Destination Mecca by Idries Shah

Author:Idries Shah [Shah, Idries]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ISF Publishing
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

Locust Army

NOW THAT THE Pilgrimage rites in Mecca were over, I put in a good deal of time seeing what advances had been made in this part of the world in recent years. The most extraordinary example of this was the miracle of “Kilo Ten,” on the Jeddah–Mecca road.

Here, in the middle of what was until recently parched, sandy desert, a million gallons of water are pumped each day to a little paradise of crops and fruits established by the foresight of one man – the Saudi agronomist Dr Badkuk – and the energy of his King. For thousands of years Jeddah existed on the uncertain flow from brackish wells. Frequently the people went thirsty. Until recently sea water condensation plants provided some water – on a limited scale. Today, however, there is actually a superfluity of water in Jeddah.

This abundance has brought life to Kilo Ten. The bedouin, with his apt turn of phrase, has named the settlement “The Desert’s Grave” – the first indication of the fate awaiting the whole arid wastes of the Hejaz. I saw hothouses, fruits and vegetables, experimental seed wheat crops ready for distribution to farmers, irrigation channels: cool, clear water, pumped from Wadi Fatma, thirty miles away.

Three yards from this fertile patch lies what seems barren desert. Frankly, faced with the problem which Badkuk had four years ago, I would have given up. So hard have this man and his little band of helpers worked at Kilo Ten that, while the place is equipped with thermostatically controlled greenhouses, there has not been time to build permanent homes for the agriculture experts themselves: like their nomad ancestors, they live in a cluster of unassuming tents.

The second modern wonder of the Hejaz is the British Anti-Locust Colony “somewhere on the Medina Road.”

Here a small group of Britishers – many of them ex-officers – maintain a lonely outpost of the Locust Service; that international organization which collects information about the insect, and exterminates them wherever they are to be found.

Equipped with all the amenities of modern science in their work if not in their huts, the anti-locust men, like their counterparts at Kilo Ten, have nothing in the nature of home comforts. Drawn up with military precision in the shadow of a barren outcrop of rocks, their camp is dominated by an enormous stack of poison bait – exactly like one of the huge slag-heaps of the English industrial north.

The Anti-Locust Service must always be mobile, on the alert. They are equipped with radio-phones, sand vehicles and repair shops. Fighting teams range over a wide area to attack the enemy as soon as he lands.

The huts are mud-walled. Instead of roofs they have canvas ceilings. This is due, as it was explained to me, to the fact that by law in Saudi Arabia no foreigner may erect a permanent dwelling. “Permanent” means with a roof. When I arrived at the camp the sun was beating down insanely upon the cluster of mud huts, their white tent-roofs sagging, as though cowed by the heat.

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