First Steps
Reem: It seemed to take all morning to reach the nomads’ camp, leading the camels up and down dunes and riding across the flat places Mansour calls sabkha. In the end, I didn’t know which was worse: riding gave me a pain in the back, but walking through the hot sand, leading the camel, was hard work and I guess I’m not as fit as I should be. Mansour, who’s a sort of uncle, looks about a thousand years old, yet he walks with a spring as if he’s about to take off. Here’s me, 12 years old, and I couldn’t even keep up with a man old enough to be my grandad.
It’s not just because I’m a girl: Jamal, who’s my cousin, though I’ve never met him before, is the same age as me. He’s a typical boy and he seems to fancy himself as some kind of tough guy, yet he had the same problem. The funniest thing was that the camel he was leading kept jerking back on its headrope. He tried to ignore it at first, but then it got too much and he tried to stop it. The camel snapped at him suddenly and he dropped the headrope in shock. So much for being tough!
I started giggling and, of course, he heard and gave me an annoyed look. Not a very good start with my long-lost cousin. Since we both grew up in the city and both go to school, I was hoping we’d be allies among these nomad relations. Jamal seems a bit full of himself though and now I’m not sure.
I was really hot by the time we came to the top of a dune and saw the camp below us — eight or 10 big black tents arranged in a sort of semi-circle in the sand. Mansour made us stop the camels a short distance away from the first tent, and some nomads — adults and children — came out to say hello and help us unload our belongings. Mansour introduced his wife, Shamsa, who, he said, was a well-known storyteller.
One thing I noticed was the nomads seemed warm and friendly; they were genuinely glad to see us because they smiled and looked us right in the eye when they shook our hands. Shamsa said that I was the spitting image of my father and that she would have known me anywhere. She said the same thing to Jamal, though.
I asked for water, expecting to get it in a plastic bottle. We’d brought a few with us but finished them on the way. I should have known better. Shamsa poured water from a girba — a goatskin — into a wooden bowl and passed it to me. I was thirsty and took a long swallow. I almost spat it out. It tasted, well, kind of salty. Shamsa handed it to Jamal who seemed surprised to find he was expected to share the same bowl as me.
Later, Shamsa showed us around the camp — a guided tour of the tents — and by the time we’d finished, I was feeling a bit down. I guess Jamal was, too. I mean, everything is so basic. There’s no electricity, of course, so no screens and no fridges. They don’t even have a radio. Forget mobile phones — we might as well have left them at home. And the tents aren’t really like houses, more like shelters. No bathroom, of course! If you have to go, it’s out in the desert. You don’t get your own room either; all the women, girls, young boys and married men sleep in the women’s quarters. The older boys and unmarried men sleep outside. And there aren’t even any beds, we have to sleep on rugs and blankets on the ground. I immediately asked about scorpions and snakes, but Shamsa laughed and said they weren’t a problem. Yeah, right, I thought.
Jamal: It was Reem’s dad’s idea that my cousin and I should spend our holidays in the desert with the nomad branch of our family we’d never met. Like us, our dads grew up in the city and hadn’t had contact with the nomads since they were kids, either. My dad told me that they were still very traditional, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t imagine that they’d have no cars, no phones, no TV, no electricity. In fact, nothing modern at all. I mean, they still light fires by striking flint against steel.
Reem’s dad told mine that he thought spending our holidays in the desert with real nomads would make us more resilient and independent. I kind of liked that idea: I’ve got three older brothers who think they are strong and are always bullying me and calling me a wimp. I thought that by living in a harsh and difficult place like the desert for a while, I’d show them how tough I really am.
Reem’s dad also said that she and I could get to know each other. To tell the truth, I wasn’t too keen on having a girl along, because if a girl can do the same thing as me, I’m not going to look so tough. And now that I’ve spent a few hours with her, I’m thinking I was right.
Old Mansour, whom we call uncle (Aami), though he isn’t really, gave her the best camel, of course. It was very well behaved, unlike mine, who kept on pulling back on the headrope. Reem even laughed when I tried to control it. I felt like saying something nasty but I didn’t. How I’m going to put up with her for the next two months, I don’t know.
One thing you have to say is that the nomads made us feel welcome. They seemed to know us. It was almost like we’d come back somewhere we’d been to long ago — as if we’d come home. On the other hand, there aren’t any comforts here. You walk or ride camels, you sleep on the ground, you drink water that tastes of leather and you eat simple food. There aren’t any distractions like online games or videos, either. When I asked Mansour what people do in the evening, he said they recite poems and tell stories. Great!
Around sunset, Reem and I sat by the fire outside Mansour’s tent — we call it that, though Mansour told us that nomad tents actually belong to the women. The sky was flame red and orange and suddenly scores of dark shapes seemed to appear out of it, outlined against the fiery sky: the camel herd. The animals seemed to float over the sand, coming to a halt not far from where we sat. The slim shadows of herdsmen moved through them, talking in quiet voices, settling them down. A feeling of peace seemed to spread over the desert, as if everything was in its place. In the last sparkling of the sun, I saw that Reem was smiling. She looked at me with wide eyes. “Maybe it won’t be so bad after all,” she said.
The Well of the Catfish
Jamal: In the first week of our stay with the nomads, some herdsmen of our clan returned to the camp not long before sunset. They were accompanied by a nomad called Salim, who looked exhausted. Salim belonged to another clan. Mansour built up the fire in the men’s quarters of his tent, had the man sit down and started to make coffee. As Reem and I sat down beside him, Salim began recounting his journey across the desert.
Salim said that he’d been herding camels in the sands with his brothers when he discovered that one of their she-camels (niyaag) had wandered off. He immediately set out to find her, following her tracks across the dunes. Thinking that she couldn’t have gone far, he took no water with him. He walked for three days without finding the camel and by that time, he was dying of thirst. On the third day, he found a deep well, but it was deserted. He could see the water far below but had no rope or bucket to draw it up. He decided that the only way to save his life was to jump into the well.
Leaving his sandals at the wellhead, he jumped. Though the well was deep, the water broke his fall. After drinking, he found that he could stand upright with his head above the surface. The walls of the well were sheer and there was no way he could climb out.
Salim stood in the well for another three days until our herdsmen arrived with their camels. They saw his sandals at the wellhead and guessed someone was in the well. They shouted and Salim shouted back. Using the well rope they had brought, they pulled him up.
When Salim told them what had happened, they were amazed. What astonished them most was that he had managed to keep his head above the water for three days. When they asked how he had done it, Salim told them that a giant catfish called Labuna lived at the bottom of the well. She had told him stories to keep him awake, he said, and every time he felt as if he might slip under the surface, the fish had held him up.
Omar and Bakhait
Reem: One of the first trips we took from the nomad camp was to a well called Ayn al-Arnab to get water for the tent. It was half a morning’s journey through the dunes, walking with the camels. Mansour called them jimaal al-bait (house camels) because they were used mainly for carrying water. They were loaded with bunches of empty waterskins.
We travelled with a small herd of she-camels belonging to a nephew of Mansour’s, tended by a herdsboy named Dahat, who couldn’t have been much older than me and Jamal. I did ask him how old he was, but he said he didn’t know.
Jamal snorted, but Mansour commented that it was no use asking nomads questions like that. They didn’t measure time in years. I realised suddenly that this meant they didn’t celebrate birthdays. No birthday presents! No parties! Just imagine that!
The dunes were quite steep and I wasn’t looking forward to climbing them, but when I told Dahat this, he looked surprised. “We don’t go over the sands,” he said. “We go around.” Now it was my turn to feel silly. Of course, why climb a dune when you can go around it? Think of the effort; you’d sweat like a waterfall and lose all that water! Dahat didn’t laugh at me though. He just gave me a big smile. For a boy who didn’t know his own birthday, he was pretty nice, I thought.
We came around a dune and saw the well in the distance. There were a lot of nomads gathered around it, with camels and goats. I noticed that they had harnessed a camel to draw up water, using a rope and a pulley wheel. I’d never seen anything like that before — I’m used to turning on a tap.
When we got to the well, the first thing we saw was a young nomad woman holding out a bowl of water to us, smiling. Nomads seem to smile a lot. Jamal reached her first, of course, and grabbed the bowl ready to drink. It was Dahat who stopped him.
“We don’t do it like that,” he said.
“Like what?” Jamal said, in that way he has. “It’s a drink, isn’t it?”
Dahat looked slightly embarrassed. “You should offer it to others first,” he said.
Mansour nodded. “Yes,” he added. “That’s the nomad way.”
He made us all sit down, took the bowl and passed it to Dahat, who took it, but instead of drinking, passed it to me. I took it and was about to drink, when Mansour shook his head. “No, you must not drink,” he said. “Offer it to Jamal.”
I handed it to Jamal, who took it, chuckling.
“I see. It’s a kind of game,” he said.
He offered it to Mansour, who took it and offered it to me again. Jamal was right; it was a game of bluff.
No matter how thirsty you were, you weren’t supposed to drink the water. You were supposed to offer it to the others. The person who drank first, lost.
The third time Jamal was handed the bowl, he stared at the water and seemed reluctant to pass it on. “All right,” he said, “I give up.”
He took several long gulps, then looked up with a guilty expression. The rest of us laughed. Thankfully, it meant that we could all drink now. Jamal might have lost face, but he’d saved us. If he’d refused, the bowl might have gone around till dark.
Of all nomad customs, this drinking ritual seemed… well, kind of out of place. When I asked Mansour about it later, he said, “Don’t you know the story of Bakhait and Omar?”
“No,” I said. He and Dahat stared at me as if I was the world’s number one dummy.
“Let me tell it,” Dahat said after a moment. He composed himself, then began.
“There were or there were not two nomads…”
“Were or were not?” Jamal interrupted. “Well, were they or were they not?”
Dahat shot him a pitying glance. “That’s a way of starting a story,” he said.
“Oh,” said Jamal.
“Bakhait and Omar,” Dahat went on, “were travelling to a place in the sands (ar-Ramla) when their camels foundered. They were exhausted and couldn’t go on. The nomads were out of water and decided to continue until they found a water source, then return for the camels on foot.
“They started walking but it was hot and they became more and more thirsty. After a while, Bakhait collapsed and couldn’t get up. ‘Leave me here,’ he told Omar, ‘and you go on and find water.’
‘Very well,’ Omar said, ‘but I swear by the Sun and his Midday Brightness and by the Lady Moon that follows, as we have eaten bread and salt together, if I find water, I shall not drink till you drink.’
“So Omar left Bakhait and staggered on alone until he reached a wadi, where he saw a she-camel grazing. He mounted the camel bareback and she took him to a nomad camp. There was a woman there and as soon as he saw her, he fell off the camel. The woman fetched a nomad called Durays, who came to Omar and offered him water. Even though he was dying of thirst, Omar refused to drink.
‘I have sworn by the Sun and his Midday Brightness and by the Lady Moon that follows,’ he said, ‘not to drink till my friend Bakhait has drunk.’
‘Where is your friend Bakhait?’
‘Lying in the desert south of here. By the Will of God, he’s still alive.’
‘I will find him.’
“Then Durays saddled a camel and followed Omar’s tracks until he found Bakhait, who was still alive. He offered him water, but Bakhait asked: ‘Has my friend Omar drunk yet? Because I swear by the Sun and his Midday Brightness and the Lady Moon that follows, that I will not drink till he has drunk.’
“Durays knew that both nomads would die unless he took the burden of honour on himself.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your friend Omar has drunk.’
‘Ah,’ Bakhait said. ‘Since he has drunk, I can drink. Give me the water.’
“When he had drunk, Durays put Bakhait on his camel and took him back to the camp, where Omar was waiting. When Omar saw Bakhait, he asked, ‘Have you drunk?’
‘Yes,’ said Bakhait, ‘because Durays told me you had drunk.’
‘Ah,’ said Omar. ‘That was not true, for I kept my oath. Since you have drunk, though, I can also drink.’
“So Omar drank and both were saved, and their honour was also saved by Durays who took the burden of honour on himself.
“The next day, after they had rested, Omar and Bakhait returned to their camels with Durays and found them alive,” concluded Dahat.
The Coffee Code
Reem and Jamal had been in the desert for three whole days. No internet. No video games. No pizza delivery.
“Seriously,” groaned Jamal, “I would trade my ghutra for one bar of Wi-Fi.”
Reem rolled her eyes. “You almost lost your ghutra to the wind yesterday.”
Before they could continue their usual sibling-style bickering, a familiar voice called out from nearby.
"Reem! Jamal! Come quickly! I want you to meet someone very special," called their Uncle Mansour, their desert guide and trusted companion on this journey.
“Children! Come, come! You must meet Shaima,” he said, gesturing toward a figure approaching from the dunes.
A tall woman approached. Her robes flowed in the breeze like sails. She walked beside Uncle Mansour, who nodded respectfully. Her smile was broad and kind, and she wore a silver ring as wide as a coin.
“My tent is not far,” she said. “Come rest. I have coffee.”
Reem and Jamal perked up. Coffee sounded adult. Sophisticated. They followed.
Inside the tent, the air was cool and calm. Thick rugs blanketed the sand, and cushions were arranged in a welcoming circle.
Shaima moved gracefully to a low table where a coffee pot—shaped like a golden genie’s lamp—rested beside tiny, handleless cups. "This pot is called a dallah," she explained. "It is a symbol of hospitality and heritage, and you’ll see it in carvings, logos, even sculptures across the UAE. And these small cups," she said, holding one up delicately, "are called finjan. We always serve in the finjan, and never fill it completely."
“This,” she said, “is the heart of our welcome. Bedouin coffee. We call it qahwa. It is not just a drink—it is a tradition, a language, a code.”
Jamal leaned in. “A code?”
Shaima nodded. “Watch closely.”
She filled one small cup only halfway and handed it to Reem.
“In our custom, the first cup always goes to the guest. A cup half full says, ‘You are welcome here. Stay as long as you wish.’”
Reem took a sip. Her eyes widened. “It’s bitter!”
Shaima chuckled. “It is made with green coffee beans, cardamom, sometimes a pinch of saffron. It is meant to awaken the senses—not to satisfy sugar cravings.”
Then she filled a cup to the brim and gave it to Jamal.
“A full cup,” she said, “sends a different message. It says: ‘Your visit is welcome, but brief.’ Sometimes we must hint that it’s time to move along.”
Jamal looked confused. “That’s so polite... and sneaky.”
Shaima grinned. “Hospitality here is delicate. Our messages are spoken in gestures. Coffee speaks for us when words might be rude.”
Reem tilted her head. “What if someone doesn’t touch the cup at all?”
Shaima’s expression softened. “That can mean several things. If the guest does not drink, they may be politely declining. Or—it may mean they wish to make a request, and are waiting for the host to ask: ‘Is there something you need?’”
Jamal’s mouth formed a silent O.
“Let me show you another,” Shaima said.
She refilled Reem’s cup, again halfway.
“Traditionally, a host pours up to three cups. The first is for welcome. The second is for conversation. The third is for farewell,” Shaima explained. “And if a guest has finished and wants no more, they gently shake the empty cup. It’s a silent way to say, ‘Thank you, I’m done.’”
Reem nodded slowly. “So if you accept the third cup, you’re ready to leave?”
“Exactly. But if you leave your cup untouched after the second... I may ask if there’s something on your mind.”
“Like needing help?” Jamal asked.
“Yes. Or seeking advice, or confessing a mistake. The untouched cup is like a whisper.”
For the next hour, Shaima showed them how to roast the beans in a small pan, grind them with a stone mortar, and boil them gently in a curved pot called a dallah. The air filled with the sharp, earthy scent of spiced coffee.
They watched in awe. Every motion had meaning. Shaima used her right hand only—never the left. She served Reem first, then Jamal. She tilted the pot so the spout always faced away from her guests.
“Even the direction of the pot matters,” she said. “When the spout faces away from the guest, it shows humility and respect. It means the host is ready to serve without appearing forceful. Turning the spout directly toward a guest might be seen as abrupt or overly assertive.”
“Why all these details?” Jamal asked.
Shaima poured herself a final cup. “Because hospitality is sacred. It shows respect. It builds trust. And in the desert, trust is life.”
Reem held her small cup with both hands. “So drinking this means more than just... drinking this.”
Shaima smiled. “You are beginning to understand.”
That night, the desert stars blinked above them like curious eyes. They had forgotten all about home and were truly in the present. Reem and Jamal sat beside Shaima, sipping the final cup.
No phones. No technology. No words needed.
They reflected on the quiet message of coffee—and the feeling of being welcome.
Bread, Salt and Sticky Fingers
Reem and Jamal had only just arrived in the desert that morning. The sun had barely climbed past the sand dunes when their bags were dropped outside a large black goat-hair tent, and their city lives faded into the background like a forgotten ringtone.
There were no buildings. No roads. No taps or toilets or screens. Just wind, sand, camels and distant relatives who smiled like they already knew what kind of trouble the cousins were going to be.
Now, as the day faded and the sky turned a deep rose gold, Reem and Jamal were summoned for dinner.
Shaima — the wise, smiling nomad woman who seemed to glide more than walk — beckoned them into her tent with a knowing grin.
"Tonight," she said, "you will eat as our ancestors did. With your hands. On the ground. From the same tray. And you will learn the meaning of bread and salt."
Jamal looked horrified. Reem looked intrigued. Their stomachs growled in unison.
Inside the tent, colourful rugs covered the floor like woven artwork. In the centre sat a massive round tray heaped with food: soft, steaming couscous, chunks of roasted meat, blistered vegetables and bowls of salted yoghurt and dates.
There were no chairs. No utensils. Not even a napkin in sight.
“Take your place,” Shaima said.
Reem and Jamal folded their legs awkwardly and plopped down beside the tray. Shaima sat across from them, elegant and serene.
"Rule number one," she said, raising a finger. "Right hand only. The left hand is for — well — private tasks."
Reem's face twisted in confusion.
Shaima leaned in and whispered.
Jamal turned green.
"Rule number two: eat only from the area directly in front of you. Do not stretch across the tray like an octopus in gym class."
She demonstrated: three fingers, a small scoop of couscous, pressed into the palm, gently rolled, and delivered with grace to the mouth.
Reem nodded and gave it a go. Her scoop exploded halfway to her lips, launching a couscous avalanche into her lap.
Jamal tried next. His ball of lamb slipped out of his hand and landed squarely in the yoghurt bowl with a heroic plop.
Reem blinked. Jamal blinked. Shaima howled with laughter.
As the tray was refilled with warm, fresh flatbread, Shaima’s voice became gentle.
“Now,” she said, breaking a piece of bread, “you will learn the deepest part of our tradition.”
She dipped the bread in a small bowl of salt and offered it to Reem, then Jamal.
“You have now shared bread and salt with me,” she said. “That means you are under my protection. Even if you were my enemies — even if you had wronged me — I could not harm you while the bread and salt remain in your stomach.”
Reem stared at her, wide-eyed. “Even enemies?”
Shaima nodded. “Yes. Once we share food, even a blood enemy becomes a guest. And for as long as the food takes to digest, they are safe.”
Jamal swallowed loudly.
Shaima continued, “It is not about weakness. It is about honour. To protect a guest is a sacred duty. Hospitality in the desert is not optional — it is survival.”
Dinner continued with less chaos and more laughter. Reem perfected her scoop. Jamal mastered the art of lamb-ball balancing. They ate slowly, listening to stories from the elders, and joined in laughter that echoed like music through the tent.
They learned not just how to eat — but how to share, how to listen, and how to respect food as more than fuel.
By the end of the meal, they were full—not just in their bellies, but in their hearts.
And their fingers? Absolutely coated in couscous.
Later that night, under a sky exploding with stars, Shaima sat with Reem and Jamal by the fire.
“You are no longer guests,” she said. “You are family. You have eaten with us, shared our bread and salt, and learned our ways.”
Reem leaned against her cousin, warm and tired.
Jamal whispered, “Do you think city people would get it?”
Shaima smiled. “Perhaps not at first. But one day, when they are hungry — not just in their stomachs, but in their souls — they will remember this.”
And they would. Because once you share bread and salt in the desert, something changes. Something ancient wakes up inside you.
Something that tastes, strangely enough, a lot like home.
How the Wide-Eared Fox Stole Fire
Jamal: We stayed the night at the Ayn Mansur well. At sunset, Reem and I helped Dahat and Mansour bring the camels into our camp. Dahat lit a fire and as we sat around it, Mansour told us a story about fire.
“Long ago,” he said, “when humans and animals could talk to each other, there was no fire. People ate their food uncooked and on cold nights, they couldn’t sleep for shivering. They had no stories because there was no cosy fire to sit around for storytelling.
“The only beings who had fire were the giants. They lived on Fire Mountain, which lay on the other side of a wide, waterless desert. Many people had tried to cross it but forgot why they had come by the time they reached there. So they lay down and died.
“One day, a wide-eared fox came for a visit. He saw that the people were suffering and told them he would cross the desert to Fire Mountain and steal fire.
‘Why do you want to do it?’ they asked him.
‘It’s what I do,’ said fox.
‘How will you remember why you are there?’ they asked. ‘Everyone who has tried up to now has died.’
‘I have an excellent memory,’ said fox.
“So fox trotted off across the desert and ran until he found himself near Fire Mountain. By that time, though, he was so tired, hungry and thirsty that he could not remember why he was there. He lay down and wanted to go to sleep.
“He had just closed his eyes when he heard the chattering of ants beneath him. They marched out of their tunnels saying, ‘Wake up, brother fox. If you sleep, you will die.’ Then fox remembered why he came and gathered strength to climb the mountain. As he climbed, he heard the giants roar above. After a while, he reached their place and saw the fire blazing. There were three giants — Father, Mother and Daughter — and they had massive heads and claws. Father said, ‘We must not allow humans to have fire, for then, they will be as we are.’ The others nodded and danced around the fire.
“Fox strolled over to the fire and sat down. When they saw him, the giants said, ‘That is only a fox. We do not have to worry about him.’ They danced till they got exhausted and fell.
“Then, quick as a flash, fox dipped his tail in the fire and the tip caught alight. The giants smelled burning fur and awoke. They saw what fox was doing and roared. Fox ran for it, dashing down the mountain with his tail on fire. The giants leapt after him and Father was about to grab his tail, when fox ran into a deep crack between the rocks, too narrow for Father to enter.
“Fox followed the crack to the bottom of the mountain, then ran back to the humans’ camp. When they saw what he had brought, they danced and sang. From that day on, no human needed to suffer the cold and they could cook their food. And now that they had a warm place to sit at night, they could tell stories.
“Not fox, though. He was punished by never being able to use fire. After that, he had a discoloured tip on his tail where the fur had been burned. If you ever spot a fox in the desert, you will see it.”
Jawza and Suhail
Jamal: One night — actually it was the early hours of the morning — Mansour woke me up and told me to come with him. Naturally, I wondered what was going on, but he just shook his head as though it was some big secret. I didn’t really want to get up but I could see he was excited about something, so in the end, I went along. He led me up the slope of a sandy rise just behind the camp. I yawned and asked where we were going. This time, he smiled and said, “Inshallah, you will see.”
When we got to the top of the rise, I was astonished to see groups of men, women and children. Almost the whole camp must have been there. They were all looking up at the sky and it was full of glittering stars. I noticed that Reem was there among the women and I was tempted to ask her if she knew what was going on. I didn’t though. I was afraid she might think I was silly not to know.
We’d only been there a few minutes when Mansour pointed out a glowing red band across the night skyline. I knew by now that it was what the nomads called al-hamr — the redness that comes before sunrise. “Look,” Mansour said, “See the bright star there? That is Suhail.”
I looked and saw a very bright star flickering just above the horizon. The men and women stood up, pointing, talking excitedly and praising God. They were almost cheering.
One older woman chanted, “Oh Suhail, your cold comes as a cool breeze — you who have loved me as a good man, though so far from the nomads.”
“What does she mean, uncle?” I asked Mansour.
“It’s a story about Suhail and Jawza,” he said. “Suhail was a nomad who fell in love with a beautiful young woman called Jawza. They were married but on their wedding night, Jawza died. No one knows why. Fearing that her family might harm him in revenge — though he swore he was innocent — Suhail fled into the desert, far away from other nomads and lived there alone. That is why, the star Suhail is far from other stars and why he always seems to be hiding, just peering over the horizon for a moment, then vanishing as if he’s afraid.
“The rise of Suhail means that the Mwasim al-Ged — the hot-hot — is over,” Mansour went on. “Today, the sfari season begins. It will start to get cooler and if God wills, the rains will come. From now on, the nomads will prepare for the migration to the north.”
I suddenly got it. The rise of the star Suhail was the nomads’ signal that the cool season was on the way. That was the reason Mansour had been so excited. For the nomads, today was the real start of their new year.
The Here and the Now
Jamal: This morning, we went with Mansour to visit the camel herd grazing in the abal and rimth pastures on the other side of the dunes. Reem and I have our own she-camels now — mine is called Sabrina and hers, Atiya. We have to feed them, water them and look after them. It’s hard work but I think they’ve got used to us and see us as friends.
We were following the sabkha and came around a steep dune to see a party of nomads riding towards us on camels. They couched their camels, jumped off and we all shook hands and exchanged greetings. Reem and I know the ropes now as far as greetings go. You have to grip the other person’s hand, not squeeze it as that’s rude. You look them in the eye and go through the ritual:
Peace be upon you.
And upon you be peace.
By God’s will you are well?
Thanks to God, all is well,
By God’s will your family is well?
Thanks to God, all is well.
It goes on like this until one side gives up. I know it sounds silly but when the other person gives up, you feel like you’ve sort of won.
Anyway, when the greeting was done, one of the nomads — an old man about Mansour’s age — asked, “What’s the news?”
“The news is good,” Mansour answered.
Then he told the nomads everything he had seen and heard since leaving our camp: the tracks of gazelles and oryx, the tracks of camels and where they were going and where they had come from, even the direction and strength of the wind, the shape of the clouds and the plants and grasses we had passed on the way.
Reem and I stared at each other, amazed. How could Mansour have taken in all that? We’d been with him every step of the way but I hardly remembered a thing. I could see from Reem’s face that she didn’t either. We might as well have been travelling on the moon.
When we moved on later, we rode either side of Mansour. “That was amazing, uncle,” I said to him. “How could you remember all those things? I didn’t even notice them.”
He laughed. “You didn’t see them because your heart is not open. That goes for both of you. I’ve been watching you. Your hearts are wandering, not set on what is around you. You do not see or feel the desert, so, of course, you can’t remember anything.”
At first, I felt a bit irritated by this. I squinted at Reem but she nodded. “Ammi Mansour is right,” she said. “The desert is full of things we don’t notice, not just things but elements like the wind, the sunlight and the clouds. It’s always changing.”
Mansour said, “In the desert, you must put aside past and future. The past is finished and the future has not yet happened. You must fix your attention on the now.”
Fox Woman
Reem: At first, I wasn’t so taken with the idea of sitting around the fire with the nomad women after dark in their quarters, chatting and listening to stories. Boring, I thought! I missed my phone and Netflix. After a while though, I started to like it and even looked forward to it. The girls were so friendly, warm and honest. Occasionally one of the girls would lose their temper and pick an argument but it was amazing how quickly it was forgotten. Mostly they were playful. They made me laugh. They were funny, happy and entertaining.
Almost all of the women could tell stories. I realised they must practice it from being small kids. Shamsa was the best, though. It was the way she told them, speaking in a very clear voice, like music, and making graceful gestures with her hands. One of my favourite stories was the one she called Fox Woman.
“It happened long ago,” she said, “when a nomad called Awad went in search of a stray camel. He followed the camel’s tracks for two sleeps and, during that time, he grew tired and hungry. On the second night, therefore, he set a hoop snare near his sleeping place, hoping to catch a small animal to eat.
“In the morning Awad found a wide-eared fox with her leg caught in the snare. He was tempted to kill and eat her but she was so small, white and lovely that he couldn’t do it despite his hunger. Instead, he let her go. He travelled on for another day but didn’t find his lost camel, so he returned to his camp.
“Awad had almost reached home when he saw smoke rising from his camp. This was odd because he lived alone. To his surprise, he found a lovely young woman baking bread in the sand. She had dark eyes and long, bushy hair that was black at the tips. After he had unsaddled, she brought him warm bread, which he ate hungrily. When he had finished, he asked, ‘Which is your clan and how are you here?’
“The young woman said, ‘Was the bread good?’
‘Yes it was good, may God be praised.’
‘Then do not ask about my clan or how I came here. If ever I am gone, do not follow my tracks; I will surely return to you. Promise me this and I will be a good and loyal wife.’
“So he promised and they were married before the whole clan. They were happy together and the goats flourished and the camels grew fat and gave more milk than they could drink. Still, Awad could not help being curious about his wife. She had a mark on her leg, he noticed, like the mark of a hoop snare, and sharp, white teeth.
“One night, there was a full moon. Awad awoke to find his wife gone. He looked for her tracks and saw that they led off into the desert. Forgetting his promise, he began to follow them and, after a time, he saw that they entered a burrow. He watched the burrow for a long time and, near morning, saw a wide-eared fox emerge, looking exactly like the one he had caught in the snare while following his lost camel.
“He was so startled that he ran back to his camp, only to find that his wife had arrived there before him. She was in tears. ‘You have broken your promise,’ she said. ‘Had you trusted me, had you not followed my tracks, I would have remained with you always and been a good and loyal wife to you.’
“She turned and walked into the desert. This time Awad did not follow her. He knew he would never find her again.
“The next day, the stray camel that Awad had been tracking arrived in his camp. ‘I am happy to see you, old friend,’ he told the camel, ‘but I would have been happier had I not, through my own fault, lost the beautiful creature I found when looking for you.’”
The Singing Sands
Reem: On a journey with Mansour, we were camping for the night amid a sea of dunes when, not long before sunrise, I was woken up by a deep humming sound. At first, I thought it must be an aeroplane, although it wasn’t like any plane I’d ever heard. I listened to it carefully and realised it was coming from the dunes. It was eerie, almost like the voices of a choir chanting my name over and over.
Jamal was sleeping not far away, so I got up, went over and shook him. He was none too pleased and was about to say something rude, when he heard the humming, too. He was as mystified as I was.
He thought we ought to wake Mansour, so we did. He just sat up, yawned and scratched his ear. “What are you worried about?” he demanded. “It’s only the singing sands.”
I like our old uncle but he can be a sly old devil. We realised afterwards that he’d brought us to this place just so that we could hear these singing sands but he wanted to make it a surprise, so he never told us anything. He knew very well that we’d be scared. That’s his kind of joke, I know that now.
The singing had stopped by morning. As we sipped coffee around the campfire, Mansour told us the legend of the singing sands, which, of course, was what all this had been leading up to.
“Long ago,” he said, “where these dunes are now, there was or there was not, a great lake full of fish and all sorts of water creatures. The lake was surrounded by green forests, where the people lived happy lives, with herds of cattle and water buffaloes.
“One day, a poor beggar came to visit them. He asked them to give him cows and water buffaloes so that he could live in abundance like they did. But as the people had grown rich, they became greedy. They cursed the old beggar and drove him away.
“What they didn’t know was that the beggar was a powerful jinn called Raoul, who had disguised himself as a beggar in order to test them. Angry at the way they had treated him, he turned into a great serpent and dived into the lake, swimming right to the bottom.
“He burrowed into the bed of the lake until he found a vast cave and from there, he began to draw down the water. Day after day, he continued to draw the water into the cave until it was full and none was left in the lake. Only the sand was left to be dried out by the sun and blown by the wind and so it remains until this day. As for the people, they could no longer live there. Their cattle and buffaloes died and they had to move.
“It is said that Raoul still lives down there in the water in that hidden cave. Sometimes, he swims up through the sand in his giant serpent form, humming a deep song that parts the grains below the surface, allowing him to pass through the sand like water. That, the nomads say, is the singing sands.”
The Pits
Jamal: Mansour would always tell us that there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things in the desert. He said that nomad ways had been handed down from our ancestors and been tested by time. You had to focus on the details, he said, because one knot badly tied, one loose hobble or one leaky waterskin could mean disaster.
At first, I thought he was kind of a know-it-all — an old fogey who wasn’t ready to consider new ways. He was right though, and I learned my lesson on one very hot day in the desert.
For some reason, Reem hadn’t come on this trip. She had stayed at the camp doing something with the women. I’m quite glad that she wasn’t there because I made a bit of a fool of myself.
It was the third day of our journey and the heat was tremendous. Around mid-morning every day, Mansour would start looking for a place to stop and erect our rakuba, which is a shelter made up of a square of cotton fixed on two wooden poles. Not even the toughest nomad, Mansour told me, would sit out in the sun in the hot season, especially not when it was directly overhead.
That day we were lucky enough to come across a growth of abal and rimth at the base of a low dune. It was a bit dried out but the camels were hungry, Mansour said, so we couldn’t pass it by. After unloading and unsaddling, we started to dig pits in the hot sand for the poles. I was scooping out sand frantically with the knife Mansour had given me, when he said, “Not like that. The pit must be round or the pole won’t stand straight.”
I felt something snap. “This is round,” I told him.
He shook his head. “It isn’t round, it’s oval. That’s no good.”
I rocked back on my heels, feeling annoyed. “It’s hot, uncle,” I said. “Do you think I don’t know how to dig a hole? What does it matter?”
When I think of it, I feel ashamed. I mean, I was only 12 years old and talking as if I knew it all. I don’t know why I said it, it must have been the heat, which I realise now can make you irritable and bad-tempered.
“Very well,” Mansour said and turned away.
He let me continue working on my pit while he dug the other. When both were finished, he told me to bring the poles over and set them in the pits. I did so and we filled the holes in with sand, packing it tight around the wood.
“Now,” Mansour said. “Try the poles.”
Reluctantly, I shook the pole that I had inserted into my oval pit and it wobbled badly. When I tried to shake the pole in Mansour’s pit though, it was as solid as a rock.
Mansour smiled and said, “It needs to be round.”
Sun and Shadow
Jamal: It was morning and we were riding camels across an area of low, rolling dunes scattered with firebush. At a certain point, Mansour told us we had to walk. I don’t know why. He’s always coming up with stuff we don’t expect. I think he wants to keep us on our toes. Mansour dropped from his camel’s back and while I was still carefully making mine kneel, Reem just slipped from the saddle like she was doing ballet or something. I don’t know where she learned to do that, maybe the women taught her. I must say it looked really good. I’d never tell her that, of course.
Mansour was scanning the desert and I followed his gaze. Apart from rolling sand and a few desert plants, there seemed to be no landmarks at all, nothing to show the way. I knew Mansour didn’t use a compass, yet he always seemed to know where he was going. I had often wondered how he did it.
“How do you know the way, Uncle Mansour?” I asked him. Reem stepped nearer, interested.
Mansour stuck his camel stick in the sand in front of us and said, “Look at the shadow of the stick. The sun rose directly behind us this morning. In what direction does the sun rise?”
“East,” Reem and I said together.
“That’s right. It’s still early. If the sun is still in the east, in which direction is the shadow of the stick pointing?”
“West,” we both said.
“Ma’ashallah. Now, look at the shadows of the camels, the shadows of those clumps of firebush over there, the shadows of those sand ripples…” He pointed to some low furrows in the sand nearby, “…and your own shadows. Are all these shadows pointing in the same direction as that of the stick?”
“Yes,” I said.
“West,” Reem repeated.
“That’s it. So if we want to travel west, how do we know the way?”
“Keep the shadows directly in front of us,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Mansour. “In the desert, everything that is higher than the surface casts a shadow. The two fixed directions are east [sharg], where the sun rises, and west [gharb], where the sun sets. If you want to travel west, at least before noon, you must keep all the shadows directly in front of you. In the afternoon, if you are still going west, where will the shadows be?”
“Directly behind us,” Reem said. She paused. “But what if we weren’t going west? I mean, what if we wanted to go south, for example?”
Mansour pointed at the shadow of his camel stick again. “If that shadow is indicating west, where is south [januub]?”
We both considered it for a moment. “South must be directly to the left of the shadow,”
I said.
“That’s it,” Reem agreed. “So if we kept the shadows on our right, we would be going south, at least in the morning.”
Mansour smiled, making his wrinkled face look even more wrinkled. “Ma’ashallah,” he said again. “And if you are travelling, say, between south and west, keep the shadows at an angle.”
“But isn’t that hard?” I asked. “I mean, with the sun always moving and changing?”
“Yeah,” Reem said, frowning, “and what about at night or if there’s a sandstorm or it’s cloudy.”
Mansour laughed. “Everything changes,” he said, “nothing stands still, especially in the desert. There are other methods of finding the way but the main thing is never to let your senses slip or allow your heart to work elsewhere. Look, listen, smell, feel, observe. Watch the surface, feel the Earth under your feet, see how the shadows change, but never, ever, lose sight of the horizon.”
Reem and I looked at each other. It seemed a pretty good lesson.
The Boy and the Three Shadows
I don’t know what woke me in the night, but I opened my eyes to find that my camel was gone. He had just disappeared, leaving me in the middle of nowhere. I was terrified because I knew that without her, I would never make it to where I was going. I was just a boy and had never been in such a situation before. There was a slice of moon, so I got up and started following the camel’s tracks as best as I could in the moonlight.
I followed the tracks for what seemed like ages, up the dunes and across plains, yet I never saw any sign of the camel. I was just thinking of giving up and returning to my camp when I noticed a light in the distance. As I moved towards it, I realised that it must be a fire. Suddenly, I felt a rush of hope. If there was a fire, there would be nomads and maybe they could help.
I moved nearer and started to hear voices — gruff voices, snarling and grating. I wasn’t even sure they were human. I felt scared and was tempted to go back; I was only a boy, after all. I kept going though, and as I approached the fire, the voices seemed to get harsher and harsher.
I could just make out three shadows in the firelight. They seemed huge. Much too tall to be men. Suddenly one of them roared so loudly that I jumped. They had spotted me!
The figures rushed out towards me in the darkness, still yelling. I turned, determined to run for my life, but I had caught my foot in a lizard hole without noticing and fell sprawling into the sand. The next moment, the three giant shadows loomed over me in the pale light of the moon.
Test of Fire
Jamal: One late afternoon, we were sitting by a fire that Mansour had made outside the tent when the firebush ran out. There was no fuel close at hand, so Mansour told us to go and collect camel droppings from around the camp.
“You mean we have to pick up camel poo?”
Reem asked. I could see that the idea of actually touching poop was way beneath the exalted standards of her ladyship. Mind you, I wasn’t all that keen on it myself.
“Isn’t it sort of dirty?” she added.
Our old uncle cackled with laughter, so hard that he almost choked.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s clean and it doesn’t smell. Anyway, I’m not asking you to pick up the little black balls you’re thinking of. I want you to look for flat pats dried hard by the sun.”
We set off with him reluctantly to the place where the camel herd is usually hobbled in camp. He showed us what to look for and gave us each a torn old leather bag to put the poop in. Then he told us, “Be as quick as you can because Shamsa needs to cook dinner,” and returned chortling to the tent.
We stared at each other, then suddenly burst into fits of laughter.
“Just what I’ve always wanted,” Reem said wryly. “A chance to collect poop.”
It wasn’t hard to find the pats and it was true, there was nothing at all yucky about them.
When we had collected two bagfuls of the stuff, we went back to the fireplace where Mansour was waiting for us, still laughing. I guessed that he’d sent us to get the poop just to teach us a lesson.
When the fuel was burning, he told Reem and me to take turns fanning the flame with one of his old sandals. We fanned until our arms ached, working so intently that we hardly noticed the sun going down and the darkness falling. We fanned and fanned until Mansour said it was enough, then he called to Shamsa, who came out of the tent carrying a pile of firebush.
Reem and I exchanged glances. She looked as if she was about to say something when Mansour cut in. “You’ve worked very hard today, so in return, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s called Test of Fire.”
The Hare and the Moon
Reem: One night, a group of girls and young women called me to sit by a fire outside the tent and watch the moon rise. As usual, Shamsa was there, holding court, and as we all sat down there, expectantly, the old lady raised her eyes and nodded at something above our heads. I looked up to see the full moon as it rose. It was so huge, polished and magnificent that I gasped. I never remember it looking that big in the city. It was clear, gold-coloured and seemed close enough to touch.
“There is a hare on the moon’s face,” Shamsa said. “Can you all see him?
I shook my head. “They told me it’s a man — the man in the moon,” I said.
Everyone laughed.
“Look harder,” Shamsa insisted. “See the dark marks on the moon’s face? You can make out the hare’s rounded nose and long ears. He is doing something with his hands, maybe pounding coffee beans in a mortar.”
We all stared hard. After a moment, I got it. I could see the shape of a hare with long ears and maybe, yes, he was pounding something in a pot.
“Did you know that the hare is the moon’s messenger?” Shamsa asked the company.
The women shook their heads and giggled.
“He is especially active on nights like this,” Shamsa went on, “when the moon is round and bright. After tonight, she gets smaller and smaller until she dies. Then a slim silver blade appears — the new moon (hilal). The new moon is very thin to start with, then grows fatter and fatter until she can’t get any fatter; then she gets smaller and smaller again and dies once more.” I nodded, fascinated now. I noticed that the other women had gone quiet.
Shamsa took a deep breath and began, “Once, long ago, the moon called for the hare and told him to go to the people and bring them an important message. ‘Tell them this,’ the moon said, ‘As I die and dying live,
So shall you die,
And dying live.’
‘Very good,’ said the hare. ‘I will do as you ask.’
“The hare climbed down the ladder from the sky to Earth, found the camp of people and told them, ‘I have an important message for you from the moon. She told me to say, ‘As I die and in dying perish,
So shall you die
And come to an end.’
“The people turned pale.‘Come to an end?’ they repeated, ‘does that mean death is the end and there is nothing after?’
“That’s all the hare said to the people and ran away, dancing and laughing to himself because he had cheated and frightened them. He climbed back up to the moon, still laughing.
“The moon saw him and grew suspicious. ‘What did you tell them?’ she asked.
“The hare answered, ‘I told them,
As I die and in dying perish
So shall you die
And come to an end.’
“The moon was furious. ‘That was not what I told you to say,’ she yelled. She was so angry that she picked up a stick and whacked the hare across the face with it, hitting him so hard that his lip split in two. The hare carries that split lip to this day.”
Blind Awda
Reem: We stayed another night with our cousin Mubarak and the camel herd. In the evening, we watched him milk a she-camel while standing on one leg and squirting the milk into a wooden bowl. She-camels who have milk, have a piece of cloth over their udders, fixed with wooden pegs. Mubarak said it was to stop the baby camels from drinking because they would finish it all up and there’d be none left for humans. That seemed a bit mean but the nomads wouldn’t be able to live without camel’s milk. Anyway, Mubarak said that as long as it wasn’t wasted, there was enough milk for all.
It was a very dark night. Yesterday, the moon was what I now know is called a waning gibbous moon and there was no light but the flames of the fire. We drank the milk while sitting around the fire and passing the bowl. It was very frothy and when Jamal drank, his nose was covered in white foam. I couldn’t help laughing. He rubbed it off hastily but didn’t seem to get the joke. The thing is, drinking camel’s milk is a serious business here. It feels like a kind of ceremony as if the milk is holy or something.
Anyway, I was thinking about Mansour’s lessons on how to find your way in the desert and, after we’d finished drinking, I asked Mubarak how, on a night like this, when it was so dark that you couldn’t see your hand in front of you, nomads could possibly navigate.
“There are other senses apart from seeing,” Mubarak told me. “Most nomads can find their way in the desert in darkness, even without the stars.”
“But how?” I asked.
Mubarak chuckled. “Do you know the story of Blind Awda?”
“Who?” I demanded.
“Blind Awda. He was a blind man.”
“I think I got that. What did he do?”
“He was a caravan guide in the desert.”
“A blind guide? How is that possible?”
“It’s true. He was blind as a bat. They said he knew the way from the direction of the wind and from the texture and smell of the surface. That might have been part of it but when they asked him how he did it, he said, ‘I get a hot feeling in my head when I am taking the right path. I just know.’”
“That’s amazing,” I said, wondering if he was joking.
In the light of the flames, I could make out the expression on Jamal’s face. He didn’t seem convinced.
“Did you ever meet him?” Jamal asked Mubarak.
“No, it was in the days of my grandfather but I think your uncle Mansour here did.”
Jamal and I both stared at Mansour, whose wrinkled face was visible in the light of the fire.
“Is it true?” I asked. “You knew him?”
“Yes,” Mansour nodded. “I was just a boy and he was an old man. He was a very odd fellow.”
“Just because he was blind, you mean?”
“No, he was unusually strong despite his age and he had very acute senses of smell, taste and hearing. He used to sniff things and mumble to himself. He would sniff people, too, and even get down on all fours and sniff the earth. Sometimes, he would pick up things, stones, for instance, and lick them. He could hear sounds and voices others didn’t hear. He had a habit of listening to what people were saying a long way off. People didn’t like it when he repeated what they’d said when he wasn’t even there.”
“Sounds sort of spooky,” I said.
“It was uncanny. Awda’s eyes were deep black and his arms and legs were thick and hairy. He spoke in a sort of gruff whisper. What with that and his great strength, and his sniffing, licking and listening, it was like being near a wild animal.”
Jamal and I both laughed and Mansour went on, “He used to ride a huge old bull camel called Anja. The camel had fiery red eyes and was always frothing and rumbling. If Awda got annoyed with someone, Anja used to threaten them, bubbling and snapping his teeth at them. I don’t know whom people were more scared of — Awda or the camel.”
Jamal and I laughed.
“But how did he become blind?” Jamal asked at last.
“Ah,” Mansour said, “Now that’s another story.”
The Gazelle’s New Friend
Reem: One thing I began to understand when I was living with my nomad relatives was that desert plants were the key to everything. Yes, the nomads depended on their camels but the camels, in turn, depended on the grasses and bushes that grew in the desert. The plants were sort of the bottom line, without them, the whole nomad way of life would have caved in.
One evening, Shamsa told us an interesting story. Although it was about animals, it highlighted how important plants are to nomad life.
Shamsa began, “A young gazelle was playing in the desert when she saw a small, striped animal with oddly hunched shoulders watching her. Being friendly, she asked the animal to join her games. The animal wasn’t much of a talker, but they spent a happy morning, running, laughing and rolling in the dunes. When the gazelle stopped to graze on some desert grasses though, her new friend just watched.
“The gazelle said, ‘Have some. Aren’t you hungry?’
“The animal grinned and made a chuckling sound, showing sharp teeth. They weren’t the kind of teeth meant for eating plants, the gazelle thought. Suddenly, she felt scared and bounded off into the desert, running as fast as she could towards her camp, pausing only to see if the strange animal was following her. He wasn’t.
“When she got home, her mother asked why she was so flustered. The gazelle told her about the new playmate, describing his stripes, sharp teeth and hunched shoulders.
“Her mother shuddered. ‘That was a striped hyena,’ she said. ‘Hyenas eat meat, not grass. Perhaps he was a baby and didn’t know what you were, but if his mother had arrived, she would have eaten you.’
“The gazelle was shocked. ‘Why do some animals eat other animals?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t they all just eat plants?’
“Her mother answered, ‘Nobody knows why. We only know that it works like a cycle. Rain falls, plants grow and some creatures eat the plants. Other creatures eat the creatures who eat the plants. All creatures flow into each other, you see, but the plants are very important beings. No one could live in the desert without them. We gazelles are herbivores. We eat plants and they become us. Other animals, like hyenas, are carnivores. They eat the meat of other animals and those animals become them.’
“The gazelle commented, ‘I don’t think I want to become a hyena.’
“To which her mother replied, ‘Next time you meet one, run away quick then.’”
Quicksand and Quick Thinking
Jamal: That morning, we were travelling over sands, not high dunes, but what I call wavy sands, leading the camels. There were four of us — Reem in front, Dahat behind her, then me and Mansour in the rear. Young Dahat has been travelling with us a lot lately and I know why — because Reem likes him. She thinks he’s handsome and really tough. I don’t see it myself but you should see her talking to him, batting her eyelids. It does annoy me sometimes.
Anyway, today I tried to put myself in between her and Dahat in the caravan so they couldn’t walk together. It’s not that I’m jealous or anything. No way! It’s just that when we’re walking with the camels, it might slow us down. In the end, it didn’t work and Dahat placed himself between Reem and me.
So there we were, tramping along these wavy sands with Reem in the lead, when, without any warning, she dropped through the surface into what seemed like a deep pool of sand. It was incredible. She let go of her camel’s headrope and in a moment, she was floundering almost up to her neck in sand, yelling in a panic. I swear I saw a circular wave spreading out from where she was struggling. It was a good three metres across the desert surface.
Dahat stopped and was about to run forward when he tripped over and fell. I let go of my headrope and ran towards Reem, who was still struggling and shouting. I was there in a few seconds, kneeling at the side of the pool, telling her not to be afraid. Dahat came up behind me, leading both his and my camels, and grabbed the headrope of Reem’s camel. Mansour arrived an instant later.
By that time, I had taken Reem’s hand and heaved her out. She seemed all right. In fact, she was laughing. She brushed the sand off her clothes, giving me the kind of looks she used to give Dahat. He seemed a bit annoyed.
“What was that?” Reem asked Mansour. “I thought I was going under. If it hadn’t been for Jamal, I might have disappeared.”
She gave me an admiring look and I felt my
cheeks flush.
“We call it a wahhal,” Mansour replied. “A place where the sand is loose and deep.”
“Wow,” I said. “How deep?”
Mansour knelt down where I had just been kneeling and pushed his camel stick into the sand. He kept on pushing until the whole stick vanished and his whole arm, too, up to the shoulder.
“And that’s not even the bottom,” he said. “The sand here must be at least one man deep.”
I gasped as that meant two metres. Deep enough for a tall guy to vanish.
Reem was still staring at me as if I’d saved her life. I even started to feel embarrassed.
“Has anyone ever been… err… swallowed up in a wahhal?” I asked.
“I have never heard of it among nomads,” Mansour said, “but there is a legend (kharrufa) that once, a long time ago, when great caravans crossed the sands from Dhofar to the south while carrying incense (bakhuur), an entire train of thousands of camels was lost in a great wahhal. All the camels and all the men just vanished and were never found.”
Now, both Reem and Dahat were watching Mansour with wide eyes.
“Wow,” Reem said.
Surviving the Dust Storm
Jamal: The dust storm hit us as Mansour and I were coming back from visiting the camp of Mubarak. Mansour told me later that it was one of the most powerful storms he’d ever witnessed. Considering how long he’s been around, that was really saying something, I thought.
It was scary. The wind roared, buzzed and droned like a lot of giant bees. It came in waves, lashing at us so strongly that we had to drop out of our saddles and continue on foot. Mansour showed me how to wrap my shemagh around my face and told me to tie my camel’s headrope to my wrist so that I wouldn’t lose her in the storm. We stamped on with our heads down, forcing one foot in front of the other and hauling our camels. Mansour kept peering through the dust and I guessed he was searching for shelter. He had once told me that it was impossible to navigate in a dust storm because you couldn’t see the sun’s position or use the shadows.
The wind became hotter, gusting behind us in blasts like fire, roasting us alive. The heat was exhausting. My heart was beating in my ears and it felt like my brains were boiling. The ground underfoot was soft and after what seemed like hours, we came to a dune — no more than a big ripple — that gave a little refuge from the dust.
We couched the camels, hobbled them, unloaded and unsaddled them. Mansour slung our waterskins from the saddles and covered them with a spare blanket so that the hot wind wouldn’t suck away the moisture. Then he drew his dagger, dropped to his knees and began digging in the sand near the foot of the dune, working quickly so that the loose sand began to pile up.
“What are you doing?” I yelled over the wind.
“What the wide-eared fox does,” he shouted back. “Digging a burrow for shelter from the wind and the heat. You will need one, too.” He pointed to the sand a short distance away. “Start digging a trench wide enough and long enough for you to lie in. But first, bring those two big cotton sheets from the saddle bags. We’re going to need them, I think.”
Hamad and the She-Camel
Reem: One evening, Shamsa gathered us around and began to tell us a tale about Hamad and his camel. “There was or there was not a youth called Hamad, who was herding his family’s camels in the dunes,” she said. “One morning, Hamad woke up to find that the best she-camel in the herd was missing. Immediately, he set off to track her, thinking that she couldn’t have gone far. He followed her tracks across the dunes, climbing up the slopes and staggering through the deep sand. Every time he reached the top of a dune, he thought he would see her but he didn’t.
“The sun got higher and the day got hotter. Hamad was feeling tired and thirsty and he began to wish he’d brought some water. He thought of going back but it was too late and in any case, he hoped to find his she-camel over the next dune. She was not over the next dune, though. Nor the next, nor the one after that. On and on he went, getting hotter, thirstier and more tired. He came over one dune and saw another in front of him. It was the tallest he’d seen so far.
“Hamad was wondering whether he should give up when he heard a strange noise coming from the other side of the dune. At first, it sounded like a camel roaring, then like a girl’s voice laughing, then like a child screaming. Hamad didn’t know what to do. He’d heard stories about evil spirits or jinns in the desert and that scared him.
“The sounds came again and Hamad knew he had to find out what was going on. He started climbing the dune. It was very steep but he plodded on, panting and sweating. He stopped to get his breath, wondering whether he should continue. The strange sounds came again. He kept on climbing but now he was so hot, tired and out of breath that he had to force himself. Finally, he reached the highest part of the dune. The roaring, laughing and screaming sounded clearer than ever. He knew it must be near.
“It was so steep that he had to crawl on the hot sand, pushing himself along. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he came to the very top of the dune and looked down.”
The Eagle and the Fox
Jamal: I started to really enjoy travelling by camel with Mansour. When I was walking or riding with him, his talk seemed to bring the desert to life as if the landscape was a series of stories in his head. He told stories about animals, plants and people, pointed out camel tracks, human tracks and tracks left by lizards, insects, small mammals and birds, and told tales about them.
One of the things I remember best from those journeys was one morning when while passing through an area of wavy sand and dune grass, he pointed out a bird circling high above us. It was a steppe eagle, he said. At first, she was no bigger than a black dot, increasing in size as she dropped lower and lower out of the cloudless sky until I could see her golden brown shape and wingtips spread like fingers and the sunlight on her talons. She was gliding, dropping slowly, suddenly swooping to the ground with amazing speed and rising again with something limp in her claws.
“A wide-eared fox,” Mansour said.
“Wow,” I said, watching the bird climbing steadily, balancing her prey, with her wings stirring as she angled in the air currents, circling again and gliding into a downward curve far away.
Mansour thought for a moment, then, without stopping his camel, he chanted:
“On the wing she spies the fox far below,
Between them the desert and the sky.
She drops, then in a swoop, long and low
She glides towards him from on high,
As he, caught in the open sees her shadow
And spellbound by her fiery eye,
Raises his tail, spreads his ears wide,
Frozen, knowing not where to hide
While she in one swift movement,
has her talons in his side,
And rising into the sun, her plumes all aglow,
Bears him off to her eyrie with exultant cry.”
I stared at the old man, stunned by his words. I guessed he must have put the poem together at that moment. I asked, “Did you just make that up or is it a poem you knew already?”
“I know many poems,” he said, “but they would not do because every event is different. I mean, similar, perhaps, but not the same. It is not a special gift. Among the nomads, both men and women make poetry. When you make a poem like this, it becomes part of the landscape and helps to show us the way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
“I mean that we will remember this place because of the poem about the eagle and the fox.” He pointed to a long S-shaped dune to the east and continued, “And that dune over there, that will be called Eagle Swoop and it will become a landmark, at least to me and you. If ever you pass this way again, you will remember the eagle and the fox and the place will come alive for you when you recite my verse.”
I laughed, not because it was silly but because it made perfect sense. The poems and stories that the nomads told weren’t like the ones written in a book, I realised. They were directly connected with the places where they were made and they became a sort of map in the nomads’ heads to help them remember the way across the desert. That was really, really cool, I thought.
Test of Fire
Reem: Jamal and I were a bit annoyed with Uncle Mansour who had sent us to collect camel droppings for the fire when it turned out that there had been firebush available all along. He’d also got us to fan the fire like lunatics because camel poop doesn’t burn that well. Mansour laughed but I think we realised in the end that he hadn’t done it to spite us but to teach us respect for fire and for the fuel that nature provides.
Anyway, later, as a reward for our work, he told us a story about fire. It was called the Fire Test.
“A long time ago,” Mansour started, “there was a young nomad named Waymer Abu Ayad. He was in love with a beautiful young woman called Fatima who belonged to another clan. They wanted to get married, but Fatima’s father preferred her to marry a young man of her own clan and demanded so many camels and goats as a bride price that Waymer was dismayed.
“In desperation, he sought help from a wise woman — a kahina — who lived in a cave in the desert. He brought her a skin of sour camel’s milk and a new sheepskin as gifts and asked if she could help him.
“The old woman promised to help but only if he would endure a test of courage and honesty. She said that he must go into the desert that night and light a fire with his own hands. ‘You must put your hand in the fire and swear that you love Fatima more than anyone or anything in the world,’ she said. ‘If you lie, your hand will be burned and you will lose your chance to marry her. If you tell the truth, your hand will be unhurt and you will get your wish.’
“Waymer agreed and went into the desert the same night. He gathered firebush and as he had no flint and steel, he cut two firesticks and made fire by twirling one against the other. It was hard work but soon the fire was burning. He looked into the flames and felt afraid but he also thought of his love for Fatima and how much he wanted to be with her. Summoning all his courage, he put his hand in the fire. He said in a loud voice, ‘I swear that I love Fatima more than anything else in the world.’
“As soon as he said these words, he felt a strange sensation in his hand. It was not pain but warmth and comfort. He looked at his hand and saw that it was not burned or blistered but glowing with a golden light. He heard a voice in his ear saying, ‘You have passed the test, my son. Your love is true and pure. Go back to your beloved and claim her as your wife. I have made her father agree to your marriage and give you his blessing.’
“Waymer was overjoyed and thanked the old woman for her kindness and generosity. He went back to Fatima’s camp and found her waiting for him at the gap of her tent. She hugged him and told him that her father had changed his mind and accepted their marriage. She said that she’d had a dream in which Waymer had proved his love for her by putting his hand in a fire.
“They were married the next day in front of the whole clan and lived happily ever after.”
Reading the Signs
Jamal: Near the end of our stay, I went with Mansour for a last visit to Ain al-Arnab well to get water for the camp. Already you could tell the days were getting hotter. Images of the air-conditioners we had at home and in our cars in the city came into my mind, but I shrugged them off. I liked moving around in the desert with camels now, with the earth under my feet and the open sky above. I felt at ease.
Today it was slightly humid, though, which was unusual, and the sky was hazy, lacking the clear blueness we normally saw.
On the way to the well, Mansour halted his camel and crouched to look at some tracks around a stand of dune grass. They were large ovals cut in two halves, and I had no difficulty in recognising them as oryx tracks. The old man studied them thoughtfully for what seemed like a long time. Then we continued, leading our camels behind us.
On the crest of the next dune, we saw two gatan (sandgrouse). They didn’t fly off as we came near but hopped about fluttering their wings, flipping sand over themselves, exactly as if they were bathing. Odd! It was the first time I’d seen that.
We descended into a gravel plain and almost the first thing I noticed was a procession of black ants – an army of them marching in file, along the kind of shallow channel the nomads called darb an-naml (ant roadway).
Again our uncle stopped his camel and paused to watch them for a moment.
“Only God knows,” he said. “But it may be. I heard Abul Hussain crying yesterday, and today we’ve seen three clear signs.”
“Signs of what?”I asked, puzzled.
“That the Shamal is coming, bringing a storm.
“When the foxes play at twilight,
And the oryx knows no rest.
When the birds bathe in sand,
And the black ant makes a caravan,
Then the Shamal is on the way.”
I was amazed, but then I glanced at the sky and realised that the dullness and the humidity I had noticed must also be signs of the coming storm. I remembered the last time Mansour and I had encountered a sandstorm. We had dug sand shelters to escape it. Would it be as bad or worse this time? I asked Mansour, but even he didn’t know.’
Reading the Wind
Jamal: We came out of the dunes onto the gravel plain, still leading our camels by the headropes. Mansour stopped and asked me if I thought I could find Ain al-Arnab well from here. He was watching me closely and I felt he was testing me. To tell the truth, he’d caught me out. Ok, I’d been to the well a few times. After all he’d taught me, I should have known the way. Today it was overcast, though, and the shadows weren’t clear. In the end, I had to tell him I was stuck.
He didn’t make any comment, just had me close my eyes.
“Do you feel the wind on your face?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. The wind was coming from my left. I felt the pressure of cool air against the left side of my face, and heard the shooshing in my left ear. It was quite strong, I thought, and cooler than usual. That must be because a storm was on the way.
“Now open your eyes,” Mansour said.
I opened them, and saw the flat gravel plain in front of me, stretching as far as another range of dunes, covered with gasis (dune grass) and merkh (firebush).
“Which direction is the wind coming from?” Mansour asked.
“North-east…. No, north.” I said.
“Good. In the daytime, the prevailing wind here is from the north. Ain al-Arnab is east of here. Now, without moving at all, choose a landmark directly in front of you.”
I saw a high dune on the horizon, with what looked like a tall merkh bush right on its peak.
I told Mansour the firebush would be my landmark.
“Good,” he said again. “Now, I want you to lead us directly towards that bush, keeping the wind in your left ear just as it is now. If you feel the wind on a different part of your face, it means you have changed direction.”
“It could mean the wind has changed direction,” I said, cheekily.
“It could, but it doesn’t usually change during the day. Make sure you keep the wind in your ear as it is now and your eyes on that firebush. Don’t let your senses wander: stay focused.”
“But I do, uncle,” I replied, a bit resentfully.
“Do you?” he asked.“Look at this.” He pointed to something behind me and I turned to see two sets of human tracks – Mansour’s and my own.
“These are your tracks,” he said, bending over. “Do you notice anything distinct about them? Examine them, then look at mine.”
The tracks ran parallel, so it was easy to compare them. Both of us were wearing nomad sandals with flat soles. Our feet were about the same size, but my footprints pointed straight ahead, while Mansour’s turned slightly outwards. I told him this and he chuckled.
“Your tracks are those of a determined youth, but not a wary one. Any tracker can see you are not thinking about what is around you, only what is ahead. That is not good. You must know what is going on in every direction – even behind.”
I felt annoyed, as if I’d been condemned by my own tracks.
“How do you know?” I demanded. “Maybe I’ve got squinted feet. Maybe that’s just how they are.”
He laughed again.“Tracks don’t lie. A wary man turns from side to side as he walks and it shows in his tracks. The desert is the face of God and the truth is written upon it. You must practice being present and improve yourself.”
Biting my lip, I took my camel’s headrope. With the wind still in my left ear, I set off towards my landmark, determined that I would find that well.
Voices in the Storm
Jamal: On the way to Ain al-Arnab, while I was focused hard on keeping the wind in my ear, Mansour told me a story about a sandstorm.
“There was or there was not a young nomad called Hassan who had recently married a beautiful young woman named Jana. One morning, Hassan was leading Jana in a camel litter across the desert, following the rest of his clan on their migrations, when he realised that he had lost sight of the others.
“He was walking faster, tugging at the camel’s headrope, desperately hoping to catch up with the main caravan, when suddenly a fierce sandstorm began. Hassan made sure Jana’s litter was closed with a rug so that she wouldn’t be exposed to the dust, then, drawing his headcloth tightly round his face, he strode on into the wind, telling himself that the others couldn’t be far ahead.
“The storm grew wilder and wilder, and soon great gusts were raging across the sands, howling like hungry wolves, rearing and coiling around Hassan like hissing snakes. As he bent into the storm, he thought he heard a deep voice bellowing with laughter: from the corner of his eye glimpsed a demon face, and thought he saw dark wings sailing through the swirling dust.
“A moment later, the young man felt the camel jerk back on the headrope and wondered what was wrong. Halting the animal, he shouted Jana’s name. There was no answer and thinking she hadn’t heard him over the storm, he moved closer. To his astonishment, he saw that the cloth covering the back of the litter had been ripped open – there was a hole in it large enough for a human to pass through. Jana was no longer riding in the litter. She was gone.
“Hassan was shocked. He knew that it could only be the wind who had taken his young wife. He recalled stories he had been told by the wise woman Rabia – kahina of the clan – that jinns or spirits were created from fiery storm winds of the desert. They could merge with the storm and would sometimes carry off young women. He thought of the demon face he had glimpsed, the dark wings, the bellowing laughter.
“At that moment, his suspicions were confirmed, when a deep, resonant voice boomed. ‘Jana is mine now. I am taking her to places unseen, to realms where time dances with the shifting sands.’
“As Hassan peered through the swirling dust coils, he glimpsed Jana soaring through the storm, her hair trailing like the tail of a shooting star. The wind laughed, spinning her higher and higher until she vanished from Hassan’s sight.
“Hassan was deeply troubled but didn’t panic. Hobbling his camel, he drew a simple shepherd’s pipe from a saddle bag. Crouching down, he put it to his lips and blew. The clear sound of the pipe emerged in a haunting melody that could be heard even over the raging storm.
“Almost at once, the wind faltered, its grip on Jana loosening. There was a momentary lull and Hassan saw her plummeting towards him out of the dust clouds. A powerful squall seemed to catch her but Hassan blew into the pipe once more, playing the same haunting song. Jana’s body plunged earthward again, only to be caught by buffeting gusts.
“Blowing into the pipe with all his force, Hassan produced an eerie melody that finally shattered the wind’s magic. Jana tumbled from the sky, her body twisting like a leaf. Letting the pipe drop from his hands, Hassan caught her in his arms.
“The wind howled in rage, but it was too late. Jana was free and Hassan held her tightly, determined never to let her go. The pipe, now silent, was lost in the sand.
“From that day on whenever the wind swept across the desert, it sang a haunting song of loss – a memory of the mortal man who had dared defy its power to rescue the woman he loved.”
Khalil and the Oryx
Reem: A lot of the stories the nomad women told were about animals. Here’s one Shamsa told the women around the fire one night that I particularly enjoyed.
“There were or there were not,” she said, “three brothers herding camels in the sands when the youngest, Khalil, found some animal tracks. He began to follow them, until, in the distance, he sighted a beautiful white animal with black markings, long straight horns and a tasselled tail. It was an oryx.
“The oryx ran away and Khalil was seized with an urge to follow it. Jumping on his she-camel (naaga), he chased the oryx all day, following its tracks closely across the sabkha, up and down dunes and along sand sheets but he couldn’t get close enough to shoot at it. After nightfall, he hobbled his she-camel lay down and fell asleep.
“When he awoke at sunrise, the oryx was standing there, gazing at him with eyes like moons. Khalil grabbed his rifle but was so bewitched by the animal’s eyes that he couldn’t shoot.
“The oryx sped off again and Khalil chased it once more from dune to dune. The day passed and he still did not catch up with it. Once again, he stopped after sunset and slept in the sands.
“Upon waking up the next morning, the first thing he saw at sunrise was the oryx once again. It was standing there, gazing at him with eyes like moons. Again, he picked up his rifle but was so bewitched that he couldn’t shoot.
“The oryx ran off once more and Khalil decided to chase it again. It was now the third day and he was dying of thirst. After a while, he saw a nomad tent in the valley below. He continued to follow the oryx’s tracks and, to his surprise, found that they led directly to the tent.
“As Khalil approached the tent, a beautiful young woman came out and greeted him. He noticed that she had eyes like moons. ‘Is all well, brother?’ she asked.
‘Yes, all is well, sister,’ Khalil said, ‘but I have been following the tracks of an oryx and the tracks enter your tent. Have you seen it?’
‘No, I haven’t seen it at all,’ the young woman said. ‘Not at all. But please make the she-camel kneel and come in. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?’
‘Hungry?’ he exclaimed, ‘Yes. And this is the second day I didn’t drink.’
“The young woman helped him unsaddle his she-camel and led her off to graze nearby. Then she brought Khalil water and food and he ate and drank. He had just finished when he heard voices outside the tent. The young woman said, ‘Those are my seven brothers, they’re back from herding.’
“She opened the back of the tent and asked Khalil to sit down by some firebush while she greeted her brothers. Here, Khalil noticed that the skin of an oryx was draped over it, with a pair of long, straight horns.
“Meanwhile, the young woman’s seven brothers entered the tent. ‘Whose is that she-camel outside?’ they demanded. ‘Does it belong to a man or a jinn?’
“The young woman replied, ‘I will tell you only if you agree to be friendly to him.’
“The brothers agreed and she brought Khalil back into the tent. When the brothers asked how he had come there, he told them the story of the oryx, how he had followed it and how its tracks had led him to the tent.
‘I don’t know what happened to it,’ he said, ‘but I did see an oryx’s skin and horns outside.’
“The brothers roared with laughter. ‘Our sister herself is the oryx’, the eldest said. ‘Indeed, her name is Maha (oryx). That skin is hers and she can put it on and take it off as she likes. Now, since you have endured hunger and thirst in following her, perhaps you both may marry and we will accept you as a brother.’
“The next day, the brothers gathered their clan and celebrated the wedding. Thereafter, Maha and Khalil lived together happily as man and wife.
“Did Maha ever again put on her oryx skin and roam the desert? Perhaps, but that’s another story.”
The Other Baby Crying
Reem: Whenever we travelled with Mansour, I noticed that while he would always follow the sabkha, the flat salt plains, between the dunes, he would never make camp there. He would go out of his way to take the camels up onto a dune side for the night, even though it meant extra effort.
I wondered if the nomads had a rule about camping in the sand. I knew that they always pitched their tents in the sand if they could but I thought that was because it was easier to get the tent pegs in. Anyway, when I asked him about it, he said, “The sabkha is not a good place to stay the night.”
Both Jamal and I looked at him puzzled.
Later, after sunset, when we’d fed grain to the camels and sat down by the fire, Mansour said, “You asked about the sabkha. Let me tell you a story.”
“Ok,” we said, excitedly. We loved the nomads’ stories by now.
“You know my daughter-in-law Khadija, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “She has that lovely little girl, Nasima.”
“Well,” he said, “When Nasima was born, our freej (camp) was pitched in the sands overlooking a broad sabkha, where, as in all sabkhas, not a plant grew nor an animal made its burrow. Khadija was the only woman in the freej who was breastfeeding at that time. Every night, when the baby girl woke up and started crying, like all babies do, Khadija would hear another child crying. There was no other baby in the camp, yet as soon as Nasima started crying, another baby would start up. When Nasima stopped crying, the other one would also stop.
“Khadija was sure she wasn’t dreaming because the same thing happened every night. One night, she went out of the tent to see if she could find out where the crying was coming from. She saw that the sabkha below her was alive with people — crowds of shadowy figures moving around a blazing fire that lit up the night. She heard murmuring voices of a multitude and even the sound of drums. ‘How can that be?’ Khadija asked herself. ‘It is only an abandoned sabkha where nothing grows and nobody lives, with salty water deep down.’
“In the morning, Khadija went down to the sabkha and found it completely empty. There were no tracks of people nor the remains of a fire. Khadija knew then that the shadowy figures she had seen were jinns and that they inhabited the sabkha as they do all desolate places where nothing grows. That is why the sabkha is not a good place to spend the night.”
Travelling as a Community
Reem: Jamal went off with Mansour to visit cousin Mubarak in his camp with the camel herds. They said it would take three sleeps to get there and back, which is nomad talk for three days. I won’t say I was glad to get rid of him but I decided not to go this time. Instead, I wandered around, visiting tents with Khadija, Mansour’s daughter-in-law, who has a little girl called Nasima.
Khadija was the young woman Mansour had talked about — the one who had seen spooks on the sabkha and heard another baby crying whenever Nasima was crying. I didn’t ask her about it because I didn’t want to embarrass her or maybe it was because I felt embarrassed myself.
There are 10 tents pitched here on the skirts of the dunes and in the course of a day, almost every woman gets to visit every tent. We would go straight to the women’s side — the muharram — and even if we’d been there only the day before, they’d treat us like long-lost sisters as if we’d done them a big favour by our visit.
They would invite us to sit and make us coffee. Sometimes, there would be bowls of fresh camel’s milk, which now I really like. They were so nice that just being with them was a pleasure. They enjoyed talking and telling stories, yet they were always busy with their hands.
One thing they did a lot was spinning yarn from black goat hair, which they mixed with camel hair to weave their tents. Sometimes, if they were weaving, I would ask if I could help. It was fun threading the strands together on the flat loom with a shuttle made from a gazelle horn and watching the breadth grow under your hands.
“I love these tents but I’ve felt from the time I got here that they’re really not like our houses in the city. Houses are made to stay in one place,” I said to Khadija, who laughed as she rocked little Nasima in her arms. “Nomads are moving people,” she said. “We don’t live in tents, we live in a community with other people. It is not the tent but the people who really matter.”
Once, in Khadija’s tent, she showed me her camel litter, which stood in the muharram. It was a wooden frame, strong yet very light. She said that when it was loaded on a camel, it would be draped with tent cloth and other bright cloths, forming a sort of tiny tent on the camel’s back.
“We have these for the migration to the north,” she told me, cradling the baby, “so that women and babies may ride out of the sun. If the rains are good, we travel for many sleeps. Ah, but to see the whole clan moving at once with all they have on camel’s back and the litters in bright colours, the saddlery shimmering with cowrie shells, the camel herds moving and the goat flocks moving in a golden sheen of dust — now that is a sight that fills one’s heart with joy.”
“How peaceful it must be to ride in a camel litter,” I said. “How much I’d enjoy that.”
“God is generous,” Khadija said. “Perhaps you will one day.”
LET'S HAVE A CHAT ABOUT
OUR PROGRAMME