Arabian Sands Read online

  Although Thesiger was descended from one of the most distinguished imperial families (he was the grandson of the general commanding the British forces in the Zulu wars and the nephew of a viceroy of India), he had little sympathy for imperial bureaucracy. He hated paperwork and politics, failed his exams and resigned his full-time position in the Sudan Political Service after only two years. He hated all the values of progress, commerce and law and order that the British Colonial Service promoted. He chose as his companions some of the most dangerous outlaws in the desert and volunteered to go on raids with them. He had finally to stop his travels in the Empty Quarter because the Saudi, Omani and even British governments saw him and his companions as a dangerous threat to stability and order.

  Thesiger’s overriding interest was in travel for its own sake. Unlike Charles Doughty or T. E. Lawrence, who returned to Britain to work on their literary memoirs, Thesiger never ceased to travel. He continued to demonstrate his commitment to a punishing life among alien cultures even when he had nothing left to prove and long after he had ceased to pioneer routes. He moved from the Empty Quarter to live for seven years among the Marsh Arabs of Iraq on floating beds of reeds, with buffaloes, hunting alongside men who fished naked with tridents, then to the Hindu Kush and finally to a remote region of northern Kenya, where he remained till he was in his mid-eighties.

  He was perhaps the first to make punishing travel itself rather than government, exploration, knowledge or writing his entire vocation. He disguised this by taking on the title of the ‘last explorer’ and insisting that after him there was nothing left to explore. He emphasised that he travelled on foot and by camel only because there were no cars available and that he usually did so in order to draw up a map. He was dismissive of people undertaking unnecessarily punishing journeys as stunts. He claimed to be the last to see a wild world. In reality, however, Nuristan and the Iraqi Marshes remain wilder and more dangerous for foreigners today than when he saw them forty years ago.

  He continued to travel on foot and by camel, long after cars were introduced, to sleep on rocks, long after the introduction of mattresses, and to press into areas that had already been fully mapped. He did not have a regular job or income for the last fifty years of his life. He wandered in this way for almost forty years because he found that these journeys gave a meaning and comfort to his life, which he could not convincingly articulate. Rather than being the last Victorian he was closer to being the first hippie on the overland trail.

  Thesiger’s physical endurance makes Arabian Sands a unique and final witness of a particular aspect of Arabic nomadic life. Charles Doughty had lived in the midst of Beduin communities and experienced the slow progress of the Bedu herds, wives and children to and from the oases, their cuisine, their trading and the formal majlis (or administration) of the sheikhs in their tents. In the journeys described in this book, Thesiger paid men from a very small and isolated tribe to accompany him on highly unnatural ventures into the very harshest parts of the desert. They left their families behind, they followed a route where there was no pasture or trading opportunity, and where they were under imminent threat from hostile tribes.

  There was a disadvantage to this: Thesiger had almost no exposure to the normal migrations of Arabic families, he saw very few women and almost no children, and his experience was of the most extreme aspects of life and landscape. He had little contact with vulnerable groups, who might have benefited most from historical change. His love of the freebooting life of the raiders encouraged him to believe that all modern development was for the worst and that modern cities were ‘an Arabian nightmare, the final disappointment’. He can be naive, superficial and even offensive, such as when (in his autobiography) he praises the Ethiopian race because ‘they had not been mongrelized’. It is not surprising, therefore, that another Etonian explorer, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, seeing Thesiger’s prejudices, aristocratic manner and suits, should conclude on their first meeting, like many others, that Thesiger was ‘an archaic figure, caught in a time warp, with excessively reactionary views’.

  Nevertheless, Thesiger’s painful participation in such eccentric environments is valuable. He gains a unique insight into the Bedu’s struggle with the desert at its worst, their resilience, their survival skills. And his own contempt for settled civilization and the love of warfare makes him particularly open to their dignity, honour, pride and joy in raiding. No one before or since has managed to capture with such sympathy the life of a nomadic bandit leader such as bin Duailan (the cat). Thesiger is able to capture what is both admirable and disturbing in bin Duailan’s disorienting combination of honour and cruelty, murder, theft and nobility.

  Many Europeans and Americans, then and now, find traditional societies difficult to understand and even more difficult to respect. ‘State-building’ projects in many of the countries where Thesiger travelled – from Sudan, through Iraq to Afghanistan – now strive to replace traditional structures with the apparatus of a ‘modern state’: the rule of law, civil society, independent and accountable governance. Such projects are based on admirable intentions and are almost inevitable. Thesiger, however, saw and could communicate how strong, meaningful and consoling the previous culture had often been.

  He saw the Beduin not as ‘savages but the lineal heirs of a very ancient civilization, who found within the framework of their society the personal freedom and self-discipline for which they craved’. He loved them because he believed that they, like him, could at any time have settled in a richer country but had instead chosen for the sake of their freedom to renounce almost everything. The virtues that they celebrated – courage, strength, generosity – were also the virtues he strove for in his own life.

  His companions in Arabia repaid the compliment. They did not remember him for Arabian Sands, which they could not read, and they did not remember Thesiger’s clothes because he dressed like them. But when bin Ghabaisha was asked to describe Thesiger fifty years after the trip he said: ‘He was loyal, generous, and afraid of nothing.’

  A few years after my first meeting with Thesiger, I also walked 6,000 miles, often in places where Thesiger had walked. He captured much of what matters most about this kind of travel. First, he suggests that there is no satisfying answer to the question of why we undertake these journeys; second, that living humans are of more interest than landscape, architecture or history; third, that the real challenge is to describe how a landscape appears not to the visitor but to people who have lived in that landscape all their lives. Finally, he shows that the greatest prize is to be, however partially, accepted and respected by your companions. The foreign traveller can never hope to have the same life experience as those he travels with. He remains always a stranger with a different home. But, at certain moments, particularly at the end of months of travel together you can sense a shared experience of courage and generosity. You can feel, if only for an instant, a sense of equality with those with whom you travel. This is, I think, what Thesiger meant when he said he travelled for ‘comradeship’. It is troubling that he, perhaps like many of us, could find such equality more easily away from home.

  Thesiger misjudged the future of the Beduin: contrary to his belief, his companions did not deliberately reject all material comfort but instead would embrace generators and pick-up trucks cheerfully. His tact, concern and patient observation, however, is humane and revealing. In the fine grain of his account are remarkable insights not only into an alien society, but into minds, modernity and a gradual modest revelation of how he believed a human life should best be lived. In Chapter 8, for example, the group have been travelling for more than a month, close to starvation, when Musallim catches a hare. They throw all their remaining flour into the pot and are all sitting ravenously waiting for it to cook, when suddenly three Arabs appear on the horizon. It is difficult not to admire the ethics and the self-awareness that underlie Thesiger’s description:

  We greeted them, asked the news, made coffee for them, and then Musallim an
d bin Kabina dished up the hare and the bread and set it before them, saying with every appearance of sincerity that they were our guests, that God had brought them, that today was a blessed day, and a number of similar remarks. They asked us to join them but we refused, repeating that they were our guests. I hoped that I did not look as murderous as I felt while I joined the others in assuring them that God had brought them on his auspicious occasion.

  It is in these moments that prejudices and limitations, that Thesiger matters, both as a writer and a man.

  Rory Stewart, 2007

  Arabian Sands

  To bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha

  List of Maps

  Danakil Country

  The Sudan

  Arabia

  Tribal Map of Southern Arabia

  The Empty Quarter: First Crossing

  The Mahra Country

  The Empty Quarter: Second Crossing

  Oman: The Interior

  Preface

  Arabian Sands describes the journeys I made in and around the Empty Quarter from 1945 to 1950, at which time much of that region had not yet been seen by a European. I returned to Arabia in 1977 at the invitation of the Oman Government and Emir Zayid of Abu Dhabi.

  Even before I left Arabia in 1950, the Iraq Petroleum Company had started to search for oil in the territories of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They soon discovered it in enormous quantities, and as a result the life I have described in this book disappeared for ever. Here, as elsewhere in Arabia, the changes which occurred in the space of a decade or two were as great as those which occurred in Britain between the early Middle Ages and the present day.

  I was aware before I returned to Oman that considerable changes, both economic and political, had taken place there. In 1954 Muhammad al Khalili, the xenophobic Imam of Oman, had died. He was succeeded by his son, Ghalib, but the following year the Omani Sultan, Sayid Said bin Timur, took the opportunity to invade and occupy his domains and to abolish the Imamate. This caused great resentment and Talib, Ghalib’s brother, backed by Sulaiman bin Hamyar of the Bani Riyan and a considerable following, rebelled. After their forces had been defeated in 1957 they withdrew into the almost impregnable Jabal al Akhdar; however, the British SAS Regiment, acting on behalf of the Sultan, scaled the mountain and overcame their resistance.

  In 1965 a rebellion in Dhaufar, instigated and actively supported by the communist regime of the People’s Democratic Republic in South Yemen, led to years of fierce fighting in the Jabal Qarra, which was finally suppressed in 1976 with the help of British and Persian troops. Meanwhile, in 1970 Qaboos had deposed his reactionary father, Sayid Said bin Timur and, as the new Sultan of Oman, he immediately set about developing and modernizing the country.

  I was anxious to see the ancient Arab seaport of Muscat which I had not yet visited, to climb the Jabal al Akhdar, the unattainable goal of my last journey in Arabia and, above all, to meet once more the Rashid and Bait Kathir who had accompanied me on my journeys; but I was filled with misgivings at going back.

  In this book I have described a journey in disguise through Inner Oman in 1947 and I wrote : ‘Yet even as I waited for my identity to be discovered I realized that for me the fascination of this journey lay not in seeing this country but in seeing it under these conditions.’ The everyday hardships and danger, the ever-present hunger and thirst, the weariness of long marches: these provided the challenges of Bedu life against which I sought to match myself, and were the basis of the comradeship which united us.

  For the three weeks I was in Oman, aeroplanes, helicopters, cars and even a launch were put at my disposal; during this time I covered distances in an hour that previously had taken weeks. Soon after my arrival in Muscat I was flown to Salala, from where I had started my journeys into the Empty Quarter. Salala had been a small Arab village adjoining the Sultan’s palace; now it was a town with traffic lights. Bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha met me when I landed. They had been my inseparable companions during the five most memorable years of my life. When I had parted from them in Dubai in 19S0 they had been young men; now they were the grey-bearded fathers of grown-up sons. I was deeply moved to meet them again. I had thought of them so often. They went off next day to prepare a feast for me at their tents in the desert. Meanwhile, old friends from the Bait Kathir, led by Musallim bin Tafl, escorted me in a procession of cars, with blaring horns, up the highway to the new town on the top of Jabal Qarra, where they entertained me in the concrete houses in which they now lived, near the military airfield.

  The following day I was flown in a helicopter, accompanied by a television crew, to bin Kabina’s black tents near Shisur. Here the Rashid were assembled, their Landrovers and other vehicles parked behind the tents. None of them now rode camels, though some still lived in tents and owned camels. Many of them had travelled with me on my journeys to the Hadhramaut, but several of my old companions had died or been killed. Bin Kabina had slaughtered a camel and provided a lavish meal; while we ate the television cameras whirred. I flew back to Salala in the evening, accompanied by bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha, who remained with me while I was in Oman. Together we climbed the Jabal al Akhdar; here, too, was an airfield with jet planes and helicopters landing and taking off. I realized that after all these years and under these changed conditions the relationship between us could never again be as in the past. They had adjusted themselves to this new Arabian world, something I was unable to do. We parted before I went to Abu Dhabi, which I found an Arabian Nightmare, the final disillusionment.

  For me this book remains a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people.

  WILFRED THESIGER

  Preface to the 1991 Reprint

  When I went back to Oman and Abu Dhabi in 1977, for the first time since I had left there in 1950, I was disillusioned and resentful at the changes brought about by the discovery and production of oil throughout the region – the traditional Bedu way of life, which I had shared with the Rashid for five memorable years, had been irrevocably destroyed by the introduction of motor transport, helicopters and aeroplanes. When I arrived at Abu Dhabi and saw the high-rise buildings and the oil refineries, spread over what had previously been empty desert, the town symbolized all that I hated and rejected: at the time it represented the final disillusionment of my return to Arabia.

  I visited Abu Dhabi once more in February 1990 for an exhibition of my photographs, organized by the British Council under the sponsorship of His Highness Sheikh Zayid. On this occasion I found myself reconciled to the inevitable changes which have occurred in the Arabia of today and are typified by the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi is now an impressive modern city, made pleasant in this barren land by avenues of trees and green lawns. I stayed in the Emirates for twelve days and I was deeply moved by the warmth of the welcome and the overwhelming hospitality I received in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Dubai and Sharjah.

  WILFRED THESIGER, 1990

  Foreword

  During the years that I was in Arabia I never thought that I would write a book about my travels. Had I done so, I should have kept fuller notes which now would have both helped and hindered me. Seven years after leaving Arabia I showed some photographs I had taken to Graham Watson and he strongly urged me to write a book about the desert. This I refused to do. I realized that it would involve me in much hard work, and I did not wish to settle down in Europe for a couple of years when I could be travelling in countries that interested me. The following day Graham Watson came to see me again, and this time he brought Mark Longman with him. After much argument the two of them persuaded me to try to write this book. Now that I have finished it I am grateful to them, for the effort to remember every detail has brought back vividly into my mind the Bedu amongst whom I travelled, and the vast empty land across which I rode on camels for ten thousand miles.

  I went to Southern Arabia only just in time. Others will go there to study geology and archaeology, the birds and plants and animals, even to study the Arabs themselves, but they wi
ll move about in cars and will keep in touch with the outside world by wireless. They will bring back results far more interesting than mine, but they will never know the spirit of the land nor the greatness of the Arabs. If anyone goes there now looking for the life I led they will not find it, for technicians have been there since, prospecting for oil. Today the desert where I travelled is scarred with the tracks of lorries and littered with discarded junk imported from Europe and America. But this material desecration is unimportant compared with the demoralization which has resulted among the Bedu themselves. While I was with them they had no thought of a world other than their own. They were not ignorant savages; on the contrary, they were the lineal heirs of a very ancient civilization, who found within the framework of their society the personal freedom and self-discipline for which they craved. Now they are being driven out of the desert into towns where the qualities which once gave them mastery are no longer sufficient. Forces as uncontrollable as the droughts which so often killed them in the past have destroyed the economy of their lives. Now it is not death but degradation which faces them.

  Since leaving Arabia I have travelled among the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the mountains of Kurdistan and the marshlands of Iraq, drawn always to remote places where cars cannot penetrate and where something of the old ways survive. I have seen some of the most magnificent scenery in the world and I have lived among tribes who are interesting and little known. None of these places has moved me as did the deserts of Arabia.