Lady Anne Blunt

“ The outline of Jebel Shammar is strangely fantastic, running up into spires and domes and pinnacles, with here and there a loop-hole through which you can see the sky, or a wonderful boulder perched like a rocking stone on the sky line. One rock was in shape just like a camel, and would deceive any person who did not know that a camel could not have climbed up there. ”

“ It is remarkable how much more prosperous the land looks as soon as one gets away from Turkish administration. The sun was setting as we first caught sight of Melakh, another strange old mediæval town of black stone, with walls and towers much out of the perpendicular; so leaving the camels to come on under Abdallah’s charge and that of a man who had volunteered to guide us, we cantered on with Mohammed, and in the twilight arrived at the house of Huseyn el-Atrash. ”

“ It is rare to meet anywhere in the North an Arab who has crossed the Great Nefûd.
To us too, imbued as we were with the fancies of the Desert, Nejd had long assumed the romantic colouring of a holy land; and when it was decided that we were to visit Jebel Shammar, the metropolis of Bedouin life, our expedition presented itself as an almost pious undertaking ”

“ Near Kurághir we saw some gazelles and coursed them vainly. It is vexatious, for I have forgotten to bring meat, and unless we can catch or shoot something, we shall have none till we get to Jôf. I ought to have thought of it, for, though provisions are by no means plentiful at Itheri, we could probably have bought a sheep and driven it on with us. The pain of my lameness distracted my attention—a bad excuse, but the only one. I suffer less when riding than at any other time.
We are now, since four o’clock, camped on the sand under some ghada bushes, and the wind has dropped for the moment. ”

“ Wherever a well has been sunk, a little garden has been made, fenced in with a wall, and planted with palms. There are perhaps a dozen of these outlying farms occupying two or three acres each. In one place there are four or five houses with their gardens together, which have the look of a village. The whole of the basin, except these oases, is dazzlingly white, showing the palm groves as black patches on its surface. ”

“ Ibn Smeyr had besides a little intrigue on foot respecting the escort of the Damascus pilgrims, which he in part provided or hoped to provide. Abd el-Kader was his friend, and it was at the Emir’s house that he alighted and that we found him. Mohammed Dukhi, noble though he is in point of blood, is not a fine specimen of a great Bedouin Sheykh. His politeness is overstrained and unnatural, reminding one rather of city than of desert manners; there are also ugly stories of his want of faith, which one finds no difficulty in believing when one sees him. ”

“ We left our camels to follow, and rode on towards the hills. It still took us several hours to reach them, but we were by three o’clock touching the stones with our hands to feel that they were real. It was as if we had been lost at sea and had found a desert island.
We had some time to wait while the caravan laboured slowly on to join us. I remained with the mares and kept a look-out while Wilfrid climbed to the top of the smaller rock. “What a place to be buried in,” he exclaimed. “Mount Nebo must have been like this.” But people who die in the Nefûd have seldom anyone to bury them. ”

“ We have learned, too, to make out a sort of road after all, of an intermittent kind, marked by the dung of camels, and occasionally on the side of a steep slope there is a distinct footway. Along this line our guide feels his way, here and there making a cast, as hounds do when they are off the scent. Neither he nor Mohammed, nor any of the Arabs with us, have the least notion of steering by the sun, and when Wilfrid asked Mohammed if he thought he could find his way back to Shakik, he answered, “How could I do so? Every one of these sand-hills is like the last.” ”

“ Mubarek, the Emir’s chief slave, was one of our particular acquaintances. He inhabits a very handsome house, as houses go in Haïl; and there Wilfrid paid him more than one visit. His house is curiously decorated with designs in plaster of birds and beasts—ostriches, antelopes, and camels. Though a slave, Mubarek has not in appearance the least trace of negro blood; and it is still a mystery to us how he happens to be one. He is a well-bred person, and has done everything in his power to make things pleasant for us. ”

“ But for the perfect travelling weather throughout our passage of the Nefûd, and the extraordinary luck of that thunderstorm, we should not now be at Jobba. The sand to tired camels is like a prison, and in the sand we should have remained. Mohammed, Abdallah, and the rest all behaved like heroes; even old Hanna, with stray p. 184locks of grey hair hanging from under his kefiyeh, for he has grown grey on the journey, and his feet bare, for it is impossible to walk in shoes, trudged on as valiantly as the most robust of the party. ”

“ Digby and her husband, Mijuel of the Mizrab, a very well bred and agreeable man, who has given us a great deal of valuable advice about our journey. They possess a charming house outside the town, surrounded by trees and gardens, and standing in its own garden with narrow streams of running water and paths with borders full of old fashioned English flowers—wall-flowers especially. There are birds and beasts too; pigeons and turtle doves flutter about among the trees, and a pelican sits by the fountain in the middle of the courtyard guarded by a fierce watch-dog. ”

“ Forty sheep or seven camels are his daily bill of fare. As we came out, we found the hungry multitude already assembling. Every stranger in Haïl has his place at Ibn Rashid’s table, and towards sunset the courtyard begins to fill. The Emir does not himself preside at these feasts. He always dines alone, or in his harim; but the slaves and attendants are extraordinarily well-drilled, and behave with perfect civility to all comers, rich and poor alike. ”

“ In the town, on the other hand, the Bedouin prince, despotic though he may be, is still under close restraint from public opinion. The citizens of Jebel Shammar have not what we should call constitutional rights; there is no machinery among them for the assertion of their power; but there is probably no community in the old world, where popular feeling exercises a more powerful influence on government than it does at Haïl. The Emir, irresponsible as he is in individual acts, knows well that he cannot transgress the traditional unwritten law of Arabia with impunity. ”

“ By the time of our return, Hanna’s good coffee was ready with a dish of flour and curry, to stay hunger until the sheep is boiled. Awwad, who delights in butcher’s work, has killed the sheep in the middle of our camp, for it is the custom to slaughter at the tent door, and has been smearing the camels with gore. When asked why, he says, “it will look as if we had been invited to a feast. It always looks well to have one’s camels sprinkled.” He has rigged up three tent poles, as a stand to hang the sheep from, and is dismembering in a truly artistic fashion. ”

“ It is no doubt discordant to European ideas of political propriety, that the supreme power in a country should be vested in Bedouin hands. But in Arabia they are the only hands that can wield it. The town cannot coerce the desert; therefore, if they are to live at peace, the desert must coerce the town. The Turks, with all their machinery of administration, and their power of wealth and military force, have never been able to secure life and property to travellers in the desert, and in Arabia have been powerless to hold more than the towns. ”

“ There is nothing like a bazaar in Jôf, nor even streets, as one generally understands the word, only a number of narrow tortuous lanes, with mud walls on either side. As we rode into the town, we found the lanes crowded with armed men, all carrying swords in the way we had seen at Kâf, dark-visaged and, we thought, not very pleased to see us. ”

“ The Jôf oasis—We are entertained by Ibn Rashid’s lieutenant—A haunch of wild cow—Dancing in the castle—Prayers—We go on to Meskakeh.
Jôf is not at all what we expected. We thought we should find it a large cultivated district, and it turns out to be merely a small town. There is nothing at all outside the walls except a few square patches, half an acre or so each, green with young corn. These are watered from wells, and irrigated just like the gardens inside the walls, with little water-courses carefully traced in patterns, like a jam tart. ”

“ A camel can never be depended on till he has had it. The ugly camel, too, which they call Shenuan, seems distressed. He has certainly got the mange, and I wish we had insisted on this point when we suspected the camels at Damascus, but it is too late now. The rest are still in fine order, in spite of the long journey and the absence of fresh pasture, which at this time of year they require. Nothing green has yet appeared, except a diminutive plant like a nemophila, with a purple flower which is beginning to show its head above the sand. ”

“ Mohammed was kissed and hugged, and it was all he could do to pacify these injured relatives by promising to stay a week with each, as soon as our visit to Huseyn should be over. Blood here is indeed thicker than water. The sudden appearance of a twentieth cousin is enough to set everybody by the ears.
A lamb has been killed, and we have each had the luxury of a bath in our own tent, and a thorough change of raiment. The tent is pitched in a little palm garden behind the house, and we are quite at peace, and able to think over all that has happened, and make our plans for the future. ”

“ The Nefûd and, indeed, Nejd, which lies beyond it, are free from those creatures which make life a torment in other districts of the East. Even the fleas on our greyhounds died as soon as they entered the enchanted circle of red sand. But Jobba would be dirty if it could; and its inhabitants are the least well-mannered of all the Arabs we saw in Nejd. The fact is, the people are very poor and have no communication with the outer world, except when the rare travellers between Haïl and Jôf stop a night among them. ”

“ A traveller may go about securely in any part of the desert with all his gold in his hand, and he will not be molested. Neither are there thieves in the towns. He has made Jebel Shammar definitely independent of Riad, and has resisted one or two attempted encroachments by the Turks. He is munificent to all, and exercises unbounded hospitality. No man, rich or poor, is ever sent away from his gate unfed, and seldom without a present of clothes or money; and hospitality in Arabia covers a multitude of sins. Besides, the Arabs easily forget, and Mohammed is already half forgiven. ”

“ Mohammed, not to be outdone, lifts Ibrahim kasír, who weighs at least twelve stone, on the palm of his hand off his legs. Then they make wheels, such as are seen at a circus, and play at a sort of leap-frog, which consists of standing in a row one close behind the other, when the last jumps on their shoulders and runs along till he comes to the end, where he has to turn a somersault and alight as he can on his head or his heels. This is very amusing, and in the deep sand hurts nobody. ”

“ The sand is rather coarse, but absolutely pure, without admixture of any foreign substance, pebble, grit, or earth, and exactly the same in tint and texture everywhere. It is, however, a great mistake to suppose it barren. The Nefûd, on the contrary, is better wooded and richer in pasture than any part of the desert we have passed since leaving Damascus. It is tufted all over with ghada bushes, and bushes of another kind called yerta, which at this time of the year when there are no leaves, is exactly like a thickly matted vine. ”

“ Our tent is set under the lee of a rough wall of loose stones, such as are set up by the shepherds as a shelter for their flocks. The wind still blows tempestuously, and it is cold as a Christmas Eve need be. But Hanna has made us a capital curry, which with soup and burghul and a plum-pudding from a tin, makes not a bad dinner, while Abdallah has distinguished himself baking bread, and Awwad roasting coffee. ”

“ Then we went to Jazi’s house, Turki, Abdallah, and I.
Jazi’s house is close to Nassr’s, only the garden wall dividing them, and is still smaller than his, a poor place, I thought, to which to come for a princess; but in Arabia one must never judge by externals. At the door, among several women, stood Saad, Jazi’s eldest son, who showed us through the courtyard to an inner room, absolutely dark, except for what light might come in at the doorway. It is in Arabia that the expression “to darken one’s door,” must have been invented, for windows there are none in any of the smaller houses. ”

“ No public works, requiring public expenditure and public loans, have yet been undertaken, and it is difficult to imagine in what they would consist. The digging of new wells is indeed the only duty a “company” could find to execute, for roads are unnecessary in a country all like a macadamised highway; there are no rivers to make canals with, or suburban populations to supply with tramways. One might predict with confidence, that the secret of steam locomotion will have been forgotten before ever a railway reaches Jebel Shammar. ”

“ For ourselves, though quite sceptical on these matters and knowing the history of Midhat’s doings at Bagdad too well to have any faith in him as a serious reformer, we called to pay our respects, partly as a matter of duty, and partly it must be owned out of curiosity. It seemed impossible that a man who had devised anything so fanciful as parliamentary government for Turkey should be otherwise than strange and original. ”

“ He is a curious little old man, as dry and black and withered as the dead stumps of the yerta bushes one sees here, the p. 168driftwood of the Nefûd. He has his delúl with him, an ancient bag of bones which looks as if it would never last through the journey, and on which he sits perched hour after hour in silence, pointing now and then with his shrivelled hand towards the road we are to take. He is carrying with him on his camel one of the red sand-stone mortars of the Jôf for a relation of Ibn Rashid’s, and this seems to balance the water-skin hanging on the other side. ”

“ Wherever one goes in Arabia one only has to march into any house one pleases, and one is sure to be welcome. The kahwah stands open all day long, and the arrival of a guest is the signal for these two forms of indulgence, coffee and conversation, the only ones known to the Arabs. A fire is instantly lighted, and the coffee cups in due course are handed round. One curious incident, however, of our stay at Jobba must be related. ”

“ Ibrahim el-tawîl (the tall as contrasted with Ibrahim el-kasír, or the short) , who has hitherto been the butt of the party, being sent down on fools’ errands to fetch water from fuljes, and up to the tops of sand-hills, to see imaginary mountains, has proved himself to-day most valiant. He, although a Christian, is a match for any Moslem of the party, and gives as much as he takes in the rough games the Arabs indulge in to keep up their spirits. ”