In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  I had bought an old saddle with the camel, and an old waterskin. The Arabs showed me how to fit the saddle, mounting the two double wedges of wood on the leather pads which protected the animal’s back, buckling the girths which held the timber in place. Someone brought my waterskin, half-filled, and I hung it from the saddle horns on one side, having suspended my rucksack from the other. A small crowd had gathered to see me off, and I walked around shaking hands with everyone. Things had happened so quickly, and so sudden had been my change of plan, that I hardly knew what my intentions were. All I knew was that I wanted to get away as quickly as possible to the quiet of the bush.

  The Arabs held the camel as I mounted, and I heard ’Ali Ahmed saying, ‘Watch out for those Hamar!’ Then I was magically up and pacing out towards the marketplace, riding my first camel. I felt king of all I surveyed, deaf to the cheers and catcalls which rippled amongst the pedestrians in the street. I rode deliberately past the stranded lorry and waved wildly at the passengers, whose faces dropped in amazement. I imagined that I was cocking a snook at the monster of motor transport in all its infamy.

  The various stages of the buying process had taken nearly the whole day, and it was almost sunset by the time I had cleared the town. The camel seemed easy to handle, though he travelled at his own pace, which seemed to be ‘slow’. Someone had given me a switch, but I was reluctant to use it, not knowing what result it would produce, and I began to suspect quite quickly that there was more to riding than just sitting in the saddle.

  The sun was a golden sovereign lodged on the edge of the world, lighting the sky with bars of gold which gave a strange, mystical luminosity to the whispering bush. As darkness came, the moon blinked out like a bleary eye, enveloped by a bank of altocumuli. The silence of the day was replaced by the chorus of the night: a million crickets rasping in the grasses and a hundred thousand lizards scampering in the dusk. The dim lights of Umm Ruwaba flickered up behind me, and I felt serene and content, to be at last here with the wide open spaces of Africa before me.

  The shell of serenity was crushed suddenly by the roar of an engine, and I saw to the north the merciless beam of a lorry as it headed west. I wondered idly if it were the same truck on which I had entered the town that morning, that lifetime away. My mind formed a fleeting image of the passengers, huddled together on its back, rattling across this vast plain, oblivious to and unconnected with its harsh beauty, carrying their false world like a bubble around them, travelling blind in an indifferent universe. It seemed to me then that already, almost imperceptibly, I had passed into the other dimension.

  This sense of perfect peace, however, was destined not to last. Some way out of the town, I decided that I had had enough for the first day, and that I would make camp. This was when my problems started. I tugged on the headrope, but the camel did not respond. I tugged harder, and he merely shifted about, nibbling at tufts of grass and shrubs, as if nonchalantly unconcerned about my presence on his back. After swearing profusely, still without result, I jumped from his back, and found myself suddenly covered in viciously sharp thistles, which embedded themselves in my arms, legs, and face. The faster I tried to extract them, the more they stuck: they worked themselves inside my trousers, up the sleeves of my shirt and even into my lips and ears. It was my first experience of heskaniit grass, the desert traveller’s nightmare.

  Meanwhile the camel, whose rope I was still holding, began to wander off, following tasty trails of thornbush and mukhayyit. I pulled against him, but he pulled harder, dragging me for yards through a grove of acacia bushes, whose needle-like armaments were even more deadly than the heskaniit. It was all I could do to retain my hold on the animal: my shirt was torn, my limbs deeply scratched. For more than an hour I fought a battle of strength with him, cursing and swearing at my ineptitude. Suddenly, however, he sat down of his own volition, without any warning. As quick as a flash, I secured his front leg with a loop of rope, as I had been shown, to prevent him from rising again. I dared not remove the saddle, for fear I should not be able to replace it in the morning.

  I laid out my meagre possessions, a sleeping bag and some clothes, and found to my dismay that they were immediately covered in heskaniit thorns. The moon suddenly went down and I was alone in the pitch darkness of the bush. With the aid of a torch I tried to light a fire, but there was no dry wood, and every step I took in search of some took me further into the heskaniit. I broke up some mukhayyit twigs, but they were too green to burn, so after a while I gave up the attempt and rolled out my sleeping bag, only to find that the zip had broken.

  Everything possible seemed to be going wrong. Certainly this was not how I had imagined my first night travelling by camel. Trying somehow to get into the sleeping bag and to ignore the heskaniit all over me, I settled down to the most miserable night I ever spent in the wilds of the Sudan. Somewhere out across the wide bush, a dog or some other unhappy animal set up a haunting wail, as if lamenting the fallen moon.

  The first thing I saw as I awoke was a camel-rider bearing down upon me. He couched his camel and came over to where I was lying in the heskaniit.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here in the thorns?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Why didn’t you go to the village?’ He pointed west and shook his head, ‘It’s dangerous to sleep in the open. The country’s full of bandits. They’ll take your camel and kill you!’

  Later, I realised how incredible it must have seemed to him to find a khawaja sleeping in such uncomfortable conditions, when there was hospitality to be found at any village. But at this time I had not yet understood that the Arab concept of hospitality was nearer to being a right than a privilege: something which could be freely asked for, and was freely offered.

  The sudden appearance of the rider and his talk of bandits had alarmed me slightly, and I rolled out of my sleeping bag and picked up the dagger which I had been carrying. The tribesman, who I guessed was a Jawa’ami, took the hint, and I watched him as he mounted and rode off. Only then did I remember that I had not yet mastered the couching of my camel.

  Luckily, a few minutes later, I spotted two Jawa’ama lads passing nearby on donkeys. I called them over, and explained shamefacedly that I could not couch the animal. They grinned from ear to ear and gave each other knowing looks, as if to say: ‘Damn khawajas, playing with camels!’ They demonstrated how to tug the headrope downwards rather than backwards, as I had been doing, and to mouth the sha sha sha sound, which I had forgotten.

  ‘Don’t be afraid of him!’ said one of them. ‘The camel will know if you’re afraid!’

  I nodded, and practised the movement several times, much to the camel’s annoyance. Then I packed up my things and rode away in the wake of the Jawa’ama, trying desperately to hold on with hands which were red and swollen from the heskaniit. The boys pointed out to me the pitched roofs of a village not far away, and I urged the camel towards it.

  As I approached, a magnificent sight met my eyes. Outside the village was a well, and, even at this early hour, almost every inhabitant of the village must have been there. The well was surrounded by cattle, sheep, and goats, pressing and pawing at each other so that a cloud of fine dust layered the air above them. Together with a few camels and a contingent of donkeys they set up a tremendous cacophony of noise: they seemed to be moving in continuous circles, always chased by ragged little children armed with sticks.

  Moving nearer, I saw lines of adults—men and women—straining on the leather ropes which hoisted the ribbed, rawhide buckets to the surface, where the water was poured into wooden troughs made from hollowed-out tree trunks. Many of the workers were teenage girls wearing loincloths or wraps of coarse cotton, their hair tightly braided and decorated with chains of gold trinkets. The men, their heads shiny with sweat, grunted rhythmically as they heaved on the ropes, continually shouting and exhorting each other.

  Though I have seen hundreds of wells in the Sudan, I have never forgotten this sigh
t, on my first morning travelling by camel. It brought home to me with sudden intensity the realities of the place which I had chosen to travel in. Everywhere man’s life depends on water, but in our tap-supplied, pipe-infested houses we are far less conscious of its immediate importance. It is something taken for granted. In parched Kordofan it is a treasure, the extraction of which occupies a large part of the day.

  I couched my camel, and greeted the villagers. Some of them answered my greeting, but all continued in their task. Eventually a toothless old man came up and asked if I was from the Ingleez. When I answered that I was, a broad smile of nostalgia spread across his face.

  ‘I remember the Ingleez,’ he said.

  ‘Those were good times. When a chicken cost only five piastres in the market. Now everything is so expensive!’

  I had not the heart to tell him that Britain was not quite the country it had been in those days, or that rising prices were due partly to a trend of world inflation. He instructed a couple of young girls to fill my waterskin and to give my camel water. The girls giggled as they lugged the heavy leather buckets from the wellhead, occasionally casting huge doe-like eyes in my direction. For them, at least, the Ingleez had no explaining to do.

  The memories of those first three days have become little more than a blur in my mind. I do remember, though, the vivid beauty of the semidesert plain I was crossing, in places nothing but red sand or cracked grey soil, in others thick with vegetation: the golden heskaniit grass underfoot, deep groves of acacia overhead. I passed through stretches of woodland where the giant baobab trees stood close together, tangled with thorns and creepers, through the vast bowls of valleys, where nothing grew above calf-height, through narrow ravines beneath the volcanic plugs of mountains. I rode into many villages and always found an enthusiastic welcome, especially from the children, who crowded around to see the strange white face of the man on the camel. Without the warmth and friendliness of the Jawa’ama and Jellaaba peoples whom I met in those first days, I would probably have made little progress, for I was still having trouble from the camel. Although I had now mastered the art of couching, I had trouble mounting. Often the animal seemed to wait until I had swung my leg over the saddle, an instant before the fulcrum of my weight was actually resting on it, then skip to his feet, sending me stumbling into the sand or the evil heskaniit. It was almost certain to happen if I was mounting before a group of village children, who naturally found the sight of a khawaja falling off a camel much to their taste, for they howled with laughter to display their approval. The saddle also gave me problems: it regularly slipped while I was riding, and once came off completely, just over a particularly rich patch of heskaniit.

  No matter how amusing they thought the whole idea, the villagers were always ready to give assistance and advice. I soon realised how totally ignorant I was. I had imagined that keeping a camel would be somehow like maintaining a motorcycle. I now had to get used to the idea that my transport was a thing of flesh and blood with desires of its own: it needed to eat, drink, and rest. I learned from the Jawa’ama how to feed it on grain, and found that it responded well, moving at a comfortable trot which placed less strain on the back. Travelling in this way, I arrived in the city of El Obeid, capital of the North Kordofan, within four days. I stopped only briefly in the town, for it was difficult to control the camel amongst the hooting of trucks and the growl of their engines. Instead, I camped outside under a great baobab tree. The next day I headed west towards En Nahud. The weather had turned unexpectedly damp, the sun dim, and sickly pale behind a bank of grey cloud, and a cool wind blew in gusts across the red plain.

  These changes were the harbingers of a day which almost proved to be my last on a camel in the Sudan. It was afternoon, and I had stopped in the shade of an acacia tree for a much-needed rest. For the first two days, my muscles had ached continuously from the unaccustomed strain of riding, and although this had largely disappeared, I was still feeling tired. I decided, however, that it was time for another effort, and began to load my luggage on the camel. As I began to mount, the animal suddenly sprang up with a jerk and I felt the headrope slipping through my fingers like a fishing line on a reel. Then it was out of my grasp, trailing in front of me, and as I stooped to regain it, the camel kicked backwards, then bounded away into the bush in the direction from which we had come.

  Within seconds it was a hundred yards away. I gave chase hotly and desperately, visions passing through my mind of myself crawling on hands and knees into El Obeid, the laughing stock of the town, without even my passport, money, or my precious return ticket to London.

  There were bubbles of self-criticism too: the plan to travel by camel seemed to have been laid bare in all its naive arrogance. Then I noticed that the beast had stopped running and was browsing on a rich patch of vegetation, on the crest of a ridge. I began to hope. I approached at a cautious walk and miraculously got within striking distance of the headrope. I made a lightning grab, but too slow for the camel’s reflexes, for he bounced off at a gallop kicking up dust and dropping cushions and cloths from the saddle. My heart sank: the horrific idea struck me that the fugitive was playing this cat-and-mouse game with deliberate and calculated spite. I remembered hearing that camels could be both vicious and vindictive.

  For many minutes the unpleasant game continued, the camel stopping to graze, making off again as soon as I drew near. The fourth time, however, it seemed that I was going to get away with it. Perhaps he had tired of this amusement, I thought, as I inched my way cautiously inside his guard and felt my fingers close on the plaited strand.

  Immediately the camel kicked and spat, leaping away. I held the rope tightly, but to my utter dismay, his jerky movement had undone the securing knot at his neck, and now the useless halter came away in my hand, as the animal skipped off. Now I was doubly desperate as I pursued him, for I could not imagine how I should capture him without a rope to grasp, and I realised with a shudder how late the afternoon was. Already the fiery nucleus of the sun was beginning to mellow: unless I got him by sunset, all hope would be gone.

  As I followed breathlessly, I lost sight of him for a while. There was no doubt in my mind that he was heading for home, as he was running due east, as if following some inbuilt homing compass. I reached the brow of a second ridge and stopped for breath, getting the miscreant back in my sights as I did so. Almost simultaneously, about a quarter of a mile away to the south in a bowl of dead ground, I spotted the figures of two camel-riders, heading west. I jumped up and down, frantically, shouting, ‘Hai, the camel! The camel!’ gesturing with my hands to where he stood, calmly chewing leaves. For a few moments the riders seemed not to have heard. Then the second of the two figures wheeled around lazily, like a battleship, setting off at a slow trot towards my animal. His companion turned even more slowly and shambled off after him.

  I watched, feeling helpless as the two riders circled the grazing animal carefully. Then the first man dropped from his saddle and walked towards him. As he approached, the beast turned sharply as if to apply his old tactics. Then, to my surprise, the man seized the camel’s tail, tugging it hard and swinging himself round so that he was able to catch the animal’s front leg in the crook of his elbow. Somehow, he transferred his grip to the camel’s throat, grasping it almost like a wrestler holding a headlock. I felt like cheering.

  I hurried towards the group, clutching the headrope, noticing as I did so how the second rider couched and dismounted from his camel, while holding the headrope of his companion’s mount. As I drew near, I saw that my camel’s captor was no more than a youth of perhaps seventeen or eighteen years: a tall, wellbuilt figure, dressed in a full-length Arab shirt or jellablyya, with a dirty lace skullcap tilted over one eye. His face was a smooth, nut-brown oval capped by a brush of curly hair, his nose and lips a little flattened like those of the Jawa’ama boys I had met. The second lad was perhaps a year or two younger, but his face, though thinner and smoother tha
n the other’s, told me at once that they were brothers. For a moment we stared at one another. They regarded me with a cool, disapproving silence, as if they were the adults and I a mere youth. The stare began to shake my confidence, creating an awkward pause, which I felt the need to puncture.

  ‘Thank God you got him!’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the older of the two, slowly. ‘And if we hadn’t got him, you never would. It’ll soon be dark.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, ‘and I’m grateful.’

  ‘He’s hungry,’ said the younger one suddenly, without smiling. ‘Don’t you feed him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said defensively. ‘I fed him yesterday!’

  ‘Yesterday!’ cut in the elder. ‘By the life of the Prophet, yesterday is too long ago! Don’t you know a camel should eat every day, if he’s to stay strong?’

  I felt not angry, but somehow mildly cheated. Had people not told me that a camel would last for months without food? I was at this time, of course, too naive to realise that though this remarkable animal can go for many days without food, it does not mean that the process is actually pleasant or desirable to him!

  ‘Give me the headrope,’ said the boy, and proceeded to thread it expertly around the camel’s head. The animal was cowed and meek now, in the hands of a man of experience.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked the younger lad.

  ‘Makil,’ I said, clipping the diphthong, which was difficult in Arabic.

  ‘I’m ’Ali,’ said the boy, ‘and this is my brother, Osman.’