THE DESERT FROM THE HILLS OF OUENAT
Ouenat is the bigger of the two oases which the explorer discovered. In the foreground is the explorer’s tent and camp. The hills are of granite and are about fifteen hundred feet high.
Sidi Saleh came to bear me company and to apologize for the enforced absence of my host, Sayed El Abid. There was set before me a feast fit for the gods, or for mortals fresh from the monotonous living of the desert: lamb, rice, vegetables, mulukhiah, an Egyptian vegetable rather like spinach, delicious bread, sweet vinegar, milk, sweets, followed by coffee, milk with almond pulp beaten up in it, and finally the ceremonial three glasses of tea, flavored with amber, rose-water, and mint.
When the meal was over and I had returned to my house, I had barely time to see about the disposition of my baggage and discuss the question of camels for the next stage of the journey when the slave came to conduct me again to El Abid’s house for dinner. El Baskari was again my host, a dignified, kindly figure in a beautiful gibba of yellow and gold, having changed the classical soft Bedouin tarbush, which he had been wearing, for a white silk kufia and a green and gold egal.
When this second meal had reached the point of scented tea and incense, suddenly the clocks began to strike, each with its own particular tone, the Arabic hour of three—which then meant nine by the standard of the outside world. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt myself back in Oxford with the hour striking in endless variety of tones from all the church towers of the university town.
I went out into the moonlight with the fragrance of the rose-water and the incense lingering about me. I stood on the edge of the ridge overlooking the waters of the lake and reflected on my former visit to Kufra when this was my goal. Now it was the beginning of the most interesting part of my journey. I heard the voices of ikhwan and students reading the “Hesb” in the evening quiet. Abdullahi slipped out of the shadows and stood beside me.
“This is the night of half-Shaban” (meaning the middle of the month before Ramadan), he said in a low tone as of a man who thinks aloud. “God will grant the wishes of one who prays to-night.”
For several minutes we two stood there silently. My face was toward the southeast, where lay an untrodden track and oases that are “lost.” But Abdullahi turned to the northeast, where lies Egypt and his family and children. I did not need to ask him for what he prayed.
Monday, April 2. At Hawari I had been told by the Bedouin caravan from Wadai that a French patrol had come north as far as the well at Sarra over the main trade-route from Wadai to Kufra. This was the route I had intended at first to follow, but it seemed that only the small portion of it which lay between Sarra and Kufra remained unexplored. Again I had heard vague stories of the “lost” oases on the direct route south which I had planned some time to explore, although I knew that this direct route to Darfur in the Sudan was practically never used either by Bedouins or by Sudanese because of its supposed difficulties and dangers. The story of the French patrol turned my mind again to these oases, and I determined to try and find them rather than to follow my original plan.
I set out decided to do all that was possible to explore these lost oases, but, failing that, I was to cross the Libyan Desert by the beaten road through Wajunga and Wadai and then turn eastward toward Darfur.