Chapter III

ABOUT two in the afternoon of the following day we reached “Ain El Jemala,” the first well of Dakhla Oasis, situated near the edge of a large area of scrub, which was said to be a favourite haunt of gazelle. We halted here to water the camels. We then pushed on past the village of Tenida, to Belat.

The _’omda_ (village head-man) came round during the afternoon, bringing some of the leading men of the village with him to welcome me to the oasis, and to invite me to dine with him, greeting me with the picturesque formula invariably used in the desert to anyone returning from a journey—“praise be to Allah for your safety.”

After dinner a man was brought in who had come from Mut, the capital town of the oasis, bringing me a note from the _mamur_, or native magistrate, welcoming me to his district, and saying that, though he had heard I had come, no one had been able to pronounce my name. He asked me to get someone to write it down in Arabic. Dakhla Oasis, though it lies just within the Egyptian frontier, had been visited by very few Europeans up to that time, and my arrival in this out-of-the-way spot consequently created somewhat of a stir in its little community.

I entrusted Khalil with the answer to the letter. The “ing” sound in my name is one which no Arab-speaking native has ever been able to master. At length, after much discussion, Khalil got the letter written; the result being that I ever afterwards went in the oasis under the name of “Harden Keen.”

From Belat we pushed on to Smint el Kharab, or ruined Smint, where are some mud-built ruins, some of which have paintings on their interior walls, apparently of Coptic origin. From Smint el Kharab we pushed on to the village of Smint itself. Here we were of course invited to lunch by the _’omda_—an invitation of which I was for once glad to avail myself, as we had made an early start, and the caravan, which had been told to wait for me outside the village, had by some misunderstanding, gone on to Mut.

My first impressions of the inhabitants of these oases, with their cordial welcome, was certainly a most favourable one. Their hospitality, however, I found at times somewhat overwhelming.

As to the nature of this hospitality there appears to be some misunderstanding. In many cases one’s host is a private individual, or, if he be an _’omda_, entertains one in his private capacity. But usually when invited to partake of a meal or to stay with an _’omda_, one is in reality the guest of the entire village, though the fact may not be apparent. The _’omdas_ of Dakhla Oasis have the right to take a small proportion of the flow of any new well sunk in their district, to pay for the hospitality they show to the strangers that come to their village. In cases where there are no new wells, they collect from the heads of the different families the expenses that they have incurred in this way; so that in reality the cost of one’s entertainment falls on the whole village.

The majority of the natives of these oases are miserably poor, and it goes much against the grain for a European to have to live upon them in this way. But to refuse their hospitality would be considered as a slight, if not as an actual insult, and so would any attempt to offer them any payment in return.

The meals, as a rule, were quite well cooked, and usually better than I got in camp. It was the tea and cigarettes that were such a trial. The one luxury the inhabitants of the oasis allow themselves is tea; even the poorest of them consume enormous quantities. The quality of the tea in the better class houses is irreproachable. The best of it is said to come from Persia, and I was told that as much as £1 a _rotl_ (the Egyptian pound) is paid for it. In addition to red tea, a green tea, and also a brown and a black are used. The last I only tasted once; it seemed to be of an inferior quality. The richer natives will often offer two or even three different kinds in succession.

After drinking, it is quite the correct thing to sit silent for some time licking and smacking one’s lips, “tasting the tea” as it is called, as a compliment to the quality supplied by one’s host. The natives have another way of showing their appreciation of the fare set before them, which, however, it would be better not to describe.

The greatest ordeal I had to face was not the tea but the cigarettes. My host would extract from somewhere in the voluminous folds of his clothing a large shiny papier mâché tobacco-box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, from which he would produce some tobacco and cigarette papers and proceed to roll me a cigarette, which he then _licked down_.

Eventually I found a means to avoid them. If the cigarette was offered me before the tea, I placed it above my ear—the correct position to carry it in the oases—and explained that I would smoke it later, so as to avoid spoiling the tea. If it was handed to me after the tea drinking, I was able to postpone lighting it for a time by saying that I would not smoke it just then, as I was still “tasting” the tea; then, while still licking and smacking my lips, with the cigarette still unsmoked above my ear, I found that it was time to take my departure. Once safely outside my host’s house in the desert, the cigarette would fall down from my ear and be promptly scrambled for by my men.

In Smint, however, no cigarettes were forthcoming. The reason was not far to seek. Close to the village the Senussi had built a _zawia_, and a large number of the inhabitants of the village had already been converted to the tenets of the sect, or, as the natives put it, they “followed the sheykh.” The members of this sect are forbidden to smoke.

In company with the _’omda_ we went to call on the sheykh of the _zawia_. After speaking to us for a minute or two, he rather sulkily invited us to enter and treated us to the usual tea.

The _zawia_ was an entirely unpretentious looking mud-built building, and might have been only the house of a well-to-do villager. The head of it—Sheykh Senussi by name—was quite a young man in the early twenties, and had probably been given the position owing to the fact that he had married a daughter of Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, the chief Senussi sheykh in Dakhla, who himself had a _zawia_ at Qasr Dakhl, the largest town in the oasis, situated in its north-western corner.

He was said to be an Arab from Tripoli way, a statement that was borne out by his clothing, which consisted of the ordinary white _hram_ of a Tripolitan Arab of the poorer class. He was very silent during the whole of our visit, and when he did condescend to speak it was generally to sneer or laugh at some remark that we made. The interview was consequently cut as short as possible.

The sharp rocks of the desert sometimes flay the entire skin from the sole of a camel’s foot, the Arabs replace this with a piece of leather sewn on to the camel’s foot. (p. 35).]

After Qway had succeeded in extracting some barley for his camel off the _’omda_ we started again, for Mut, which lay about six miles away to the west.

In many parts the scenery of these oases is extremely pretty. Our road to Mut lay through cultivated fields, alternating with areas of salt-encrusted land, and sprinkled with palm plantations and low earthy hills. Away to the north at the foot of the cliff that bounds the oasis lay the palm groves of the village of Hindau. The fields, with their ripening grain and green crops of _bersim_ (clover), the yellow ochreous hills, the clumps of graceful date palms with their dark green foliage, set against a background of cream-coloured sand dunes and purple cliffs, made a lovely picture in the light of the setting sun.

As we neared Mut, however, the country became less productive. Large areas of land thickly encrusted with salt and barren stretches of desert replaced the fertile fields and palm groves in the neighbourhood of Masara and Smint. Owing probably to the sinking of new wells at a lower level in the village of Rashida, the water supply of Mut has for many years been falling off, and now, although the place is the capital town, the district in which it lies is one of the poorest in the whole oasis.

We reached Mut in the dusk soon after sunset. Built on a low hill, and seen in the failing light, the place gave rather the impression of an old medieval fortified town. We skirted round its southern side, past a number of walled enclosures used to pen the cattle in at night, and, passing through a gap in the south-western corner of the wall that surrounds the town, arrived at a large rambling mud-built building, mainly used as a store, in which I had received leave to stay. It was a gloomy-looking place, and had evidently been built with a view to defence. Entering through a gate in the wall, secured by a bar, and turning to the right past some low outbuildings, we found ourselves in a narrow court, surrounded on three sides by high two-storied buildings—the upper part having apparently been used at some time as a harem by one of its former inmates.

Doors opened from either end of a gallery that joined the two wings. One led into the centre of three rooms on the western side that looked over the desert, and the other into some small chambers which, as one had a fire-place in it for cooking, I allotted to Dahab and Khalil, retaining the three western rooms for my own use.

These proved to be high, spacious and airy, and commanded a fine view over the desert. The windows were large and fitted with a sort of trellis. This not only made the rooms more private, but considerably reduced the glare of the desert. So beyond the fact that the floors in many places seemed unsafe, and that the place was said to swarm with scorpions, I had little fault to find with my lodgings.

I walked out in the dusk as soon as we had settled into our quarters in the old store, to see what I could of the town. Many of the streets were roofed over, as in Kharga Oasis, but the tunnels were not nearly so long and very considerably higher, so that, except for the unevenness of the roadway, we had no difficulty in getting about. We were, however, compelled to carry a lantern in order to find our way.

There was not much to be seen; but the monotonous thudding of the women pounding rice, the continuous rumbling sound of the small stone hand mills by which they were grinding grain, the smell of wood smoke, the soft singing of the women and an occasional bar of ruddy light, crossing the roadway from some partly open doorway, showed that most of the inhabitants were in their houses preparing their evening meal.

Rice enters largely into the bill of fare of the natives of the oases, and is pounded by the women with a large stone held in both hands, which is brought down with all their strength into a small basin-shaped hollow scooped out of the rocky sandstone floor upon which the town is built.

The following morning I received a state visit from the _mamur_ (magistrate), Ibrahim Zaky by name, the doctor, Gorgi Michael, a Copt from Syria, and the _zabit_, or police officer. The _mamur_ and doctor spoke English fairly well.

Like most of the native officials who are to be found in the oases, the _mamur_ was rather under a cloud, and had been sent to Dakhla as a punishment for some misdeeds of his in his last appointment. These oases posts are cordially disliked by the natives, as in these remote districts they are entirely cut off from the gay life of the towns of the Nile Valley. The appointments, however, have certain advantages. Being so far removed from the towns of the Nile Valley may be dull, but it frees them from the constant supervision of the English inspectors, a state of things of which an Egyptian is usually not slow to take advantage, by extorting _bakhshish_ from the wretched _fellahin_ of their district—often to a most outrageous extent.

One of the English inspectors had very kindly written to the _mamur_ to inform him that I was coming into his district, and to tell him to help me in any way he could. The _mamur’s_ term of office in Dakhla being nearly at an end, he was extremely anxious to get my good word with the inspector in order that he might be appointed to a better district. He was accordingly most oppressive and unremitting in his attentions—until the government removed him to another and still worse district.

He was by no means enthusiastic about his life in the oasis, and, from his account of the natives, he evidently looked upon them as being little removed from beasts. He explained that he had left his wife behind in Egypt, but as he found that he did not get on well without one, he had married a young girl from Mut. He complained bitterly of the expense she had put him to, for as he expressed it in his rather defective English, it had “cost him £25 to make her clean!”

After the Egyptian officials had departed, a succession of _’omdas_ from all over the oasis dropped in to pay their respects and to ask me to come round to their villages.

After the _’omdas_ came various minor fry. First the camel postman, a burly, black-bearded Arab, called ’Ali Kashuta, looked in, drank a gallon or two of tea, took a handful of cigarettes out of the box that was handed to him, told me several times that he was my servant, and obviously didn’t mean it; and then asking if I had any letters for post, departed, leaving a breezy independent atmosphere behind him, which was a pleasant contrast to the fawning attitude of the other natives.

Then came the clerk to the Qadi, Sheykh Senussi, who was also a member of the Senussi sect. He was a very learned person and a poet in his leisure moments. He drank tea, but didn’t smoke, and was all smiles and compliments.

Next came the postmaster. He had been to school in the Nile Valley and spoke English quite well. He explained—what I was beginning to realise—that I was causing much mystification to the good people of the oasis; they could not make me out at all. The postmaster, however, who had been educated in Egypt, knew all about it. He had read about a man called “Keristoffer Kolombos,” who had found America, and he thought that I must be in the same line of business. I told him that he was quite right. He beamed all over, and immediately departed to break the good news to an expectant oasis that the great problem had been solved. Before going he wished that Allah would preserve me on my journey, and hoped that I should find another America in the Libyan Desert.

In the afternoon I went round to tea with the _mamur_ in the _merkaz_, or official residence.

One of his guests was a tall intelligent looking man, who was introduced to me as the _’omda_ of Rashida, the _mamur_ adding in English that he was one of the most hospitable men in the oasis; but very fond of whisky.

The latter statement unfortunately proved to be true. According to the _mamur_, he was a most depraved and habitual drunkard. This, however, was an exaggeration.

Between him and this _’omda_ there was very little love lost. Shortly before my arrival they had quarrelled furiously. I never heard the cause of the dispute—it was probably a case of _cherchez la femme_, for Dakhla is one of those unfortunate places where, as Byron so nearly expressed it, “man’s love is of his wife a thing apart, ’tis woman’s whole persistence.” These small-minded natives will squabble over the most trivial matters and keep the quarrel going for years. Often a tiff of the most puerile kind will become a family matter and end in a regular hereditary feud. In the Nile Valley this often leads to bloodshed. In the oases, however, the quarrel usually takes the form of the two sides to abusing and telling lies about each other behind their backs, wrangling whenever they chance to meet, and endeavouring at every possible opportunity to subject their opponent to an _ayb_ (insult, slight, snub) often of a most elaborate description.

Shortly before my arrival the _’omda_, getting sick of the squabble, or finding that the _mamur_ was making things too unpleasant for him, had held out the olive branch by sending him a basket of early mulberries—a fruit much appreciated in the oasis. The _mamur_ had made this an opportunity to humiliate his opponent. He had thrown the fruit out of his window into the square in front of the mosque, where all the inhabitants had seen it. It was generally considered that he had scored heavily by doing so, and that this was one of the best _aybs_ that had been seen for years. The whole oasis had been talking about it.

The partisans of the _’omda_ were consequently much discomforted; but endeavoured to cover up their defeat by explaining that it hadn’t really been a good _ayb_—the _mamur_ had not thrown the whole of the mulberries away, as he had stated, but had taken out all the best ones and had only thrown away the rotten ones out of his window; so as an _ayb_ it didn’t count at all.

The ill-feeling between these two at length rose to such a pitch that some of the leading men in the oasis decided to try and effect a reconciliation between them, and a ceremony known as “making the peace” took place.

The two opponents were invited to meet together in the presence of some of their friends, who had argued with them, and at length the quarrel had been patched up. They had then fallen on each other’s necks and embraced and had agreed to feed together. They had partaken of a huge feast in which whisky apparently played a prominent part, and had both got drunk and started quarrelling furiously again, in their cups. The next morning, when they were both probably feeling rather cheap, the peace-makers had got to work again and explained to them that they had not played the game, and again a reconciliation had been effected; but there was still a good deal of latent ill-feeling between them which vented itself mostly in backbiting, under a show of friendship.