The Road to Ubar (16 page)

A patch of green—a tiny oasis—marked Shisur. We circled once and landed by a cluster of one- and two-room cinder-block buildings, a seasonal settlement of the Bayt Musan, a band of the Rashidi bedouin. They greeted us warmly, if a little warily, and offered us the abiding hospitality of the desert. Little boys ran from house to house, rounding up sufficient cups and glassware. Cardamom-flavored coffee was brewed and ceremoniously poured. Sitting in a circle on the floor of Shisur's one-room schoolhouse, we inquired as to one another's well-being. It was a formal, almost courtly gathering. I sat on my left hand to ensure that it wouldn't unwittingly reach for a handful of dates, a breach of bedouin manners.

The Rashidi were pleased we knew of their history. They listened with interest to our idea and hopes of finding Ubar. Yes, they were well aware of the lost city and believed it could lie as close as half a day's drive away. Some day, Allah willing, a desert wind would bare its walls. And did we know that there were ruins here at Shisur? Yes, we had read of the fort here. It had been described by both Bertram Thomas and Wilfred Thesiger. Thesiger noted that it had been built by Badr ibn Tuwariq, a famed sheik of the early 1500s.

The Rashidi walked us over to Shisur's ruined fort. A lot of work had gone into it, considering its location so far out in the desert. Too bad that it dated back only five centuries.

"All right! Yes!" Juri had found a potsherd, burnished in much the same way as the scrap he had found at Khor Suli on the coast.

"Unfamiliar," Juri mused. "Weird stuff."

"How old?"

"Could be the People of 'Ad. It's unique, could have been made very early on, a couple of thousand years ago. But it's also a little bit sloppy, see here? This rim. They didn't finish it as well as they could have. Maybe things weren't going so well, maybe they didn't care anymore. Could be late."

"Late ... What do you mean by late?"

"Medieval, I suppose, or maybe even after that, at about the time Sheik What's-his-name built his fort here." The promise of the Shisur shard faded.

It had been a long day and was still a very hot one. As we returned to the helicopter, everyone dragged a bit, except pilot Nick, whose step was now remarkably sprightly. He said something about a need to conserve fuel, or maybe a need to avoid turbulence. The upshot was that the last leg of the flight was to be fast and low.

A half hour beyond Shisur, we banked and dropped down into the Wadi Andhur, a dry watercourse that originated in the incense groves of the Dhofar Mountains, off to the south. The wadi was once a major caravan route, a branch of the Ubar road.

As we followed the wadi south, I checked my watch: it was a little after seven
P.M.
The desert was no longer relentlessly bright and shadowless. The dry watercourse was cast in deep relief; boulders and patches of scrub brush were caught in the low sun's golden crosslight. They whipped by, no more than twenty or thirty feet below us. The wadi narrowed. We careened hard to the left, then to the right, then back again, following its twists and turns. Out the side window all was sky. A second later and the view was of the wadi floor, as the helicopter's rotors flattened vegetation and kicked up swirls of sand.

We hurtled on. Kay, by a window, was really enjoying the ride, untroubled by thoughts of imminent physical danger, such as catching a rotor and crashing.

Quite unexpectedly, the wadi widened. Ahead, in its center, rose twin mesas crowned with impressive ruins. We had come to the walled fortress of Andhur, reported by Bertram Thomas in 1930 and yet to be excavated or studied.

Reconnaissance into the Dhofar interior

In an aerobatic climax to the day, Nick spiraled into a deft landing within the walls of Andhur's south mesa. We offloaded our camping gear (and, this time, water). We improvised a plan: Nick would leave us to explore the site, then return, refueled, the next morning to pick us up.

We waved the helicopter on its way, then paused a minute to catch our breath and take in Andhur's splendid setting. It was quiet now, not the deathly silence of the open desert, but a stillness touched by a murmur of breeze, the chirps of a few hardy birds, and the bleating of goats.

A shout, in Arabic, came up from the base of our mesa. We looked over the edge to see a raggedy flock and a fierce Jebali (mountain man) herdsman. He was quite agitated. Ran listened.

"I can't quite make it all out, but he claims that our helicopter frightened five of his goats to death ... Oh, and there's more. It seems another dozen goats, at least, have run away. Dear me, tsk, tsk." (When the occasion warranted, Ran did an excellent "tsk, tsk," at once skeptical and sympathetic.)

Ran offered to make amends. "Just bring us the frightened-to-death goats," he shouted down, "and we'll discuss a price."

The Jebali cursed (no translation needed), whacked his (surviving) goats with his staff, and stalked off.

"Nice try. Tsk, tsk," Ran commented. "You have to hand it to him for that."

In the last light of day, we prowled Andhur. The walled south mesa, where we had landed, had probably been used to sort, store, and guard frankincense harvests. The walls of the north mesa enclosed a curious half-buried double-walled structure that had likely been a temple.

Architecturally, the site was reminiscent of the port of Sumhuram on the coast. Its masonry was identical. It stood to reason that, like Sumhuram, Andhur was a colonial outpost of the kingdom of the Hadramaut. The site dated to perhaps 60
A.D.,
the work of wary outsiders (we thought) penetrating the land of our People of'Ad.

We pitched camp and reflected on the long day's adventures. Though we had found and followed the Ubar road, we had made no startling discoveries. Three sites that could have been Ubar weren't. All told, we were pretty disappointed. Juri was intrigued by his pottery find, but, as Ran noted, you don't sell an expedition on a shard.

But we were not about to mope. The temperature had fallen, a full Arabian moon had risen, and ex-rocker George had brought his guitar. He now played for an audience of four adventurers, three Omani policemen and, possibly within earshot, a scattering of lost and traumatized Jebali goats. The ancient ruins of Andhur echoed with big-city blues and tales of Texas heartache, which somehow triggered a lively discussion of Junkyard Dog. Inexplicably, the American wrestler had become an Omani folk hero. Was it possible, our police escorts wondered, that the great Dog might someday come to Arabia?

Ruins of Andhur

Civilizations rise and fall, come and go.

We turned in, all but the first of the policemen who would stand watch in four-hour shifts throughout the night. The local Jebalis, they had been warned, were not to be taken lightly; a few months earlier they had murdered an outsider who had had the temerity to venture into the Wadi Andhur and visit its mesa ruins.

As we stirred at dawn, our policemen reported that we had not been alone in the night. They had seen lights and heard voices at the foot of the mesa. With binoculars Ran swept the wadi. No one in sight. After a quick breakfast of bread, jam, and coffee, we split up to explore the area. How close were we to the incense groves? Were the rock inscriptions reported by Bertram Thomas still in evidence? And what was that over there, on the far side of the wadi?

"Flint, an outcropping of flint!" Juri exclaimed, racing off. As I caught up, he explained that he knew of only one other source of flint in all Arabia. A deposit here would have been highly valued for tools and weapons. Andhur flint could have been traded far and wide.
²
"No wonder there's a fortress here," Juri exclaimed. "It stands to reason that..." He paused in midsentence, frowning. "What's happening?" I followed his gaze. Across the way, below the rim of the mesa, Humaid Khaleefa, our number-one policeman, lay sprawled in the rocks. Kay was running toward him.

We hurried over to find that in descending the mesa, Humaid had tripped, fallen, and severely gashed his arm and hand. Already Kay had broken open our first aid kit. He would be okay. Catching his breath, Humaid explained he'd been in a rush. But why? He gestured to the base of the mesa.

The matter of the frightened-to-death-and-runaway goats was upon us. The disconsolate Jebali herdsman of the day before had returned, backed by half a dozen of his clansmen, all armed with Belgian FAL automatic rifles. They had first encountered Ran. We joined him now and looked on as the Jebalis made their demands in heated Arabic. Listening to what they were saying, Juri whispered, "These are not nice people."

Ran turned to us and noted, in English, that we were outgunned and in a decidedly edgy situation. Nothing really scary, but we clearly had to make the right moves.

We had a couple of options. We could retreat to the high ground of the mesa and hold out until Nick's helicopter—due any minute now—returned. But that would be awkward and could even lead to an exchange of gunfire. Which would mean that we would never be able to return to ruined Andhur. Indeed, any sort of incident would mean never being welcomed back to Oman.

We decided that the better part of valor would be to negotiate an appropriate ransom. Our team and the Jebalis trooped to the top of the mesa, where we hastened to get whatever money we had from Kay, banker as well as paramedic. We had about $130 worth of Omani riyals, which we offered to the Jebalis. They scowled and shook their heads. Not enough.

They indicated that they might find items of value in our packs, so we invited them to look. Sure enough, one of the Jebalis was delighted by my plastic rain poncho. But his friends remained dissatisfied. We threw in a crate of apples. Still not enough.

Next they were into Ran's pack. They discovered and waved aloft a South Seas batik shirt. It was several sizes too large for any of them, but that was okay, it was enough. Our ransom was set.
Khalas
(deal done)!

Within a few minutes, our helicopter returned. As we ducked down to avoid the wash, Kay's notebook, open to get at our cash, snapped its binder and scattered our expedition records—and traveler's checks—to the reaches of the Wadi Andhur. Weeks later, a courteous yet understandably skeptical American Express agent allowed that losing-one's-checks-while-paying-a-ransom-for-goats-frightened-to-death was surely the most unusual explanation he had ever heard.

Returning to the monsoon-shrouded coast, we plotted a further helicopter foray out into the desert, this time to check out Ubar reports
not
associated with our space-imaged caravan route.

At this time of the year, many of the sheiks and elders from the interior could be found at the coast, relishing the cool and damp of the monsoon. Being born a son of the desert doesn't mean you have to love it. As one sheik wearily said, "The desert. Too hot. You know, just too much sun. A while ago, a German came by my tent. He told me of a place called Alaska. You know of this Alaska?
Schwea, schwea sams
(very little sun).
Wagan zain!
(wonderful)."

The sheiks of the desert lands of Mugshin, Mudhai, and Thumrait all had ideas about how and where we might look for Ubar. They spoke of a cave where, after the wicked city's demise, its treasure had been hidden. Surprisingly, they agreed as to its location, which they pinpointed on a map. There was also talk of an old man out in the sands who could take us to a stone signpost pointing the way to Ubar. There was, though, some disagreement as to the old man's health.

"He's dead," one sheik asserted.

"Not completely," another disputed. "He's strong, very, very strong. Couldn't be more than sixty percent dead."

"No, no. Eighty percent maybe."

Sort of dead or really dead, we were never to learn. That evening, pilot Nick contacted us with some bad news: the sandstorms we had encountered on our initial reconnaissance were now raging throughout the southern Rub' al-Khali. Even though his helicopter's engines were fitted with sand filters, it would be near-suicidal to venture north of the coastal mountains.

Two days later the sandstorms were undiminished in their fury, and reluctantly we headed back to Muscat and our flight home, thankful to have had at least a glimpse of the Rub' al-Khali and the road to Ubar.