The thought that perhaps I might be pregnant first came to me about 400 miles north of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the middle of the desert, after what was, for me, another uncomfortable night of attempting to sleep in a Land Rover. It was early morning and other members of the party had scattered to all points of the compass, some carrying shovels, for their morning constitution. Although my periods were usually regular I thought perhaps this gruelling journey was to blame for its lateness and put any thoughts of babies to the back of my mind.
This five day camping trip had been particularly arduous and I have to admit to very little enthusiasm on my part, thankfully I have become much more culturally aware in my later years. The year was 1974 and looking back on it now it was a real adventure to set off into the desert to visit the ancient Nabatean ruins in Madein Saleh. One member of our group worked for the British Embassy and procured a British Embassy Land Rover for the trip. Then there was Charles Stuart, a member of the British aristocracy and a descendent of King Charles Stuart, at least that is what he told us. Charles was charming and extremely knowledgeable introducing us to the delights of Charles M Doughty’s ‘Travels in Arabia Deserta’ and T. E. Lawrence the first of whom I knew nothing, the second very little, although I had seen the film!
We were to trace the journey of Lawrence of Arabia, it sounded as though it should be full of romance and adventure so I went along for the ride but not expecting too much.
The first obstacle we encountered was the paper work, we needed permits to travel, permits to allow us to view the Nabatean remains, permits to dare to go within a mile of Medina, permits to breathe were waived on this occasion, although we could have breathed our last had we taken a wrong turn and ended up in Medina.
When we had acquired the necessary paperwork, paying the compulsory baksheesh along the way, we could get down to practicalities. Vehicles had to be mustered, we had the land rover, previously mentioned, other members of our party included the manager of the British Bank of the Middle East who spoke Arabic and his wife who was a nurse, which was reassuring and they had a Toyota four wheel drive and another Toyota was also hired to accommodate our party of twelve.
So, we were twelve people travelling in three vehicles. My husband and I were separated; I travelled in the British Embassy Land Rover with the diplomat, his wife and Charles Stuart. My husband was in the British Bank of the Middle East’s Toyota.
Provisions had all been arranged by the bank and embassy wives, we had adequate water supplies to get us to the first watering hole, some we carried in traditional canvas water cooling bags, or chuggles, suspended from the vehicles; it was a bit like drinking from an old sock.
We had chosen to travel during the Feast of Ramadan, the five day break following the fast. The previous week I had witnessed a public flogging in the Souk where several people were being beaten by the Matawah for breaking the fast.
We set off on the first day of the holiday heading for Medina 200 miles north of Jeddah, from here we had to take the Christian highway, so named because it bypassed Medina (no Christians allowed).
The journey to Medina was uneventful, just the occasional dead camel, beset by vultures, at the side of the road. The traffic was the usual mix of cars driving down the middle of the road some with children crouching in the boot, small pickups with the men cosy inside and the women and the goats in the back. The funniest cargo I ever saw in one of these pickups was a huge wedding cake, open to the elements, swaying precariously.
In Jeddah locals rode their bikes with no consideration of safety, they could be seen wobbling along whilst gazing around them often resulting in a fall. Donkeys tottered along on their spindly whip scarred legs, children begged, mainly for the fun of it and the religious police were to be feared as they were known to beat the legs and arms of women who had failed to comply with the dress code, tarring them in some instances. Men did not escape the Matawah they could be dragged unceremoniously into a barber’s shop for an enforced haircut if theirs was deemed too long, my husband experienced this indignity but I digress back to this journey.
We reached the outskirts of Medina where there was a border control, papers were perused, passports checked by everyone around, we were studied curiously then dismissed with a vague wave as to which direction we should take. We discussed between ourselves which direction the wave had been towards we decided it had been towards the road in front of us and drove on. We hadn’t got far before we realised that all was not well, I don’t know if the wave had been deliberately misleading, perhaps they were in need of some excitement or target practice but we were being chased and when we stopped we were vociferously reprimanded by a bunch of gun toting guards.
Our experience led to the following being added to the guidelines issued by the British Embassy for future travellers:
‘On leaving the police post, cross the central carriageway to the left and take the loop road which is on the left and bears to the right onto the Christian bypass’.
Continuing north towards Al Ula we eventually ran out of good road and we were on the well worn track as described in our brief from former travellers. It was at this point I found my contact with the seat becoming increasingly less and so it went on until our return to the main road four days later.
As soon as the sun began to set we had to find a place to camp, it was a very rough terrain, not picture book desert with dunes and soft sand and there were trees and shrubs which came in handy when nature called. It was this first night when I realised the delights of camping in the desert. During the day we had not seen hardly any wildlife apart from camels but at night the ground became alive with dung beetles. During hours of darkness all I could think of was avoiding contact with these creepy crawlies, on the ground were the beetles and around the lanterns were hundreds of kamikaze flying insects, including hard shelled flying beetles and moths the size of kites.
It wasn’t long before everyone started preparing for sleep, camp beds were erected and I was told how lovely it would be to sleep under the stars, something I would love to do now, oh for those dark dark skies! However, all I could think of were the bugs and when everyone was nicely tucked up I crept into the Land Rover, I wasn’t going to risk having a scorpion as my bed mate.
When day dawned I was happy, I’m definitely a day person and always will be. I remember the nights in Jeddah very vividly, when my husband was working late, which was most nights, it was dark by six or seven in the evening. One particular evening it had been raining and the house was invaded by flying ants about an inch long and they were coming in under doors and crevices where air conditioning units didn’t fit properly. I attacked these things with anything that came to hand until the rooms were littered with gossamer wings, which fell from the creatures on impact. On another occasion I saw something bobbing around the room close to the wall but the movement wasn’t like the more familiar movement of a cockroach or gecko. It wasn’t until I had noticed mice running around my vegetable patch that I realised they must have got into the house.
The dog caught the mouse and my husband took it from him, a tiny little thing, holding it by its tail he proceeded to wash it under the tap, at least that is what it looked like, he thought he was drowning it! When this didn’t work, I can’t think why, he took it outside and let it go. On another occasion I opened the back door to check on the chickens and came face to face with a rat, I hadn’t realised until then that they could climb walls.
When I first went out to Saudi Arabia, my husband was working in Al Khobar, near Dammam on the east coast, we had just married and I had been pleasantly surprised on arrival as it wasn’t as grim as I had expected. However, I was incredibly naïve and when some workmen arrived to fit an air conditioner I showed them to the room and left them to it. After they had gone I went to look at their handy work and couldn’t believe what I saw. The carpet was littered with nails and splinters of wood and other debris left over from a ham fisted attempt to force a rectangular air conditioner into a badly cut hole that didn’t have right angles. The air conditioner was crooked and where it didn’t fit you could see daylight through the wall. I cleared away the mess making a mental note to supervise any future work.
Another eye opener was the delivery of a large American style fridge freezer; several people arrived ushering in what looked like a walking fridge, it wasn’t until the fridge came nearer I noticed the small hunched figure, of a Yemeni, beneath it nearly doubled over with the burden on his back.
The second day of our trip took us just 12 kilometres short of our destination. During the day we had at least two punctures and a lot of problems with the roof rack on the hired Toyota giving rise to this note in the guide for future travellers issued by the embassy:
‘Put only lightweight items on the roof rack and make sure that they are well tied down’. In fact the supports had forced holes in the roof of the vehicle as well as many items being lost along the journey.
Through our experience we were able to leave another important guideline for future travellers it is this ‘Railway (Hejaz) – in parts the track actually follows the railway track. Watch out, there are gaps at some culverts. Do not drive along the railway unless you can see a well-worn track along it. If you have to drive down an embankment make the turn as much of a right angle as possible. It is probably better for passengers to walk down.’ The latter part of this refers to a near accident when the vehicle, in which I was travelling driven by Charles Stuart (descendant of THE Charles Stuart), on seeing a culvert ahead, he drove down the embankment diagonally and we very nearly turned over. During the seconds that it took when it felt as if we would turn over and for Charles to bring us back from the brink with his skilful driving we sat in stunned silence.
We were all numbed by this incident; the occupants of the hired Toyota had seen what happened and thought we were going over, it was only on reflection I realised how lucky we were not to have had any accidents or illness on the trip.
It was when we joined the route of the old Hejaz railway we started to see some incredibly incongruous sights. Engines, from the time of Lawrence, standing majestically in the desert perfectly preserved in these dry conditions. Twisted railway tracks and empty station buildings that looked as if they had just been built but the only occupants were goats.
By now the terrain had changed and could be likened to parts of Arizona, red rock formations artistically chiselled by the wind. On the outskirts of Al Ula we were stopped by police who could find no copy of the authority for our visit. After showing our copy of the document our drivers were taken to the Deputy Emir’s office to play the waiting game while the rest of us were shown where we could have the tyres repaired and also where we could replenish our water supply at the local well. It wasn’t until we had quenched our thirst that we noticed the tadpoles swimming around in it! However, no one suffered any ill effects.
By the time we had arranged for the punctures to be repaired for our return trip and the Emir had satisfied his curiosity it was getting late and we were unable to reach Madain Saleh before nightfall, we camped within twelve kilometres of our destination.
The next day we drove into Madain Saleh, after we had partaken of half a dozen cups of tea with the Emir in his sitting room fitted with black vinyl settees and chairs from which, in the intolerable heat, we had to prise ourselves off to leave. The Emir told us we could now visit the tombs but someone would find us during the day to check our papers but we should not look for him, possibly to add a little intrigue?
I can remember feeling too tired to want to do anything I was completely exhausted from the journey, whereas Charles rushed from one group of rocks to another expounding their beauty. I sat and wondered why my enthusiasm didn’t match that of Charles, I think we all descend on historic sites expecting to feel some sense of history and lost civilisation with the expectation that it will radiate something of its past but I felt nothing except disappointment.
Here we were surrounded by tombs of an ancient Nabatean tribe, a settlement related to Petra. It was and still is an amazing site for anyone with an interest in archaeology, when we were there very few people had visited the area and no excavations were allowed. Looking at pictures of Madain Saleh on the internet today and in ‘1000 places to see before you die’ it is obvious we didn’t see the large tombs and monuments, we only saw roughly cut caves and nothing spectacular and I think the disappointment I felt at the time was justified. I have the original documents we used to find our way to Madain Saleh together with photocopies of the drawings taken from Charles M Doughty’s aforementioned ‘Travels in Arabia Deserta’ and we saw nothing that spectacular. This seems to be the story of my life as, if you read on, my visit to Petra also ended in disappointment. What we saw were roughly hewn cavities in the rocks, probably burial chambers as they had steps carved above the entrance as if for the soul to ascend to heaven.
We were eventually tracked down by the man seeking us; he studied our papers for half an hour and left. Later we were ‘found’ again by more men who entertained us by crawling under our vehicles, trying to read and record our number plates, studying the travel permits again and perusing our passports, sometimes upside down. John Hill, the Arabist amongst us tried to assist them but they were beyond help and by this time we had had enough, it was hot we wanted to explore not waste our valuable time and we knew our papers were in order. Eventually they left probably without the information they required because they were unable to read our documents.
Although tourism had not yet reached the area, only a handful of visitors a year at this time, small children appeared to sell us their treasures; they poured them onto the ground from small pouches, old coins and trinkets which may have been authentic and so time was spent bartering for the treasure.
We camped close to a rocky escarpment with some of the group choosing to sleep on top of the rocks to be at one with nature, I climbed into the Land Rover.
The return journey wasn’t particularly eventful, we made a slight detour to visit a fort of Turkish origin, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in what I consider desert proper, it looked like what once must have been a flourishing oasis, sand dunes and palm trees some erect some fallen, in fact it looked like an abandoned film set quite surreal. Along with the true desert image had to be soft sand and we spent a lot of time driving in and out of it hence another footnote for other intrepid explorers:
‘In soft sand – keep going with high revs. If stuck reverse out (try again).
We travelled home using the sun as our compass and the occasional signpost. The boredom of our journey had been broken by incongruous sights such as locomotives, carriages and twisted tracks left over from T.E. Lawrences’ guerrilla attacks during the Arab revolt. On another occasion we encountered a gang of Korean road builders who were, presumably, building the highway that would make the journey much easier for subsequent travellers. Bedouin tribes along the way were visibly shocked by the sight of khawajas driving across the desert but always proffered help and hospitality.
Back in Jeddah, the bone shaking journey was behind me but still no period!
