As we halted at the well outside the town, whilst the various members of our caravan collected, we overheard a woman chide a man for drawing too much water from the well, to which he replied, 'We have to wash our town from the infidel this day.' Needless to say we gladly shook the dust of Shibahm off our feet, and returned to the flesh-pots of Al Koton with considerable satisfaction. Of a truth, religion and fanaticism are together so deeply engrained in the Hadhrami, that anything like friendly intercourse with the people is at present next to impossible.
Religion is the moving spirit of the place; without religion the whole Hadhramout would have been abandoned long ago as useless, but the inhabitants look upon it as the most sacred spot on earth, Mohammed having been born in Arabia, and hence their objection to its being visited by unbelievers. The Shafi sect prevails to the exclusion of all others. The men go in crowds to India, Batavia, and elsewhere, sometimes remaining absent twenty years from their wives and families, and indeed we were told of one case in which a husband had been away for forty years. They return at last to spend their gains and die in their native sanctity.
We reached Al Koton on January 30, and found our friend the sultan very well indeed. We had begun to suspect we were being deceived as to his illness, for when the wazir and Saleh, who seemed in league together, heard the seyyid son-in-law, who came straight from Al Koton soon after the letter, telling us that the sultan was much better, they looked disconcerted, whispered together, and the wazir said, 'You should not talk of what you know nothing about.'
We were most anxious to learn all that had gone on in our absence, and what arrangements had been made. It seemed to be considered a mistake our ever having gone to Shibahm, but I do not think it was. Had we not gone we should never have seen that fine and interesting town, and assuredly not have obtained King Yarsahal's seal.
The sultan told us there had been a great uproar about us, and all the Yafei tribe were now considered Kafirs. The Kattiri absolutely refused the Jabberi leave to conduct us, and the Nahadi, through whose lands we had passed from Hagarein, said that if they had known how the Kattiri would treat us, they would have treated us just the same. It would be madness to go to Shabwa, as we should, even if we could get there, be only further hemmed in; the Wadi bin Ali was closed to us, the Nahadi were between us and Meshed; nevertheless, the sultan had actually sent a man to ask if we could dig there a few days, he camping with us. Our very faint hope of this was only founded on the fact that the seyyids of Meshed are at enmity with those of Siwoun.
On February 1, the Tamimi sent to say they had really started to fetch us, but the Kattiri told them they would declare war on them unless they retired.
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with the siyara of four Amri only, and no siyara of Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us. They proposed that we should, without touching Shibahm, turn into the very next wadi and go up on to the akaba; the men who went with us were to stay with us all the way to the coast. The sultan promised to keep hostages till his returning soldiers told of our safety. We had another council with Imam Sharif. We counted up our dollars, for we had to live on our money-bags till we reached the sea, and determined to reach Bir Borhut if we could, saying nothing to the servants to upset their minds till all was settled.
The sultan went away to Shibahm the next day, and, as usual, the women became very noisy, and during his absence we were close prisoners, on account of our fear of being mobbed. The Indian party were generally looked upon as Jews.
In the evening the sultan came back, telling us that the Tamimi wished to bring 400 soldiers unpaid (?) and to take us through their country, but the Kattiri were too strong for them. They said, 'One man came disguised to see us (Herr von Wrede), one man came undisguised (Herr Hirsch), and now a party has come. Next time it will be a larger one still, and then it will be all over with the sacred valley of the Hadhramout.' Saleh, meanwhile, was doing all he could to annoy us. When we were talking over our difficulties with Imam Sharif, he strutted in with a bill for the camels. My husband said:
'It is already paid.'