Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

I left next day for Egypt. As I got on my camel to start, the mamur and Co. announced that they intended to walk with me for part of the way. As this was calculated to increase my prestige with the other natives, I decided to keep them with me for some time.

I rode—and the mamur walked—which was quite as it should have been, for these little distinctions carry great weight among these simple natives. The mamur, I was glad to see, was wearing a pair of new brown boots fastened with a metal clasp over the instep, and having soles about as thin as dancing pumps. The road was rough and baked very hard by the sun in those places where it was not boggy. The mamur, I fancy, was not used to much pedestrian exercise and soon became very obviously footsore.

I saw him look longingly at an unloaded camel, so told Dahab to get up on it and ride. Several times he hinted that he had come far enough, but I merely had to look surprised and displeased to keep him trotting along beside me for another mile. He had not shown up well while I had been in the oasis, and he realised that in a very few days I should be seeing one of the Inspectors about Qway, so was desperately anxious not to do anything to displease me.

At last I decided to take a short cut. We left the road, such as it was, and went straight across country over a very rough stretch of desert. I called out to Abdulla to hurry up the camels, as they were going too slowly, with the result that the limping mamur and the fat old qadi began to fall behind. The farce was becoming so obvious that all my men were grinning at them and Abd er Rahman sarcastically whispered to me that he thought the mamur must be getting tired.

When I had got them well away from the road, and two or three miles from any habitation, I looked back and suddenly discovered the mamur was limping, and asked him why on earth he had not told me before that his feet were all covered with blisters. I insisted that he should go back at once to Mut.

On the way to Assiut, in the train, I saw old Sheykh Mawhub, the Senussi, going, as he said, to Cairo. But I was not in the least surprised to find that he broke his journey at Assiut, where he lay doggo in the native town, pulling strings in the mudiria to get his catspaw, Qway, out of his difficulties—unfortunately with considerable success.

I went round to the mudiria as soon as I got to the town, only to find that the English Inspector was away, so I asked to see the mudir (native governor of the province). The mudir did not think Qway had been tried, but would I go up into the town and ask at the mamur’s office? There I was requested to wait while they made enquiries. They made them for about three-quarters of an hour, and then a man came in with an ill-concealed grin and announced that Qway had just that moment been tried and had been acquitted!

I went round to interview the mudir again—rather indignantly this time. He was bland and courteous—but firm. He had been acquitted, he said because I had said that I did not want him to be severely punished, and because I had given him a good character the year before. The course of true law never did run smooth in Egypt!

I tried to get this decision reversed by applying to a very exalted personage. He told me, however, that the Government did not want to raise the Senussi question and were anxious to avoid an incident on the frontier, and he was afraid that he could not take the matter up.

I had to get the best of Qway somehow and, as the regulation methods of dealing with him had failed me, I took the law into my own hands—which is quite the best place to keep it in Egypt—and fined him the balance of his pay, which amounted to about twenty pounds. I afterwards heard that the Senussi, in order to prevent Qway from having a grievance against them, had bakhshished him £42 worth of cotton; so I got at the real culprits in the end; but it was a roundabout way of doing it.