In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  From El Atrun, the caravan passed northeast through the oasis of Laqiya Arba’in to Selima. This was the most dangerous section of the journey, for not only were water-sources far apart, the route was also dogged by bandits of the Kababish, Bedayatt, and Gor’an tribes who were particularly apt to strike at caravans travelling south to north, since they knew that many of the merchants were likely to have sold their Egyptian-bought firearms in the lucrative market in Kobbay, and thus be unarmed except with spears and swords. The Gor’an, a black Saharan tribe, had a base at the oasis of Nukheila, north of El Atrun, not seen by any European until 1925. From here they would sally forth in raids as far east as the Ghab wells near Dongola. Threat though they were, these bandits were never a prohibitive force to the trade caravans, the masters of which were far more afraid of the levies likely to be charged them if they passed through the more comfortable reaches of the Nile valley. As Browne himself noted, this empty quarter of the Libyan Desert could sustain neither ‘wandering tribes nor ferocious animals’ for long.

  There were other threats to the travellers, however. The caravan had to face hot winds from the north which cast a scourge of sand into their eyes and dehydrated their waterskins. Occasionally sections of the caravan would be lost, only to be found by other travellers years later, a nest of skeletons and twisted hide. Over the centuries the caravanners piled up stones into small cairns which marked their way, but more significant were the thousands of skeletons of camels which had expired in the desert, and which lay like grotesque and unearthly insects amongst the rocks. Of such importance as signposts did these become that the 1946 survey of the Sudan noted one stretch of the old route as being “A track about one mile wide marked with white camel-bones”.

  From Selima, the caravans moved north through the oases of Shabb and Abul Hissein until they arrived at the string of settlements at Kharja, where they came into Egyptian jurisdiction. Here they encountered local officials who assessed the revenue payable on their merchandise, so that before arriving in Kharja, the caravan-masters would hide the smaller slave children in the empty waterskins in order to avoid payment of taxes. The officials soon grew accustomed to this ploy, however, and would walk along the lines of camels beating the skins with their sticks, and listening for a cry of pain from inside.

  The two-hundred-mile stretch from Kharja to Assyut was relatively easy. One can picture the scene of the caravan’s arrival at the end of its journey: the vast columns of camels appearing suddenly out of the empty desert, moving towards the town with their unfaltering, unstoppable pace. The onlookers would be wild with excitement, but as the caravan slowly emerged from the vast landscape, they would become aware of the toll taken by that merciless void which it had recently crossed. The camels would be thin and weak with hunger, some of them staggering on feet covered in sores. The slaves too would be in the last stages of exhaustion and malnutrition, looking on with eyes misted with fatigue and despair at the place which marked the end of their ordeal.

  Exactly how long the journey took is uncertain. It is likely that the title ‘Forty Days Road’ referred only to the actual marching time, which might have been divided up into forty equal stretches of a little less than thirty miles each, the average daily marching distance of a camel. Browne’s journey from north to south lasted far longer than the prescribed forty days, and it is likely that the south-north caravan with its contingent of slaves took even longer. The bulk of the time would be consumed in watering and grazing the animals and in stops for much-needed rest.

  Little is known of the early history of the route. It may be that the Egyptian explorer Herkuuf came this way with his trains of donkeys, many centuries before the birth of Christ. It is unlikely though that there was regular traffic south of Kharja before the introduction of the camel to North Africa in the first few centuries AD. The lack of grazing on the southern sections of the route would have rendered it unsuitable for less hardy animals. Old maps of the area show the passage of a route south of Kharja through Selima, though this route rejoins the Nile a little below Dongola. It may be, therefore, that the Darfur section of the way is a more recent innovation. More definite, however, is the knowledge of the ceasing of traffic along the darb al arba’in.

  During the wars of the Mahdiyya, between 1883 and 1898, the British built military posts at Shabb and Wadi Halfa, in order to halt trade between the Sudan and Egypt. When the Sudan was recaptured by the British at the battle of Omdurman in 1898, slave-trading was forbidden.

  Without this lucrative commodity, the caravans were no longer profitable, and eventually ceased. Many of the old guides and camel-men had died during the Mahdist wars and the last of the Kayra sultans had been killed by a British soldier in Darfur. Kobbay was depopulated and its water sources began to dry up. Within a few generations, the ancient way of the caravans was forgotten. Even the exact route which the caravans took between Kobbay and El Atrun is no longer known.

  Nomads of the Kababish, Bedayatt, Meidob, and Zaghawa still range across this vast area, but none of them now knows the meaning of the darb al arba’in. Some of the peoples of North Darfur and Kordofan apply the name to quite a different route which skirts around the fringes of the desert, running west to east from Darfur to Omdurman. The desert beyond El Atrun has been left to the gazelles and the desert foxes, the creatures whose domain it was before the coming of man. The ancient road is forgotten, the grooves left by the feet of millions of camels are buried under shifting sands. Nothing now remains to record those centuries of human history but tens of thousands of skeletons of both humans and camels who never saw their journey’s end.

  8. BORDER INTRIGUE

  A stranger is the friend of every other stranger.

  Arab saying

  SHAYKH RASHID OMAR WAS SITTING cross-legged on a pile of rugs in his house in Gineina, and around him in a semicircle were a dozen Arabs of the Rizayqat, waiting for his deliberation. The shaykh had the distinctive air of a king holding court. He was an old man, perhaps over seventy, but his eyes were very sharp and clear and his skin was as black and smooth as ebony, with those unmistakable carved-mahogany features of the Rizayqat.

  ‘Rizayqat’ is in fact a collective term for five distinct nomadic tribes who inhabit the extreme west of the Northern Sudan, roughly between El Fasher and the town of Abeche, in Chad. The best-known Rizayqat tribes are the Mahamid and Mahriyya, but each of them is divided into clans and sub-clans. They are related to the Rizayqat cattle-Arabs of Southern Darfur, who were amongst the most ferocious warriors of the Mahdi. The Rizayqat still have a reputation as fierce fighters, and are constantly embroiled in some tribal dispute or other.

  The Eritrean, Hassan, and I sat a little apart from the semicircle of Arabs, on two dusty folding chairs which had obviously been brought out specially for the occasion. Slowly, the Arabs rose and left one by one, and finally the shaykh turned his attention to us.

  ‘By the will of God you are well!’ he said.

  ‘Praise to God, we are well,’ we answered. ‘By the will of God, the Goodness is with you.’

  ‘Praise to God, it is, may God’s blessing be upon you.’

  ‘May God give you peace.’

  The greetings continued for many moments, in the traditionally courteous Arab way. Then the shaykh looked at me, and said, ‘My son tells me you want to go into Chad with the Arabs.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘You know there is bad fighting in Chad now. The border tribes, the Gor’an and the Bedayatt, are armed and dangerous. They would kill anyone, especially a khawaja, for they hate the French. Only the barashoot dare enter the country now!’

  Hassan explained that barashoot meant smugglers.

  ‘Perhaps you can help me to travel with them?’ I said.

  ‘I?’ he said as if aghast. ‘What would I know of the barashoot?’ Then he smiled, a white-toothed, engaging smile which reminded me at once of a hyena I had seen in Kordof
an. I suddenly sensed why this man was feared and respected, why he had the reputation of a vicious adversary, quite capable of smiling and stabbing someone in the back at the same time. I remembered the stories about him in the market, how he had obtained his wealth by raiding, smuggling, and double-dealing. I recalled too, the words of Hassan when he had first told me about the shaykh. ‘His house is like a port,’ he had said. ‘You will find things there that you never see in the market. They come across the desert by hidden ways, and sooner or later they make their way here.’

  His words struck a chord in my mind. Already I had spent some time travelling with Arabs on such hidden ways. I had found in the desert a world which had never grown old, where life continued as it had been for centuries. Arab tribes and others still roamed with their herds and flocks, raiding, feuding, and smuggling without much regard for international boundaries. The shaykh’s house on the edge of Gineina, on the border between the Sudan and Chad, on the line between the desert and the Sahel, and on the route of ancient caravan ways, east, west, and north, seemed ideally suited as a repository of illicit goods and information coming from all directions. Indeed it was a port, a place that almost smelt of intrigue and subversion, a world beyond the jurisdiction of governments, where the camel-man was king. Now, with one of my camels couched in the shaykh’s yard, I felt again that yearning to go further into this hidden world, to leave the sedentary life of the town and set out once more for the desert where for a time I had found tranquillity and peace.

  Gineina was a small settlement on the extreme western edge of the Sudan, over two hundred miles west of El Fasher. Although on the same latitude as El Fasher, its atmosphere was quite different. This area was in the Sahel belt, dressed in thick woods and smooth-walled mountains. The terrain undulated between great wadis which carried abundant water for part of the year. The wadis were decorated in places by vegetation which was almost tropical: huge heraz trees drooped over their banks and fruit shrubs were laden with mangoes, guavas, oranges, and limes.

  It was the very simplicity of the town which appealed to me the most; even in comparison with El Fasher it was like stepping back a hundred years in time. There were no asphalt roads, no electricity, no tall buildings, no running water. Camel caravans were the most important form of transport from the surrounding towns, and many of the local tribesmen rode horses. They carried sheaves of spears, swords, and throwing sticks, and caparisoned their steeds with ornate harness and saddlery as if they were constantly about to ride out to war.

  The marketplace consisted of rows and squares of mud-brick shops which were cracked and neglected; grass grew in their walls and roofs. These enclosed areas of wooden stalls, flimsily constructed and roofed with cane. This was the women’s market, one of the most exotic places I had seen in the Sudan. It was a splash of colour and life where women from many tribes brought their wares. The air was thick with the scent of spices, fruit, buttermilk, perfumes, fats, and oils of many kinds. The suq was suspended in a matrix of voices, a variety of different dialects which wove around each other in a fascinating tapestry. There were women from the nomadic tribes who brought charcoal, firewood, leather goods, and other animal products. They were elfin-like creatures with shoulder-length hair—oiled and braided—and wearing brilliantly coloured dresses (which swept down to their knees), cloth head-bands, nose rings, and bracelets of gold. They contrasted markedly with the women of the local tribe, the Mesalit, who wore their hair short and decorated with trinkets and jewellery. They were dressed in wraparound robes of coarse blue cotton which faded as it grew old.

  The Mesalit were the dominant tribe in the area, which was known as dar Mesalit. The many clans of the Mesalit owed allegiance to their hereditary sultan, Abdal Rahman Bahr Al Din, whose white-walled palace dominated the town. In the past, the Mesalit had been famous warriors, feared by the smaller tribes to the north, the Tama, Erenga, and Jabal, whose culture was similar. Now they were settled cultivators akin to the Fur, who grew millet and sorghum in their fields.

  Mixed in with these sedentaries were nomadic Arabs of the Rizayqat family, whose territory spread northwest and east from Gineina. The largest of the clans was the Mahamid, who moved constantly between the Sudan and Chad. The Rizayqat were abbala or camel-rearing nomads, but there were also tribes who owned cattle in the area, such as the Bani Halba and the Messeriyya. To the east there were pockets of separate abbala tribes, such as the Awlad Rashid. To the north and along the Chad borders lay the territory of the powerful Central Saharan tribes such as the Zaghawa, Bedayatt, and Gor’an. These seminomadic peoples were the Arabs’ traditional enemies, and had a special reputation for wildness and rapine.

  I knew immediately that I should like Gineina. It was quite unlike anywhere of comparable size I had seen in the Sudan: so inaccessible that during the rainy season it might take a lorry fifteen days to reach it from El Fasher, the nearest large town. Its position on the border meant that it was a place of secret struggles and intrigues beneath its placid surface.

  The situation in Gineina was made extreme by the power struggle which was taking place between rival factions in nearby Chad. In 1980, when I arrived there, the main factions were the armies of the president, Gikoni Wadai, and the guerrillas of his former minister of defence, Hussein Habri. Gikoni was supported by the forces of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, who had an interest in annexing Chad, and specifically in controlling certain areas in the north of the country in which uranium had been discovered. Habri opposed Libya’s influence in the country and had the tacit support of the Sudan and Egypt.

  Habri had armed the border tribes, the Gor’an and Bedayatt, many of whom were simple tribesmen, ill-disposed to identification with either faction. They tended to use their new weapons for projects of their own such as raiding Arab camels and attacking isolated Sudanese markets, despite the fact that the Sudanese government was supposedly supporting them. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the Arabs of this area, who generally regarded themselves as neither Sudanese nor Chadian, but whose nomadic way of life gave them access to both countries, should be more sympathetic to Gikoni than to Habri, whose men stole their livestock with ease, by dint of the superior weapons which Habri had given them.

  The travelling Arabs were well equipped to observe military movements and buildups, and their traditional disregard of the border meant that they could easily carry such information from place to place. Thus they became useful to Gikoni as a source of intelligence, and built up an effective spy network, in which respected tribal shaykhs such as Rashid Omar were important links.

  However, the Arabs were involved in the war in another way. The Libyans had trained a force of Sudanese guerrillas, known as the jebha, under the leadership of the exiled politician, Ahmed Al Hindi. These guerrillas were recruited mainly from Sudanese who had left their country secretly, looking for work in affluent Libya, and many of them were from nomadic Arab tribes. The jebha were trained to re-enter the Sudan covertly, and to take up ordinary jobs as labourers, butchers, or waiters, under the command of a local paymaster. When the strategic conditions were right, they would receive orders to pick up weapons from caches all over the country, and go into action against important government posts.

  The Arabs played a vital role in establishing these secret arsenals of weapons, especially along the northwestern borders of the Sudan. Arab caravans would rendezvous with Libyan convoys on the Chadian side of the border, and load up their camels with rifles and ammunition which they transferred to a hiding place on the Sudanese side of the border, to await collection by the guerrillas.

  It was this world that I brushed shoulders with during my visits to the house of Shaykh Rashid Omar and I soon became a regular guest at his home, partly through my connection with the shaykh’s son, an intelligent youth whose name was the reverse of his father’s, Omar Rashid, and who was a pupil of mine.

  Hassan, the Eritrean, a small man with Abyssinian features and a mop of wiry
hair which sat on the back of his head, was another guest. He was a refugee with secrets of his own to protect. Hassan pretended to be a Muslim, but he was in fact a Christian named Michael, and had arrived in Gineina only two years before. He had fought with the Eritrean Liberation Front in their war against Ethiopia, but had been arrested by his own side when he disagreed with some of their policies.

  Later, he escaped and walked into the Sudan, finally reaching the capital, Khartoum. He worked as a tea-boy and a labourer, and slowly formed a rough plan to move to the west of the Sudan, from where escape would be much easier.

  Arriving in El Fasher, he met by chance another Eritrean who called himself Yagub, and who had left the war several years before. Yagub, whose actual name was Jacob, and who was also pretending to be a Muslim, was well set up in the town with a wife, children, and a small business. However, he was forced to leave the town after seducing the young daughter of a neighbour, and the two men fled west to Gineina.

  At first, things had gone quite smoothly. They had established themselves as radio-technicians, repairing wireless sets. Gradually, however, Yagub took to drink and spent more and more time in local brothels.

  Hassan, who was a most careful and circumspect man, prepared to work patiently towards his goal, grew tired of giving Yagub the money which he had been carefully saving against the time when he could make good his plans. He and Yagub had a flaming quarrel, and afterwards never spoke to each other. Yagub lapsed into alcoholism, and I met him many times in the town, usually drunk. He had a dynamic personality, and was intelligent and quick-witted, though his senses had been clouded by the insidious raw spirit which he drank, upchachumba, which destroyed the liver and the brain. He had abandoned all ideas of escaping or of returning to his own country, and he pretended to scoff at Hassan’s plans. He often said, ‘We will all die, all of us, white or black, rich or poor. You are not different from me: we are all the same!’