and another slightly south-east, taking three and a half
days, of which two are difficult. From Ribiana it is possible to
continue through the same high dunes to the Kufara group. By the more
direct route one arrives at Hawari and by the longer one at Tolab. We
took the straight road without hesitation, for our camels had by no
means recovered from our last disastrous journey. Two of the nagas were
expected to foal at any moment and all looked extremely thin and weak.
Abdul Hafiz shook his head over them despondently. “Allah is great,” he
said, “but so are the dunes!”
We left Buseima at 8.20 on January 8. Bu Regea walked with us to the top
of the first sand ridge, from where there was a marvellous view of the
whole oasis, palms, lake and mountains, the latter like ruddy amethysts
in a gold setting. The “Fatha” was solemnly repeated on the summit of a
sharp rise; then, after many good wishes and blessings, we plunged
sharply into the maze of dunes. The strange little scene stuck in my
mind because of the treachery that we knew underlay it. The preceding
evening, after they had eaten our food, one of the Faqrun family had
said to Yusuf, “Wallahi! Had we but a force equal to yours, you should
not now depart,” while the loyal Sheikh el Madeni had urged Mohammed to
leave the oasis as soon as possible.
The morning of our departure a spy arrived from Ribiana, saying, “The
Bazama family have just returned from Jedabia, and they tell us that
strangers are coming to this country. We cannot believe it is true that
the Sayed has given permission to any stranger to visit Kufara. I have
been sent to discover the truth.” Now the aged ekhwan who originally
intended to accompany us on our journey, Haji Fetater, had warned
Abdullah that the Sayed should not allow the Bazamas to go to Ribiana
until we had returned in safety. Amidst all the complications of our
departure the warning had been ignored, yet when the spy’s words were
repeated to us we felt at last we understood the situation. Ever since
we had left Jedabia there had been a strange undercurrent that we could
not understand. We met with much hospitality and friendliness, yet
always an odd distrust dogged our footsteps, while queer, impossible
rumours spread before us. There was the robber band that laid in wait
for us near Bir Rassam. There was the change of front at Aujela. Even in
Jalo there was a faint uneasy shadow, which Hameida Bey Zeitun explained
by saying that some of the sheikhs were old-fashioned and ignorant. Then
came the actual enmity of Buseima, with all the rumours and warnings
that terrified our retinue and were disregarded by us. The culminating
point was the arrival of the spy, whose tale gave us every reason to
suppose that we should be attacked on the way to Kufara, for he made
exhaustive inquiries as to the strength of our party and the retinue we
were taking.
It was Mohammed who elucidated the mystery. He told us that the Bazamas
were an old and highly respected Senussi family, who had been ekhwan
since the ancestor, who was sent to Kufara by Sidi Ben Ali, was one of
the original four who were to instruct the Zouias in the faith of Islam.
There had been an ancient dispute about the possession of some land in
Ribiana between the Sayeds and a member of this family, but Sayed Ahmed
had settled matters amicably by making them sheikhs of Ribiana.
Unfortunately, they had lately evaded the payment of “Onshur” (the tenth
part) to the Government, on the grounds that they had not enough
servants to till the lands. Sidi Idris had just removed them from office
and appointed another man in their place. Consequently the whole Bazama
family were in search of revenge. What better opportunity could offer
than the murder of the Sayed’s guests, who were, moreover, generally
supposed to be engaged on an important Senussi mission?
Now we could trace all the threads to one spinning-wheel. We had
attributed the robbers to chance greed, the affair at Aujela to the
meanness of a surly Zouia who did not wish to feast the travellers, the
rumours of danger in Buseima to the strained imaginations of the
retinue. As a matter of fact, we probably owed our continued existence
in the first place to our disguised flight, which misled Jedabia. Later
on, Hassanein’s eloquence the first night in the She-ib’s tent at
Aujela; at Jalo, the loyalty of the kaimakaan; at Buseima the smallness
of the population doubtless saved us from disaster; but what about
Kufara? The Bazamas might have much influence there, and in a large Arab
oasis there are always factions only too glad of an excuse to squabble.
The sacred character of the place and the fierce fanaticism of the older
Senussi would give our enemies every chance of fomenting the distrust
which the advent of the first strangers in their history must naturally
arouse. Mohammed and Yusuf were exceedingly troubled. For the hundredth
time I imagine they wished they had never started on this southern
journey! The story invented by the Bazamas, the one most likely to unite
every faction and family against us, was that Sidi Idris had sold
Kufara, Ribiana and Buseima to Europeans, and that Christian strangers
(sometimes I was reported to be the Queen of Italy!) were coming to gain
all information about the country, so that the Europeans could occupy it
with greater ease! Unless this amazing rumour could be rapidly
discredited, every man’s hand would be against us and our lives not
worth the fraction of a centime!
We calculated that the spy would waste at least half the day “fadhling”
at Buseima, after which it would take him a day to return to Ribiana. We
expected that more time would be wasted there in organising the attack
and so hoped, by moving speedily, to arrive at Hawari without a battle.
It would not matter much, in case of attack, whether we were victorious
or not, for in the former case we should have started a blood feud and
the relatives of the slain would lie in wait for us on our return.
Unfortunately, the dunes made rapid progress impossible. The camels
slipped and fell going down them; the ungirthed loads were flung off in
all directions. The beasts had to be urged up them slowly and
laboriously. We were obliged to wind round the largest and our course
that day was an infinitely slow zigzag. We rose to a height of 580
metres, with great waves and ridges of dunes running irregularly on
every side. At 3 P.M. we arrived at an almost flat stretch with one very
high pointed dune measuring nearly 100 metres high at the farther side.
We clambered up this and had a wonderful view over the turbulent sea of
sand. Behind us the great cliffs of Buseima appeared just sunk among the
dunes. On the western horizon rose another long, square-topped
formation, dark as the gara we had left. This was the mountain of
Ribiana. It appeared to me at least 60 kilometres away. To the east were
clearly visible the Fadil hills and the Hawaish between Zieghen and
Kufara, mere little blots of indigo among the curly sand ridges. At 5
P.M. we were forced to camp because one of the nagas was foaling. She
walked up to the last moment and an hour later she appeared to have
recovered, but, alas! the foal was reported dying, which depressed the
Arabs intensely, for camels are gold in their eyes, and gold to them is
Alpha and Omega and a great deal else in between!
The Sudanese amused me greatly that evening. “Don’t be afraid! We will
defend your life,” said Farraj cheerfully. With memories of their
various panics in Buseima, I replied, “Don’t you worry about defending
my life. I can do that all right. Keep your minds fixed on defending
your own!” This was a new point of view and elicited the doleful answer,
“But I don’t want to fight without a reason. There is a little girl I
want to marry when I go back!”
January 9 was a very cold morning, so the retinue dawdled hopelessly
over their meal. The Sudanese prefer the fiercest sun to a touch of
cold, which literally freezes them. We started at 8 A.M., and made
better progress than the previous day, in spite of the fact that the
foal, having completely recovered, had to be carried in a sort of
pannier on the mother’s back. The dunes were very uneven in size.
Sometimes for a kilometre or two there was a stretch of mildly
undulating sands and then we would come to great massive dunes like
small mountains, from the top of which one had a view of the four black,
rocky chains, roughly east, south, north and west. At 10 A.M. we climbed
to the top of the Seif el-Biram, which the Arabs say is the highest on
the route. It is called the “Dune of Firepots,” because the Zouia women,
flying south before the Turkish occupation of the northern oasis, took
their clay cooking pots with them on their camels. As the beasts crawled
down the precipitous slopes of the mighty dune the vessels fell off and
were all broken! To a certain extent our caravan repeated the
experience, for most of the baggage collapsed and a strange woman who
was travelling with us—a pale girl-widow, who had left her baby in
Buseima because her husband’s family refused to give it up and had
claimed our protection to go to Kufara to join her own people—turned a
complete somersault over the head of her surprised camel. Luckily the
sand was soft! It became distinctly pinkish as we went farther south, a
pale coral colour. Unfortunately, another naga took it into her head to
foal, after we had done only 28 kilometres and we were forced to camp at
3 P.M. Luckily there was no doubt about this foal’s health, so we
avoided the gloom of the preceding evening.
Yusuf and Abdullah sat with me while the tent was being erected in a
wide open space, splendidly open to attack, but the fatalistic spirit of
the desert had made us careless. They told me stories of Sidi el Mahdi,
who is supposed among the Beduins to be still alive and a mystic
wanderer in the Sahara. Some day he will return to lead the Senussi to
further glory and power, “Inshallah!” They say that he disappeared
suddenly at Garu on the way to Wadai and another was buried in his place
in the holy morabit in Kufara. As an instance of his continued existence
they quoted the experience of some Arabs seated round their camp fire
amidst the starlit dunes. To them came a stranger who asked them for
news of the Mahdi. “Our lord is dead,” they replied; “the Sayeds at
Kufara say so.” “He is alive,” said the stranger, “Huwa fi Wasst.” The
Beduins translated this to mean that Sidi el Mahdi was in a town called
“Wasst” in Algeria, and they rushed with the news to Kufara. “Why did
you not hold the man?” asked the sheikhs. “That was the Mahdi. He is
alive. He told you he was ‘fiwasst,’ ‘between you.’” The play on the
Arabic words is clumsy in English. “Fiwasst” means “between,” “in the
middle of,” while “fi” means “in,” and “Wasst” might be the name of a
place.
The previous night we had camped with a feeling of unrest and
apprehension. Everybody clung to his rifle and I remember Hassanein and
I had a fierce dispute over an ancient musket, left behind by a soldier
who had deserted at Jalo, reducing our army to nine, inclusive of
commandant and sergeant. As a matter of fact, the weapon which really
filled the Beduin soul with terror was Hassanein’s useless target
pistol. Its long barrel thrilled them and we overheard Abdullah telling
a friend that Ahmed Bey had a revolver which could shoot people an hour
away!
The second night the desert had stuck in her claw again—fatal anæsthetic
which makes one utterly careless of the future—“What matter dead
yesterday and unborn to-morrow, so that the day be good?” In truth the
days are generally extremely trying, for there is either a blazing sun
which burns through the thin cotton barracan over the wound
handkerchief, or a bitter wind which pierces every bone in one’s body.
Sometimes there were both together and then one side of one is frozen
and the other baked! One’s skin split and blistered under this
treatment, but there was only one hour I shall never be able to forgive
the desert. This was the moment when, at 5 A.M., one crept shivering out
of one’s warm flea-bag into pitch darkness, placed one’s feet gingerly
on icy cold sand, fumbled with numb fingers for a candle and matches,
and proceeded to drag on cold, stiff garments from each of which fell a
shower of sand. Meanwhile, with chattering teeth, one had to call out
loud, cheerful greetings and hearty good wishes to rouse our improvident
following, although one’s mind contained nothing but venomous invective!
However, the nights were good. On that particular one, Shakri, being
sentinel, stationed himself clear-cut against the starlit sky on the top
of the highest dune and, in case his presence were not sufficiently
obvious, he played mournful little tunes on a wooden flute.
Next day, January 10, we started at 6.30 A.M., after the usual breakfast
of half a plate of rice with a dozen dates and a cup of coffee. It is
amazing how one gets accustomed to much work on little food. We walked
for eleven and a quarter hours, doing 44 kilometres as the crow flies,
with only a handful of dates at midday. Moreover, when we reached camp
there was always map-drawing and writing to be done before we thought of
supper.
That day Abdullah and I started off briskly in front of the others, for
it was very cold and the sun had not yet risen above the dunes. We were
soon stopped by the sight of something white a little to our left. Upon
inspection it proved to be a pathetic reminder of the desert cruelty we
had escaped just a week ago. Three human skeletons lay in a huddled
group, half-covered with sand. “Thirst,” said Abdullah grimly. It must
have been a fairly recent tragedy, for the men’s white clothes were in
good condition, and the skin of the hands was still yellow and dry. The
strange woman bent over them pityingly. “Three men were lost on their
way from Ribiana to Kufara,” she said. “Their baggage was found but they
had disappeared.” The soldiers, however, said they were probably blacks,
for they had many Sudanese hejabs on them. We found some leather
amulets, a fox’s foot and the complete bones of a bird, but I would not
let the men disturb the desolate scene further. With a “Rahmat Ullahi
Allahim!” we passed on to join the caravan.
The foals were being carried in panniers, one on each side of the
biggest naga, and occasionally we had to stop to let them feed.
Otherwise we made good pace, for the dunes were gradually getting less
steep. At 8 A.M. we mounted the last big rise and saw before us a sea of
low coral waves, for the sand was getting steadily pinker, with the
black mass of the gebel in front. Great was our excitement, however,
when, with binoculars, we were able to follow this chain, apparently
with scarcely a break, to very near the position of the Ribiana Gara. In
fact, the whole horizon seemed to be enclosed in a semicircle of
irregular violet hills, stretching from the Fadil and Hawaish to the
north-west and west with scarcely a break where Kufara lay, to the long
chain of the Gebel Neri. From the map we had seen we had supposed the
hills to be in small, regular groups. This marvellous view of a land
enclosed by strange cliffs was so unexpected that it was like
discovering a new country. From that point the ranges appeared to run in
a complete half-circle from north-west to south-east. With blazing eyes
Hassanein began tracing his sand maps. “Don’t you see the Hawari Gara is
a continuation of the Gebel Neri?” he said. “Yes, and the Ribiana Gara
is a bit broken off the other end,” I answered with rising excitement.
“Do you know, the Hawaish mountain was originally called the Keid el
Adu, ‘vexation of the enemy,’” he continued, “because no one could break
through it?” “To enter the enclosed land,” I interrupted. “Of course,
these oases are all linked in a circle by the black hills. Taiserbo
alone has no gara—she lies outside.”
From that moment I have always thought of Buseima, Kufara and Ribiana as
the mountain oases of Libya. Some day, no doubt, geologists will come
and prove our theory false or true, but for me the palm gardens isolated
in the middle of red sands, each with its guardian crag, will ever be an
island country within the arms of the strange dark mountains.
The name Hawaish means a great beast; therefore we questioned Yusuf and
Abdullah closely about these mountains. “No one ever goes there,” they
said. “The jinns live there!” “Does anyone ever go to Gebel Neri?” “No;
they are afraid.” “What are they afraid of?” “They do not know.” “Have
they seen anything?” “No. When they go near the mountains they have a
feeling.” “Are there men there?” “No. There is no water nor food. Men
lived there long ago and drank rain water.” “They may be there still,
then?” “No. There are jinns.” “What do they look like?” “Nobody has seen
them.” “How do you know they are there?” “In the morning one can
sometimes hear a loud noise as of many birds.” “And no one has seen
anything?” “They have seen bones.” “What kind of bones?” “They do not
know. They are afraid.” Pressed on this point, Yusuf said the bones were
big and drew a picture in the sand which might represent the vertebræ of
anything from a man to a camel! I repeat this conversation verbatim in
order to show how difficult it is to draw information from a Libyan
Arab!