In Search of the Forty Days Road

by Michael Asher

  ‘In our country, there is dried grass and thorn trees,’ he said, ‘which camels prefer. They like it better than the wet grass which you find in this place. Of course the camels here are big, but they are not hardy, not like ours. They have to drink often, because they are used to softer conditions. Our camels may be smaller than yours, but they are more healthy. Many of your calves die, but few of ours do.’

  The conversation passed to another favourite topic of the Arabs: guns. Mohammed told the Mahamid that the Zayadiyya had many guns, often obtained from refugees from the war in Chad.

  ‘By the life of the Prophet, we have plenty, too!’ said Amin Yusif. ‘But the police don’t like it. Last year they raided us and tried to collect all our weapons. They said we were fighting the Bedayatt and Gor’an who were friends of the government. Friends! When they steal our camels!’

  ‘That’s unbelievable! Did they find any?’

  The old man’s face creased into a boyish grin, ‘Never! We knew they were coming, of course, and put them in the ground. They found nothing!’

  We talked until late at night, bathed in the soft light of a bloated moon, which illuminated our shelf and the grazing camels, which belched and gurgled happily in the thorn trees. As the flames of the fire faded and the chill of the winter night set in the Arabs retired one by one, leaving us alone with the splendour of the desert stars.

  The next day we set off back to Abu Wishdera. The woods were still full of Mahamid and some Bani Halba, whom we greeted as we rode. Before nightfall we reached a chain of spurs from which we could see the green oasis of Gineina, like a jewel against the pastel-coloured qoz which surrounded it. As we approached the town, I felt a twinge of disappointment. Previously, it had seemed primitive and exciting; now, after a few days with the nomads, it seemed like any town, anywhere in the world.

  14. SANDS OF UNRULINESS, SANDS OF SUBMISSION

  What a difference in substance between the sands of

  unruliness, and the sands of submission.

  Antoine de St Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

  IT WAS MARCH. I WAS watching the days pass and the weather get slowly hotter as the season drifted towards high summer, fretting at the steadily increasing temperature, mindful that in a month’s time the desert would be a far from a pleasant place. I had begun to lay the foundations of my next attempt to reach the elusive Forty Days Road and I wanted to visit the oasis of El Atrun, but I knew that the way through the remote reaches of dar Zaghawa was barred to me. Instead I planned to trek northeast to Kutum and Mellit, and then north into the Libyan Desert. I had been warned by the police not to attempt this again, but I saw no reason why they should object to a journey to Kutum and Mellit. Besides, I had made a friend in the secret police in Gineina, and with his help I obtained written permission to travel as far as Mellit. From there onwards, I would have to take my chance with the authorities.

  My friend Mohammed Hissein advised me strongly not to begin the journey in Gineina.

  ‘Even if you have permission, it will be dangerous,’ he told me. ‘Between here and Kutum the country is as wild as in the north. There are Bedayatt and Zaghawa all over the mountains. Remember what happened to your camel! And there are the Umm Jallul Arabs who live in these mountains. They are well known as robbers. It would be better for you to go from Mellit: at least there are few Bedayatt in the desert!’

  I thanked him for the advice, but told him that such threats did not disturb me. This was not bravado: I merely felt that as I had accepted the sheer joy and freedom of travelling in the nomads’ dimension, then I should also accept the hardship and danger. I never expected my journeys to be easy. On this particular trip, though, I had good reason to remember Mohammed’s words.

  Mohammed helped me to find a superb riding-camel in the market. It was a tall sadiis, strong, sinewy, and even-tempered. I then set about trying to find a companion. Mohammed himself declined to go with me and eventually I managed to find some Hamar who were taking camels from the market back to Kordofan. Unfortunately, though, when I arrived at the suq one afternoon to meet them, I discovered that they had already left. Therefore, I left the town alone on April 9, wearing Arab dress, carrying a full complement of food and water, and armed with my pistol and a walking-stick. I had no companion, but at least I was on the way.

  I crossed Wadi Kajja, which looped in a semicircle around the town, and at once pressed my camel into a victorious trot. The animal braced himself, surging forward like a cruiser into the swell, his legs pumping like greased pistons, his feet tripping lightly over the sand as if they hardly touched it. My whole body was charged with excitement, and it was as if the camel and I were one, a merged unit of power, crossing the short time warp between the city and the qoz. For several hours I rode like this, following the track which hugged the wadi bank, tunnelling through thickets where the leaves glistened silver on the thornbush and red knolls of rock rose steeply from the other side of the track.

  The vegetation here was the skeletal remains of its former glory. Fifteen years before this had been savannah woodland. Water-buffalo had rutted in the thickets and lion and leopard had stalked the tall grass. Herds of elephant had moved through the woods like tanks, feeding on the rich greenery. Only fifteen years ago, Sultan Abd Al Rahman of the Mesalit shot an elephant on this very track. Now there were no elephants north of the Bahr Al Arab, a hundred miles away.

  Desiccation had crept into the valley like an evil spirit, withering the trees and driving out the animals. All that was left of that teeming fauna were a few red monkeys playing in the mango trees near the wadi’s edge, and a family of small crocodiles dammed up in one stretch of the wadi which held water all year round. Soon, perhaps, they too would be gone.

  Just before sunset that day, I met a shaykh of the Mahamid, like an ageing Don Quixote on his bony stallion, his old sword hanging low in its sheath, and his spear held ready.

  ‘Where are you going, khawaja?’ he said. I told him that my destination was Seref Umra, the nearest large settlement. ‘Don’t go alone by night!’ he told me.

  ‘There are robbers on the road. Only an hour ago I saw a party of Gor’an. They will take a fine camel like yours without doubt! Look, over in the wadi is an Arab camp. Go there and rest.’

  I thanked him and set off towards the tents which were laid like brown stones on the concave bed of the wadi. The sky was already heavy with prussian blue and grey as I sloped in amongst them. A group of women with long, braided locks were pounding spices on the far bank, and in the bushes some camels and horses grazed. As I couched my camel between the tents, two young men with keen, predatory features came out saying, ‘Welcome! Peace be upon you, welcome and peace!’ They shook hands warmly, then automatically began to unload my saddlebags and other luggage, carrying it to a dara near the tents, where rugs were laid out. They brought me water, as custom demanded, and as I crouched to drink, told me that they were Essel and Yahyah Sadiiq of the Mahamid. They were evidently unused to seeing Europeans, for they treated me rather standoffishly at first, and Essel asked if I were ‘travelling for the government’. I hastily explained that I was not. As the remaining blue patches of sky thickened into deep grey, and stars appeared like bright badges on its coat, they performed their sunset prayers, kneeling in the soft sand. Afterwards they brought a steaming dish of ’asida and brewed tea on the fire with the now familiar ritual.

  As we drank tea, I asked them how long they would stay in Wadi Kajja.

  ‘Until the first rains come,’ Essel told me.

  ‘Then we go north into the land of the Zaghawa. The camels hate the dampness, so we cannot stay in the south after the first rains fall.’

  I asked for information about the area between here and Kutum. Yahyah said, ‘It’s hard country and becoming dangerous! The Bedayatt and Zaghawa have come to settle there because of the dryness in their own country, and they try to drive out the other tribes by ki
lling and stealing. They steal from everyone, by God! But usually they steal from the zurqa—the Fur and Tungur, who have few weapons.’

  ‘We heard a strange story recently,’ said Essel. ‘By the life of the Prophet, you won’t believe it, khawaja!’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was up in the mountains near Kutum. Some Tungur—there were five of them—were taking grass to Kutum market by camel. It was early morning, and some Bedayatt watched them from far away hidden on the side of a hill, in a hole they’d dug. They had automatic rifles mounted on stands, like this …’ He drew two twigs into a ‘V’ shape to demonstrate. ‘Then boof! Boof! Boof! They hit the Tungur from above as they came. Hit them all with bullets! Then they crawled out of their holes, ran down and took the camels. But by God, one of the Tungur was alive, he was only a boy, and he asked for mercy. But where was mercy? They shot him through the head! They have no fear of God, those men!’

  ‘Didn’t the Tungur search for them?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they gathered twenty men and followed the tracks for days. They found the Bedayatt camp up near Jebel Meidob. But as soon as they came near, boof! Boof!’ He held up a twig as if it were a rifle. ‘The Bedayatt shot at them. What could they do? They had no weapons except small pistols. They had to return home without justice.

  ‘God destroy them, those Bedayatt!’ Yahyah said, spitting.

  I felt obliged to tell them of my pleasant experience with ’Ali Ahmed in dar Zaghawa.

  ‘Yes,’ Essel replied, ‘there may be some good men amongst them, Muslims who know God. But most of them are like animals. Arabs may steal, but they do not kill without purpose as the Bedayatt do!’

  I saw the Arabs’ point. To them, raiding and stealing was a game to be played by certain rules; a game which might bring honour and fame. The Saharan tribes, so near yet so far from Arab culture, did not play by the Arabs’ rules. They were merciless and ruthless, and did not consider five deaths a large price for five camels. This was the reason the Arabs hated them so much. If the Arabs stole, they would do so in daylight, while the Bedayatt attacked at night. The Arabs would not kill women and children except by accident; the Bedayatt made no such distinction. The races would never be reconciled while they played by such different standards.

  ‘You must be careful north of Sereyf, khawaja,’ Yahyah told me.

  ‘It’s wild country around Kutum. You will pass through the dar of the Bani Hissein, who are Arab, and good people. You will find no difficulty there. But beyond that the country belongs to no one.’

  I had heard of the Bani Hissein and was curious to meet them. They were a settled Arab tribe of cattle-owners and cultivators, who claimed to be ashraf or ‘noble’ Arabs, descended from the Prophet’s nephew, ’Ali. Despite this claim, though, they had intermixed with the neighbouring Fur cultivators and in many cases their appearance was hardly Arab-like. Nevertheless, they had an unequalled reputation for hospitality.

  It was four days later that I arrived in Sereyf, the centre of the Bani Hissein. I had passed through the crossroads settlement of Seref Umra,where tribesmen from the Fur, Gimmar, Zaghawa, and Bedayatt mingled with the Arabs of the Mahamid, Awlad Rashid, and Bani Halba. From there, I had travelled north across miles of semidesert, where caravans passed me on the track and nomads moved in the thorn woods. Beneath the great turtle-shell massif of Jebel Bir Kasayra, I had passed through the villages of Darai and Abu Jowra, arriving at the wells of Sereyf near sunset.

  Sereyf was an austere settlement of grass huts and compounds, like an imperfect copy of the Hamar villages I had seen in Kordofan. It stood on a high flat shelf above a wadi that was filled with cows and sheep, and a score of boreholes at which dozens of tribesmen were watering. At the very first house I passed, a middle-aged man came out to greet me. He was as coal black as a Mesalati, but with the broad square features of the Arabs. He greeted me solemnly and led me into his poor house of grass stalks, saying, ‘You must stay here tonight.’ He told me to couch the camel outside. ‘There are no robbers here,’ he said. ‘This is the country of the Bani Hissein.’

  That evening my host, whose name was Adum, entertained me in a three-sided khalwa dyuuf where his aged father, a toothless old man who could no longer walk, was a permanent fixture. Chickens were killed to honour me as guest and many tribesmen came to greet me and to sit around the fire drinking tea. I warmed to the courteous yet sharp conversation. The Bani Hissein knew little about the outside world, but their minds were quick and penetrating.

  Adum began to tell me about the days of British rule in dar Bani Hissein. ‘Sereyf wasn’t where it is now in those days,’ he told me. ‘It was up near Dileyba. That was in the days of Sultan Moore. Mr Moore held a court at old Sereyf every week. He used to come by camel from Kutum along a special way. It is still called “Mr Moore’s Road”. That’s the best way for you to approach Kutum.’ Adum informed me that the next day he and his son would ride with me as far as the wells at Dileyba, in order to set me on ‘Mr Moore’s Road’.

  It took us until noon the next day to reach Dileyba. The Bani Hissein rode the muscular horses for which they were renowned, and carried shotguns slung from their shoulders or balanced across their saddles. Dileyba was no more than a few wells set in a dry watercourse, where the sand was all but obscured by the accumulated animal dung of decades. Hundreds of full-bodied cows and bullocks were being watered by the Bani Hissein, and further along I saw seething nests of camels, belonging to nomads of the Mahamid. The Bani Hissein herdsmen welcomed us and slaughtered a goat in honour of our arrival.

  We drank ajina, a delicious drink made from millet. Afterwards, Adum and his sons escorted me to ‘Mr Moore’s Road’, a narrow animal track which wound through thin bush.

  As I wished him farewell, Adum said to me, ‘I advise you to get out your pistol, khawaja. This is a dangerous road. There are even more bandits about than there were in Mr Moore’s time! Go in peace.’

  ‘Go in peace.’

  After the Bani Hissein had gone, I did as Adum had advised me, putting my pistol into my pocket.

  The prelude to what was to come happened the next day. As I climbed out of a verdant wadi in which I had been resting, I saw a single camel-rider coming towards me, and he halted his mount beside me. He was an Arab youth, with a fox-like, pugnacious face, the narrow, pointed features of which were accentuated by the skullcap which he wore rakishly on the back of his head.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘Ingleezi,’ I answered. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Arab, Umm Jallul. What are you doing here alone?’

  ‘Travelling,’ I answered, resenting his aggressive tone, ‘to Kutum.’

  ‘Not good,’ he shook his head. ‘Not good at all. The Ingleez should not be alone out here. This is bad country. There are robbers here.’

  ‘So people say,’ I said, as nonchalantly as possible. ‘But I haven’t seen any, brother, and there are robbers everywhere!’

  ‘I’ll tell you, khawaja, there are Zaghawa ahead. They won’t let you pass! They won’t let you alone!’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I said. ‘But in any case, that’s my business. Go in peace.’

  And I set off at once up the steep slope, whipping my camel into a trot. The boy had angered me considerably. Advice I much appreciated, but this patronising attitude cut me to the quick. It turned out, though, that the youth’s aggressive advice was quite sound, if a little inaccurate.

  Some time later I realised that I had lost ‘Mr Moore’s Road’. Either it had petered out into nothingness, obliterated by the scores of animal tracks which crisscrossed it, or I had merely strayed off it inadvertently. Before me lay some very rough country, an uneven plain of rock, cut deeply by gullies and ravines, scattered with boulders and sharp outcrops, and covered in twisted brakes of acacia. It was cut off to the east by a smooth green wall of rock. I saw no alternative
but to cross the plain on a due east bearing which I set on my Silva compass, hoping that I would find some pass through the mountain on the other side. It was difficult going and my progress was painfully slow, descending slippery banks of sand and shale and through narrow gorges where I was forced to duck away from the twisted boughs of the thorn trees.

  Suddenly, I saw two camel-men bearing down on me. They were riding at an oblique angle on a collision course, and it was obvious that they intended to close with me. Their camels were small and fast and as the men came nearer, I could see that they were Arabs, two youths with the same streamlined features as the Jalluli I had seen earlier.

  Something in the purposeful way they rode ignited a warning signal in my head, and I decided to get away from them as soon as I could. But in a few moments they had moved skilfully across and stood blocking my path. I looked into the two youthful faces and was met by a slit-eyed stare. The youths were of different ages, one perhaps fifteen, the other in his early twenties.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the elder youth nastily.

  ‘To Kutum.’

  ‘To Kutum? Then why aren’t you on the path? Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you go this way?’

  ‘I use this,’ I said, showing them my Silva compass.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A compass,’ I said, using the Arabic word.

  ‘What does he mean?’ said the younger to the elder.

  ‘He can look through it and see Kutum,’ the other said.

  ‘No, no,’ I began to explain.

  ‘Where’re you from?’ snapped the elder, interrupting me. ‘What is your people?’

  ‘Ingleez.’

  ‘What’s that? A tribe from Chad?’