Ombashi Suliman had also consoled himself, and presented the primus stove, now very worn and shaky, to his new wife, a buxom Sudanese. She sold it to her married sister. It exploded and set a tent on fire; so the sister gave it to her little girl Zumzum, a small black infant with tight curls and one pink garment. Then one day Halima saw the primus, her primus, in the hands of the small Zumzum, and remembered about it. She rushed home to her new husband and stirred him to action; so he arrived at my office with a long incoherent complaint, demanding justice and the return of the stove.
I had to spend an entire morning unravelling this history and examining endless witnesses, who all wished to talk about any subject except the one I was getting at. When the present wife and the divorced wife of Ombashi Suliman met outside the office they were with difficulty restrained from fighting, and the lurid details which were wafted through the window, about the lives and antecedents of both ladies, were interesting, but quite unprintable. Eventually the small Zumzum, now in a state of inaudible terror, produced the primus, which was found to be worn out, irreparable, and absolutely useless.
One of the features of Sollum is a little cluster of tents and huts, near the Camel Corps Camp, which is known as the “Booza Camp.” It is run by about a dozen elderly Sudanese widows and divorcees who manufacture “marissa,” a drink made from barley. The men are allowed here at certain times and on holidays, as marissa is not permitted to be brewed in the camp. The wives have the strongest objection to this institution which attracts their husbands away from home, as a public-house does in England, though the dusky barmaids could not possibly be called attractive. One can rightly say of the Sudanese that their favourite diversions are wine, women and song.
The Sudanis of the Camel Corps are a very likeable lot. They are thoroughly sporting and have a strong sense of humour, but in many ways they are very like children. They have an aptitude for drill and soldiering, but are useless without British officers owing to their lack of initiative. They are faithful and become very attached to Englishmen, but they have a keen sense of discrimination. Like all native troops there is a tendency for each man to consider himself a born leader, and offer his advice and opinion on all occasions; this takes a long time to subdue. But with careful training they become efficient soldiers, and they look very smart in their khaki uniform, which is rather similar to an Indian’s. Physically many of them are splendid men, very powerful and muscular, like bronze statues, but although the climate of their own country is intensely hot they are by no means immune from the effects of sun, and they seem to be almost more liable to catch fever than an Englishman.
The three sections take it in turns to go to Siwa, where they generally remain from six to nine months. It is not a popular place, in spite of the fact that every man is allowed to marry, with no restrictions, such as first having to pass a musketry test. The men much prefer being on the coast where there is more going on, as they are at heart intensely sociable, and also, though living is cheap at Siwa, the climate has a bad reputation.
The best time to go to Siwa is in the spring, when the weather is cool and there is probably water on the road. The trip needs a good deal of preparing for, especially as one has to take down stores for many months. A camel patrol from Siwa used to meet a patrol from the coast at the half-way point on the road once every month, and in this way the mails were sent down to the oasis. A car patrol was supposed to go down at certain intervals, but they were very irregular, and sometimes, on the few occasions when they did come, they forgot to bring the mail. One depended so much on letters at Siwa that this was an intense disappointment. The following is a rough diary of a trek down to Siwa in the hot weather.
Saturday, July 24th.
Spent a busy morning making final arrangements for the trip and seeing that everything was ready. We moved off from Sollum at 3.30 p.m., myself, 39 men, 50 camels, and one dog. The whole camp turned out to see us off, including many small black babies belonging to the men. Some of the men wept profusely at parting with their wives, but almost before we were out of Sollum I heard them gaily discussing which of the Siwan ladies they would honour by marriage. Saturday is a fortunate day to start on a journey. Apparently the prophet Mohammed favoured Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but Saturdays most of all. Another good omen was the appearance of two crows which we passed just outside the camp; a single crow would have been cause for anxiety, and to see a running hare before camping at night is considered a very serious piece of ill-luck. I think this started from the idea that a running hare was a sign of people on the move close at hand, probably enemies.
We marched along the bottom of the Scarp and reached Bir Augerin, where we camped for the night, at sunset. At Augerin there is one of the many rock cisterns that one finds on the coast. These cisterns are large rectangular underground tanks, often 40 feet square and 20 feet high, with one or two square holes in the roof large enough to admit a man. The Arabs draw the water up in leather buckets on the end of a rope, or if the supply is low one man goes down and fills the bucket which is drawn up by the man above. They are always built in the middle of a hollow with several stone runnels that carry the rain water down from the higher ground. Generally there is a mound near the well with a sheikh’s tomb on the top of it, a cairn surrounded by a low wall, ornamented with a few little white flags which are contributed by passing travellers as a thank-offering for the water. According to M. Maspero, the cisterns along the coast were built by the Romans in the second century A.D., and were in use until the middle or end of the fourth century. Most of them are now so out of repair that they only hold water for a very short time after the rains have ceased, and when they are dry they become the home of snakes, bats and owls; however, I believe it is proposed to restore several of the most useful of them.
We camped near the well at Augerin. I had an indifferent dinner. My new cook, Abdel Aziz, seems to be a fool and unaccustomed to being on trek. He is a Berberin, a despised “gins”—race—but always considered to be good cooks. The men I have got with me are a fine lot, all “blacks” and mostly “Shaigis”—from the North Sudan. The old Bash-Shawish—sergeant-major—was previously in the Coastguards and knows the country well. I did not bother to put up a tent, but slept in the open under the stars, which were gorgeous. Not a very hot night.