Contentment is an inexhaustible treasure.
Saudi proverb
We arrived in Al-‘Ula at dusk and spent the night in a small guesthouse, exhausted after so much driving. The next morning, though, I woke up early to explore and it was as if I’d woken up in paradise. Al-‘Ula appeared to be a sleepy little oasis, lush and green. It was awash with colourful flowers that lined the roadside, and groves of palm trees and orange orchards in between the flaming red mountains that flanked the town.
It used to serve as a major stop-off point on the pilgrimage route from the north, during the days of the camel caravans, and well before that it was an ancient incense-trading centre that linked Arabian merchants with as far afield as Egypt and India. These days a new highway dissected the settlement in half. The ‘new town’ was host to a few shiny mosques and coffee shops and breeze-block apartments, but Khaled insisted there was more to see than that.
My trusty guide stopped the car in a dusty little side street and we got out to walk towards a large hill that dominated the horizon. Khaled led the way and I followed him up a carved stone staircase that seemed worn from the footsteps of centuries. At the top I discovered we were standing on the scorched remnants of an ancient fort.
‘This used to be the centre of the pre-Islamic civilisation,’ he said, as his white robes fluttered in the hot wind.
‘Saudi Arabia is packed with history, dating back seven thousand years, and nobody even knows it, least of all the Arabs.’
From the ramparts, I looked out across the golden valley. It was as spectacular as anything I’d seen in Egypt or Jordan. For miles, date palm groves spread out like a vast, green blanket, backed up by sheer red cliffs and jagged, caramel mountains. And there, right below us, stretching out like a patchwork quilt of adobe, were hundreds of abandoned mud houses; an entire ghost city with not a human inhabitant in sight.
From the fortress walls, we descended into the maze. We entered a narrow passageway through an arch and it led us into another world. There were mounds of ancient bricks and masonry, mixed with old wooden beams, and shattered doorways leant against crumbling walls. It was a scene of apocalyptic archaeology.
‘See that.’ Khaled pointed to the keystone at the top of an arch. It was a huge wedge-shaped stone holding the doorway together.
‘What is it?’ I said, noticing that the stone was engraved with what appeared to be an inscription.
‘It’s Bronze Age, dating back two thousand, six hundred years,’ he told me.
The eight hundred houses were centred around a large hill, dominated by a walled fortress that overlooked the valley.
‘The last people left in 1983,’ he said, kicking an old glass bottle aside. Old rags and clothes from then were strewn about the corridors and the rooms still had tin pots and pans on dusty shelves. It was as if the entire population had just got up and left one afternoon.
‘In the eighties, Saudis started to realise that they didn’t want to live in mud huts and tents anymore. The old Bedu ways became unfashionable and everyone wanted a house with an air-conditioning unit, a TV and a toilet. So, they all left and built a new town on the other side of the valley.’
Khaled smiled. ‘You see, they have no concept of the past, especially anything that came before Islam. For a long time, Arabs have believed there is no beauty in dust and old houses. They are merely places to sleep and eat. Where you tourists see beauty and history, Saudis see rot and crumbling bricks. This place should be a UNESCO heritage site, and it’s my job to make sure it is one day. I’m trying to tell my people we need to look after the old things and the old ways, so that we can preserve our heritage and legacy.’
He continued, ‘Some people understand, but sadly not too many. They’re too interested in getting the latest Toyota, or smart phone, but when they see the potential for tourism, maybe things will change. If there’s money in it for them, then they’ll save it, and inshallah, the new Crown Prince is changing things for the better and the tourists will come soon.’
We picked our way through the ruins back to the car and made our way out of the town and back to the desert, passing through a valley filled with vast sandstone stacks and natural arches that anywhere else in the world would be famous national monuments. There were huge black and yellow stones balanced on top of one another, and spines and pinnacles reaching into the azure sky. In the middle of the desert, there was one massive arch that stood out from all of them.
‘That one is called Elephant Rock,’ said Khaled, grinning with pride at the massive wonder.
We drove the car through the spectacular arcade. We must have looked as tiny as a little ant in comparison to the mammoth cliffs dominating all around. We carried on, following desert trails to another valley, where cliffs towered above us on all sides. On a ledge, a hundred feet high, I noticed the cliff face was covered in ancient scribblings: pictures of antelope, dogs, horses and humans.
‘These ancient petroglyphs are thousands of years old,’ Khaled said. ‘They were drawn by the first Arabs.’
It was an insight into a way of life that had lasted for millennia across the Arabian Peninsula; a life of hardship, of desert living and a daily battle for survival against the elements. The art showed sword fights and hunting; there were images of eagles and ostriches and sheep with vast curled horns; it was a culture at one with nature that seemed all but forgotten now.
One thing that hadn’t changed, however, was the code of hospitality that had survived the ages intact.
We returned to the town to find a place to stay, and the next morning Khaled suggested that we attend Friday prayers at the mosque. Even though I’d been to plenty of mosques before, I was still pleasantly surprised to find that the imam had no problem letting a non-Muslim sit in and watch the proceedings. I’d got it into my head that because this was Saudi Arabia, it must be full of proselytising fanatics. I’d fallen for the generalisations and stereotypes that plague the media and our minds. I’d expected somehow to face withering looks and threats of forced conversion, but of course, none of this had happened.
The locals gathered outside the prayer hall to greet each other and shake hands, before removing their shoes and performing the ablutions. I entered with Khaled. He took his place on the mat and asked me to sit next to him, but I thought it better to stay at the back of the mosque with the teenagers, out of respect for those praying.
After the imam came in, the prayers began. He led with a sermon, which I gathered to be all about finding inner peace and respecting your neighbours. One of the kids explained the messages, while old men thumbed with their prayer beads. I found the prostrations mesmerising, and I couldn’t help thinking that they must be quite healthy and good for one’s joints. It wasn’t too far removed from a form of yoga, and even the children and old men did the ceremony without fuss.
The service was refreshingly short. After half an hour, all the men were on their feet, shaking hands again, and then strolling back outside where a host of Land Cruisers sat in the car park, waiting to whisk them off for their Friday lunch.
‘The imam has invited us to his house,’ said Khaled. ‘He wants us to eat with him.’
I eagerly accepted the offer, excited by the prospect of meeting the spiritual teacher, and finding out more about what it means to be a Muslim in the country that hosts the holiest sites in Islam.
His house was just around the corner on the main street. It was in a large compound surrounded by palm trees and high fences. The gates were open and we followed him through. He insisted on showing us around the communal rooms, as Khaled translated.
‘The gates are always open to the community,’ he said, with a warm smile. ‘Anyone can come in and rest, at any time of day.’
The imam was a large man in his mid-fifties, who went by the name of Khalid Al-Muarei. He was wearing a brown cloak with golden trim, and a white cloth on his head. His moustache was shaved clean, leaving a long beard under his chin.
‘Please, take a seat.’ He motioned for me to sit on one of the cushions in the guest room. Rugs covered the walls and floors and we sat cross-legged, while a servant brought a platter of grilled goat and rice and bottles of Coca-Cola. A TV was blaring out music in the background.
‘How do you like my country?’ asked the imam.
I told him that I’d been welcomed with hospitality everywhere I’d been and was surprised at how liberal it appeared.
‘We are very progressive. Don’t believe all the things you hear on the news. We’re not all terrorists, you know.’
It felt a bit impolite over lunch, but I thought I should ask some difficult questions, since I had the opportunity.
‘What would you say to those people who accuse Saudi Arabia of funding terrorism?’
He shook his head and looked me in the eye.
‘It is not true. That’s it.’
‘But this is where Osama bin Laden came from, isn’t it? And there are a lot of people who believe that Daesh are being funded by Saudi Arabia. And what about Wahhabism?’
He smiled.
‘I know you must ask these questions, so I will try to answer them, even though I am but a lowly cleric.’ He took a swig on some Coke and stroked his beard before continuing.
‘To begin with, Wahabbism is just a name. It means nothing. There are, of course, people who like to cause problems, but this is not limited to Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was a terrorist with lots of money, who was only interested in power and fame. Terrorists come from all over, but they are not real Muslims. There are over a billion Muslims in the world and how many cause terror? Very few. In the Qu’ran it is said that whoever kills another human being, he will go to hell, especially if he kills fellow Muslims, and most people that terrorists kill are other Muslims. Daesh are not real Muslims, they are crazy people. We do not support them. There are other powers in the world, you know, who do. I shall not say who they are.’
‘Who?’ I asked. I guessed he was referring to Western powers, as that was the great conspiracy theory that seemed so prevalent across the region.
‘I think you already know,’ he replied. ‘But I will say this. The United States has much to gain by the chaos in the Middle East. If there is chaos, they have an excuse to try to control it and be here, taking the oil. But for us here in Saudi Arabia, the biggest terrorists are the Iranians. These people are the ones playing their games, so that we look bad.’
It was an all-too-familiar story that I’d heard all across the peninsula.
‘But whatever the politics, remember this. Real Muslims, real Saudis, we just want peace and to worship Allah. That is all.’ With that he ate a grape and waved a hand to indicate that he’d had enough talking politics.
‘Why don’t you become a Muslim?’ he said, with a casual shrug.
I liked the man, even though I knew we disagreed on plenty of things. I thought he was naïve to think that Wahabbism was only a name and that there was no implicit support of Islamism within the Saudi set-up. And yet he had a wry smile and a glint in his eye that betrayed a conviction in his beliefs without even a hint of arrogance. I thought I’d parley with him, if only to give him a different point of view.
‘I like whisky,’ I said to him.
He laughed out loud. ‘That’s a problem.’
‘I also like art. Why can’t Muslims draw pictures of living beings? It seems such a waste.’ It was a question that had been nagging me for some time. I’d been dismayed to see ancient statues and pictures brutalised by fanatical Muslims from Egypt to Syria and Iraq over the last few years, and even recently I’d seen road signs of camels scrawled over – and I still hadn’t figured out what was so offensive to the religion about an image of a face or a creature.
He pondered my question.
‘Well, the Prophet Muhammad said that only God shall create images of living beings and it isn’t for us humans to show pictures of people or animals, since we can never do the job as well as God.’
I pointed to the TV. ‘Well, there’s pictures of people coming out of that,’ I said. ‘And there’s a photo of your face on your ID card. Surely that’s the same?’
He screwed up his nose, before breaking into a smile.
‘That’s different. But I tell you what. If you become a Muslim, you can keep your art. I think Allah won’t mind too much if you want to draw pictures.’
He patted me on the shoulder. ‘But no whisky, okay?’
I told him I’d think about it, as we finished up our coffee. We shook hands and I thanked him for lunch before saying goodbye. I knew that I’d never find all the answers to my questions, and it was unfair to ask my host to speak for an entire religion and a whole country, but I’d come away feeling that he meant what he said. If his opinion was representative of most religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, and they were even half as pleasant as Khalid Al-Muarei, then I was reassured that the mosques and madrassas weren’t entirely to blame for espousing terror and fanaticism.
That afternoon, we left Al-’Ula to follow the road parallel to the old Hejaz railway. It was the moment I’d been waiting for and the most special personal experience of my time in Saudi Arabia, if not the journey so far. When I’d watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia at the age of ten, I swore that one day I’d set foot on the tracks that earned him a place in British history as one of the greatest and most famous adventurers of all time.
I’d read Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a young army officer and took lessons from it during my deployment in Afghanistan a decade before. For all his controversy and faults, Lawrence was my hero. As we sped through the majestic red volcanic plains of the Hejaz, I mentioned as much to Khaled.
He grunted without looking at me.
‘The man was a bastard. He was just a British spy who promised the Arabs gold, but it was all lies. Nothing good came of his mischief. Don’t get me wrong, we hated the Turks and we wanted rid of the Ottoman Empire, but the Arabs, the Bedouin who he says he loved, they got nothing. We just swapped one foreign rule for another. No, I don’t like Lawrence. Or your man Burton either. He sneaked into Mecca without permission. The only one I like is Thesiger. He lived with us Arabs and got to know us. He had no agenda other than wanting to learn about our ways, I think. Isn’t that what travel should be all about?’
As the peaks grew higher in the distance, the dry river beds weaved between a fractured landscape made up of great boulders, jagged mounds and small groves of palm trees and lush acacia bushes, flowering with red and yellow blossom. We left the main road and followed a sandy track that led through a narrow valley.
As we came out onto a plain, I found the reward I’d been looking for. A sand-covered embankment ran in a straight line between the boulders, following the natural course of the wadi. It was, of course, the old railway line that we’d followed north, but here it was so indistinct that it was hard to tell what it was. Khaled had never been here before and was reluctant to visit a place that for him symbolised a tainted past, but for me, I knew that I couldn’t come this far and not see with my own eyes one of the original stations. This was Haddiyah.
The old Ottoman station, which appeared before us as an abandoned two-storey building, its grey bricks were now crumbling after a century of dereliction. There was no one else around and I climbed through a hole in the rusty wire fence to explore the scene of such monumental importance.
It was here that exactly a hundred and one years ago, Thomas Edward Lawrence, employed by the British army to raise a rebellion of the Arab tribes against Ottoman Turkish rule, had succeeded in blowing up a number of Turkish and German trains in the midst of the First World War. It was a guerrilla campaign that changed the course of history in the region and helped Britain and her allies to defeat Germany and the Central Powers – the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria.
Throughout my journey, I’d seen and felt the legacy of Britain’s colonial rule. It was a subject that fascinated me as a student of history, and the reverberations are still very much apparent across the Arabian Peninsula, but I can’t describe the sense of personal excitement and satisfaction at seeing for myself the place where Lawrence himself fought a battle. I followed the railway tracks, as Khaled watched on.
They were now mostly covered in sand, but all around lay the debris of battle. The cartridges and bullets had long since been swallowed up by the desert, but bits of twisted metal, ammunition tins and ration boxes littered the stony plain. Almost all the wooden sleepers of the railway line had disappeared, no doubt pilfered by nomadic Bedouin to use for firewood, but it was the fact that anything remained at all that astonished me.
Then I saw what I’d been looking for. A hundred metres away, at the base of a small hill, sat the twisted remains of a locomotive. At the front was the engine and behind it the metal frame of the carriages, complete with their wheels, doors, valves and pipes. The chassis was coloured a deep purple, its metal a uniform shade of sun-drenched rust. It rarely rains in the Hejaz, so it was in surprisingly good condition and the oxidisation was only surface level. The engine with its steam funnel was on its side; otherwise it was in impeccable shape and in no way looked more than a century old, but the date marking its construction was clear – 1911.
This was one of the several German-made trains that had been sold to the Turks to transport troops and weaponry to the front line against the British, and Lawrence had used dynamite to blow them up wherever he came across them. Only a few steps away was the hill where I presumed he and his men had lain in wait for the locomotive to steam around the bend. It would have to slow down to take the corner, making it the perfect ambush site. I walked to the top of the hill and crouched behind the largest boulder. I knew, somehow instinctively, that it was right here that Lawrence would have crouched just before he pushed down on the detonator box.
For the first time in a long time, I felt joyful to the point of awe. I’d finally fulfilled my dream, and equally importantly, I’d almost crossed Saudi Arabia. It was a watershed in my journey. I’d broken the back of the expedition and completed almost four thousand miles. As far as I could tell, the most difficult and dangerous parts of the trip were now behind me.
Ahead lay Jordan, a country I knew well – it was safe, and easily accessible, filled with friendly people and beautiful scenery – and beyond that was the Holy Land, and I was still on track to get there before Christmas. As I stood on the mound, in the footsteps of Lawrence, I congratulated myself on a job well done and looked forward to whatever the adventure might have in store next.