‘Sultan Moore came to Tina every month to preside at the court,’ he told me. ‘By God he was a hard man, but absolutely honest. You could tell the time from his punctuality. Whether he came by car or camel he would arrive at exactly the same time. He had no excuses; everything was exact in those days.’
Later we walked through the streets, which were almost deserted, for the market was held only twice a week. A chilling wind blew from the north, giving the town a stark, spartan feel, yet there was deep beauty in its bleakness. The town seemed to stand like a fortress against the desert: the last outpost of the Sudan, beyond which lay the wasteland, ancient, brooding, and empty.
The wind became a blizzard, blasting razor-edged particles of sand across our faces, slashing into the streets, where figures, their heads shrouded in cloth, bent into the savage assault. Suddenly a shadow loomed across our path, a stocky man wearing a long white cloak and a tightly wrapped headcloth. Tijani introduced him to me as the local police commandant, and as he loosed his headcloth, I saw a wizened, rat-like face, the colour of a dried prune. He shook hands brusquely, then in the irritating Sudanese custom, began talking to my companion about me as if I was not present. I knew that this was not intentionally impolite, but it never ceased to irk me.
‘Your friend has just arrived in the town?’ he asked. ‘He is khawaja, isn’t he? British? Ah, a teacher. I see. Tell him to come to my office first thing tomorrow. Don’t let him forget!’
With that he was off again, enveloped by the whiteout of the wind which snaked and coiled about his robes. It was with some disappointment that I discovered that the next market day would be on December 14, a delay of four valuable days. I knew, however, that before making any decisions I must wait and see what the police had to say. When I arrived at his office the next day, with Ibrahim Khalil, the officer received me formally and politely. He was dressed smartly in his green uniform, and I felt rather conspicuous in my ragged Arab clothes. At once I saw that this was going to be a no-nonsense meeting.
‘You are English? Yes? Where is your permit to travel from Gineina?’
‘I have none.’
‘No one is allowed in this region without papers. There is a war on. You should have asked for them in Gineina. There is no alternative but to return.’
‘I’m a teacher in Gineina,’ I protested. ‘Everyone knows me there. This man Ibrahim knows me. This is unreasonable.’
‘Nevertheless, you must return.’
‘But I am a teacher there, I work for the government.’
‘I believe that you are a teacher. If I did not I would make you sell your camels and have you sent to El Fasher.’
I could see that the man was adamant. There was no point in protesting further. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and kept my mouth shut, but I left his office resentfully. The meeting had realised my worst fears. And to cap it all, I had to return to Gineina by the same dangerous route by which I had come.
Ibrahim noticed my silence and said, ‘Don’t worry, ustaz. That man knows nothing. There is a way. The nomad way.’
I could guess his meaning. I knew that outside these settlements, the police could exert little authority. The country was in many places too rough for motor vehicles, and there were few Camel Corps. This was a town on the very edge of a great desert, beyond and around which lay wild, unknown country, where the people were a law unto themselves. I knew, however, that should I commit myself to the anarchy of the desert, I could expect little support from the authorities if I found difficulties.
For the next two days the wind ravaged the town, and the temperature plummeted. Whips of sand thrashed the bald dunes, bent the stunted bushes and poured with icy force into the sheltered yards where the people sat huddled, swathed in their robes and cloaks. Meanwhile, Ibrahim and I explored the area together. We crossed Gar Hajjar into Chad and visited Hill Gaynor, a tiny settlement of the Bedayatt composed of dome-shaped cabins of brushwood, inhabited mostly by women and children, whom Ibrahim spoke to in the tongue of the Kobbe, which was close to that of the Bedayatt. Later, back in Tina, we ate at the house of Ibrahim Abdallah, the man who controlled sale of camels in the town, sitting on rich carpets, whilst his son brought in legs of mutton roasted on spits and sliced them with a dagger. While the other guests spoke together in their own language, I drifted into thoughts of my own about the ‘nomad way’ and what I should do next.
On the 14th, things looked up. The windstorm dropped slightly, and we went out early to watch the people coming into the market. The shallow, concave scoop of the suq was soon full of Bedayatt camels, couched in lines, the sand littered with saddlebags full of rock salt from Chad. The cliff behind the marketplace was covered with sheep and goats attended by Kobbe shepherds, their heads wrapped in cloth against the piercing haboob. Beyond them lay a phalanx of camels bearing the brands of the Kobbe and Ango clans, with piles of saddlery.
Men in greatcoats and white turbans sat in tight groups, and Bedayatt tribesmen strode across the sands, their eyes glittering from beneath their headdress. They looked stern, confident and majestic, and I realised how wrong I had been to think of the Arabs alone as being masters of the desert. These people were as old as the desert itself and its ways were no mystery to them.
For some time we watched the endless strings of camels crossing Gar Hajjar from Chad, unloading their wares in the suq. Then Ibrahim and I fetched my two camels and took them to join the others which were for sale. Here the stock seemed of far better quality than that in Gineina, and I recalled what the Zayadiyya had told me about the desert fringes being the best country for camels. Almost all the camels in the market had Bedayatt brands. Eventually I sold the two camels to a Bedayi from Abeche in Chad, and bought a huge grandfather of a bull which seemed ideal for the desert. After the selling and the mutual congratulation were over, Ibrahim led me to a low thatched building which was full of the smells of cooking meat and coffee.
‘There are some Bedayatt going to Umm Buru tomorrow. They say you can go with them.’
‘Bedayatt! Brother, they’re robbers!’
‘They are. But they are also my relations. They will not harm you. These are all right, and it’s your only chance.’
‘What about the police?’
‘They won’t know unless someone tells them. I will say that you have returned to Gineina.’
I thought long and seriously about this proposal. This was the nomad way. I knew he was right. The police would never find me with such people. But to commit myself to the Bedayatt would be to put myself at their mercy. I could not, however, face the idea of abandoning my expedition to El Atrun, so I whispered to Ibrahim that I accepted and arranged to meet them outside the town the next morning
10. THE ROVING ARAB
O turn the roving Arab back,
Who tyger-like infests the way
And makes the traveller his prey
Eyles Irwin, Ode to the Desert
I MET THE BEDAYATT EARLY the next morning at their camp in a wadi outside the town. Ibrahim Khalil and I had been up before sunrise.We saddled my new bull and slipped away in the cold shadows of daybreak. There were four of the tribesmen there when I arrived, sitting huddled around a fire upon which a blackened kettle rattled. The men were wrapped in thick cloaks and woollen shawls, for it was still unusually cold. To me, these Bedayatt were indistinguishable from the Kobbe Zaghawa, except that they wore their headcloths wound over the lower parts of their faces in a distinctive style. This custom had no doubt developed because of its practical value in an environment which was constantly choked by dust, and had been accepted as a convention of dress. However, it was not forbidden for a Bedayi to show his face as it was for some Berber tribes such as the Tuareg.
As Ibrahim and I couched our camels in the watercourse, I noticed that there were eight bulls grazing along its banks. Some of these bore the complex star, lightning-fl
ash and twisted-rope symbols which marked them as Bedayatt camels, whilst others had the less conspicuous double-line brands of the Arabs. The men stood up to greet us speaking in heavily accented Arabic, which they spoke as a second language.
We were shown to a place near the fire and Ibrahim introduced me to his relation, ’Ali Ahmed, who he said was a camel-trader, taking animals from Tina to sell in the markets of Mellit and Kutum. I wondered secretly if ‘camel-trader’ was a euphemism for ‘camel-thief’, but I checked myself for my prejudice. All the stories I had ever heard about these Bedayatt were bad but I had learned to let the actions of people speak for themselves, knowing that stories of rapaciousness and dishonesty were often born of jealousy and resentment.
The Bedayatt were tall men, perhaps a head above most Arabs, but with the same whiplash leanness which is the mark of desert peoples. They were darker than the Arabs, their skin that shade which with typical perversity the townspeople called akhdar (green), and the Arabs azraq (blue). They wore specially tapered sirwel like cavalry breeches, and the knee-length, sideways-slashed shirts called conflets which I myself was now wearing instead of my Arab shirt. All of them were wearing daggers and ’Ali Ahmed was carrying a rifle in a leather case.
The Bedayatt were once regarded as a subsection of the Zaghawa, renowned as raiders who pillaged the desert as far east as the Nile. They now occupy a large part of the country between the Darfur mountains and the hills of Tibesti in Chad. They are nomadic and seminomadic people who possess camels and goats. They have no tents or palanquins as the Arabs have, but live mostly in cabins of brushwood of the type Ibrahim and I had seen in Hilla Gaynor, across the Chad border. Many are devout Muslims, but some of the tribe have never adopted Islam, and still follow the animistic practices of their ancestors. They have never been a rich race, for the Libyan Desert and the western Sahara in which they live is the harshest part of the North African desert, though since the time of French colonialism in Chad they prospered. Some of them served in the Camel Corps of the French army, and not only profited financially, but also learned new methods of warfare which they practised on their old enemies the Arabs. Since the civil war between Gikoni and Habri had broken out, many had volunteered to fight in Habri’s forces, but by that December the fortunes of war had gone badly for them: many had been pushed out of their homes and had lost their livestock.
I watched as the Bedayatt couched and loaded their riding-camels. I had chosen to use the less comfortable packsaddle on this trip, since I was carrying a great deal of baggage, but they were using neat riding saddles padded with costly furs and slung with hide saddlebags, worn shiny with use. Their camels looked as lean and powerful as leopards, and I wished, not for the first time, that such superb animals were available in the market. I knew, however, that such camels could not be bought: the Saharan peoples reared their riding-camels from their own herds, and trained them carefully from birth. Besides their mounts, my bull seemed like a great cruiser beside a flotilla of fast frigates.
Soon we were moving north, pushing the four loose camels before us, across a bleak winter landscape where the cruel blast of the desert winds slapped our faces. We moved through graveyards of brush and tree, where not a leaf was to be seen and where there was no sound but the soft crunching of the camels’ percussion-padded feet on the crystalline sand. I knew that I had left the last settlement of any size in the Sudan, and was approaching that wilder world of the desert, beyond the fringes of civilisation, that young unruly world where there was no law but the law of nature.
We halted at Khazan, where there was a water-pool consisting of black flats of mud on which a light film of water shimmered silver in the winter sun. Some Zaghawa camels were drinking at the water’s edge and women were drawing water in buckets and filling waterskins.
We asked them to help fill our skins, then three of the Bedayatt asked our leave to go. They were travelling to their camp near the Khazan, whilst ’Ali Ahmed and I were heading northeast towards Umm Buru with his four camels. The two of us moved on, crossing interminable wastes of sand which nursed occasional beds of dead camel-thorn and the blond stubble grasses. For hours we crossed these featureless flats, until in the early afternoon we discovered the deep red wound of a watercourse where a steep cliff of sand gave us protection from the tyrannical wind. We turned the camels out to graze on the sparse vegetation along the edges of the wadi. I began to make ’asida while ’Ali Ahmed went off to watch the camels.
After eating we sat back in the sand and examined each other’s weapons. ’Ali’s was a locally made shotgun, which nevertheless looked well built. ’Ali told me that he often shot gazelle. He said that he travelled on this route constantly and usually alone, and because of this it helped to have some protection.
‘Are there many robbers?’ I asked.
’Ali smiled a broad, good-humoured smile. ‘A few,’ he answered. ‘Sometimes you have to be careful.’
Unlike most tribesmen to whom I had addressed this question, he did not immediately accuse other tribes of stealing. This, I thought, was indicative of two things: either he was an unusually fair man, or he knew who the real thieves were. I had no way of deciding which of these was correct, for I had been completely thrown by the personality of ’Ali Ahmed. Tales I had heard of the Bedayatt had led me to expect some kind of uncouth barbarian, but I found instead a man with what the Arabs called ahsas: instinctive politeness and a natural ability to inspire trust.
’Ali told me that as he usually made this journey alone, he was very glad of my company, for the road to Mellit was long and lonely. Later we set off, driving the free camels into the icy wind, padding through pillowed creeks of sand along the banks of which goats were grazing, over plunging downland the baldness of which was broken only by the stunted stubs of old thornbushes. Night came, but the sunset brought no cheer in this cold wasteland. The camels seemed to hate the cold, hanging back and moaning, and once when they got the scent of a wood fire began to move instinctively towards it. I tried to steer my bull away, but he became very nervous, bucking and pulling on the headrope. The intense cold which now set in, and the resistance of the camels, brought to mind a verse from T. S. Eliot:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter,
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
Hours later we arrived at a creek sheltered by the boles of heraz and lalob trees, which were still in leaf. We made camp by a tall cutting, where the water had sheared a smooth wall of soil and sand at the side of the wadi bed. We turned the camels out into the trees and ate ’asida.
Thousands of stars were out above and ’Ali Ahmed began telling me the names of the constellations in his own language. After some time, I noticed, looking around with my torch, that my camel was no longer in sight. I mentioned it to ’Ali, suggesting that we should bring the camels into the camp for the night as was normal practice. He disagreed, preferring to let them feed a little longer. Finally, however, he said that he would help me look for my own animal. We moved through the thick foliage of the wadi in silence. Five minutes passed, then ten. The animal was nowhere to be found. I became worried, and hoped I had not made an error in tying the qayd. ’Ali stopped suddenly and began listening hard in the starlight. Somewhere behind us the other five camels chewed on oblivious. Then came the distinct sound of a camel’s groan in the darkness. We knew that this could mean only one thing, for a camel will not usually groan unless approached by a man. Immediately the Bedayi unslung his shotgun. ‘Quick,’ he whispered to me. ‘Get your gun!’
I hurried back to the camp and collected my pistol, wondering what was afoot. Quickly I returned to where ’Ali stood, by a low bush. Now we both stared outwards into the night trying to give form and substance to the grotesque shadows which spread out before us. Again there came the roar of a camel.
‘Who is it?’ ’Al
i called out, in Arabic.
It was then that I heard the sound which I recognised instantly and which made my hair stand on end. It was a sound I had once spent my entire waking life listening for: the cocking of a rifle. Almost instinctively ’Ali and I dropped, expecting a shot to ring out in the darkness. Both of us brought up our weapons, although we had neither direction nor target at which to aim. I knew that at the faintest move I would squeeze the trigger, for behind that small chain of muscle lay all the pent-up fears and tensions of the journey so far. Then a voice cracked the shell of the tension; a man’s voice speaking in a language I did not recognise. ’Ali answered immediately in his own tongue and as I watched, two shadowy figures emerged from the blackness, their forms thickening as they approached.
‘It’s all right, they’re Zaghawa,’ ’Ali said.
We shook hands with the two men in the darkness. They wore greatcoats of some dark material and headcloths piled up in the Zaghawa style. One of them carried an automatic rifle which looked like a Heckler-Koch. At once ’Ali began to speak to them in a quiet, though forceful manner, and I guessed he was dressing them down for sneaking up in the night. The man with the rifle spoke with equal conviction, assisted at intervals by his companion, and I assumed that he had some good excuse. The unarmed man disappeared suddenly, but reappeared a few minutes later leading two camels through the underbrush. He pointed further down the wadi, and said something to ’Ali.
‘That’s your camel,’ said the Bedayi, ‘through those trees.’
In Search of the Forty Days Road Page 13
