CHAPTER XX
THE GARA MOUNTAINS
At length we turned our faces towards the Gara mountains, with considerable interest and curiosity, and prepared to ascend them by a tortuous valley, the Wadi Ghersìd, which dives into their very midst, and forms the usual approach for camels, as the mountain sides in other parts are too precipitous. After riding up the valley for a few miles, we came across one of the small lakes of which we were in quest, nestling in a rocky hole, and with its fine boulders hung with ferns and vegetation, forming altogether one of the most ideal spots we had ever seen. That arid Arabia could produce so lovely a spot, was to us one of the greatest surprises of our lives. Water-birds and water-plants were here to be found in abundance, and the hill slopes around were decked with fine sycamores and acacia-trees, amongst the branches of which sweet white jessamine, several species of convolvulus, and other creepers climbed.
The water was deliciously cool, rushing forth from three different points in the rock among maidenhair and other ferns into the basin which formed the lake, but it is impregnated with lime, which leaves a deposit all down the valley along its course. Evidence of the mighty rush of water during the rains is seen on all sides, rubbish is then cast into the branches of the great fig-trees, and the Bedouin told us that at times this valley is entirely full of water and quite impassable.
Next day we pursued our way up the gorge of Ghersìd, climbing higher and higher, making our way through dense woods, often dangerous for the camel riders, and obliging us frequently to dismount.
Merchants who visited Dhofar in pursuit of their trade knew of these valleys, and not unnaturally brought home glowing accounts of their fertility, and thus gained for Arabia a reputation which has been thought to be exaggerated.
In the Wadi Ghersìd, amongst the dense vegetation which makes the spot a veritable paradise, we came across many Bedouin of the Beit al Kathan family tending their flocks and dwelling in the caves. They were all exceedingly obsequious to Sheikh Sehel, and we soon found that he was a veritable king amongst them, and forthwith we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his hands, to take us whither he would and spend as long about it as he liked. One thing which interested us very much was to see the greetings of the Bedouin: for an acquaintance they merely rub the palms of their hands when they meet, and then kiss the tips of their respective fingers; for an intimate friend they join hands and kiss each other; but for a relative they not only join hands, but they rub noses and finally kiss on either cheek. Whenever we met a party of their friends on our way, it was a signal for a halt that these greetings might be observed, and then followed a pipe. At first we rather resented these halts; but they take such a short time over their whiff of tobacco, and are so disconsolate without it, that we soon gave up complaints at these delays. They literally only take one whiff and pass the stone pipe on, so that a halt for a smoke seldom lasts more than five minutes, and all are satisfied. Sheikh Sehel met many of his relatives in the Wadi Ghersìd, and his nose was subject to many energetic rubs, and the novelty of this greeting, about which one had vaguely read in years gone by, excited our interest deeply, but at the same time we were thankful we were not likely to meet any relatives in the valley, and to have to undergo the novel sensations in person.
Every afternoon, when our tents were pitched and our baggage open, whole rows of Bedouin would sit outside asking for medicine; pills, of special violence of course, and quinine were the chief drugs required, and then we had many sore eyes and revolting sores of every description, requiring closer attention. As to the pills, we had some difficulty in getting the Bedouin not to chew them, but when one man, Mas'ah by name, solemnly chewed five Holloway's pills and was very sick after so doing, it began to dawn upon them that our method was the right one. Most embarrassing of all our patients was old Sheikh Sehel himself. Fortune had been kind to him in most respects: she had given him wealth and power amongst men, and the fickle goddess had bestowed upon him two wives, but alas! no offspring, and to seek for a remedy for this, to a savage, overwhelming disaster, he came with his head-men to the tent of the European medicine men. It was in vain for my husband to tell him that he had brought no remedy for this complaint. They had seen him on one or two occasions consult a small medicine book, and their only reply to his negative was, 'The book; get out the book, Theodore,' and he had solemnly to pretend to go through the volume before they could be convinced that he had no medicine to meet the case.
It was curious to hear their morning greeting, 'Sabakh, Theodore! Sabakh, Mabel!' The women of the Gara tribe are timid creatures, small, and not altogether ill-looking; in fact the Garas are, as a tribe, undersized and of small limbs, but exceedingly active and lithe. The women do not possess the wealth in savage jewellery which we found to be the case in the Hadhramout the previous year, nor do they paint themselves so grotesquely with turmeric and other dyes, but indulge only in a few patches of black, sticky stuff like cobbler's wax on their faces, and a touch of antimony round their eyes and joining their eyebrows; they wear no veils, and at first we could not get near them, as they ran away in terror at our approach. They have but poor jewellery—silver necklaces, armlets, nose, toe, and finger rings. One evening, when up in the mountains, we were told that a harem wished to see us, and we were conducted to a spot just out of sight of our tents, where sat three females on the ground looking miserably shy, and in their nervousness they plucked and ate grass, and constantly as we approached retreated three or four steps back and seated themselves again. Presently, after much persuasion, we got one of them to come to the tent and accept a present of needles and other oddments, the delight of womankind all the world over. Altogether these Gara women formed a marked and pleasant contrast to the Bedouin women in the Hadhramout, who literally besieged us in our tent, and never gave us any peace.
It is interesting to read in the 'Periplus' (p. 32) a description of this coast and of the high mountains behind, 'where men dwell in holes.' We often went to visit the troglodytes in their cave homes, where we found men, women, and children living with their flocks and herds in happy harmony. The floor of their caves is soft and springy, the result of the deposits of generations of cattle; in the dark recesses of the cave the kids are kept during their mother's absence at the pasture, and though these caves are slightly odoriferous, we found them cool and refreshing after the external heat. In some of them huts are erected for the families, and in one cave we found almost a village of huts; but in the smaller ones they have no covering, and when in the open the Gara cares for nothing but a tree to shelter him. All their farm implements are of the most primitive nature; the churn is just a skin hung on three sticks, which a woman shakes about until she obtains her butter. Ghi or rancid butter is one of the chief exports of Dhofar. They practise too, a pious fraud on their cows by stretching a calf-skin on a stick, and when the cow licks this she is satisfied and the milk comes freely. They have but few pots and pans, and these of the dirtiest description, so when we got milk from them we always sent our own utensils.
