The storm drives the sand into everything one possesses. It fills clothes, food, baggage, instruments, everything. It searches out every weak spot in one’s armor. One feels it, breathes it, eats it, drinks it—and hates it. The finest particles even penetrate the pores of the skin, setting up a distressing irritation.
There are certain rules about the behavior of sand-storms which every Bedouin knows and is quite ready to tell the stranger to the desert. The wind that makes the storm will rise with the day or go to sleep with the sun. There will be no sand-storm at night when there is a moon. A sand-storm never joins the afternoon and evening. These are excellent rules; but on our trek to Jalo every one of them was broken! We had storms when the moon was shining and storms when the night was dark. We had storms that began before dawn and storms that did not pause till long after the sun was set. We had storms that not only joined afternoon and evening but wiped out the line of demarcation between them. We had little storms and great storms, the worst I had yet seen; storms that were short and storms that were long; storms by day and storms by night. But even under this interminable bombardment, I did not lose the spell of the desert’s charm. Sometimes at evening, when we had been battling doggedly against the flying squadrons of the sand for hours, the wind would stop dead as if a master had put up a peremptory finger. Then for an hour or so the fine dust would settle slowly down like a falling mist. But afterward the moon would rise, and under the pale magic of its flooding light the desert would put on a new personality. Had there been a sand-storm? Who could remember? Could this peaceful expanse of loveliness ever be cruel? Who could believe it?
The trek to Jalo was therefore not an easy one. The sand-storms were a constant annoyance and sometimes a menace. The latter part of the way led through a country of sand-dunes, and the caravan had to go winding about among them. To keep one’s course straight to the proper point of the compass in spite of those wrigglings and twistings takes all one’s skill and attention at the best of times. When a sand-storm is torturing and blinding the whole caravan, the task becomes a staggering one. Nevertheless we pushed steadily on, making on the whole good time of it.
In spite of the viciousness of the attacking sands there were hours of pleasure on this trek.
Memorable were the genial evenings when we were all gathered around the fire of hatab for our after-dinner glasses of tea. Then stories would begin to go around. Old Moghaib, with the firelight playing on the gray hairs of his shaggy beard, would begin by telling bits of Zwaya history when his grandfather used to go to Wadai to fight the black tribes and bring back camels and slaves. Saleh would follow with a tale of the great profits that his cousin had made on his last trip to Wadai, when he did not have to fight anybody but brought back leather, ostrich-feathers, and ivory to sell in Barka, which is the Arabic name for Cyrenaica.
THE ARMED MEN OF THE CARAVAN
Hassanein Bey is mounted on his Arab horse, Baraka
Then I would turn to Ali and demand a love-song. He was a poet of sorts and betrothed to Hussein’s sister. If the girl is anything like her brother, the boy is not doing badly for himself. Ali would look to his uncle for permission to comply with my request and find the old man busy with his rosary and pretending to be oblivious of the turn that matters had taken. It does not befit the dignity of a gray-haired Bedouin to sit and hear love-songs from the younger generation. But his respect for me keeps him from leaving the gathering.
Finally he mutters in his beard, “Sing to the bey, since he likes to hear our Bedouin songs.” Ali’s pleasant voice rises on the evening air, and the beads of old Moghaib’s rosary fall through his fingers with the deliberate regularity characteristic of a man who is conscious of nothing but his devotions.