Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

Author:Wilfred Thesiger
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2007-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

9. From Salala to Mukalla

A leisurely journey with the Rashid

to Mukalla completes my survey

of this part of Arabia.

I stayed at Salala for a week. I was busy writing up my notes, sorting out my collections, and arranging to travel with the Rashid to Mukalla.

I had come to Dhaufar determined to cross the Empty Quarter. I had succeeded and for me the venture needed no justification. I realized, however, that from the point of view of the Locust Research Centre my return journey through Oman was far more important than my crossing of the sands. To them the only justification for this crossing would be that it had enabled me to enter Oman. Had I tried to go there from the south the Duru would certainly have identified me with the Christian who had travelled the year before with the Bait Kathir and would have held me up. Coming from the north my rather unconvincing disguise passed muster because no one expected me to be European.

My own observations, and the inquiries I had made while crossing the Empty Quarter, had convinced me that there were few years when it did not rain somewhere in this area. The rain was usually slight, a few scattered showers; but little rain was needed to produce vegetation in the sands, and where it rained locusts could breed. I had seen a few locusts during the journey, some of them yellow, which showed that they were ready to breed. I had made notes of their colour, numbers, and direction of flight, and often bin Kabina and the others had secured me specimens, chasing and swatting them with their head-cloths. I had collected specimens of the plants that grew in the sands, and had compiled information about their distribution, and about recent rainfall. All this was useful, confirming what was already known or suspected as a result of my first journey to Mughshin, but I doubted that by itself it would have justified the expense of this second expedition. However, from Oman I had brought back the information which the Locust Research Centre required. Dr Uvarov had thought that the river-beds which drained the western slopes of the ten-thousand-foot Jabal al Akhadar might carry down sufficient water to the sands to produce permanent vegetation there, and that in consequence the mouths of the great wadis might be outbreak centres for the desert locusts. I had found out that floods were rare in the lower reaches of the wadis, and that when they occurred they dispersed in the sterile salt-flats of the Umm al Samim, where nothing grows.

I enjoyed the days I spent at Salala. It was a pleasant change talking English instead of the constant effort of talking Arabic; to have a hot bath and to eat well-cooked food; even to sit at ease on a chair with my legs stretched out, instead of sitting on the ground with them tucked under me. But the pleasure of doing these things was enormously enhanced for me by the

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