Arabian Sands Read online

  Three years later, accompanied by David Haig-Thomas, I

  Danakil Country

  returned to Abyssinia to explore the Danakil country. We travelled first with mules for two months in the Arussi mountains, for we wished to test under easy conditions the men who were going with us before we took them down into the Danakil desert. We camped high on mountain-tops, where the slopes around us were covered with giant heath, or higher still among giant lobelias where clouds formed and re-formed, allowing only glimpses of the Rift Valley seven thousand feet below. We travelled for days through forests, where black and white colobus monkeys played in the lichen-covered trees, and rode across the rolling plains near the head-waters of the Webbi Shibeli. We passed through some of the finest mountain scenery in Abyssinia. Then we dropped off the Chercher mountains to the desert’s edge. Breaths of warm air played round us and rustled the dry leaves on the acacia bushes, and that night my Somali servants brought me a bowl of camel’s milk from a nomad encampment near by. I was filled with a great contentment. The desert had already claimed me, though I did not know it yet.

  The Danakil desert lies between the Ethiopian plateau and the Red Sea, north of the railway line connecting Addis Ababa with Jibuti on the coast. It was a grim land with a grim reputation. Somewhere in this country towards the end of the last century the three expeditions of Munzinger, Giulietti, and Bianchi had been exterminated. Nesbitt and two companions had crossed it from south to north in 1928. They were the first Europeans to return alive from the interior of the Danakil country, but three of their servants were murdered. Nesbitt later described this remarkable journey in his book Desert and Forest. He had been prevented from following the Awash river for a large part of its course by the hostility of the tribes, and he had not explored the Aussa Sultanate nor solved the problem of the river’s disappearance.

  The Danakil are a nomadic people akin to the Somalis. They own camels, sheep, goats, and cattle, and the richer tribes have some horses which they keep for raiding. They are nominally Muslims. Among them a man’s standing depended to a very large extent on his reputation as a warrior, which was judged by the number of men he had killed and mutilated. There was no need to kill another man in fair fight; all that was required to establish a reputation was to collect the necessary number of severed genitals. Each kill entitled the warrior to wear some distinctive ornament, an ostrich feather or comb in his hair, an ear-ring, bracelet, or coloured loin-cloth. It was possible to tell at a glance how many men anyone had killed. These people buried their dead in tumuli, and erected memorials, resembling small stone pens, to the most famous, placing a line of upright stones in front of each memorial, one stone to commemorate each victim. The country was full of these sinister memorials, some of them with as many as twenty stones. I found it disconcerting to be stared at by a Danakil, feeling that he was probably assessing my value as a trophy, rather as I should study a herd of oryx in order to pick out the animal with the longest horns.

  Unfortunately, David Haig-Thomas developed acute laryngitis during our journey in the mountains. As he was too ill to accompany me into the Danakil country, I left the Awash station without him on 1 December with forty Abyssinians and Somalis, all armed with rifles. We obviously could not force our way through the country ahead of us, but I hoped that we should appear too strong a force to be a tempting prey. We had eighteen camels to carry our provisions. As I planned to follow the river, I did not expect to be short of water. We started as quickly as possible since I heard that the Ethiopian Government intended to forbid my departure.

  A fortnight later we were on the edge of Bahdu district, where the country was very disturbed; the village in which we stopped had been raided two days before and several people killed. The Danakil are divided into two groups, the Assaaimara and the Adaaimara. The Assaaimara, who are by far the more powerful, inhabit Bahdu and Aussa, and all the tribes through whom we had passed were terrified of the Bahdu warriors. The Adaaimara warned us that we should have no hope of escaping massacre if we entered Bahdu, which was guarded from the south by a pass between a low escarpment and some marshes. This we picketed at dawn and were through it before the Assaaimara were aware of our movements. We then halted and, using the loads and camel-saddles, quickly built a small perimeter round our camp, which was protected on one side by the river. We were soon surrounded by crowds of excited Danakils, all armed – most of them with rifles. Two Greeks and their servants had been massacred here three years before. Expecting an attack we stood-to at dawn. Next day, after endless argument, we persuaded an emaciated and nearly blind old man, who possessed great influence in Bahdu, to provide us with guides and hostages. Everything seemed to be satisfactorily arranged, when just before sunset a letter arrived from the government. It had been passed on from one chief to another until it reached us. Its arrival roused great excitement among the Danakil, who collected in large numbers round their old chief. The letter was written in Amharic, and I had to have it translated, so there was no possibility of concealing its contents. It ordered me to return at once, since fighting had broken out among the tribes, and emphasized that in no circumstances must I try to enter Bahdu – the very place where I now was. Half my men insisted that they were going back, the others agreed to leave the decision to me. I knew that if I ignored this order and continued my journey with a reduced party we should be attacked and wiped out. I realized that I must return, but it was bitter to have my plans wrecked, especially when we had successfully entered Bahdu, and by so doing had overcome the first great difficulty in our way.

  On the way back we passed the ruins of a large Adaaimara village. The Assaaimara had sent a deputation of seven old men to this village to discuss a dispute about pasturage. The villagers had feasted them and then set upon them during the night. Only one man, whose wounds I doctored in Bahdu, had escaped. The Assaaimara then attacked the village and killed sixty-one men. It was the incident that had started the recent fighting among the tribes.

  I went up to Addis Ababa and wasted six weeks before I could induce the government to let me return, and then only after I had given them a letter absolving them from all responsibility for my safety. I returned to find my men suffering from fever, which is prevalent along the banks of the Awash. They were demoralized, and a few of them insisted on being paid off. In return for the letter which I had given them, the government had agreed to release from prison an old man, Miram Muhammad, and to allow him to accompany me. He was the head chief of the Bahdu tribes. Some months before, he had visited the government and had been detained as a hostage for the good behaviour of his tribes. It was his refusal to guarantee my safety while in Bahdu which had led to my recall. His presence with me ensured us a favourable reception there and at least an introduction to the Sultan of Aussa.

  While we were in Bahdu I stayed for several days in the village of a young chief called Hamdu Uga. He had a charming smile and a gentle manner and I enjoyed his company. Though little more than a boy, he had lately murdered three men on the borders of French Somaliland and was celebrating his achievement with a feast when I arrived at this village. He wore, with amusing affection, the ostrich feather to which he was now entitled. Two days after we left, his village was surprised by another tribe, and when I asked about Hamdu Uga I heard that he had been killed.

  Six weeks later I was at Galifage on the borders of Aussa, camped on the edge of dense forest. The tall trees were smothered in creepers; the grass was green and rank; little sunlight penetrated to my tent. It was a different world from the tawny plains, the thirsty thorn-scrub, the cracked and blackened rocks of the land through which we had passed. It was here that Nesbitt had met Muhammad Yayu, the Sultan. Nesbitt had received permission to continue his journey but his object was to travel across the lava desert to the north, not to penetrate into the fertile plains of Aussa. Muhammad Yayu, like his father before him, feared and mistrusted all Europeans. This was natural enough. He had seen the French and the Italians occupy the entire coastline, w
hich consists of nothing but lava-fields and salt-pans, and he naturally believed that any European power would desire to seize the rich plains of Aussa if it learnt of their existence. No European before Nesbitt had been given the Sultan’s safe conduct and all had been massacred in consequence. Until I arrived in Aussa I had been faced with conditions of tribal anarchy, but now I was confronted by an autocrat whose word was law. If we died here it would be at the Sultan’s order, not through some chance meeting with tribesmen in the bush.

  I was ordered to remain at Galifage. The camp was full of rumours. On the evening of the third day we heard the sound of distant trumpets. The forest was sombre in the dusk, between the setting of the sun and the rising of the full moon. Later a messenger arrived and informed me that the Sultan was waiting to receive me. We followed him deeper into the forest, along twisting paths, until we came to a large clearing. About four hundred men were massed on the far side of it. They all carried rifles, their belts were filled with cartridges. They all wore daggers, and their loin-cloths were clean – vivid white in the moonlight. Not one of them spoke. Sitting a little in front of them on a stool was a small dark man, with a bearded oval face. He was dressed completely in white, in a long shirt with a shawl thrown round his shoulders. He had a silver-hilted dagger at his waist. As I greeted him in Arabic he rose, and then signed to me to be seated on another stool. He waved his men away. They drew back to the forest’s edge and squatted there in silence.

  I knew that everything, even our lives, depended on the result of this meeting. It was different from anything I had anticipated. The Sultan spoke very quietly; my Somali headman interpreted. We exchanged the customary compliments and he asked me about my journey. He spoke little and never smiled. There were long intervals of silence. His expression was sensitive, proud, and imperious, but not cruel. He mentioned that a European who worked for the government had recently been killed by tribesmen near the railway line. I learnt later that this was a German who was working with the Ethiopian boundary commission. After about an hour he said he would meet me again in the morning. He had asked no questions about my plans. I returned to camp without an idea of what the future held for us. We met again next morning in the same place. By daylight it was simply a clearing in the forest with none of the menace of the previous night.

  The Sultan asked me where I wished to go and I told him that I wanted to follow the river to its end. He asked me what I sought, whether I worked for the government, and many other questions. It would have been difficult to explain my love of exploration to this suspicious tyrant, even without the added difficulties of interpretation. My headman was questioned, and also the Danakil who had accompanied me from Bahdu. Eventually the Sultan gave me permission to follow the river through Aussa to its end. Why he gave me this permission, which had never before been granted to a European, I do not know.

  Two days later I climbed a hill and looked out over Aussa. It was strange to think that even fifty years earlier a great part of Africa had been unexplored. But since then travellers, missionaries, traders, and administrators had penetrated nearly everywhere. This was one of the last corners that remained unknown. Below me was a square plain about thirty miles across. It was shut in on all sides by dark barren mountains. To the east an unbroken precipice fell into the water of Lake Adobada, which was fifteen miles long. The northern half of the plain was covered with dense forest, but there were wide clearings where I could see sheep, goats, and cattle. Farther south was a great swamp and open sheets of water, and beyond this a line of volcanoes.

  We followed the river, through the forest, past the lakes and swamps, down to the far side of Aussa. It was fascinating country, and I would gladly have remained here for weeks, but our escort hurried us on. I had permission from the Sultan to pass through this land, but not to linger. The Awash skirted the volcanoes of Jira and re-entered the desert, and there it ended in the salt lake of Abhebad. The river had come a long way from the Akaki plains to end here in this dead world, and it was this that I myself had come so far to see – three hundred square miles of bitter water, on which red algae floated like stale blood. Sluggish waves slapped over the glutinous black mud which bordered the lake, and hot water seeped down into it from among the basaltic rocks. It was a place of shadows but not of shade, where the sun beat down, and the heat struck back again from the calcined rocks. Small flocks of wading birds only emphasized the desolation as they passed crying along the shore, for they were migrants free to leave at will. A few pigmy crocodiles, stunted no doubt by the salt water in which they lived, watched us with unblinking yellow eyes – symbolizing, I thought, the spirit of the place. Some Danakil who were with me told me it was here that their fathers had destroyed an army of ‘Turks’, and thrown their guns into the lake. No doubt this was where Munzinger’s expedition had been wiped out in 1875.

  I crossed the border into French Somaliland and stayed with Capitaine Bernard in the fort which he commanded at Dikil. He and most of his men were to die a few months later when they were ambushed by a raiding force from Aussa. From Dikil I travelled across the lava desert to Tajura on the coast. So far it had been the tribes that had threatened us, now it was the land itself. It was without life or vegetation, a chaos of twisted riven rock, the debris of successive cataclysms, spewed forth molten to scald the surface of the earth. This dead landscape seemed to presage the final desolation of a dead world. For twelve days we struggled over the sharp rocks, across mountains, through gorges, past craters. We skirted the Assal basin four hundred feet below sea-level. The blue-black waters of the lake were surrounded by a great plain of salt, white and level as an icefield, from which the mountains rose in crowded tiers, the lava on their slopes black and rusty red. We were lucky. Some rain had fallen recently and filled the water-holes, but fourteen of my eighteen camels died of starvation before we reached Tajura.

  I was restless. For three years I had been planning this journey, and now it was over and the future seemed empty. I dreaded a return to civilization, where life promised to be very dreary after the excitements of the last eight months. At Jibuti I played with the idea of buying de Monfried’s dhow. I had read his Aventures de Mer and Secrets de la Mer Rouge and had talked to the Danakil who had sailed with him. I was fascinated by his accounts of a free and lawless life.

  I returned, however, to England, joined the Sudan Political Service, and went to Khartoum at the beginning of 1935. I was twenty-four. I had spent nearly half my life in Africa, but it was an Africa very different from this. Khartoum seemed like the suburbs of North Oxford dumped down in the middle of the Sudan. I hated the calling and the cards, I resented the trim villas, the tarmac roads, the meticulously aligned streets in Omdurman, the signposts, and the public conveniences. I longed for the chaos, the smells, the untidiness, and the haphazard life of the market-place in Addis Ababa; I wanted colour and savagery, hardship and adventure. Had I been posted to one of the towns I have no doubt that, disgruntled, I should have left the Sudan within a few months, but Charles Dupuis, Governor of Darfur, had anticipated my reaction and had asked that I should be sent to his Province. I was posted to Kutum in northern Darfur, where I served under Guy Moore, a man of great humanity and understanding. He had come to the Sudan from the deserts of Iraq, where he had been a Political Officer at the end of the First World War. He loved talking of those days among the Arabs, and his reminiscences made a great impression on me. We were the only Englishmen in the District, which was the largest in the Sudan and covered more than 50,000 square miles. It was desert country with a small but very varied population of about 180,000. There were nomadic Arab tribes, others of Berber origin, Negro cultivators in the hills, and in the south some of the Bagara, the cattle-owning Arabs, who had won fame as the bravest fighting men in the dervish army.

  I spent most of my time on trek travelling with camels. In the Danakil country I had used camels for carrying loads; here for the first time I rode them. District Commissioners usually travelled with a baggage tr
ain of four or five camels loaded with tents, camp furniture, and tinned foods. Guy Moore taught me to travel light and eat the local food. I usually travelled accompanied by three or four of the local tribesmen; I kept no servants who were not from the district. Where there were villages, the villagers fed us, otherwise we cooked a simple meal of porridge and ate together from a common dish. I slept in the open on the ground beside them and learnt to treat them as companions and not as servants. Before I left Kutum I had some of the finest riding camels in the Sudan, for I bought the best that I could find; they interested me far more than the two horses I had in my stable. On one of the camels I rode 115 miles in twenty-three hours, and a few months later I rode from Jabal Maidob to Omdurman, a distance of 450 miles, in nine days.

  During my first winter in the Sudan I travelled for a month in the Libyan desert. I planned to visit the wells of Bir Natrun, one of the few places in this desert where there was water. It was not in Kutum district, not even in the same province, but as no officials ever went there, and as I had been told I should be refused if I did ask permission from Khartoum, I decided to visit it and say nothing. I started from Jabal Maidob with five companions. As we topped a rise on our first day and saw the stark emptiness before us I caught my breath. There were eight waterless days ahead of us to Bir Natrun and twelve more by the way we planned to return. For the first two days we saw occasional white oryx and a few ostriches; after that there was nothing. Hour after hour, day after day, we moved forward and nothing changed; the desert met the empty sky always the same distance ahead of us. Time and space were one. Round us was a silence in which only the winds played, and a cleanness which was infinitely remote from the world of men.