After much tacking and flapping of sails we at last reached Al Hafa, where Wali Suleiman had his castle, only a stone's throw from the beach. Our landing was performed in small, hide-covered boats specially constructed for riding over the surf, and was not completed without a considerable wetting to ourselves and baggage. After so many preliminary discomforts a cordial welcome from the wali was doubly agreeable. He placed a room on the roof, spread with carpets, at our disposal, and he furnished our larder with a whole cow, and every delicacy at his command. The cow's flesh was cut into strips and festooned about in every direction, to dry it for our journey. Our room was, for Arabia, deliciously cool and airy, being approached by a ladder, and from our roof we enjoyed pleasant views over the fertile plain and the Gara mountains, into which we had now every hope of penetrating. We looked down into his courtyard below and saw there many interesting phases of Arab life.
Al Hafa is 640 miles from Maskat in one direction and 800 from Aden in the other; it is, therefore, about as far as possible from any civilised place. Nominally it is under the sultan of Oman, and I may here emphatically state that the southern coast of Arabia has absolutely nothing to do with Turkey—from Maskat to Aden there is not a single tribe paying tribute to, or having any communication with, the Ottoman Porte. Really Al Hafa and the Dhofar were ruled over autocratically by Wali Suleiman, who was sent out there about eighteen years before as governor, at the request of the feud-torn inhabitants, by Sultan Tourki of Maskat. In his small way Wali Suleiman was a man of great capacity; a man who has made history, and could have made more if his sphere had been larger. In his youth he was instrumental in placing Tourki on the throne of Oman, and after a few years of stern application to business he brought the bellicose families of the Gara tribe under his power; and his influence was felt far into the interior, even into the confines of Nejd. With a handful of Arabs and a badly armed regiment of slave origin he had contrived to establish peace and comparative safety throughout the Gara mountains and, thanks to him, we were able to penetrate their fastnesses. Wali Suleiman was a stern, uncompromising ruler, feared and respected, rather than loved.
The wali kept all his prisoners in the courtyard. When we were there he had twelve, all manacled, and reposing on grass mats at night. These were wicked Bedouin from the mountains, prisoners taken in a recent war he had had with the Mahri tribe, the casus belli being a find of ambergris which the Mahri had appropriated, though it had been washed up on the Dhofar coast. One prisoner, a murderer, whose imprisonment was for two years, was chained to a log of wood, and he laid his mat bed in a large stone sarcophagus, brought from the neighbouring ruins of the ancient capital of the frankincense country, and really intended for a trough. Another, convicted of stealing his master's sword and selling it to the captain of a dhow, had his feet attached to an iron bar, which made his locomotion exceedingly painful. A mollah prisoner was, owing to the sanctity of his calling, unfettered, and he led the evening prayers, and on most nights—for want of something better to do, I suppose—these prisoners of Wali Suleiman prayed and sang into the small hours of the morning. Day by day we watched these unfortunate men from the roof, and thought we had never seen so unholy a set of men, according to what we heard; they did not look so. Some were morose, and chewed the cud of their discontent in corners; the younger and better-looking ones were gallant, and flirted with the slave girls, helping them to draw up buckets from the well in the centre of the courtyard; the active-minded cut wood for the household, and walked about doing odd jobs, holding up the iron bar which separated their feet with a rope as they shuffled along, or played with the wali's little boy, five years of age, who rambled about among them.
Goats, kids, cocks, and hens, also occupied this courtyard, and the big, white she-ass, the only representative of the equine race as far as we could see in Dhofar, on which Wali Suleiman makes his state journeys to the various villages in his dominions along the coast, and which he kindly lent to me once when we went to visit the ruins.
The ladies of the wali's harem paid me frequent visits, and brought me presents of fruit and embarrassing plates of food, and substances to dye my teeth red (tamboul leaves and lime), but they were uninteresting ladies, and their conversational powers limited to the discussion of the texture of dresses and the merits of European underclothing. On the very first morning they appeared before I was up—that is about sunrise. As I had put them off the evening before, I dared not do so again. My husband sprang out of his bed and got out of their way. I managed to put on a jacket sitting up in bed, and then, finding time allowed, a skirt, and had just got my hair combed down when in they trooped. I knew my shoes and stockings would never be missed, so I felt quite ready for the visit. They wore bourkos on their faces, and had on a great deal of coarse jewellery with mock pearls and bad turquoises. Whenever they chose to come my husband had to depart, and I do not think he liked these interruptions.
We were much interested in the male members of the wali's family. His eldest son was paralysed and bedridden, and he had adopted as heir to his position in Dhofar a nephew, who lived in a separate wing of the castle, and had his separate harem establishment. Besides these the wali had two dear little boys, one of twelve and the other of eight, who constantly paid us visits, and with whom we established a close friendship. Salem, the elder, was a fair, delicate-looking boy, the son of a Georgian slave who was given to Wali Suleiman by Sultan Tourki of Oman. Some years ago she ran away with her boy to Bombay, but was restored to her husband, and now has been sent as a punishment to Zanzibar; she is a servant in the house of one of the princesses there. Salem would often tell us that his mother was coming back to him in a year or two, but we thought differently.
The tragedy connected with little Muoffok, the younger boy, a bright, dear little fellow, very much darker than his brother, in fact nearly black, is far more heartrending. About two years before, his mother, also a slave, an African, was convicted of misconduct, and on her was visited the extremest penalty with which the Arab law can punish a faithless wife. In the presence of a large assemblage, the unfortunate woman was buried up to the waist in the sand and stoned to death.
The poor little motherless fellows were constantly on the go, rushing hither and thither, playing with and petted by all; at one time they amused themselves with the prisoners in the courtyard, at another time they teased the Gara sheikhs who sat in the long entrance corridor, and then they came to torment us, until we gave then some trifle, which they forthwith carried off in triumph to show it to everybody. Both the little boys wore the large silver and gold daggers of Oman round their waists, and powder-flasks similarly decorated hung on their backs; and when dressed in their best silk robes on Friday, they were the most fantastic little fellows one could wish to see.
Wali Suleiman was, as I have said, an austere and unlovable man, but he was the man for his position: taciturn and of few words, but these always to the point. Before he would permit us to go forth and penetrate into the recesses of the Gara mountains, he summoned the heads of all the different families into which the tribe is divided to Al Hafa, and gave us into their charge, we agreeing to pay for their escort, their protection, and the use of their camels a fixed sum per diem in Maria Theresa dollars, the only coin recognised in the country.
Such palavering there was over this stupendous piece of diplomacy! Wali Suleiman and the Gara sheikhs sat for hours in solemn conclave in a palm-thatched barn about fifty yards distant from the castle, which takes the place of a parliament house in the kingdom of Dhofar. The wali, his nephew, and Arab councillors smoked their narghilehs complacently, whilst the Gara Bedouin took whiffs at their little pipes, which they cut out of soft limestone that hardens in the air, and all drank endless cups of coffee served by slaves in huge coffee-pots with long, bird-like beaks, and we looked on at this conference, which was to decide our fate, from our roof, with no small amount of impatience.