On consulting the book of words I found there was mention of ruins and cisterns on the island of Errich. This island was supposed to be the antique Pharos of the Ptolemies. Perhaps there would be water there, since they spoke of cisterns. We drank terribly in this sultry weather. We had to allow ten litres of water per man per day, for drinking only, for we washed with sea water.
This evening, threatening storm clouds were once more massed on the mountains, but I was not to be caught a second time. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon; I had plenty of time to find an anchorage behind the island of Seïl Bahar before nightfall. There was a vast emeraldgreen bay there, sheltered from every wind that blows, a mute invitation to sailors to spend a peaceful night. The water in it was clear, calm and deep, and the passage leading to it was wide. A boutre was moored at the end, surrounded by pirogues like a hen surrounded by chickens. I decided to join her. But no sooner had we entered this pretty lake than on all sides I saw the yellow splotches denoting submerged rock. If the light had been bad and we hadn’t noticed them, we should inevitably have been ripped up. By keeping a look-out from the mast-head, we were able to reach the healthy, clear water where the other boutre was anchored, but it was only after much meandering.
They were Sudanese who were fishing for a kind of sea slug in order to secure the horny membrane which the animal uses as a peduncle to help him to move about, and as a lock when he is resting or when danger threatens. This organ looks like a plectrum of a mandolin, so you can understand what enormous quantities of them are needed to make up an appreciable weight. This substance is very expensive, and is used in India as an aphrodisiac. When it is burned over live coals the smoke, which is strongly ammoniacal, is considered a sovereign remedy for colics, fevers, etc.
The two crews were soon bartering fish for tobacco and exchanging news. Suddenly the khamsin began to blow with terrific violence. What a delight it was to listen to it whistling harmlessly through our rigging, while the boutre sat comfortably astride on her two anchors, and think what unholy weather it was outside
The nacouda of the other boutre was a very old Sudanese, who had been sailing these waters for forty years. He said that it was quite true that there was drinkable water in an island to the north. Naturally, he could not indicate it on my chart, which was a complete puzzle to him. He carried his charts in his head, and looked with some contempt on the piece of parchment by which I set such store. The explanations he gave me were perhaps quite clear to him, but I didn’t follow them very well, especially as he answered yes to all the questions he did not understand. However, I concluded that the island he referred to must be the island of Errich, which was marked on my chart as having cisterns.
Next morning, there was a good land breeze blowing, and we soon reached the bay to the north of this island. There was a shallow lagoon which we had to cross in the pirogue. I landed at the foot of a hillock on which, sure enough, there were remains of walls. These must be the ruins my chart mentioned. They were on the highest point of this flat and barren island. There must have been a town there in olden days; one could still see traces of foundations and lines marking out streets and squares. The sun was beating vertically down, and the ground was so hot that we could not put our bare feet on it, but were obliged to wear thick-soled shoes. Mhamed Moussa, who had no shoes, walked cautiously in the shadows of stones or on tufts of grass. Suddenly he vanished from sight as if the earth had swallowed him up. But almost immediately his head reappeared above the ground. He had merely fallen into one of the famous cisterns. I then discovered several of them, all exactly alike. I explored them, not that I hoped to find water – I saw how ridiculous that would be – but out of that curiosity that old things never fail to excite.
These cisterns were in the form of amphorae, ten feet in diameter. The walls were of baked clay, all in one piece. They were in a perfect state of preservation, without a single crack. The clay for these Cyclopean potteries had probably been fired on the spot. They were three-quarters full of sand, and of course there was not the faintest trace of water in them.
It became so unbearably hot that in spite of my desire to potter about among the ruins, I was forced to go back to the ship to quench my thirst. The climate of this island must have changed considerably, for a city could never otherwise have been established in this desolation of burning plains, which stretched as far as the eye could reach, unbroken by a human habitation, a herd of goats, or even a tree. Archaeologically speaking, this excursion had been very interesting, but as far as getting water was concerned, I was no farther on. I-had just time before nightfall to get to the Kohr Nowarat, in the middle of which was the island of Badhour.
The Kohr Nowarat was a sort of large lake, conneded with the sea by a very deep strait which, unfortunately, was barely eighty yards wide and strewn with rocky islets. In the middle of this stretch of water was the island of Badhour, like a fortress surrounded by moats. On the most southerly point of the island, a small village of half a score of huts could be seen. We anchored near it and I went ashore to see if there was any chance of getting water.
We did not meet a single man on the way, only women. They were dressed in ample black robes, of much the same style as those worn by the women of Upper Egypt. They were very Arabic in type, but nearly as brown-skinned as the Dankalis. The children, not at all shy, played round us; the boys were naked, while the little girls wore a loin-doth. All the men were away fishing for trocas (sea snails) or mother-of-pearl. There were no old men, for the men who follow those occupations die long before they reach old age, generally blind. I saw two or three blind men crouching at the doors of their huts. Their blindness was in the early stages, when the eyes become opaque like those of a boiled fish. This disease of the eyes is due to their work as divers in waters infested by a sort of jelly-fish to which I have already referred when describing the trocas fishers. But hereditary syphilis may also have something to do with it. To even up the balance, the women live to be incredibly old. They looked as if death had forgotten to call for them. The Arab proverb that cadis and old women have to be beaten to death with sticks must have some truth in it.
I learned that there was still water on Badhour from the year before. This year’s water had not yet arrived. They spoke about water exactly as if it were a crop that ripened at a given season, and indeed their water did come rather in that way, as you will see. The inhabitants of this island bore no resemblance to those of the adjacent coast. On the mainland, the natives were Sudanese with an admixture of Egyptian blood. In the old days, in the time of the Khedives, they were slaves; today they are to be found among the lowest classes in the towns. In Cairo and Alexandria they fulfil the functions of porters, night-watchmen, orderlies and so on. They are magnificent specimens of male perfection with their coal-black skins and beautifully muscled bodies, and dressed in Oriental garb they are most decorative as they stand at the doors of the big hotels. Nowadays they are also in great demand in the dancing establishments from Khartoum to Cairo. But the inhabitants of Badhour are very different, and have the most profound contempt for their neighbours on the continent, as Arabs have for everything that is African.
For a long time this island was the port of concentration for the caravans coming from the Sudan, and it was from here that they set sail for Arabia. Badhour was the central market for working slaves as Tajura was for luxury slaves. This traffic was openly carried on until the making of the Suez Canal, and continued for some time after that. Indeed, it is said to flourish to this day, although it is now forbidden.
There were about twenty huts all told in the village, all belonging to the same family. The ‘ancestor’ was a woman so incredibly ancient that she might have represented a statue of old age. She was very tall, and generally walked nearly bent double, but when she drew herself to her full height, she was terrifying. She did not look at all like a woman, but like a man, a man who resembles a horse. Her immense eyes were further lengthened towards the temples. Strange fires must have burned in those eyes many, many years before. Now they were blurred, the pupils covered with a bluish film, as if they had ceased to look on anything living, or show interest in any human being. Before me I felt I had the spectre of a dead world, with a withered heart incapable of any emotion, a creature older than time, which had lost all its instincts and forgotten all its affections. The others addressed her with great respect, in some unknown tongue in which were mingled a few words of Arabic They explained to her that we wanted water, for this life-giving element belonged to her. The fleshless spectre was the guardian of the treasure.
Without a word she got up, leaning on her two sticks, and we followed her towards a sort of amphitheatre hollowed out in the centre of the island. It looked like a disused quarry, with vertical sides about twenty-five feet high. At the foot of this circular wall, little heaps of stones like tombs were arranged. There were nearly two hundred of these heaps, a few yards apart.
A flock of white goats was drinking from little clay troughs filled by women who drew the water in leather bags from a deep hole. This water was brackish and had a strong magnesia content; it was undrinkable. This, we were told, was only for the cattle; there was much better water. Salah had a smattering of the language of Badhour, for he had lived for a long time in the Sudan. He acted as interpreter and arranged the price. After long palavers, during which the old woman did not move a muscle, it was agreed that I should pay a thaler arid a half for the right to take water from one of the cisterns closed by the heaps of stones. There were different qualities, it appeared, and this price was for one of the best.
The old woman went up to one of the heaps, bent down and with careful gestures removed the stones one by one, while we formed a respectful circle round her. We felt a sort of awe, as if it were a magic ceremony, and she was going to mutter an incantation so that the clear water might gush forth. One has to be in this arid country, burnt by the leaden sun and dried by fiery winds, to understand the emotion we felt at the sight of those rocks which were to give us water. At last all the stones were removed, and a screen of branches appeared. Under it was the mouth of a hole twenty inches in diameter. This was the cistern. A hollow about seven feet deep stretched in a vault under the rock. In the foot of this hole was a sheet of water, so clear that I had to drop a pebble into it to convince myself that it was really there.
A man lowered himself into the hole and drew some water. It was very good, pure as the water of a mountain spring. We had the right to take all we wanted, until the cistern was empty. It appeared that when these cavities were emptied, they gradually refilled, the water oozing out of the rocky sides. However, at this time of year many were dried up. So it really was water of the previous year we had taken, for the next rains would not fall until September, when they would refill the mysterious reservoirs which fed these miraculous cisterns.