Abdullahi struck an attitude. “Ask the magnet how it attracts the iron,” he commanded rhetorically, and the debate was closed.
CHAPTER XI
ON THE TREK
ON Thursday, March 15, we were ready to trek.
I got up at six to pack and get my baggage ready. As is usual on the first day of a journey, when the caravan is not yet shaken down and accustomed to the routine, it took us three hours to load. We were to follow the Bedouin custom of tag-heez, which means going to a near-by well before beginning a journey and spending several days, sometimes a week, in final preparations away from the distractions of town life. Buttafal Well, thirty kilometers from Jalo, was the point where we were to make our tag-heez, or preparation.
When the packing was well under way, the kaimakam, notables, and ikhwan came to give us the ceremonial mowad-a or farewell. We squatted down together and discussed the prospects for the journey. I had made this same trip to Kufra two years before under somewhat more favorable conditions and nevertheless we had lost our way before getting to Kufra. It had been cooler then, two months earlier in the year; the winds and sand-storms had not been so incessant; and the caravan had been smaller.
The problem of providing camels, their fodder, men, and food and equipment for the men did not arise then, as the whole caravan was produced complete and provided for by the generosity of Sayed Idris, a fact which had a considerable effect in lulling the suspicions of the Bedouins and subduing their hostility to strangers. On this occasion, I had to arrange for the camels and personnel, and so big a caravan journeying with the quantity of unusual luggage necessary for a long journey naturally aroused curiosity.
On these long waterless treks Nature is often the only enemy; and she can be one if she chooses. The men of my caravan worked well together. The four whom I had brought from Cairo, Sollum, and Siwa got on excellently with all the people we met. Zerwali, the Senussi ikhwan delegated by Sayed Idris to accompany us, was kindness itself and did everything in his power to make the journey as comfortable as possible. I felt no real concern over the outcome, no matter what Nature might choose to do.
When the camels were all loaded, we went through the dignified ceremony of the farewell. We took our stand in two half-circles facing each other, the men of my caravan and myself in one and the chiefs of Jalo and the ikhwan in the other. Solemnly and reverently we raised our hands, palm upward, for prayers that the journey would be a blessed one, that God would guide us and return us safe to our homes. We read the “Fat-ha,” the first chapter of the Koran, the oldest of the ikhwan saying the “amen.” Then we shook hands and parted. The shouts of the men urging on the camels were echoed by “lu lias” from women of the village, and we were on our way.