In answer to the seven letters there was nothing from the sultan of Siwoun, and the sultan of Terim sent a verbal answer—'Do as you please,' taking no responsibility—to which Sultan Salàh replied, 'I have sent you a letter, send me a letter.' The sheikh of the Kattiri tribe came to Al Koton and said he would take us, but on January 23 we heard that the sultan of Siwoun had made a proclamation in the mosque there, forbidding the people to admit the unbelievers to the town. Though we could easily go by the kafila road, leaving the town of Siwoun two miles on one side, the sultan deemed it wiser for us not to attempt it, as brawls might arise, the two tribes being at war; so we then decided to mount on to the akaba, pass the inhospitable Siwoun and Terim, and reach the friendly Tamimi tribe. The Kattiri kabila, or tribe, really came to Siwoun to be ready for us, but the seyyids had collected a large sum of money and bribed the sultan to send them away.
We were hoping to get off to Shibahm, but as the sultan was neither well nor in a very good humour, we had to resign ourselves to settling down in Al Koton in all patience. He said he must accompany us, as he could not depend on his wazirs for they were too stupid.
My husband and I were always occupied. He used to sketch in water-colours, and I had plenty of work developing photographs in a delightful little dark room, where I lived and enjoyed as many skins of water as I could use, till I had to stop and pack my celluloid negatives like artificial flowers, for they curled up and the films contracted and split, from the alkaline water. I had to put glycerine on them when I reached Aden. Our botanist nearly died of dulness and impatience; Mahmoud was quite contented to sit quite still, and I do not think the Indian servants minded much. Poor Imam Sharif used to gaze up at half a dozen stars from a yard, but he dared not venture on the roof to see more.
We took a stroll with the sultan one day, no crowd being allowed, and remarked how many things were grown for spices, those spices which were becoming rather wearisome to us. There was zamouta, an umbelliferous plant, the seed of which is used in coffee, and habat-assoba for putting in bread; coriander, chili, fennel, and helf, a plant very like tall cress, which is used in cookery and also raw, and which we liked as a salad; also attar, a purple creeping bean, very pretty and good to eat. There was also another low-growing bean, brinjol (egg plant), cucumber, water-melon, henna, and indigo. The sultan has besides a private inclosure where he has some lime-trees, not our kind of lime-tree of course, but the one which bears fruit; and I must not forget cotton, from which the place originally took its name, as it is abundant in a wild state.
At last another polite letter came from the Kattiri, and a letter from the sultan of Terim. 'I have both your letters and you can do as you like, my answer is the same.' This did away with all hope of progress in that direction.
Our spirits, however, were much cheered by hearing that the sultan had received a letter from a seyyid at Meshed (probably the nice one who had been in India and had leprosy in his legs), telling him how very badly the sultan of Hagarein had behaved about us. As this was spontaneous, we hoped that the negotiation our sultan was going to undertake about our making excavations at Meshed, Raidoun, or Kubar al Moluk (for some part of the ruins is called Tombs of the Kings), would turn out successfully. The sultan of Hagarein was summoned to Al Koton, but we were away before he came. I believe in the end he was turned out of his place, former misdeeds counting against him.
[12] II., 100.
