We have made so little progress this week that we could not consent to stay another night with Musa, and have come on, in spite of tempestuous skies and alarming rumours of a ghazú, which is said to be on the march from Mizban’s. We have, however, hitherto, escaped all these dangers. The thunderstorms, though rattling like artillery, right, left, in front, and behind us, spared us overhead; and we have seen no living soul all the afternoon. It is a wild, strange piece of country, but covered in places with excellent pasture, so that we have the satisfaction of seeing our dear camels growing fat beneath our eyes. We have stopped for the night at the edge of an enormous red morass, the haunt of innumerable birds. There are two little tells close by, and a pool of rain water good to drink. We have now left the neighbourhood of the Tigris for good, so that these swamps have nothing to do with it. They seem to be caused by small streams running from the Hamrin Hills, and caught in this great flat plain. The railway, in Wilfrid’s opinion, if it is ever made, ought to run along the foot of the hills where the ground is sounder. It is difficult, however, to imagine the use of a railway in such an uninhabited country.
The tells where we are, are called Doheyleh; but there is nothing in the shape of a village anywhere this side the Tigris, nor are there any Bedouins except these Beni Laam.
March 28.—A good morning’s march has brought us safely to Mizban’s. It seems that after all we ran some danger last night, for a ghazú was really out between the two Beni Laam camps, and we find Mizban’s people in commotion. A few miles from the camp we were met by a body of horsemen advancing in open order, who, as soon as they saw us, galloped at full speed towards us, and seemed as if intending to attack. But Seyd Abbas rode forward to meet them on his old grey kadish and waved his cloak and shouted to them to stop. “It is I,” he called, “Seyd Abbas.” Whereupon the horsemen pulled up, and dismounting, kissed the old man’s hand. They were a ghazú, they told us, from Lazim, Mizban’s eldest son, and they were following on the track of some robbers from Musa’s, who had carried off seventeen camels in the night. They cross-questioned Seyd Abbas as to Musa’s whereabouts, but the old man would not let out the secret. It would have been a breach of the hospitality he had just received from Musa. They did not stop long, however, to talk, but went on their way, leaving a couple of the party only to show us to Mizban’s tent.
The tents of the Beni Laam are peculiar. Instead of being, like every other Arab tent we have seen, set on a number of poles each of different height, these are shaped like regular pent-houses, with gable roof and walls. Such, at least, is Mizban’s mudíf, a construction corresponding with the kahwah of a town house, and used only for reception. The living tents are smaller, and the word beyt house here applies only to the harim. The mudíf is a fine airy room, very pleasant in the hot weather we are beginning to have. It is pitched close to the river Tibb in the middle of a very large camp, several hundred tents, and looks imposing enough. The country all round is very bare and trodden down, having been exposed last night to a fearful hail storm, which has wrecked all the vegetation. The hailstones, they say, were as big as dates.
The Tibb is much swollen, and flowing through a deep cutting, looks anything but easy to cross,—a turbid yellow river cutting its way through the alluvial plain without valley of any sort, so that you do not know it is there until you come close to it. It is about fifty yards wide.
At the door of the mudíf we alighted, and presently made the acquaintance of our host—not Mizban, for he, as we heard before, is away at Amara, but his son Beneyeh—a rather handsome but not quite agreeable looking youth, whose forward, almost rude manners show him to be, what he no doubt is, a spoilt child. We have been rather reserved with him in consequence, and have left to Hajji Mohammed the task of explaining our name and quality, and delivering the letters which we have with us for his father. Beneyeh is not the eldest son, and I do not quite understand why he does the honours of his father’s tent instead of Lazim. It is difficult to know exactly how to treat him; but we think it better to be on the side of politeness, so we have sent him the cloak intended for the Sheykh, and have added to it a revolver, with which he seems pleased. We are so completely in his hands for our further progress, that we must do what we can to secure his good will. I have paid a visit to the harim, and have been well received by Beneyeh’s mother, Yeddi, a fat jovial person, young-looking for her age. She is very proud of her son, and the evident cause of his spoiling. Her stepdaughter Hukma, and daughter-in-law Rasi, are both rather pretty; though the latter, like the mother-in-law, shows signs of foreign blood, being inclined to fat, and being red-haired and fair complexioned. The occasion of my visit to them was a distressing one. We had hardly retired to our own tent when a loud explosion was heard, and immediately afterwards a man came running to us to beg us to come, for an accident had happened. In the storm last night some gunpowder belonging to Beneyeh had got wet, and a slave had been set to dry it at the fire in the women’s tent, with the result of a blow up and fearful burning of the unfortunate creature. They wanted us, of course, to cure him; and we gave what advice we could, but with little chance of success. The poor slave lay groaning there behind a matting all the time I was in the tent, but Yeddi and the rest chattered, and laughed, and screamed, regardless as children. Sick people get little peace in the Desert.
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Wilfrid believes he has arranged matters with Beneyeh, who came to dine with us this evening, and talked matters over afterwards with Seyd Abbas. He declared at first that a journey across the frontier into Persia was out of the question, that nobody had ever been that way, that the Beni Laam were at war with the Ajjem (Persians) and could not venture into the neighbourhood of Dizful, or any town of Persia, and that his father was away, and he had no men to spare as escort. After much talking, however, and persuasion on the Seyyid’s part, he has agreed to start with us to-morrow with thirty horsemen and see us safely to the camp of one Kerim Khan, chief of a Kurdish tribe, which lives on the river Karkeria, beyond which Persia proper begins, and that he will take £10 for his trouble. The sum is hardly excessive if he fulfils his part of the bargain, for the country between Turkey and Persia has the reputation of being quite impracticable, not only from the robber bands which inhabit it, but from the rivers which must be crossed. Hajji Mohammed is very gloomy about the whole matter.
In the middle of our conversation a fearful hubbub arose in the camp round, followed by some shots and the galloping of horses, and Beneyeh exclaiming, “A ghazú, a ghazú!” jumped up and rushed out of the tent. Our first thought was to put out the candle, and our second to stand to our arms and look outside. In the dim starlight we could see what seemed to be a fight going on inside and round the mudíf; and though night attacks are very unusual in the desert, we were convinced an enemy was sacking the camp. Though the quarrel was no affair of ours, and we should probably be in little danger had it been daylight, now in the darkness we could not help feeling alarmed. Wilfrid served out cartridges, and gave the order that all should kneel down so as to be prepared for action if the tide of battle should come our way, an arrangement which resulted only in Hajji Mohammed’s letting off his gun by accident, and very nearly shooting one of the Agheyls. The mares had their iron fetters on, and with the keys in our pockets we knew they could not be lost. Still it was an anxious moment. At the end of a quarter of an hour, however, Beneyeh came back in great excitement to say that a ghazú had come from Musa’s, and that some camels had been driven away; that the hubbub in the tent was not fighting, but preparation to fight; and that he was come to borrow a rifle as he and his friends were starting in pursuit. Wilfrid gave him one of the guns and offered to ride with him on his expedition, but Seyd Abbas, who had all the time been cheering us with an assurance that “it was not our affair,” would not hear of this; and, after a long discussion, it was decided that we should all stay together, as indeed is only prudent. I do not believe the ghazú has been anything very serious; for, though Beneyeh and some of his men have galloped off in the supposed direction of the enemy, by far the greater number have remained, preferring shouting and singing to actual fighting. They are now chaunting in chorus “Aduan—Mizban (enemies—Mizban)—Aduan—Mizban,” and striking their spears on the ground to beat time. A great fire has been lit and is blazing in the mudíf, and the dark figures passing and repassing in front of it make the whole thing wild and savage in the extreme.
