Chapter 10

OUR SOJOURN AT KOTON

Like a fairy palace of the Arabian Nights, white as a wedding cake, and with as many battlements and pinnacles, with its windows painted red, the colour being made from red sandstone, and its balustrades decorated with the inevitable chevron pattern, the castle of Al Koton rears its battlemented towers above the neighbouring brown houses and expanse of palm groves; behind it rise the steep red rocks of the encircling mountains, the whole forming a scene of Oriental beauty difficult to describe in words. This lovely building, shining in the morning light against the dark precipitous mountains, was pointed out to us as our future abode. My horse, Basha, seemed to have come to life again and enjoy galloping once more, for we had left the servants, camels, &c. to follow.

As we approached _feux de joie_ announced our arrival, and at his gate stood Sultan Salàh to greet us, clad in a long robe of canary-coloured silk, and with a white silk turban twisted around his swarthy brow. He was a large, stout man, negroid in type, for his mother was a slave, and as generous as he was large, to Arab and European alike. He looked about fifty-five or sixty, but said his age was 'forty-five or forty.' At first, on being seated in his reception-room, we were very cautious in speaking of our plans, as we were surrounded with all sorts and conditions of men.

He placed at our disposal a room spread with Daghestan carpets and cushions, furnished with two tables and three chairs, and not a mouthful of our own food would he allow us to touch, a hospitality which had its drawbacks, for the Arab _cuisine_ is not one suited to Western palates.

We were very glad of this hospitality at first as it would give Matthaios a holiday, which he could devote to the washing of clothes, water being so plentiful. I will describe one day's meals, which were invariably the same. At eight o'clock came several cups, all containing coffee and milk, honey, eggs, hard boiled and peeled, and a large thin leathery kind of bread made plain with water, and another large thin kind made with _ghi_, and like pastry.

About 2.30 came two bowls like slop-bowls, one containing bits of meat, vegetables, eggs and spices in sauce, under about an inch of melted _ghi_, the other a kind of soup. They were both quite different, but at the same time very much alike, and the grease on the top kept them furiously hot. There were little pieces of boiled lamb, and little pieces of roast lamb; tiny balls of roast meat and also of boiled; a mound of rice and a mound of dates; and upon requesting some water we were given one large glassful. Identically the same meal came at 9.30, an hour when the _bona-fide_ traveller pines to be in his bed. These things were laid on a very dirty coloured cotton cloth, but no plates or knives, &c. were provided.

At several odd times through the day a slave walked in and filled several cups of tea, a few for each of us. The cups were never washed by him.

After struggling for a few days, many of the party having had recourse to the medicine-chest, we were at length compelled humbly to crave his majesty to allow us to employ our own cook. This he graciously permitted, and during the three weeks we passed under his hospitable roof, our cook was daily supplied by the 'sultanas'--most excellent housewives we thought them--with everything we needed.

One of the most striking features of these Arabian palaces is the wood-carving. The doors are exquisitely decorated with it, the supporting beams, and the windows, which are adorned with fretwork instead of glass. The dwelling-rooms are above, the ground floor being exclusively used for merchandise and as stables and cattle stalls, and the first floor for the domestic offices. The men-servants lie about in the passages. We lived on the second floor, the two next stories were occupied by the sultan and his family, and above was the terraced roof where the family sleep during the summer heat. Every guest-room has its coffee corner, provided with a carved oven, where the grain is roasted and the water boiled; around are hung old china dishes for spices, brass trays for the cups, and fans to keep off the flies; also the carved censers, in which frankincense is burnt and handed round to the guests, each one of whom fumigates his garments with it before passing it on. It is also customary to fumigate with frankincense a tumbler before putting water into it, a process we did not altogether relish, as it imparts a sickly flavour to the fluid.

We found the system of door-fastening in vogue a great nuisance to us. The wooden locks were of the 'tumbler' order. The keys were about 10 inches long, and composed of a piece of curved wood: at one end were a number of pegs stuck in irregularly, to correspond with a number of the tumbling bolts which they were destined to raise. No key would go in without a tremendous lot of shaking and noisy rattling, and you always had to have your key with you, for if you did not lock your door on leaving your room there was nothing to prevent its swinging open; and if you were inside you must rise and unbolt it to admit each person, and to bolt it behind him for the same reason.

We got very friendly with Sultan Salàh during our long stay under his roof, and he would come and sit for hours together in our room and talk over his affairs. Little by little he was told of all our sufferings by the way, and was very angry. We also consulted him as to our plans, and told him how badly Saleh was behaving.

We used sometimes to think of dismissing Saleh, but thought him too dangerous to part with. It was better to keep him under supervision, and leave him as much in the dark as possible about our projects.

The sultan took special interest in our pursuits, conducting us in person to archæological sites, and manifesting a laudable desire to have his photograph taken. He assisted both our botanist and naturalist in pursuing their investigations into the somewhat limited flora and fauna of his dominions, and was told by Imam Sharif that his work with the sextant was connected with keeping our watches to correct time.

He would freely discourse, too, on his own domestic affairs, giving us anything but a pleasing picture of Arab harem life, which he described as 'a veritable hell.' Whenever he saw me reading, working with my needle, or developing photographs, he would smile sadly, and contrast my capabilities with those of his own wives, who, as he expressed it, 'are unable to do anything but painting themselves and quarrelling.' Poor Sultan Salàh has had twelve wives in his day, and he assured us that their dissensions and backbitings had made him grow old before his time; his looking so old must be put down to the cares of polygamy. At Al Koton the sultan had at that time only two properly acknowledged wives, whom he wisely kept apart; his chief wife, or 'sultana,' was sister to the sultan of Makalla, and the sultan of Makalla is married to a daughter of Sultan Salàh by another wife; in this way do Arabic relationships get hopelessly confused. The influence of the wife at Al Koton was considerable, and he was obviously in awe of her, so much so that when he wanted to visit his other wife he had to invent a story of pressing business at Shibahm. 'Our wives,' said he one day, 'are like servants, and try to get all they can out of us; they have no interest in their husband's property, as they know they may be sent away at any time.' And in this remark he seems to have properly hit off the chief evil of polygamy. He also told us that, having got all they can from one husband, they go off to a man that is richer, though how they make these arrangements, if they stick to their veils, is a mystery to me.

Then again, he would continually lament over the fanaticism and folly of his fellow-countrymen, more especially the priestly element, who systematically oppose all his attempts at introducing improvements from civilised countries into the Hadhramout. The seyyids and the mollahs dislike him; the former, who trace their descent from the daughter of Mohammed, forming a sort of hierarchical nobility in this district; and on several occasions he has been publicly cursed in the mosques as an unbeliever and friend of the infidel. But Sultan Salàh has money which he made in India, and owns property in Bombay; consequently he has the most important weapon to wield that anyone can have in a Semitic country.

The sultan told us a famous plan they have in this country for making a fortune. Two Hadhrami set out for India together, a father and son, or two brothers. They collect enough money before starting to buy a very fine suit of clothes each, and to start trade in a small way. They then increase the business by credit, and when they have got enough of other people's money into their hands, one departs with it to the inaccessible Hadhramout, while the other waits to hear of his safe arrival, and then he goes bankrupt and follows him.

Sultan Salàh had not a high opinion of his countrymen, and told us several other tales that did not redound to their credit.

'Before I went to India I was a rascal (_harami_) like these men here,' he constantly asseverated, and his love for things Indian and English is unbounded. 'If only the Indian Government would send me a Mohammedan doctor here, I would pay his expenses, and his influence, both political and social, would be most beneficial to this country.' It is certainly a great thing for England to have so firm a friend in the centre of the narrow habitable district between Aden and Maskat, which ought by rights to be ours, not that it is a very profitable country to possess, but in the hands of another power it might unpleasantly affect our road to India, and in complying with this simple request of Sultan Salàh's an easy way is open to us for extending our influence in that direction.

Likewise from a humane point of view, this suggestion of Sultan Salàh's is of great value, for the inhabitants of the Hadhramout are more hopelessly ignorant of things medical than some of the savage tribes of Africa. Certain quacks dwell in the towns, and profess to diagnose the ailments of a Bedou woman by smelling one of her hairs brought by her husband. For every pain, no matter where, they brand the patient with a red-hot iron (_kayya_); to relieve a person who has eaten too much fat, they will light a fire round him to melt it; to heal a wound they will plug up the nostrils of the sufferer, believing that certain scents are noxious to the sore; the pleasant scents being the most harmful. Iron pounded up by a blacksmith is also a medicine.

On an open sore they tie a sheet of iron, tin, or copper with four holes in the corners for strings. We heard of the curious case of a man who for a wager ate all the fat of a sheep that was killed at a pilgrimage. He lay down to sleep under a shady tree and all the fat congealed in his inside. The doctor ordered him to drink hot tea, while fires were lit all around him, and thus he was cured and was living in Shibahm when we were there.

We had a crowd of patients to treat whilst stationed at Al Koton, and I have entered quantities of quaint experiences with these poor helpless invalids in my note-book.

We had many an interesting stroll round the sultan's gardens at Al Koton, and watched the cultivation of spices and vegetables for the royal table, or rather floor; the lucerne and clover for his cattle, the indigo and henna for dyeing purposes, and the various kinds of grain. But on the cultivation of the date-palm the most attention is lavished; it was just then the season at which the female spathe has to be fructified by the male pollen, and we were interested in watching a man going round with an apron full of male spathes. With these he climbed the stem of the female palm, and with a knife cut open the bark which encircles the female spathe, and as he shook the male pollen over it he chanted in a low voice, 'May God make you grow and be fruitful.' No portion of the palm is wasted in the Hadhramout: with the leaves they thatch huts and make fences, the date stones are ground into powder as food for cattle, and they eat the nutty part which grows at the bottom of the spathes, and which they called _kourzan_. On a journey a man requires nothing but a skin of dates, which will last him for days, and, when we left, Sultan Salàh gave us three goat-skins filled with his best dates, and large tins of delicious honey--for which the Hadhramout was celebrated as far back as Pliny's time[11]--which he sent on camels to the coast for us, as well as a large inscribed stone that I now have in my house.

Innumerable wells are dotted over this cultivated area, the water from which is distributed over the fields before sunrise and after sunset. The delicious creaking noise made by heaving up the buckets greeted us every morning when we woke, delicious because it betokened plenty of water: and these early morning views were truly exquisite. A bright crimson tinge would gradually creep over the encircling mountains, making the parts in shade of a rich purple hue, against which the feathery palm-trees and whitewashed castles stood out in strong contrast. All the animals belonging to the sultan are stabled within the encircling wall, and immediately beneath the palace windows; the horses' stable is in the open courtyard, where they are fed with rich lucerne and dates when we should give corn. Here also reside the cows and bullocks, which are fed every evening by women, who tie together bunches of dried grass and make it appetising by mixing therewith a few blades of fresh lucerne; the sheep and the goats are penned on another side, whilst the cocks and hens live in and around the main drain. All is truly patriarchal in character.

The sultan only possesses four horses, and one of these, a large white mare, strangely enough came from the Cape of Good Hope, _viâ_ Durban and Bombay. The sultan of Makalla had three. The 'Arab courser' lives farther north.

As for the soldiers, they sent, as if it were a matter of course, for some money to buy tobacco and were given two or three dollars each, and we gladly parted from them friends. The sultan of Makalla had paid them for a fortnight's food, and had written to Sultan Salàh to pay what was owing. My groom was dismissed also without bakshish: he was only a rough fellow taken from the mud brick works at Makalla, and my poor Basha would have fared ill if really dependent on M'barrek for care. My entreaties alone saved him from being publicly bastinadoed, as the sultan wished, when he heard of all his rudeness and disobedience.

The sultan was most anxious to arrange for our onward journey, and wrote seven letters to different sheikhs and sultans, and sent them to us to read, but we could not read them ourselves, and would not let Saleh, so we were none the wiser. The sultans of Siwoun and Terim are brothers, of the Kattiri tribe, but have no real authority outside their towns. We were anxious to proceed along the Hadhramout valley and to reach the tomb of the prophet Houd. The sultan also went to Shibahm to meet some of the arbiters of our fate, and the sultan of Siwoun agreed to let us pass: but others said we had five hundred camels loaded with arms, and all sorts of other fables, and they all quarrelled dreadfully about us, so the sultan returned to Al Koton to await replies to his letters.

The day the sultan was absent, the women were determined to have a little enjoyment from our presence themselves, so a great many servants came bringing the sultan's ten-year-old daughter Sheikha, a rather pretty little girl, with long earrings all round her ears, which, like all the other women's, hang forward like fringed bells. An uneven number is always worn, and a good set consists of twenty-three. They are rings about two inches in diameter, with long drops attached. Her face was painted with large dots, stripes, and patterns of various colours, and she had thick antimony round the eyes. Her neck, arms, and shoulders were yellow, and her hands painted plain black inside and in a pattern like a lace mitten on the back, the nails being red with henna.

I was also asked to pay a visit to the ladies. I went upstairs. Every floor is like a flat, with its bath-room containing a huge vase called _kazbah_, and the bath is taken by pouring over the person, from a smaller utensil, water which runs away down drain-holes to the wooden spouts. I found myself in some very narrow passages, among a quantity of not over-clean women, who all seized me by the shoulders, passing me on from one to the other till I reached a very large carpeted room, with pillows round it, some very large looking-glasses and a chandelier.

I advanced across the room amid loud exclamations from the seated ladies, and was pointed out a position in front of the two principal ones, who were seated against the wall--one was the chief wife of the sultan, and the other a daughter married to a seyyid, whose hand his father-in-law must always kiss. He is a very disagreeable-looking man, who was much offended because Imam Sharif would neither kiss his hand, being a seyyid himself, nor let his own be kissed. I squatted down, and round me soon squatted many more ladies--they were certainly not beautiful, but one, who was nearest to me and seemed to be my guardian or showman, had a very nice, kind, clever face. Her lips were not so large as most.

We seemed all to be presided over, as we literally were, by a kind of confidential maid, who sat on the little raised hearth in the corner, amongst all the implements for the making of coffee and burning of incense, chanting constantly: 'Salek alleh Mohammed' and something more, of which I can only remember that it was about the faith. Sometimes she was quiet a little, and then, above all the din, she raised her shout, accompanying it with an occasional single loud blow with a stone pestle and mortar. There was no difficulty about seeing the gold anklets the ladies wore, for their clothes, as they sat, were well above their knees. Their feet were painted like fanciful black slippers with lace edges. Their examination of me was very searching, even reaching smelling point, and I feel sure I was being exorcised, for so much was being said about Mohammed. At last an old lady said to me, 'There is no god but God!' with which I agreed, and murmurs of satisfaction went round, while she nodded her head triumphantly. Later on she pointed to the ceiling, and asked if I considered this was the direction in which Allah dwells, and seemed glad when I agreed. Of course no infidel would, she thought.

Presently the woman who had prepared the frankincense brought it down in a small chafing dish, continuing the same chant and handing it round. I wondered if I should be left out, or left till the last, but neither happened, and when my turn came, like the rest, I held my head and hands over the fumes, and we were all fumigated inside our garments. I may have been partaking in some unholy rite, but my ignorance will be my excuse, I hope.

I was then told I might go, which I was glad of, as I had been afraid to offend them by going too soon. I was asked, as I left, if I should like to see their jewellery; of course I said 'Yes,' and had hardly got home and recovered from the deafening row, when I was fetched again.

There were crowds more women of all classes, clean and dirty, and as they came trooping in to see me, the room seemed to resound with the twittering sound of their kisses, for the incoming visitor kissed the sitter's hand, while the sitter kissed her own, and there was kissing of foreheads besides.

Numerous little baskets were brought in with immense quantities of gold ornaments, some very heavy, but with few gems in them--absolutely none of value. They consisted of coral, onyx, a few bad turquoises, crooked pearls, and many false stones. Everything was of Indian work. Sheikha came in in a silk dress with a tremendous, much-alloyed silver girdle, and loaded with chains and bracelets of all sorts, clanking and clashing as she came.

We had very good coffee with ginger and cloves in it, and at this time there was a very great deal of religious conversation and argument, and as they were exciting themselves I thought I would go, for I did not feel very comfortable; but the chief lady said to me, in a very threatening and dictatorial voice:

'La illaha il Allah! Mohammed resoul Allah.' I looked as much like an idiot as I could, and pretended neither to notice nor understand, but I was patted and shaken up by all that were near-enough neighbours to do so, and desired to look at that lady.

Again she said 'La illaha il Allah' in the same tone, and I was told I must repeat it. So she said the first part again in a firm tone, and I cheerfully repeated after her, 'There is no god but God.'

Then she continued, 'Mohammed is his prophet.' I remained dumb. Then the name of Issa (Jesus) went round, and I bowed my head.

The coffee woman then called out, 'Issa was a prophet before Mohammed.'

They then asked me if Issa was my prophet. I could only say that He is, for my Arabic would not allow of a further profession of my faith.

I gladly departed and gave Sheikha afterwards two sovereigns for her necklace.

They said they would show me their clothes, but they never did. I have described the shape of these dresses, but I omitted to say that they are gaily trimmed with a kind of ribbon about two inches wide, made of little square bits of coloured silks and cottons sewn together. This is put round the armholes, over the shoulder, and down to the hem of the garment over the seam, where a curious gusset or gore runs from the front part to the corner of the train. The dress is trimmed round the neck, which is cut square and rather low, and generally hangs off one shoulder, and, across the breast it is much embroidered, beads and spangles being sometimes introduced. These women seem to live in a perpetual noise: they gurgled loudly when we arrived, and we could always hear them playing the tambourine.

Tiny girls wear, as their only garment, a fringe of plaits as in Nubia, and their heads are shaven in grotesque patterns, or their hair done in small plaits. Boys have their heads shaven also, all except locks of long hair dotted about in odd places. I never saw such dreadful objects as the women make of themselves by painting their faces. When they lift their veils one would hardly think them human. I saw eyes painted to resemble blue and red fish, with their heads pointing to the girl's nose. The upper part of the face was yellow, the lower green with small black spots, a green stripe down the nose, the nostrils like two red cherries, the paint being shiny. Three red stripes were on the forehead, and there was a red moustache, there being also green stripes on the yellow cheeks.

There was a delightful, tiny room on the roof, just a little place to take and make coffee in, and we were allowed to clamber up to this, but not without calling a slave and assuring ourselves that there was no danger of my husband meeting any of the ladies, for it commanded the roof, to which we had not access. We liked going up there very much, for the views were splendid, and we could see down into the mosque, which is built like cloisters, open in the middle. I took some photographs from there, and also, with the greatest difficulty, managed to get one of the room itself by tying my camera, without its legs, of course, with a rope to the outside of the fretwork frame of the little window, which was on a level with the floor. It was hard work not to be in the way myself, as I had to put both arms out of the next window to take out the slides, and to guess at the focus.

The sultan, though his Hindustani was getting a trifle rusty, said he greatly liked the company of Imam Sharif, whose uncle had in some way befriended him in India. Intelligent conversation he had not enjoyed for a long time. He was certainly a little scandalised at Imam Sharif's lax ways in religion, for he was one day sitting without his turban when some coffee was brought. The sultan put his hands up to cover Imam Sharif's head, saying:

'My brother, you are drinking with a bare head, and this is contrary to the Koran.' The same remark was often made in camp by people who looked into his tent. They said, 'Look! he is a Christian, his head is bare.' At the same time no one thought anything of the Bedouin's bare heads.

During this period of uncertainty we made several little explorations of the surrounding valleys.

One day we started out with the sultan, who had on his long coat, which made him look like a huge, sulphur-coloured canary. It was lined with light blue. He, my husband, Saleh, and a groom rode the four horses; Imam Sharif and I had our Basha and Mahsoud, and a camel most smartly decorated carried the Wazir Salim-bin-Abdullah and a soldier; other soldiers followed on foot. We went about five miles to Al Agran to see some ruins perched on a rock beneath the high wall of the plateau, prettily situated with palms, gardens, and wells. The ruins, which are those of a well-built fortress, consist of little more than the foundation, but all embedded in modern houses, so that excavations would be impossible. It must once have been a place of considerable importance. There was a scrap of very well cut ornament, which looked as if it might have belonged to a temple. It was from Al Agran or Algran that we obtained a stone with a spout to it, with rather a long Sabæan inscription on it, a dedication to the god Sayan, known to have been worshipped in the Hadhramout. We were given coffee in a very dirty room, which we were all the time longing to tear down that we might dig under it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Pliny, vi. 28, § 161: 'Mellis ceraeque proventu.']