A Desert Dies Read online

  He told me that many of the Mirna were excellent hunters and knew the whereabouts of the gazelles, the hares, and the wildcats. ‘But the game has gone since my father’s time,’ he told me. ‘Now even the crops will not grow.’ I asked how it was possible for his people to survive in this drought. In answer, he pointed out some tiny marks at intervals around the base of a bush. ‘See, the mouse of the desert!’ he said. ‘He lives, even though there is no water on the land. He eats the little plants that grow in the wadis, which you hardly notice! My people are like the jerboa. As long as there is some moisture, they can survive.’ He told me how the women would gather the wild grasses like gau and haskanit and grind them into flour on their stone hand-mills, and how the flour could be made into a polenta that was almost as good as that made from sorghum or millet.

  These were not new skills. Rather, they were a survival of an ancient knowledge that had been handed down since the Stone Age. The desert was littered with grinding and milling stones that had been used for grinding wild grasses by the neolithic people of northern Africa before agriculture was invented.

  There were other wild fruits that men could eat, the Mimawi explained. The nuts of the mukhayyit tree could be ground up and made into porridge, though they had to be prepared in a certain way to rid them of their poison. Many trees, like the tundub, carried edible berries; the green nuts of the nabak tree provided sustenance. There were small melons called handal that could be used to feed donkeys, and another species of dwarf melon that humans could eat. The green herb from the haljal bush was a substitute for tea, and the grass called jibayn was used for making cheese. Wild okra was a valuable herb, and men could eat the gum of the siyaal and the samuk, or gum arabic tree. Locusts were a delicacy, and there were many kinds of grubs and caterpillars that were edible. Hungry men could even eat lizards and snakes, or the hardy desert-rat itself.

  It was a fascinating lesson for me, and at the end of it I was much impressed by what I had learned of the Mima. They were one of the strange tribes from the west of the Sudan who seemed to combine the traditions of the Arabs and the Africans equally. The nomads treated these men as inferiors, but I saw that, like the desert-rat, they hid a strong and resilient spirit under a humble exterior.

  Before he left me, Hamud said. ‘Do not linger on the road to El Fasher. There are bandits from the Bedayatt who have come from Chad. Only a few weeks ago, they attacked a market near Kobkabiyya. They stole tea and sugar and a large amount of money. Two men ran for help and the bandits shot them. Then they rode back to Chad on their camels. Those men have no mercy, and certainly will not spare a white man on a camel. Go in the safekeeping of God.’

  I left at dawn the next day and moved northwest across the unrelenting wasteland south of El Fasher. I could see all day the faint shadow of Jabal Sarjayn, the double-peaked outcrop that stood on the plain near the city. Everywhere, I was reminded of the drought and desertification that was devastating the land.

  It was popular to blame the nomads for this destruction of vegetation and even for the diminishing rainfall. Certainly, overgrazing by camels and sheep had played its part in reducing plant cover, just as the practice of cutting trees for fuel had encouraged the blight of deforestation in the ranges. But no one had yet proved a connection between overgrazing and deficient rainfall that was powerful enough to have created this drought. Drought was endemic in the Sahara and the Sahel, and had occurred at intervals for millennia.

  The fertile area that became the Sahara, the world’s largest desert, died because of a decrease in the monsoon rains that fed it before about 2000 BC. No one knows why these rains began to diminish, though it is known that at some stage, an imbalance occurred between rainfall and evaporation. A change in only one degree in rainfall distribution could bring drought to thousands of square miles of land. Before 10,000 BC, the Sahara was desert as it is today, and even after the monsoons were supposed to have ceased, there were wet periods, one of which ended as recently as AD 500. Though nomads may have affected changes at local level, I believe that the drought that reached its nadir in 1984 was far too vast to have been brought about by a few tribes and their animals. Those who blamed the nomads were reluctant to admit that they were unable to explain the colossal natural fluctuations of which this drought was but a minor part.

  I arrived in El Fasher two days later. No rain had fallen since I had been away and the Wadi Halluf, which fed the lake in the centre of the town, was still bone-dry. Many Zaghawa, who had fled from their villages in the north, poured into the area, setting up shanty towns around the cattle market or moving in with families already established there.

  I was anxious to press on as soon as possible. My route lay northeast through Zayadiyya country to the tiny village of Umm Sunta on the Kordofan border, where the nazir of the Kababish, Hassan Wad at Tom, had pitched his camp, or dikka. Many Arabs I spoke to in El Fasher market told me, ‘The Zayadiyya and the Kababish are killing each other. There are many bandits on the road. If you keep your eyes open, you will be all right.’ It sounded as if the Kordofan-Darfur borders were more disturbed than ever. When I last rode across this land in 1980, there had been a truce between the Kababish and the Zayadiyya. I wondered what had happened to aggravate their peaceful relations.

  I left El Fasher in midafternoon, riding across the cultivated plain of green, orange, and buff. Some farmers were planting millet in the sandhills, still hoping for rain. Soon, the town fell behind me and I was in a great grey desert with the Wima hills towering amongst the bluish mist on the skyline. I rode past outcrops of black rock and across orange sand dunes, climbing up into the saddle of the hills as night fell and making camp in a dry wash under the rock wall. As I made camp, I saw the flash of a torch in the hills. It was impossible to say how far off it was. After all the tales I had heard about bandits, it disturbed me to know that there were others moving about in this lonely place after dark. I loaded my shotgun and kept it close to me as I slept.

  The next morning, I moved into the belly of the hills. For the first hour, I skirted through the wadis on the lower slopes, seeing the solid grey wall looming up before me. I knew that there must be a way through it. As the land began to slope steeply upwards, I dismounted and led the camel by hand. Soon, I saw a cleft in the rock face, through which a watercourse meandered, lined with trees. I began to head-haul the animal up the ravine. In one place, our way led over smooth granite boulders and the camel suddenly refused to move. He dug his feet into the soft sand, and though I tugged and strained on the headrope, I could not budge him. I cursed at him loudly in English and Arabic, as a hot sweat broke out across my forehead. Still the animal would not move. I realised that my only choice was to go back. Edging my way behind the animal, I pulled gently on the headrope. Wad al ’Atiga dug in his feet more firmly. He was not going up, but neither was he going down. I yanked the rope more determinedly. Equally resolute, he spread his legs out and braced himself backwards, ducking his neck to relieve the strain on his head. I managed to master my anger, and tried speaking to him gently, coaxing him sideways. Along the side of the wadi was a narrow strip of firm ground, which led upwards past the obstacle of the rocks. There was a scattering of goats’ droppings on the path. Slowly, I nursed him towards it, talking soothingly. At last his resolution wavered. He took a tentative step forward, trembled a little, then took another. Then he was standing on the ledge, with myself in front of him. Step by step, I manhandled him past the rocks, and after about ten minutes, we came to a place where the path was wider and less steep. I heaved a sigh of relief. Soon, though, the path disappeared and we were on a steep scree of stones that led up to the summit of the hill. Exasperated anew, I gripped the headrope over my shoulder in a mad effort to drag him up. Amazingly, it succeeded, and inch by agonising inch, I drew the animal to the top of the scree.

  Below me was a vast plain stretching as far as the horizon, a patchwork of brown and beige reflected vividly in the growing sunlight. I descended through a thicket of t
angled bush and came out into a sheltered bay where about twenty camels were drinking from a pool between the rocks. I noticed that the camels bore the distinctive lightning-flash and star brands of the Bedayatt. I became wary, for I knew it was unusual for these nomads to graze so far east. I wondered if the torchlight I had seen the previous night might have belonged to them. I saw no herdsmen. It gave me an eerie and vulnerable feeling to know that they might even now be watching me. Involuntarily, I scanned the rock walls around me. At the same time, Wad al ’Atiga began to pull towards the camel herd. I pulled him back, staying clear of the Bedayatt animals and striding firmly towards the plain, feeling, even as I did so, unseen eyes boring through my shirt.

  There had been a gun battle in these hills only a few weeks previously, when an Arab of the Zayadiyya, Abdal Rahman Umm Badda, the court bailiff of the Zayadiyya chief, caught up with some bandits whom he had been tracking. The bandits, from the Bedayatt, had hidden themselves in the hills and opened fire on the Zayadi as he approached, leading his camel. Luckily, no one had been shot, but the Bedayatt had escaped by leaping on to their fast mounts. I did not hear this story until I reached El Koma, which was still in front of me, but had I done so, I should certainly have thought twice about wandering alone through the Wima hills.

  When we reached the valley floor, I swung into the saddle and rode across the semidesert plain. In the centre stood a few villages of grass huts, and beyond them, the black canines of mountains along the skyline. The plain was deserted. A forest of broken trees lay in ruins in the sand, and the grass had been burned crisp by the long and rainless summer. Everywhere, there seemed to be the bones of dead beasts, bleach-white and wrapped in shrouds of rock-hard leather.

  Without its tree covering, this area might soon be desert, like so many parts of the western Sudan. Here, the rains had always been uncertain, and the needs of the vegetation were precariously balanced. Nomads and farmers together had tipped the scales in the direction of disaster by chopping down the acacia trees, which they needed for fuel. The process was unstoppable because the people of this region had no alternative source of fuel. The villagers used charcoal, which was more economical than firewood, but which also depleted the forested land. Charcoal was impracticable for the nomads, who had to carry all their supplies by camel.

  The areas most seriously affected by desertification were those around towns and villages, where the livestock of the settled people grazed. Although their herds and flocks were far smaller than those of the nomads, the destruction they caused was much greater; the nomads had the range to make use of even the most remote pastures, whereas the animals of the settled people were concentrated in one place for most of the year. The animals destroyed the young shoots so that plants could not reproduce. Without the plants to hold the topsoil, the wind and rain leached it away, leaving only the sterile skin of the desert beneath. Year by year, the volume of grazing around the villages diminished. In some areas, the problem was made worse by the shifting sands of the desert, which were capable of burying acres of arable land and drowning entire villages within a few years.

  I spent the night near the volcanic cone of Jabal Tantara and the next morning arrived at El Koma. I sought out an old acquaintance of mine, Ibrahim Munzal, who was an umbasha of police in the village. Ibrahim invited me to his house at once. It was built of cane, like those of the Berti and Mirna, and yet was far larger, with more interlocking courtyards and huts. The Zayadiyya, to whom Ibrahim belonged, were nomads and semi-nomads, though they lived in straw houses and had no tents as the Kababish had. Of mixed African and Arab origin, they were an offshoot of the much larger Dar Hamid tribe of Kordofan, though they had lived in Darfur for generations. El Koma was a watering centre for the Zayadiyya, and the village was centred on two borewells run by diesel engines. To the northwest lay the wells of Abu Ku’, from where I had set off to Mellit in 1980 with two Zayadiyya nomads, Tahir and Ahmad.

  As I sat in the shade of Ibrahim’s grass compound, we were joined by a hoary, grizzled-looking man, who carried a long-barrelled Martini rifle. This was Abdal Rahman Umm Badda, whom I knew by reputation. He was the ghaffir, or bailiff, of the court of Mohammid Jizzu, sheikh of the Zayadiyya. His job was to bring to the court those who had been convicted. In this wild land only someone who had a detailed knowledge of people and places would have been capable of doing this job. Rolling a cigarette from the local chewing tobacco, he told me that he had been involved in several gun battles over the past few months, including the one in the Wima hills.

  When I told him that I was on my way to meet the Kababish nazir, he grimaced and said, ‘This is a bad time to cross into Kababish country. There has been fighting all year. Seven of the Zayadiyya have been killed by Kababish in the last few months. The Kababish dare not come near El Koma now.’ I asked him if he knew Dagalol, and he grinned nastily. ‘Yes, I know him well,’ he said. ‘He is the only friend I have amongst the Kababish.’ Just then, Ibrahim cut in and said, ‘Do you remember Tahir, the man you travelled with to Mellit two years ago?’ I told him that I remembered him well. ‘He was one of the Zayadiyya killed by the Kababish. He was with three companions, and they were attacked by twelve Kababish one morning as they left camp. They had no chance. Two of them escaped, but Tahir and another were killed.’

  I was shocked by the news, and I asked why it had happened.

  ‘Tahir was a bandit.’ He shrugged. ‘The Kababish knew him and the Zayadiyya knew him, but whether he had stolen camels that day, only God knows!’

  I wondered again what lay at the heart of the problem. Umm Badda told me, ‘Zayadiyya land is rich and the Kababish have always wanted it. This grazing is ours. If they graze their camels on our land, there will be trouble. The Kababish are many, but we are ready to fight them, by God! Not a month ago I met one of the Kababish sheikhs, Ibrahim Wad Ali. He said to me, “If there is any more trouble, we will bring twenty truckloads of weapons, then we will finish the Zayadiyya. And we will finish you!” I just got up and left. No one dared to stop me.’

  It sounded as if the tribes were on the verge of a major conflict. As always, the ultimate trouble was over grazing land. The diminishing rain, coupled with the rise in population of men and animals in recent years, fanned ancient feuds that had lain dormant for decades.

  I left El Koma two days later, climbing up to a high tor of purple rock. I looked down over a carpet of grey and amber, hemmed in by an archipelago of dunes and decorated by thorn trees.

  Before me lay a journey of more than two hundred and fifty kilometres, in country where the tribes faced each other with daggers drawn. I decided to stay away from the tracks as everyone had advised me and to travel on a compass-bearing. For two days, I rode through dead thorn scrub, seeing no one and nothing. Wad al ‘Atiga kept up a steady, rhythmic trot, and I rode for eight hours a day, covering more than forty kilometres between sunrise and sunset.

  Just before sunset on the second day, I came to the borewell at Umm Hejlij. There was a spray of fine dust over the water yard and the last gold beams of the sun illuminated its particles, drawing a gilded veil over the huts and thorn trees. Zayadiyya men and women were driving away herds of cattle and knots of camels and goats through the sand.

  I led my camel into the well compound, hoping to water him and fill my waterskin. As I stood there, the watchman told me, ‘There is no water. The engine is going off.’ I protested, saying that I had ridden from El Fasher, but the man hardly listened to me and seemed intent on my camel and riding gear. ‘It is too late,’ he argued. ‘I am going to the sunset prayers and the engine is going off.’ I had never experienced such a lack of hospitality before; it was very unusual for a well-keeper to turn away a lone traveller. I knew that it was the custom for local people to invite strangers to stay with them at sunset, and though I never relied on hospitality, I was surprised that no such offer came. The man told me sourly, ‘Your people are camping out there.’ He pointed to the desert. There are some Kababish with goats. You can ca
mp with them and come back in the morning.’ With that, he ushered me out of the compound and snapped the gate firmly shut.

  It was dark by the time I led Wad al ’Atiga to the nearest grove of thorn trees. I had a little water left in my canteen, but I knew that it would not be enough and that I should go thirsty that night. I was irritated by the lack of hospitality. In a land where there were no inns, it was the custom for travellers to rest with local villagers. Not only was this an Islamic rule, it made good sense. The nomads said that anyone who camped alone must have something to hide. It was only after I had made camp that it struck me that the watchman might have taken me for a Kabbashi. I remembered how he had examined the brand on my camel’s leg very carefully. It had been almost dark when I met him, and my head had been cowled in a headcloth and shawl. Many Kababish were light-skinned and their accent was very different from that of the Zayadiyya; perhaps he had taken my foreign pronunciation for that of the Kababish. If this were true, then it showed how deep the feelings between the tribes ran.

  The man’s hostility had made me uneasy and I loaded my shotgun again before retiring, placing it next to me broken, with a cartridge in the breech.

  Just after settling down on my sheepskin, I heard the sound of hoofbeats in the darkness. From somewhere, a man was approaching me on a donkey. I sensed that he was coming directly towards me, and in a moment I glimpsed a shadowy figure moving through the trees. Instinctively I seized my shotgun and snapped the breech shut. There was a resounding metallic clang and almost simultaneously the rider broke through the cover. ‘Who is it?’ he shouted, wheeling the large white donkey round in a half-circle and sliding off the saddle.