In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  I knew that the other, latter-day world did exist in the Sudan. There were rich merchants who flew regularly to Paris and London, just as there were diesel lorries, TV, telephones, and discotheques in the country. I soon realised, however, that these things were as alien to some sections of the population as cornflakes and pork pie, and with delight and amazement, I discovered that these desert camel-men of the Sudan seemed to correspond much more nearly to the earlier stratum of my imagination.

  Occasionally the Arabs would come into the marketplace in Dongola, looking raggedly regal as they led their camels across the dust-bowl square, the beasts towering above the donkeys and horses of the local people. Their presence added a new element to the bustle of the market, amongst the Nubian tribespeople of the Mahas and Danaqla tribes. The lines of uneven tables which formed the stalls were piled high with fruit, vegetables, spices, sweetmeats and bric-a-brac. Young girls sold bushels of groundnuts and melon seeds, and in the shadow of the teetering, mud-cake walls, old women nursed baskets of eggs and bread and hoary old roosters for sale. The odour of dung, spices, tea, coffee, tobacco, sweat, and urine hung in the air like a vapour amongst the merchants and the farmers, the buyers and the sellers.

  Only the Arabs seemed to stand aloof from all this. They rarely bought fruit or allowed themselves the luxury of fresh bread. For them, the purchase of nonessentials was an encumbrance, an extra item with which to burden their camels in the heat of the desert. Their faces, paler, lean, and predatory, set them apart from the dark, broad-faced Nubians. They spoke to no one without good reason, and in vain did I try to engage them in conversation. I longed to discover their destinations and origins, yet the terse, monosyllabic answers which I received only served to increase for me their aura of mystery and fascination.

  Exotic and fascinating as I found the Nubian culture of Dongola, it was always to the desert that my imagination returned. Its delights were of a subtler, more delicate nature: the flame of a campfire seen far off, just after sundown, the discovery of three charred stones, surrounded by camel droppings, which told their own story of an overnight camp. Such simple experiences filled me with excitement.

  It was Katie who had first told me of the nomadic peoples of the Sudan, and who first articulated for me the idea of a desert journey by camel. Katie was five years my senior and had spent half her life travelling in remote and obscure corners of the world. A natural curiosity, a penchant for the exotic, and a considerable personal charm had enabled her to penetrate deep under the surface of other societies. She encouraged and understood my interest in the desert and its peoples. She convinced me that, although some westerners were already lamenting the passing of the nomadic way of life here in the Sudan, nomadic Arabs—still possessed of the skills and traditions of desert travel—continue in a pattern of existence that has been essentially unchanged for centuries.

  Yet this microcosm of an ancient world is hidden, shielded from the senses of those who follow the new dictates of motor and air travel. By its very essence the domain of these camel-men moves at its own speed, occupying a very different time span. The time of this world is measured by the pace of the camel and the eternal cycle of the seasons, unmodified by the artificial environment of the motor vehicle. These two worlds exist side by side in the Sudan, sharing much of the same ground, but rarely mixing: two separate dimensions in time. It was this second, hidden dimension which, in the fullness of time, was my ambition to find.

  3. A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH ONE STEP

  What’s the name of them wild beasts

  with humps, Old Chap?

  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  IT WAS IN DONGOLA THAT I first heard of the ancient caravan route known as the ‘Forty Days Road’. It began in the far west of the Sudan, in the region known as Darfur, traversing the Libyan Desert by way of a chain of oases, meeting the Nile in northern Egypt. It was an historic route which had played a major role in trade between Africa and the Mediterranean for centuries, and I was assured that it was still used by Arabs who took their camels that way for sale in Egypt.

  I was fascinated by the idea of travelling on this ancient route, for it seemed an ideal way to discover the inner world of the desert which I sought. I formed a plan to travel to the west by conventional means, and there to contact Arabs who were taking their stock north along the Forty Days Road. With this plan still raw in my mind I left Dongola in March 1980, bound for Khartoum. As chance would have it, however, my first camel journey was not to be in the Libyan Desert proper at all, but a five-hundred-mile trek across the semidesert scrubland of Kordofan and Darfur.

  From Khartoum, I crossed the river to the city of Omdurman, and obtained a seat on the back of a merchant’s lorry, travelling to El Fasher in the west.

  There were about ten other passengers on the truck, all of us perched precariously upon sacks of cotton and cartons of soap, completely at the mercy of the driver as the truck lurched and grated out of the tortuous streets of Omdurman. We pulled out of the sprawling city just after sunset, and as the garish neon tubes of green and orange which decorated the mosques and shops faded slowly in the darkness, we found ourselves in an eerie no man’s land, where shrouds of dust hung on the night like cobwebs and herds of ghostly cattle stamped and snorted on the periphery of our vision. The passengers huddled together, holding on with a kind of desperate grit as the vehicle banked and staggered.

  For two days we travelled like this, passing small settlements of mud and straw buildings, snatching a few hours’ sleep at night under the eaves of a lean-to shelter or on the open range. I felt completely cut off from my surroundings and their inhabitants, hardly noticing the beauty of the landscape or the sights along the way. I became increasingly irritated, and wondered not only why my fellow passengers had abandoned their animals for this uncomfortable and humiliating means of transport, but also why I myself had succumbed to its lure.

  It was with this feeling that I awoke from an uneasy doze on the morning of the third day to find the truck limping into the town of Umm Ruwaba, nursing a blown-out tyre. As I climbed wearily down with the other passengers, I heard the driver telling someone that the repairs would probably take all day. Depressed by this extra blow, I followed the others to the centre of the marketplace, where we found a shelter of grass stalks near a well, and an old woman served us with coffee in the customary thimble-like cups.

  As the sun rose higher, I took the opportunity to survey the town. It was quite different from the moulded mud settlements which had been a familiar sight in Nubia. The centre of the town was arranged along a system of wide, sand-filled boulevards, lined with shops of mud and timber, and around the perimeter of the town were rank upon rank of the conical, beehive-like huts known here as ghaudyyas. It was the first time I had seen one of these Kordofan towns, and the rows of huts and the rolling bushland beyond were unmistakably African. My feelings were confirmed when I watched a group of youths at the water troughs.

  They were heavyset, powerful-looking men with very dark skin and negro features. I watched as they strained on the ropes together, hoisting bucket after bucket from the lip of the trough. I was told that they belonged to the local Jawa’ama tribe, an Arabic-speaking people whose ancestors had been amongst the first bedouin immigrants to the Sudan. Looking at them now, I could see that their ancestry belonged at least as much to those African races with whom the Arabs had mixed, and whose features were imprinted upon their faces.

  As I sat there, rather disconsolately sipping coffee, my attention was drawn to a train of three camels that were being led by two men, who I guessed were father and son. Their appearance was quite distinct from that of the Jawa’ama lads at the water trough. They were small, slight men with fair skin, dressed in knee-length shirts which were ragged and filthy. They wore wooden prayer-beads around their necks, and their headcloths were knotted across their temples. Both were barefooted and wore daggers, and they moved with a consu
mmate grace which belied the uncouthness of their clothing. Their narrow, aquiline features at once reminded me of the Arabs I had seen in Dongola.

  The camels looked magnificent as they stalked in, tied head to tail. As they reached the well, the men began to tug on the headropes, making a sha sha sha sound, trying to couch them. The first two animals went down without protest, but the last one roared, belched, and backed off, spitting and gurgling and spewing a slick of green cud on the man’s clothing. Still he tugged, patiently and firmly, until finally the camel flopped down on its knees. It was then that my gaze fell on two cow-skins, bulging with water, which lay like bloated slugs in the mud at the wellhead. I watched as the two men inspected them and realised that they intended to load them on to the camels. Suddenly, the younger man turned and walked directly to our shelter with a curiously delicate, mincing step. He stopped before us and began speaking in a dialect that I found difficult to understand. As he spoke he moved his hands in languid gestures, almost as if he were reciting poetry, and indeed his words themselves seemed to have some of the qualities of verse.

  Whatever it was that he said had little effect on the audience, who regarded him with silent indifference. I heard someone whisper, ‘Arabs!’ with distaste, and I realised that the young man had been asking for help in lifting the waterskins, which were obviously too heavy for himself and his father. Flushed with embarrassment, I impulsively stood up and followed him to the wellhead. We lifted the skins so that they rested on the wooden frame of the camel’s wooden packsaddle, while the older man tied them securely to the saddle horns.

  When it was finished, neither of the men expressed any thanks, but the younger one looked at me appraisingly and nodded. I nodded back, then on another sudden impulse, said, ‘Which are your people?’

  ‘Our people? We’re Baza’a. We’re camel-men, Arab.’

  ‘You sell camels?’

  ‘Sometimes—but if you want to buy a camel, go to the camel suq.’ He gestured to another part of the market. ‘That’s the market. Ask for Shaykh Mohammed ’Esa, he will help you.’

  With that he turned and went about adjusting the camel’s headrope. I walked off, feeling with a flush of excitement that this was the nearest I had yet been to that parallel dimension. Already I had the urge to forget the lorry and its dubious glory: I would go and have a look at the camel-market, if only to examine the animals for sale. I found a small square filled with sand and shaded by a few nim trees, surrounded by tightly packed mud-brick shops. In the soft sand were couched about twenty camels, and small groups of men stood around talking or merely sitting in the shade. Most of these, by their appearance, were Jawa’ama, but I noticed a few of the more roughly dressed Baza’s amongst them. There seemed to be very little business in progress, and my arrival caused a stir of excitement, something I had got used to in a country where a European khawaja was a rare sight.

  Shaykh Mohammed ’Esa was a withered old stick of a man with a narrow head and bird-like features, but there was no mistaking his Arab origins, nor the watchful, evaluating nature of his stare. He listened to my questions without apparent surprise, but almost immediately a group of men and youngsters gathered around to listen to the conversation, and I heard some familiar remarks passed:

  ‘Is he a Palestinian?’

  ‘No, he’s Egyptian!’

  ‘He’s a merchant from Omdurman, come to buy our camels!’

  ‘He’s from the government!’

  Mohammed ’Esa took all this in his stride, leading me by the hand on a tour of inspection of the animals for sale and showing off their qualities.

  ‘This is a fast one, but it won’t be good over long distances,’ or ‘This one is strong, and well behaved, it will be good for you.’

  I felt a little disarmed by his frank manner. In Dongola I had asked repeatedly about the qualities of a good camel.

  ‘Look for strong legs without excess fat,’ I had been told. ‘Make sure it has shiny eyes and pointed ears. Its neck should be arched, its chest broad, and its hump directly above its belly.’

  Now, with twenty camels to choose from, I realised how pathetically inadequate such information was. To appreciate the quality of any animal, whether horse, dog, donkey, or camel, one requires a rich store of experience. Those such as Mohammed ’Esa had camels in their blood: they had been gathering such experience since they first learned to walk.

  Eventually, however, my eye alighted on a camel which seemed to incorporate some of these characteristics: it was a male of medium size, which the shaykh told me was a seven-year-old.

  ‘Do you want to try it?’ he asked.

  Thinking that I had little to lose, I answered that I would.

  Several men stood on the animal’s front legs, while I struggled awkwardly into the saddle. I took the headrope and held on tightly to the saddle horn as the camel’s back tilted violently backwards, then forwards, then backwards again. Then I was up, and the beast was walking at a steady pace around the square. Mohammed shouted to me to guide the creature’s head with the rope, so that it walked round in a circle. There were guffaws from the crowd, but I ignored them. This was my first camel ride: I felt a new surge of excitement as the animal obeyed my commands to move left and right. It was something primitive welling up inside me–man’s mastery over the beast. I was almost disappointed when Mohammed took the headrope and couched the animal. He looked at me inquiringly. I stood deep in thought, trying to master my emotions. There was no doubt that I was already hooked: the lorry had gone completely from my mind.

  ‘How much?’ I said.

  There followed a great deal of shifting and discussion, in which I was urged unsuccessfully to suggest a good price.

  Finally the shaykh said, ‘£500.’

  I returned his hard stare. I did not know camels, but one thing I had inquired about carefully was current prices. I had been told that a good camel should be between £300 and £400, depending on size and quality, and as far as I could tell, this one did not seem exceptional in either. I offered £250, and the crowd almost booed with disapproval. Various people poked and prodded the camel and more remarks were passed:

  ‘Look how well behaved he is!’

  ‘By God, he’s a good camel!’

  Once again I was up against the Sudanese group effort: it seemed that the entire community was involved in the task of selling me this camel. The bargaining went on, following an intricate ritual of offer and rejection, which I was to see enacted many times in the Sudan.

  Eventually, however, the shaykh and I reached stalemate at £400 and £350 respectively. I mumbled regrets and stalked off back towards the wellhead. There seemed no alternative now to another long and unproductive period on the truck, being tossed about like flotsam, isolated from this magnificent landscape. I was hovering on the brink of two worlds, unable to settle in either.

  Suddenly a small boy touched my sleeve, and as I turned towards him I heard a shout, and saw not far away a group of Baza’s who had been closely engaged in the bargaining. They beckoned me over to them.

  ‘Have you got the money with you now?’ one of them asked. The question alerted my suspicions for a moment: it seemed dangerous to admit that I was carrying a large amount of cash.

  ‘That camel is ours,’ said another. ‘If you have the money, we’ll take £350, but we must go quickly to the house of the clerk, to register!’

  At once I felt ashamed of my suspicions: throughout the sale I had been worried that these people would try to cheat or rob me. This was not entirely the paranoia of a stranger in a foreign land, but also the result of tales I had heard in various places about the rapaciousness of the Arabs. In retrospect I can say that these Baza’a and Jawa’ama treated me with scrupulous honesty, for I had come to Umm Ruwaba totally ignorant of camels, and could easily have been sold a bad one.

  In fact my first camel brought a profit when I eventually sold
it. The official clerk, ’Ali Ahmed Gad Allah, lived in a house composed of grass huts and incorporating a cool yard where we sat on rugs and were served tea by a small boy, waiting for the actual owner of the camel to be found. Meanwhile ’Ali Ahmed, a rotund and cheery Jawa’ami, harangued me on the lunacy of my trip west.

  ‘You can’t sleep in the open without a rifle or pistol to protect you,’ he said. ‘Especially on the other side of El Obeid. The tribes there, like the Hamar and the Kababish, don’t respect life. They are heavily armed, by God! They’ll kill you and take your camel as easily as eating their food!’

  I found myself listening to this talk with a certain disbelief. I had already heard tales of Arabs roaming about toting automatic rifles and submachine guns. To me, it seemed unlikely, a memory of the past. I put it down to the natural distrust between townsmen and nomads. I was not aware how soon I would discover the truth of such stories.

  Meanwhile, the old Baza’a who owned the camel arrived with a group of ragged kinsmen, some of whom I recognised from the market. They looked wild and proud as they sat amongst us. The owner, Yusuf Hassan, was a bowed old man with a face like polished babanoss: he seemed miserable to be losing his camel. Nevertheless, the deal was concluded, and I counted out the thirty-five pinkish £10 notes into the hand of ’Ali Ahmed. He counted them again into the hand of Yusuf Hassan, who counted them himself, just to make sure. He looked at me almost reproachfully, as if I had stolen a daughter, but the others smiled and there was profuse handshaking. ’Ali presented me with a yellow slip, which was my certificate of ownership. There were persistent offers of hospitality, but I explained that I was anxious to set off as soon as possible, and walked outside to find my camel couched amongst several others. I noticed the Arabs hanging back, with smirks on their faces, and I realised that they were waiting to see if I would recognise my own animal. Luckily I remembered the complicated brand-mark on his flank, which I had been told belonged to the Jellaba Howara, a tribe renowned as travelling merchants.