Food on Foot by Demet Güzey

Author:Demet Güzey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-03-03T16:37:24+00:00

Muhammad bin Al Jabari (on the right), one of Wilfred Thesiger’s Bedouin guides, at a campfire in Ramlat ar Rabbad sands.

Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2004.130.17952.1).

The water in the desert was brackish. The first time he tasted it, Thesiger thought it tasted like Epsom and spat it out. Often the Bedu added a few drops of milk to make it taste better, but camel’s milk also tasted slightly salty. Sometimes, Thesiger took his water without milk but mixed it with crushed cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cloves to make it into a tea. He was often hungry, but thirst troubled him the most: “I was always conscious of it. Even when I was asleep I dreamt of racing streams of ice-cold water, but it was difficult to get to sleep.” When he was thirsty, swallowing bread was difficult, making him even hungrier. When it rained, the water did not relieve them but made them drenched, cold, and still thirsty. And no wood was dry enough to light a fire. And when they did find water, they carried a limited amount of it so as to not put too much weight on the camels.

Goatskins in which the Arabs carried their water were a piece of gear that stood the test of time. These goat bags were light, and when empty they could be rolled up and stowed away. They would be rubbed with butter from the inside to completely seal them. If they leaked, holes were plugged with splinters of wood. The bad news was that this also meant that the already foul-tasting water also tasted of goat. Flour, rice, and dates were packed in other goatskins and slung along the saddle to balance the weight of water on the other side. Butter instead was carried in lizard skins about 18 inches long.

The Bedu had no desire for variety of food. They would eat happily the same food twice a day for months, caring about quantity over quality. When they were hungry for weeks, they were talking about food, the food they have eaten, and the food they planned to eat. They often went hungry and thirsty because either the wells they found were dry or because they had to share their food with travelers who came their way. Thesiger described at length the feeling of hunger. After weeks of hunger, he tried to persuade himself that he was not hungry and that he was used to or indifferent to it. For the first day, his hunger was a feeling of emptiness. He could overcome it like a toothache. By lying on his stomach or pressing it down, he tried silencing the cries of his hunger. In the evening, he dozed and dreamt of food. At night, he woke up and thought of food. He could not concentrate on anything: as he tried to read he would slack and find himself thinking once more about food. He started looking at camels and thinking of them as food. In these difficult

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