Chapter V: Plots and Omens

MY plans were all made for a trek straight south to Jaghbub when, two days before the date determined upon for the start, an incident happened which disquieted me.

I was sitting one evening in my room in the little government rest-house, busy with the figures of my scientific observations. There came a knock at the door. I could not imagine who could want me at that hour, but I went to the door and opened it a little way. A Bedouin whom I did not know was standing there, muffled Bedouin fashion in his _jerd_. I shut the door quickly and demanded, “Who are you?”

“A friend,” was the answer, which somehow did not convince me.

“What is your name and your business?” I asked.

“I am a friend, and I have something to tell you which you ought to know,” explained my visitor through the closed door.

I opened the door and demanded what he had to tell. He came in.

“You are going by the straight road to Jaghbub?” he half queried.

I nodded assent.

“Don’t go,” he continued with vigor.

“Why not?” I asked.

“The bey is a rich man,” he said. “He carries with him great stores of the bounty of God, and the Bedouins are greedy. The rumor is that you have many boxes of gold.”

I could see that he half believed it, though he was pretending not to.

“The camelmen have agreed with friends on the road that you shall be waylaid and robbed. You will lose your money and probably your life.”

“One can always fight,” I suggested.

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “if you had plenty of men of your own.”

I hadn’t, so I proceeded to question him further about his information. The story seemed straight enough, and when I learned that my visitor was a relative of a man to whom I had done a good turn when on the last mission to the Senussis, I felt that it would be wise to believe him. I thanked him for his warning, and he went away into the night. I sat down to consider the unpleasantly melodramatic situation.

The desert people are quick to ferret out your purpose if they can, and, if they cannot, to build up imaginary stories to account for what you are and have and intend to do. Much of our paraphernalia was in boxes. Boxes, to the Bedouin mind, mean treasure. If three rifles in a case could be translated into a machine-gun, why should not cameras and instruments in boxes be translated into gold and bank-notes? It was no wonder that the men whose camels we had hired were convinced that I was going into the desert with vast wealth for some unknown purpose. It was quite possible that they planned to rob me. It was a cheerful outlook for the very beginning of our journey. A fight, no matter how successful, would be a poor start for our undertaking. I decided that it would be better to avoid this first obstacle in our path rather than to encounter it.

Promptly the next day the camel-owners whose pleasant little plan had been revealed to me found themselves discharged. Others with their camels were forthwith hired to take me to Siwa. Instead of the straight line to Jaghbub we would go along the two other sides of the triangle whose apices were Sollum, Siwa, and Jaghbub. It would materially lengthen this first part of our journey, but, after all, time and distance were less important than safe arrival. The road by way of Siwa had several advantages. It lay in Egyptian territory and not in the country inhabited by the tribes to which the first set of camelmen belonged. In the second place, it ran through more frequented territory, where a treacherous waylaying of our caravan would have been more perilous to the waylayers. Lastly, our quick departure after the change of plan gave the conspirators no time to develop any new plot if they had wanted to. It looked safe, and it proved to be as safe as it looked.

On January 1 the caravan started, and three days later Lieutenant Bather very kindly took me in a motor-car to catch up with it. We found the caravan at Dignaish, thirty-six miles out; and, saying good-by to the lieutenant, I took up the journey.

It was then a six days’ trek to Siwa. Our spare time was profitably spent in camouflaging the boxes and cases in our luggage to look like the usual Bedouin impedimenta. The only event of interest during the six days was the first of three good omens that foretold success to the trip. On the fifth day in the late afternoon I saw a gazelle feeding a little distance off our track. Without other thought than the pleasant anticipation of fresh meat, I set out after it. As I went I heard discouraging shouts and howls from the men behind me. I could not understand their reluctance to have me go after the game, in view of the Bedouin’s love of meat. I imagined that they were afraid I would be led away some distance from them and thus hold up the progress of the caravan. The reason did not seem sufficient, and so I pursued my quest. After some chase I got a shot at the gazelle and brought it down.

As I approached the caravan with my game, I was surprised again. The men came running toward me with waving arms and shouts of joyful congratulation. I understood their present state of mind no more than I had their former one, until the explanation was forthcoming.

Then I learned that among the Bedouins the first shot fired at game after a caravan sets out is the critical one. If it is a miss, disaster is certain to overtake the caravan before the journey’s end. If it is a hit, fortune will smile upon the whole undertaking. The men of the caravan had been reluctant to see me put our luck to the test so soon. If I had remembered the Bedouin travel lore, I should have saved my first shot at game until we reached El Fasher, six months later.

We were three days in Siwa, hiring other camels for the trek to Jaghbub and making a few final preparations. Siwa was the last outpost of the world I was leaving behind. There the postal service and the telegraph end. Beyond that point there is nothing to be bought except the products of the desert, or occasionally a little rice or cloth, perhaps at exorbitant prices. In my three days I enjoyed the hospitality and valuable assistance of the Frontier Districts Administration, in the persons of the _mamur_ and town officials and of Lieutenant Lawler, in command of the troops there.

Siwa is the biggest and most charming of oases; springs of wonderful water, excellent fruit, the best dates in the world, picturesque scenery, and the quaintest and most interesting of customs. For example, if a woman loses her husband she is kept forty days without washing, and nobody sees her. Her food is passed through a crack in the door. When the forty days have expired, she goes to bathe in one of the wells, and everybody tries to avoid crossing her path, for she is then called _ghoula_ and is supposed to bring very bad luck to anybody who sees her on that day of the first bath.

In the date market, called the _mistah_, all the dates are piled together, the best quality and the most inferior. No one thinks of touching one date that does not belong to him or mixing the dates together with a view to gaining an advantage thereby. On the other hand, anybody can go into a _mistah_ and eat as much as he likes from the best quality without paying a _millième_, but he must not take any away with him.

He studied as a boy under the Grand Senussi, the founder of the sect. He can quote from memory all the incidents that took place in his time, giving day and year of every event.]

In Siwa there is a shrine of a saint where people may deposit their belongings for safety. If a man is going away he can take his bags with the most valuable things and put them near this shrine, and nobody would dream of touching them. Literally, if any one left a bundle of gold there, no one would touch it, because of the very simple but unshakable belief in them that if you touch anything near that shrine and it does not belong to you, you would have bad luck for the rest of your life.

When I was ready to leave Siwa, my little group of personal retainers had doubled in number. At Sollum I had added to Abdullahi and Ahmed a man of the Monafa tribe named Hamad. He was the hardest-working individual in the entire caravan. I never saw him tired. He took charge of my camel and later of the horse which I secured at Kufra. The fourth member of the group was Ismail, a Siwi. He looked like a weakling, but on the trek he was always the last man to give in and ride a camel. Ismail was the one whom I used to take with me when prospecting for geological specimens or making elaborate scientific observations. Coming from an oasis in Egyptian territory where the post and the telegraph made connection with the outside world, he had less of the wild Bedouin’s suspicion that interprets every simple action of the stranger into something with an ulterior motive. Why should the bey be chipping off bits of rock, the Bedouin might say to himself, unless there were gold in it, or he intended to come and conquer the country? Not so Ismail. If the bey wanted a bit of rock, that was for the bey to say.

We left Siwa on the fourteenth with our new caravan. Our last link with the outside world was broken. At the first stop I took off my faded khaki and put on the Bedouin costume and felt myself now a part of the desert life. The effect upon the men was immediate. Till now they had approached me with embarrassment and awkwardness. Now they came up naturally, kissed my hand in Bedouin fashion, and said, “Now you are one of us.”

Our second good omen befell us a few miles out of Siwa. We found dates in our path, where some unfortunate date merchant taking his cargo to market had had an accident. Dates in the way are a promise of good fortune for the journey. Often, when a Bedouin is setting out with his caravan, friends will go secretly ahead and drop dates where he will be sure to pass them. With my first shot and the gazelle and the dates in the path, we had every reason to be cheerful. But the best omen of all was to come.

I had sent two men ahead with a letter to Sayed Idris at Jaghbub, to inform him of my approach. In the desert one does not rush upon a friend or a dignitary headlong and unannounced. There should be time for both to put on fresh clothing and go with dignity to the meeting as becomes gentlemen of breeding.

Two days out from Siwa I was riding some distance behind the caravan and presently came upon it halted. I asked the reason for the unusual stop and received the reply, “Messengers have come to say that Sayed Idris will be here within an hour.” The men could scarcely conceal their excitement. To be met by the great head of the Senussis himself at the beginning of our journey was the most auspicious of omens. The rest of the message was indicative of the etiquette of the desert. “He asks the bey to camp so that he may come to him.”

We immediately made camp, and before long the vanguard of Sayed Idris’s caravan appeared and made camp in their turn a short distance away. A half-hour later Sayed Idris himself, with his retinue, advanced toward my camp, and I went to meet him.

Sayed Idris met me with warm cordiality, and we renewed the acquaintance made on our previous meetings with deep gratification on my part and apparent pleasure on his. The former trip could never have been successful without the countenance he gave to it and the assistance he rendered; how much more the present one, which was to take me three times as far and into more completely unknown regions.

In his tent we lunched on rice, stuffed chicken, and sweet Bedouin cakes, followed by glasses of tea delicately scented with mint and rose-water. I told him of my plans and gave him news of the outside world. He was interested to know the final issue of the Peace Conference at Versailles.

At his suggestion, I brought all the men of my caravan to his tent to receive his blessing. As I stood with them and heard the familiar words fall from his lips, there came irresistibly to my mind that moment in the incense-shrouded room in Cairo and my father’s blessing upon my undertaking. Then my imagination had leaped out to meet the vision of the desert, the camels, the Bedouin life. Now the need for imagination was gone. I was in Bedouin kit, with the camels of my caravan behind me, and the road to the goal I sought stretching ahead.

To my men the experience of being blessed by Sayed Idris himself was the greatest augury of success that we could have had. Nothing could harm us now.

In the afternoon we said farewell, both camps were broken, and both caravans took up the march, Sayed Idris going east into Egypt and I west to Jaghbub and the long trail into the desert. As we marched my men insisted on following the track made by the caravan of Sayed Idris, to prolong the great good fortune that had befallen us.