Chapter 37

AMONG THE FADHLI

We were up and off before the sun rose, our party being increased by Sultan Salem, brother to the Fadhli sultan. He was twenty, and though not dark in colour, has woolly hair. He and the soldiers and the wazir, Abdullah bin Abdurrahman, rode at some distance to our left, between us and the dangerous Yafei towers. The Goddam or Kadam range, which separates the Wadi Yeramis from the Abyan, is a mass of arid peaks, none reaching to more than 2,000 feet. A road leads from Al Ma'a across the mountains to the sea at Asala.

We reached Karyat el Maksuf about ten, the valleys getting narrower and more woody and grassy as we approached. There is an ancient fort on a hill 650 feet above the valley, and about 1,300 above the sea, with a glorious view over the Goddam range to the sea. There is another ruin of a round fort on the left of the valley. We went on a mile to a delightful place, where there were trees, water, and reeds, and beautiful views through shady glades to the mountain peaks, and many cattle. We wished to remain there, but were told it was better to get on to Naab, as there was a little danger. We quite understood that danger was a bogey to prevent us keeping them from a town, and we pointed out that the Yafei were not likely to come down a light-coloured mountainside with only a few tamarisks into a valley half a mile wide; so my husband firmly said we would stay on the clean sand. Here we saw many baboons. The first ruin is probably Persian or later Arabian. The second one, which is a mile further up the Wadi Yeramis than the first, is evidently Himyaritic, and protected the first town after Banna on the way to the Hadhramout. It is circular, crowning a hill 300 feet high, and enclosing a space of 50 yards in diameter. On the north-east side it is protected by five square towers, and has one gate to the south. It was the acropolis of a large town, lying in all directions, but chiefly to the north-east. It has evidently been a place of considerable strength, as the Wadi Yeramis is only half a mile wide here. There is a regular stream of water in a narrow channel, and the whole valley is green and fertile.

Before we entered this narrow part of the valley, it was curious to see below the peaked mountains a flat-topped effusion of basalt, called _borum_, advanced forward.

We made a very early start next morning, and gradually got into a thick low wood, but where the Wadi Yeramis widened out there were only tamarisks. Our ascent was rapid, and after about an hour we turned due east, this part being very bare-looking, though there were a good many horrid acacias and also euphorbias with rounded trunks. We soon burst upon a lovely plain all mapped out in fields and abrs. It is six miles to Naab, and we took three hours. We passed through full two miles of this fertility, with three or four villages--Souat, Nogat, Arrawa, and Old Naab, with mosque, minar, and a fine old house all tumbling into ruins. Wadi Yeramis is much opened out here, and the lower part is bounded by the basalt in walls about 200 feet high, sometimes with mounds within them again, and hillocks of the same formation as the high mountains. This cultivated paradise is the property of Sultan Ahmet bin Salem, brother to Sultan Saleh of the coast, and may be said to be the pick of his whole dominions.

Arrawa, or New Naab, has twenty-four shops, and the sultan gets half a real (or Maria Theresa dollar) on all merchandise-camels going up to the Beled Yafei. There were many bales of merchandise in a sort of Custom-house when we arrived at this great centre of inland traffic. We encamped on the opposite side of the wadi from the town of Arrawa, which is perched on a raised plateau of earth banks. When we halted, and had climbed up, there was a line of people waiting to salute us. We and Sultan Salem walked in front, our eleven men with guns walked behind, singing a _merghazi_, or salutation song, of which I have a copy. We halted again, and they fired ten salutes; then we advanced again, Sultan Salem leading, when twenty of the local sultan's soldiers came forward and kissed his hand and shook ours. Then there was a refreshment of five or six cups of coffee and ginger, very weak, on the floor in a tower. There was milk in the first cups, but it became exhausted. We never saw the sultan all the time we were there, for they said he had a wound in his leg.

The earthen cliffs are about 30 feet high, and we had to go a very roundabout way to get up them by very narrow gullies. My husband went up a hill, Yerad, just behind Naab, with an old Arab fort on it above the Yeramis, which ends here; then begins Wadi Reban, with a clear course north-east for three miles, then north, and then a long stretch east again. There was a lovely view over the Yafei mountains on the north and Goddam range on the south. A Bedou, Abdallah, who went with him told him all the names. Though he could understand when the Bedouin talked to him, he could not understand two talking together. Abdallah said he had been a soldier in the sultan's service, but when my husband asked how long he answered, 'Four, five, six years. I have never had it written down.' The Bedou gave my husband some food called _kharou_, roast millet seeds put in a mug with boiled milk, not at all bad.

The Sultan Salem bin Saleh's old abandoned castle had some nice decoration about it. They left it because there were so many jinni (_i.e._ ghosts) in it. Our informant had not seen them, but only heard of them.

March the 12th my husband went up what he thought was the highest mountain of the Goddam range, Minzoko, just behind Naab, and made it 2,000 feet, but considered when he got to the top that its neighbour Haidenaab was 300 or 400 feet higher. The Tarik Minzoko goes between them.

The sultan sent to our camp some bowls of food, soup, and a fowl cut up and cooked in gravy, very rich with oil and onions. It would have been good but for the stuffy, bitter taste of myrrh, which they like so much to put in their food. He also sent us red cakes of millet bread.

A poet of Naab made a _merghazi_ on us during our stay, about our treatment by the Yafei sultan: how he had demanded money of us and how he had bidden us return to Aden. This was thought so excellent by everybody that my husband was forced to take a copy of it from dictation and Sultan Salem took a copy back to Shukra.

Our party was now increased by another 'prince,' Sultan Haidar, son of the sultan of Naab, a person delightful to contemplate. He was got up in Bedou style; his hair, fluffy and long, was tied back by a fillet and stuck out in a bush behind. He had a curious countenance and very weak eyes. He was wrapped in a couple of large blue cotton cloths with very long fringes, half a yard at least. The cotton is plastered with indigo, even beyond the dye, and when calendered, as the clothes are when new, gleam purple and red. The richer you are the bluer you are, and Sultan Haidar was very blue indeed. The curious thing about these blue people is that, as the prominent parts of the face and body are the darkest, there is an odd inside-out effect.

While in Naab we had our usual number of patients, but the one we were most interested in was a woman who had a dreadfully sore foot. The foot was very much swollen, and there was a sore on her instep and ankle in which one could nearly put one's fist. This had never been washed, though it had been going on for some years, and it had a dressing composed of half a pound or so of dates stuffed into it. The poor creature lay on a sort of bedstead or _charpai_ in a tidy little house consisting of one room and lighted only by the door.

My husband set off at once half a mile back to camp to fetch the necessary relief and I waited, sitting on a cloak that someone rolled up on the floor, for there was not even a carpet to sit on. I was afraid of various insects, but I could not rudely stand, and I should have had to stand a good time as my husband had a mile to walk.

When he returned he syringed the sore with Condy's fluid and I cleaned it with bits of wadding, and the woman with her nails in a way that made me shudder, but she did not seem to hurt herself. Then we put on zinc ointment. She drew her bedding from under her foot so that the water streamed through the bed to the floor, which was earthen and below the level of the door. There was a big puddle, of course, and I feared they would have mud to contend with, but a woman soon came with a basketful of dry sand, and by constantly brushing it up when wet into a palm-leaf dustpan quickly cleaned up all the mess.

We went daily to attend to this foot and at last, if not much better, it was improved by becoming thoroughly clean, foot, leg and all, and its poor owner was cheered and looked much brighter herself.

We left her all the zinc ointment we had remaining to use first; a milk-tinful of ointment, composed by me from pure lanoline, vaseline, and zinc powder, to go on with, and some grease-proof paper to spread it on, a lot of tabloids of permanganate of potash and directions to pour it from a water vessel, very clean.

Before the family would undertake to receive these final instructions we had to wait while some elderly persons were fetched, reputed wiseacres evidently, and it was like teaching a class. The poor things, with such earnest faces, were determined to make very sure they all thoroughly understood what to do. An old man took each thing and handed it to the husband, telling him how to use it, and we all consulted as to the best niches in the roof in which to stow the things safely. They, at least, longed for us to stay, and we felt sorry to go. One feels so helpless face to face with such misery. I do hope she got well.

The first day we visited this house a great crowd came after us, but they were turned out with sticks and fastened out in a very ingenious way.

Most of the houses are surrounded by a fence of prickly brushwood, in which is an entrance 3 or 4 feet wide. Outside this stands, on its head, with its root in the air, a bush. The root has a rope of twisted palm-leaf attached to it. You enter and pull the rope. The bush stands on its side then and blocks up the entrance; the rope is secured inside to a bar which is fixed across the threshold and no one can pass this strange and thorny gate. The bush is, of course, wider than the gateway.

Certainly Arabians are not all that one expect. I never can believe that Mohammedans in general can consider dogs so very unclean, when they have so many about them, and one tribe in the Soudan is called Kilab (dogs). We used to hear also that they all shaved their heads, leaving one lock only for Mohammed to draw them up into Heaven. Instead of this they do all kinds of things to their hair, and the only people I ever saw with one lock were the Yourouks in Asia Minor, and I think it was only a fashion.

Some people think that all the rude efforts of aborigines and uncultivated tribes are inspired by truer wisdom than are the results of science and civilisation, and amongst other things, turbans are pointed out to us as an instance of the good sense of people in hot climates, who know how necessary it is to protect their heads from the sun. If so, why do some cover their heads with turbans and some not? and why do those who wear turbans take them off to cool their heads in the sun, and some accidentally leave a bit of head exposed when they put the turban on without ever finding it out? Some never cover the middle of the head at all, but only wind the turban round. My theory, which may be wrong, is that it is really worn for ornament, as a diadem in the original sense of the word, just tied round the head as a mark of dignity.

Once or twice, our camp being on the far side of the valley from the town, we managed to give the slip to the spearman who otherwise would have accompanied us, and sneaked up a very narrow little wadi, where we found a good many flowers and enjoyed this very much.

Wild beasts live in holes in these hills, and on the extreme top of the mountain my husband ascended, was found a big goat that had been killed in the wadi the night before. A little hairy animal called _ouabri_ was brought to our camp.

When we left Naab we turned into the Wadi Reban to Shariah--three hours and ten minutes, seven geographical miles, four north-east and three north--and ascended 350 feet. Wadi Reban is a quarter of a mile wide near Naab, but after two miles opens out; and there are gardens, and now and again running water appears, and plenty of trees. At the fourth mile, near a fort, we turned sharply to the north, past Jebel Riah, where Wadi Riah comes in, and then reached a wide open space, where Wadi Silib joins in. Jebel Shaas was beyond us, very high, and Wadi Ghiuda to the right. This large open space is girt with mountains 500 to 5,000 feet high, and is a great junction for the waters from Wadis Reban, Silib, and Ghiuda. It was once exceedingly populous; there are here no less than four old villages called Shariah; two considerable towns were perched on the rocks, forming gates to the Wadi Silib, and two others at a great elevation on the opposite side. The cause of the decrease in population in Arabia must be the constant inter-tribal warfare and the gradual filling up of the valleys with sand. Great banks of sand 20 feet high line the river-beds, and wash away with the heavy rains, which contribute to the silting up. This country must have been very fertile to have supported the population, for the four towns must have been large. The stone buildings alone would make any one of the four larger than most towns in Arabia to-day, and there must have been the usual hut population. We had a very pleasant camp among trees, and had a steep scramble to the ruins.

An enthusiastic geologist would have enjoyed our next day's journey immensely; we went through such a strange weird volcanic valley--not a wadi, but a sheb, narrower and shallower. The road is called Tarik Sauda. The strata of the rocks are heaved up at a very steep angle, and we had to ride along smooth rocks, sometimes without any trace of a road at all among the stones; sometimes we had to make very great windings amongst heaps and hillocks of all sorts of different-coloured earths. Hardly a green thing was to be seen, and altogether the whole place looked dreary and desolate; but we were much interested in this day's journey among the great scarred and seamed volcanic mountains. We ascended 650 feet--very difficult indeed, travelling about seven miles in four hours; the steepest part is called Akaba Sauda. We reached the headwater of the Wadi Ghiuda at the top of the akaba, 2,000 feet from sea level. Naab is 1,000 feet above sea level; thence to Shariah is 350; and thence to Ghiuda, 650. We passed Dogoter and M'Haider, mere names. We encamped on a waste of stones; no tent-pegs could be used, and it was windy and cold.

There are gazelle in this part and we had some for dinner.

Now was our time to send by Musaben to the camp of the sultans three very gay blankets for them and Abdullah-bin-Abdurrahman. The long name of the wazir's father had constantly to be on our lips on account of his dignity, for they are like the Russians in that respect--common people's fathers are not mentioned. The name was marvellously shortened to B'd'rahman. We were thought to be in danger that night, and did not make a very early start, as we had to load up water; and we two climbed down 350 feet into the Wadi Ghiuda, that I might take photographs. It was so pretty, with pools of water and creepers hanging on the trees.

The sultans, meanwhile, sat up in their beds of leaves wrapped in their blankets. How absurd it seems that two princes and a prime minister should have to sleep out because two English choose to travel in their country! Not a word of thanks did we ever get for those blankets, but they were evidently much appreciated, for their recipients sat on their camels wrapped over head and ears in them in the blazing sun.