TREACHERY AT HAWARI
In the afternoon we left the dunes behind and emerged on flat, rolling
country, with broad sand-waves ahead and the purple crags of the Neri
running south in an irregular mass of peaks and square-topped ridges,
with dark stretches of stones and lava in between. The sand was now the
colour of mellow brickdust, with occasional streaks of purplish red and
scattered patches of stones of all colours, like those I had picked up
in Buseima. Some of the ground looked almost like mosaic work in blues,
mauves and reds. Hoping to arrive at Hawari on the morrow, the caravan
moved briskly through the sunset, when the land turned an ugly hot brown
and the aching cliffs tore the orange sky with sombre violet crests. We
barraked beneath the first big, round sand wave, from where we could see
the dark gara of Hawari—a continuation of the Gebel Neri—and while we
triumphed in our success as geographers, the retinue developed a
beautiful new panic!
They had heard that one man had left the Bazama caravan at El Harrash
and gone on to Kufara. Abdullah suggested that he would have spread all
kinds of libel about us and Abdul Rahim grew pale beneath his ebony! The
pitiful thing was that Mohammed had so completely lost his nerve that he
too was terrified. He had changed very much in the last week. He no
longer looked out upon the world with his old, frank, boyish glance. His
eyes wavered and fell. He never laughed or sang these days. I think that
he was really the only imaginative and sensitive man in the party and
therefore he alone had conjured up visions of what dying of thirst
really meant. Also his reserved pride had been violently wounded by the
attitude of Buseima, though he would never acknowledge it.
Unfortunately, that morning he had seen the skeletons and drew on his
vivid imagination for details and comparisons. This completed his
demoralisation. He joined with the guide and the soldiers in imploring
us to go past Hawari by night and arrive at Kufara proper before dawn,
so that by the time anyone woke up in Taj we should be established in
one of the Sayed’s houses, presumably in a state of armed defence. In
vain we argued and protested. They all foresaw a well-organised attack
the moment the inhabitants of Hawari perceived us. To do Yusuf justice,
he was the only one who declared this was nonsense. “There may be
robbers,” he said, “but how could they openly attack the Sayed’s
slaves?” We found an unexpected ally in him when, sitting round the camp
fire, we tried to instil a little courage into the retinue while at the
same time insisting on staying in Hawari.
It had been an exceedingly hot day and feet had blistered anew, which
perhaps accounted for the mental depression. Yusuf was our most reliable
barometer. When he discarded the fleece-lined waterproof and strode
along in his fluttering white shirt and a skull cap, as he had done that
afternoon, we knew it must be almost torrid. I never saw Mohammed walk
without my plaid rug wound over the top of the torn woolly waterproof!
January 11 I saw the sun rise from the top of the immense dune that had
guarded our slumbers. The dull sand turned slowly pink as the purple
cliffs of the Gebel Neri came into view in low, irregular masses to the
south, while a little to the east of them appeared the solitary black
rock of the Hawari Gara. It looked at least a day’s journey away.
Abdullah said we should reach it by midday. As we marched towards it I
tried to draw out more tales of the desolate mountain on our right, for
I was intrigued by the description of the sounds heard therein, “a noise
of birds.” Hornemann, the first modern writer to speak of the Tebu
oasis, says that the people of Aujela described the speech of the
inhabitants as “like unto the whistling of birds.” Curiously enough, the
Tebu women I met had extraordinarily high-pitched, sweet voices, which
sounded rather like clear warbling. Moraja and Abdul Hafiz both
volunteered the information that “footprints” had been seen near the
haunted Gebel. “Footprints of what?” I asked. “Well, they are like
snakes!” they replied. The anti-climax was too great. I could not bear
my jinn or prehistoric savage to turn into a serpent!
After two hours we left the pink sands and passed into the waste of
stony ridges and small hills on the outskirts of the mountains. The
colours were quite extraordinary. Occasional banks of vivid vermilion
lay between patches of loose black stone, with here and there scattered
blocks of grey, rose and mauve, at the foot of the smaller cliffs. All
round us the basis of the sand was fawnish red and as the stones grew
thicker we found odd hollow tubes and balls, heavy and black, but filled
with sand. The largest balls measured more than a foot across, the
smallest about an inch. The blacks were delighted with these new toys
and broke open the solid ones to see the sand run out, after which they
used them as cups and candlesticks. I had never seen the formation
before and did not know what it was. We passed the Hawari Gara at noon.
It does not stand out particularly from the rest of the Gebel Neri, as
it is but one cliff among many in the neighbourhood, but a few hundred
yards beyond, the ridges of stones and red sand rise sufficiently to
allow one to look, as it were, over their edge on to a country of paler
sand beyond. Here reigned our old enemy, the mirage, so it was difficult
at first to distinguish the false from the true. On the far horizon
loomed the purple hills of the Kufara Gara. Somewhere beyond those peaks
and cliffs lay the mysterious, elusive oasis that was so near and yet
always just beyond our reach. Up till that moment we had considered
Hawari as a part of Kufara, but Yusuf, pointing joyfully to a pale sand
wave just before the distant hills, said, “Do you see the white sand?
Before we come to that, below it, are the palms of Hawari, but Kufara is
‘bayid,’ beyond the Gebel.”
For a couple of hours we straggled across uneven country, dotted with
rare patches of stones and mounds, with ever more and more tantalising
points appearing to the south till we wondered if the mountains ever
ended. Nobody waits for anyone else in the desert. Everyone walks at his
own favourite pace. If you cannot keep up, you drop behind and your
companion does not stop to ask the reason. If you pause to shake the
sand from a shoe, he does not halt with you. It is against the custom,
unless you are ill. The Beduins often speak of the long, waterless
routes as “The roads where we do not wait for a dying man. An hour for a
camel, two for an Arab, then we leave them!”
At last a stronger sand wave than most gave us a sudden perfect view of
Hawari, a long, very narrow strip of palms running for about 12
kilometres very nearly north and south, with two little isolated groups
of palms at the southern end. All round it lay a band of very red sand,
broken into thousands of small mounds of “hattab,” the little dry sticks
we had seen before. A third naga started to foal, but we ruthlessly left
her to the care of Abdul Hafiz and pressed on, so that we entered the
oasis at 3 P.M.
Against the wallflower sands the thick, low-growing, heavy-foliaged
palms looked almost grey. There were few tall ones, so it was easy to
cut great clusters of yellow dates, which were very sweet and tasted of
honey. I did not like them very much. The retinue began to panic
frantically, chiefly because a group of blacks we passed cutting dates
amidst a picturesque circle of goats and blue-robed women, asked, “Where
is the caravan with the Christian? The Bazamas sent news of it.”
We went straight across the southern end of the oasis to the palm
gardens of the Sayed, which were kept in excellent order with neat leaf
fences, many wells, rows of newly planted young palms and continuous
patches of vegetables, brightest green amidst the monotonous brick-red
sands. The whole of this portion of the oasis was inhabited by the
Sayed’s slaves and we saw numbers of blacks, men, women and children,
working in the gardens or driving small, pale grey donkeys laden with
dates. We camped on the edge of the village and Abdul Rahim nearly had a
fit when he saw me wander off to photograph the houses, gleaming white
between the palms. He ran after me almost foaming with terror. The
general state of nerves was beginning to get boring.
[Illustration: GARDENS AND LAKE AT BUSEIMA]
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR ON A CAMEL AT BUSEIMA]
The houses of Hawari are almost like European buildings. They are
exceedingly well constructed of sand bricks in regular lines, square,
solid, flat-roofed, with windows, but many of the yards have quite low
walls, all of which are neatly coped. We had scarcely put up the tent
when the sheikh of the zawia, Musa Squaireen, arrived to inquire our
business. He was soon followed by the leading Zouia headmen, among them
Musa Gharibeel and Mansur Bu Badr of the Gebail. Soon a circle of a
dozen were sitting round our hastily built zariba, while Mohammed’s
faithful follower, Omar, hurriedly made coffee. The tribesmen were
slightly depressed at first and we wondered if it had anything to do
with our arrival, until it appeared that one man had made a bad bargain
in buying slaves from a Wadai caravan a few days before. He had paid 400
mejidies (about £70) for a man and two women, and now the man was very
ill. “It was bad business,” he said sadly. They all repeated the same
formula, “The Sayed’s orders are above our heads,” and added that our
visit was welcome, saying, “Your coming is a blessing. May Allah bless
our Sayeds and those who come from them!” Yet Abdul Rahim started the
rumour that night that we were prisoners and were not to be allowed to
move till permission arrived from Kufara.
[Illustration: ZOUIA WOMEN AT BUSEIMA]
[Illustration: AT BUSEIMA: TEACHING THE FAQRUN FAMILY TO USE FIELD
GLASSES]
We were too sleepy to inquire into the truth, but the following morning
gifts of sour leban and milk arrived, together with a couple of
chickens, so we thought that probably the Zouias, while paying all
honour to the Sayed’s guests, were anxious to show how impossible it was
for strangers to penetrate their well-guarded borders. Yusuf and
Mohammed implored us not to move from the camp, which they had pitched
in an unsheltered, torridly hot and fly-ridden spot to avoid robbers in
the palm groves. “Wait till the big men come to see us,” they said.
“Then you can walk with safety.” This was palpably an excuse, for Hawari
is only a little village suffering from its nearness to a big centre.
The whole life of the country depends on the town beyond the mountains.
The big sheikhs and ekhwan live in Jof and Taj. In Clapham or Tooting
one does not expect to find Ministers of the Crown. So in Hawari
everyone says, “There is nothing here. All things come from Kufara.” The
important sheikh of the place, Bush Naf, was at the moment in Jof. For
this reason we had sent on Abdullah as a herald of our coming to present
our credentials to Sidi Idris’s wakil and to prepare a dwelling for us
in Taj.
That morning we over-ate on eggs, dates, fresh bread made with yeast—oh,
but it tasted good—and goat’s milk. Then, while Hassanein lazed—he
called it absorbing the spirit of the desert—I hid two kodaks in the
folds of my voluminous barracan, veiled my unfortunately white skin and
went off to explore the town. The corporal and the largest Farraj
offered to escort me, but they were not happy till they realised how
little interest we aroused. We saw many well-kept gardens wherein grew
vegetables, peaches, barley, thorn-tree figs. In each of them were one
or two Sudanese working the primitive wells, sometimes with the aid of
the delightful little grey donkeys, the cleanest things I had seen in
Libya. We walked all through the village, encountering no opposition,
but of subjects for photographs there were few. The big, square houses,
with their complicated yards and outbuildings, were dotted here and
there among the scattered palms or over the broad bare spaces of sand.
There were no winding streets or passages as in Jalo and Aujela. A
small, insignificant mosque, a low, square building with a row of
windows, a little zawia established by the great Sidi el Mahdi, with a
“qubba” that looked rather like a horse trough with an upright stone at
each end (a former muezzin of the zawia), made a group at one end of the
village. We climbed one of the vermilion dunes, half-covered with the
feathery grey bushes we had first met at El Atash, in order to get a
better view for a photograph, but the scattered houses were too far
away.
On our return we passed one or two buildings with mud porticoes, whose
arches could be seen above the walls of their yards. Some women came out
to talk to me in high, clear voices. They were practically unveiled and
wore straight, dark red tobhs, unbelted, so they made an attractive
group under a large thorn-tree between high sand walls. One and all they
asked for medicine, and when I returned to my fly-filled tent a group
gradually gathered outside with various tales of woe. The most important
entered and sat uncomfortably on my folding bed, from which they soon
slipped thankfully to their accustomed crouched-up position on the sand.
My treatments were simple, consisting chiefly of boracic powder and
quinine, but the recipients tied the pills carefully into corners of
their barracans and departed with blessings.
Suddenly a blaze of colour obstructed the view beyond my tent flap. The
smallest of the grey donkeys, almost covered with a gorgeous striped mat
of reds and blues, and still further obscured by the voluminous
draperies of a small, huddled figure in the vividest scarlet I have ever
seen, was led up by a tiny urchin in a tattered white shirt, while
another beat from behind. “The mother of Sheikh Musa has come to visit
you,” announced one of the Farrajes. The flaming folds disengaged
themselves, trailed into the tent and crumbled into a red heap on the
sand, from which emerged the oldest, frailest Arab woman I have ever
met. She was bent and wrinkled beyond belief, toothless and almost
blind, yet she carried on an interested conversation about the Sayeds
and finally offered me a Moslem rosary blessed by Sidi el Mahdi.
As the heat was terrific I was glad when the visit came to an end and
only wished we had fixed our departure for that afternoon instead of for
the next morning. Hassanein suggested our wandering down to the other
end of the oasis where there is another small village, Hawawiri. We
borrowed a donkey from the reluctant sheikh el-zawia, who told us we
should be killed before we were out of sight of the belad, and called
for a guide to show us the way. At that moment there were half a dozen
Zouias seated round our zariba, but none of them moved. I began to
understand the sufferings of Rohlfs when I looked at the cruel, anæmic
faces of these Arabs. Brave they may be, but they had not the keen,
fierce looks of the warrior Beduin. They had small, cunning eyes that
shifted restlessly, long, mean faces with thin lips and generally a
fretful scowl between the brows. The Zouias are known as a bad tribe and
these people certainly looked untrustworthy to the last degree. When we
offered a bribe of tea and sugar one of them got up to accompany us, but
none of the soldiers would come. Moraja and Abdul Rahim hid in their
tent and Yusuf said he was lame. We were just starting off alone when
Mohammed sprang up and slung on his gun. “They are a pair of eagles!” he
exclaimed. “I will not be less brave than they.” After we had gone a few
hundred yards there was a soft thud-thudding in the sand behind, and the
big Farraj, who had become our sort of personal slave, together with the
corporal, silently joined us.
Our progress, however, was almost instantly stopped by a band of young
men and boys rushing wildly after us. “Do not walk! Do not walk!” they
yelled, and pointed to a large group of white-clad Arabs marching
rapidly towards us. We turned to meet them. “For God’s sake do not go!”
said Mohammed. “There is bad work here. I do not understand it. Let us
go back to the camp!” He followed gamely, however. The Arabs were all
armed and they looked very angry, for they were gesticulating and
talking in loud voices. I always wore my revolvers underneath my hezaam.
I managed to get them out under the folds of my barracan and wondered
with an odd, fierce pleasure how many shots I could get in. The corporal
pretended to busy himself with the donkey, but our Farraj came on, his
rifle ready. The Zouias surrounded us, a wild, threatening group. “You
shall not move from here till orders come from Jof!” they shouted. “We
have been warned about you. We know. No strangers shall come to our
country. They die quickly here!” Hassanein suddenly had one of his
inspirations. “You wish to show that you are brave and will defend your
country to the last, but you should behave thus to strangers, not to the
guests of the Sayed!” he said angrily. They were puzzled. They expected
us to be frightened and impressed. Instead, we were angrier than they.
If you can make an Arab talk he generally forgets to fire.
While loudly arguing we led the way to the camp and soon there was a
large “megliss” seated outside our tent. Some Tebus joined the Zouias.
They were coal-black like the Sudani slaves, but with more refined and
intelligent faces. Most of them do not talk Arabic, but their head man
explained the situation to them and to our surprise they ranged
themselves on our side. “The guests of the Sayed are welcome to our
country,” they said. The Zouias, headed by Bu Badr, were angrier than
ever. “Why does not a messenger come from Jof?” they asked. “Sidi
Abdullah went last night and he promised to send back news. We told him
you should not follow until permission came.”
We looked blankly at each other. We had not told the guide to send back
a messenger, and he had breathed no word to us of such intention, nor of
his tribesmen’s threats. “It is a plot,” said I grimly. “Yes, but where,
why——?” murmured Hassanein vaguely. Mohammed leaned forward
triumphantly. His eyes shone, his voice was strong. I think in that
moment he recovered his self-respect and we our old ally. “I understand
it all,” he cried. “Wallahi! I will never stroke my beard again till I
have settled with Abdullah who has betrayed us. You men of Hawari, you
are fools and you have insulted the Sayed’s guests because you are like
the foolish woman in the suq who buys the first thing that is offered to
her!” He whispered to Hassanein in Arabic too rapid for my
comprehension, “By Allah, hear and believe, for I speak the truth!”
shouted the latter above the babel of angry voices. Even Sheikh Zarrug
of the Hawaij ceased from exclaiming that if no messenger came from Jof
on the morrow the Zouias would know that we had deceived them and it
would go hard with us. “You get no news here and you believe the first-
comer,” continued Hassanein. “Abdullah told you that you must prove to
the strangers that you were brave and strong lest they think that anyone
can enter your country easily. Is it not so?” They acknowledged
uneasily, some even with crooked smiles, that this was the case. Then
they remembered the point which changed a bluff meant to impress
strangers into a grim reality. “Abdullah was to send back a messenger if
the ekhwan approved of your letter and would receive you. It is a short
journey and none has come.”
At these words smiles vanished and the pale, cruel faces grew more
cunning and suspicious. The Tebus grouped themselves behind us. It might
be a good battle, I thought, and wondered if the Zouia rifles were
modern. A fight is always stimulating and not like that awful, helpless
day of thirst when one could not war with nature! “Of course, no
messenger has come,” said Hassanein triumphantly. “None will. You have
been fooled and so have we. To-morrow you would have prevented our
going. There would have been a fight. You are brave but so are the
slaves of the Sayed. Perhaps his guests would have been killed and
Abdullah would have been saved. Do you know why?” Then followed the
story of the guide who had lost his head and his reputation at the same
time and I suddenly grasped Abdullah’s neat little plot.
If none of the caravan returned to Jedabia, or even if the two
strangers, chief witnesses against him, disappeared, he would be saved.
He knew full well that no one would employ him as a guide after the
story of his Taiserbo mistake became known. His future depended on our
lips being sealed. His best chance lay amongst his suspicious Zouia
kinsmen, always distrustful of strangers, fanatical and warlike, yet the
caravan could not be attacked while he was with it. Therefore he
suggested going to prepare the way for us at Taj. When we agreed, it was
easy to arouse the _amour propre_ and suspicions of the Hawari Zouias.
“Show your courage by not letting these doubtful strangers cross the
borders of your land. If their story is true and the sheikhs of Jof will
receive them, I will send back a messenger.” He had never the slightest
intention of dispatching anyone to rescue us from the ever-growing
hostility at Hawari, and he calculated that in a day or two we should
make an attempt to escape and be promptly fired upon. The blacks would
be obliged to defend us and, after the general carnage, the story of his
failure would be buried with the slain.
Mohammed having discovered the plot, Hassanein rose nobly to the
occasion. His words poured forth with all the subtle rhetoric that sways
the Beduin mind and when their brains were steeped in this river of
speech he suddenly flung down Sidi Idris’s letter. “Do you wait for
orders from Jof when your Sayed sends us here? Is this the insult that
you pay him when he trusted you to help his guests?” There was an
uncomfortable pause. The shifty eyes of the circle would not meet ours.
Sheikh Saad, the feki of the town, who had been the spokesman against
us, murmured incoherent words. Mansur Bu Badr sent hastily for a sheep.
The group began to split into twos and threes. A party was forming in
our favour. Musa Gharibeel exclaimed, “He is speaking the truth. We have
made a mistake.” For at least an hour arguments raged on every side, but
we ignored them and planned low-voiced revenge with Mohammed in the
tent. It was delightful to see how the man had taken hold again.
“Wallahi,” he repeated five times running. “May I never see my wife
again if Abdullah does not get his reward from the Sayed!”
From the pleasant task of plotting the guide’s downfall we were summoned
by a smiling Yusuf. “Your words are flames,” he said to Hassanein. “The
people are feeling very foolish and they regret what they have done.” I
felt it was Hassanein’s triumph, so left him to receive the apologies of
the Zouias with condescending coldness, but even this did not content
them. Musa Gharibeel and Bu Badr insisted on wishing me personally a
good journey on the morrow. “I shall be glad to rest in the house of
Sidi Idris,” I said coldly. “He told me it would be an easy journey, but
I think he has been mistaken.” The Zouias were silent.
Yusuf told me afterwards that Abdullah had insisted that the caravan was
to follow him to Jof the next day without waiting for any news from
Kufara. To make things quite certain he had told the men of Hawari that
we were looking for gold in the mountains and we would return with an
army to conquer the land and take the treasure it contained!
When it was dark the slave-girls, Zeinab and Hauwa, crept into my tent.
“We thought we should all die to-day, but now we are happy. The people
are bad here, but we have been saved!” they said. Our greatest triumph,
however, was the moment when a very meek Zouia deputation woke us up to
ask us if we would care to go to Hawawiri on our way to Kufara on the
morrow. They dared not approach the tent themselves, so sent Yusuf to
offer their olive branch.