Voyage By Dhow (3 page)

The dhow’s captain—the
nakhoda
—told us that he hoped to set sail in the early hours of the next day. But an hour after we had embarked a canoe came alongside, bringing a messenger from the city with an invitation for the dhow’s crew and passengers to attend a wedding of a Hadrami family which had settled in Aden. This was instantly accepted and the
nakhoda
announced that work for that day was finished.

We were delighted to find ourselves included in the invitation. For one reason, we hoped that the marriage celebrations would afford us an excellent opportunity to get to know our future sailing companions. Of equal importance was our suspicion that, whatever the promises, we might still have several days on our hands before the dhow sailed. We were soon to discover that, as feared, sailing would be postponed due to exceptionally strong head winds. These winds, our new friends told us, were provided by Allah whenever there was a prospect of a good party. It would have been ill-mannered not to agree, and thus we made our way to the main entertainment, held in a large tent that had been put up on a waste space at the back of the town.

Inside, cushion-covered benches, forms and, above all, packing cases had been arranged in rows. This was the main gathering place for the 200 guests. Shortly before sunset the
nakhoda
and the crew of the dhow appeared. They lined up facing each other and to the rhythm of pipes and drums performed a sword dancer. They pranced and gesticulated, advancing threateningly and retreating a number of times. Then, as the music and chanting reached a climax, they rushed to meet each other, leaping high in the air. The dances of the Hadrami, like most Arab performances, were violent and warlike. Swords had to be clashed as often as possible and if a party was going well—as in this case—someone would shoot out the lights.

When the dance was over, night had fallen, and we joined the guests, led by torchbearers, to the house where the bride’s family lived, for the signing of the legal documents. An overflow sat down at tables that had been set out in the street, where they were served by members of the bride’s family with coffee and sweets. Some, perhaps bored—even a little drunk—went to sleep, and these were approached by a soft-footed servant, who sprayed them with perfume. After about an hour had elapsed, the witnesses came out of the house. A basket filled with jasmine blossoms was passed round and when each guest had taken a handful, embraced each other and praised God, the party broke up for the night.

The wedding party was held next day in the great tent. Inevitably in southern Arabia, it was devoted to the chewing of khat—a drug guaranteed not to provoke argument or improper conduct of any kind. The guests stripped the leaves from their bundles of khat, pulled out their narghiles, refreshed themselves with mouthfuls of water and listened to the musicians. The host’s two younger brothers were with him, as bridegrooms are never left unattended during the ceremonies, theoretically to protect them from evil spirits, but actually to avoid overindulgence.

The all-powerful barber-surgeon was master of ceremonies, and as each newcomer entered the tent the barber played a few notes on a pipe and announced his name. Guests went up to the dais, placed a gift of money in the bowl set before the bridegroom and gave a small coin to the barber in recognition of his services in arranging the wedding. The low social standing of the barber was curious in view of the essential services that he performed. His most important function was that of surgeon, and however fearsome the wounds he was called in to treat, his services were preferred in this Islamic community to those of physicians with medical degrees—suspected in this society as sorcerers and quacks. The barber in southern Arabia, like the sweeper and the troubadour, was often recruited from the depressed Subis, thought to be descendants of the enslaved remnants of the Persian and Abyssinian invaders of the Yemen. But because the bonds of caste were loosely drawn, it sometimes happened that a barber, escaping his destiny, would rise even to become the governor of a province.

Morally and philosophically I did not think we had much to offer of advantage to the East. But, generally speaking, the ills of the body were not well understood or capably treated. Bloodletting was the remedy for most ailments. The traveller returning home after a long journey made for the barber’s parlour and had himself slashed wherever he had felt pain while away. He sat down in a chair, stripped to his loincloth, and the barber cut into the areas that had given trouble. Then heated cows’ horns were cupped over the razor cuts and left there as long as necessary.

Even khat may produce special effects when taken in abundance. Some of the guests began to sing quietly to the accompaniment of the
rebaba
and the violin of the musicians. Others fell into melancholy silence. Outside the tent the Hadrami seamen who had been chewing for hours on end laughed and clapped their hands and danced a kind of farandole in the torchlight. An unveiled Subi woman exorcized evil spirits with a prolonged and quavering howl. She was answered by the faint yapping of the pariah dogs that came down from the mountain slopes to devour the Parsee dead and to wander among the tombstones of the ancient Jewish cemetery. A few Yemeni Bedouin looked on with uneasy fascination. It was remembered in the Yemen that the Prophet, when he heard the music of pipes, had put his fingers in his ears, although recently Yahya had written a poem in music’s praise, mentioning that its use promoted calm and the dutiful acceptance of the orders of those placed in authority.

Finally the feasting and the many delays were at an end. Two days later, half an hour before the appointed sailing time, we rowed out to the dhow and climbed the rope ladder again.

Promptly at six o’clock the
nakhoda
raised his arms and gave an order. Several of the crew scrambled down to the bows and heaved the anchor up. Others grasped the rope and began to hoist the sail. This task, like the others on the dhow, was done to a rhythmic chant. A leader set the time by cries of ‘
He bab
’, and, with each heave, the haulers roared all together, ‘
Allah karim
’. Some of the passengers went to help the crew with the sail. Before it was halfway up the mast, a chance breath of wind caught it and the dhow began to move slowly forward. Immediately, the helpers let go of the rope and clambered hastily to the sides to say goodbye to their friends. The air resounded with parting cries of ‘God keep you’, and ‘Go in peace’.

It was a hot and airless evening. The burnished breast of the harbour curved gently with a sinuous movement from the depths and, in places, a vagrant breeze frosted its surface with changing designs. Momentarily the great triangular sail filled with wind, and strained billowing at the mast. Then just as suddenly it drained out and hung down loosely. We moved so slowly that looking at distant objects we seemed to be stationary. Only a gentle straining of timbers assured us that we were under way, and in the water thin streams of iridescence spread out and curled into rings over the gently heaving wake as the ship’s sides disturbed the oiliness of the surface. Even the gull perched on the mast remained standing trance-like on one leg, and, as night drew close, stirred only to put its head under its wing.

While we were still a distance from the mouth of the harbour the sun began to roll down the sky, gilding the ship with yellow light. Some of the Yemeni who had previously wound cloths round their mouths now covered themselves completely. They believed that the rays of the setting sun were harmful and, for this reason, in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, the houses had no ordinary glass windows facing west, but in their stead, round or oval apertures with panes of thin alabaster. These they called ‘
kamar
’ (moon) on account of the moonlight effect they gave.

The sun reached the horizon. Silhouetted against the brilliant sky were the tall raked masts of the dhows that still lay between us and the open sea. The faint stir of urban noises reached us across the still water, rising above the soft splash of oars and the lapping of the water against our ship. At the sonorous ‘
azaan
’ of the muezzin the
nakhoda
turned from the wheel and, facing east, raised a quavering voice in the call to salvation. Now the evening air came up over the bows, cleansing the ship of the staleness of sacking and dried fish and bilge. We clumsily moved the packing cases about to clear a little area of private space, and laid down our blankets. Most of the passengers who had come aboard with us lay huddled up asleep, but the Hadrami from the eastern end of the coast collected in the bows and began to sing the quavering songs of their country.

Packages of food had been left in our luggage and we were endeavouring to find them when our neighbour on the deck, father of a family of three, uttered what sounded like a cry of alarm. They had been busy with their supper, and now the man scrambled to his feet and came over smiling and bowing. What had become of our meal? he wanted to know. It was the first of a number of such embarrassing situations. These people, we were to discover, found it difficult to eat in the presence of others who were not eating without inviting them to share their meal.

We rummaged among our baggage, produced sandwiches, smiled and bowed and held them aloft. We had learned our first lesson, but it was a small problem that constantly recurred, and it took us a while to understand the complex routines of hospitality that governed life on board.

We soon became friends with our neighbours on the deck, and this quickly spread to the majority of the passengers and then to members of the crew. Possibly only the Western world tends to regard questioning of strangers as impolite. On the dhow curiosity was even a demonstration of good manners. A young man in temporary possession of a few square yards on the other side of the deck leapt to his feet at my approach, and smilingly said, ‘Ask me something about myself.’ I asked him whether he was married and what he did for a living, and scribbled his replies in my notebook. At this he was clearly gratified.

These Yemeni folk were strikingly handsome, with the refined features of a people locked away in their deserts for thousands of years. I was to notice that they seemed sometimes to respond to questions that were not asked, as if with our increasing familiarity they were mysteriously able to read my mind.

It was the practice on dhows like ours to carry a ‘fortunate lady’. That night I was to catch my first glimpse of her. When the families were asleep the
nakhoda
summoned her for a tour of the deck, and as she stole past trailing an aroma of jasmine blossom. I was astonished by how much beauty the faint gleam of her torch revealed in her face.

This young Somali girl was rarely mentioned in conversation. In Europe she would have been called a prostitute; here she was respectfully referred to as ‘
Sa Mabruka
’ (the Fortunate One). A few days later I asked through a crew member if she would permit me to photograph her, to which she agreed. She proved to be as charming and beautiful as the sailor had suggested. But as she could not appear on deck I had to take the picture in the dim light of her windowless cabin; the result was poor.

The moon came up; the breeze died away, and we lay motionless on a sea that glistened with phosphorescence, white as a frost-flecked desert. The sail stretched above us like a dark wing, cancelling out the stars. Sometimes it gave a single flap and the mast creaked faintly. A stifling exhalation rose from the bowels of the ship and filled it to the brim, and the chanting of the Hadrami died away as if oppressed. Against the silence that followed could be heard the strong hum of mosquitoes, which the dhow harboured by the thousand. We soon found that protecting our exposed flesh from their torment meant unmaking our improvised beds and covering ourselves completely with our blankets.

The morning brought no freshness. Aching and sticky with heat we climbed to the side and looked around us. We were adrift in an expanse of steaming silk. Just over the stern, unexpectedly, the rocks of Aden were still imminent and huge after the night of travel. The harbour from which we had sailed the day before was only two or three miles away, but the short distance that separated us from the city’s ash-heaps had wrought a change. The rocks had lost their sharp outlines and become pale and spectral, as if on the point of floating away.

As the sun rose higher, a canvas awning was unrolled and stretched over part of the ship to afford shade to the passengers. This was a doubtful blessing, because the awning held in the intolerable odour of staleness and decay which the sun seemed to scorch away wherever it was allowed to penetrate. We felt greatly tempted to cool ourselves by swimming in the sea around the ship, but on attempting to climb over the side, we were held back by the Arabs, who showed their alarm and pointed meaningfully at the water. We saw no sign of sharks, but the general nervousness impressed us and we abandoned the project.

For half the day we stayed motionless. Then a faint breeze began to blow from the shore, and to make the most of it the
nakhoda
had the sail changed for a larger one, and at last we moved again.

The Arabs began to prepare the main meal of the day. The cook was of slave origin and almost pure African in type. He was heavier, more thickset and more muscular than the average Arab, and his voice was deeper and more melodious. His face was pock-marked and twisted into an almost permanent grin. He prided himself on his professional artistry, and spent a great deal of time pounding and blending the ingredients for each meal. He filled in the intervals between his work by dancing and, as far as was possible, he used to dance even while the cooking went on. Up in the bows he kept an open fire on which he baked unleavened bread. The fire used to menace our lives by throwing out sparks which the breeze took and spread among the cargo. We were thankful that this was not especially flammable. Until recently, kerosene and petrol had often been carried by our dhow. This practice had been discontinued when four petrol-laden dhows in succession set sail from Aden for Madagascar and never reached their destinations.