On August 17, I took a unique trip. It touched my heart and soul in a thousand ways, and so I hesitated to write about it.
Have you ever had one of those days you just want to keep to yourself, because it was so good you didn't want to share it for fear the "specialness" would get somehow diluted? [No, you haven't? Does that make me weird, or does that make you weird?]
There's no way I can explain how this went, so I'll ask your understanding if my inept attempt fails to convey all the specialness. This will also be a long one, so make sure you have sufficient time and attention span.
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Muharram is a good friend; a solid friend that I trust with my life, even though I've only know him for 3 months. He has a friend, he explained one day, that has a camel farm, and Muharram extended an invitation for my roommates and me to visit the camel farm, drink camel milk, and eat camel burgers. The invitation came on the heels of the faux (henna) camel tattoo from Chapter 22.
Marlon agreed to go; Danyal spends weekends with his family in Jeddah, and politely declined.
The camel trip was talked about in a jolly, adventurous tone, with a fair amount of macho enthusiasm -- you know me, that's the way I roll.
We started from KAEC one morning, and drove for about 90 minutes through Jeddah. Crazy place, Jeddah .... but I digress. We pulled off the interstate at a spot Muharram described as "the pick up spot." Obviously, he's not familiar with the latest American slang.
movie goes here, except Blogger can't handle it. [expletive deleted.]
We met his friend Hamud and transferred to his Nissan pickup for the rest of the day. Hamud speaks almost no English, and works for the Saudi Special Forces. He brought a fabulous attitude, which added to Marlon's, Muharram's, and mine. I made the crew stop at Al Baik, the Jeddah equivalent of KFC, since I'd not yet eaten there. That was the last touch of reality for the day.
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| Guess where? |
We re-entered the interstate, and aimed the truck at the mountains just north of Jeddah. The typical sandy desert changed quickly to giant stacks of rocks with the ubiquitous sand caught in valleys, chinks, and crevices. We continued to blow down the road at 120 to 140 kmh, headed towards Makkah. (The Saudi government spells it that way; Americans spell it "Mecca".)
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| Headed into the mountains. |
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| Makkah's Holy Mosque is the black cubic item on the right side of the billboard. |
Makkah is the site of the most holy place in the Islamic faith, and is off-limits for all who are not Muslims. I reminded our driver of this, which I didn't really need to do, and decided for the rest of the day to just shut up and let things unfold.
We got off at the last exit for infidels (they don't use that term any longer; at least I don't think they do) and stopped for fuel and drinks. There were some small corrals -- with camels! We looked around and enjoyed ourselves, although we were assured this little highway tourist stop was nothing compared to what we would see later.
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| Camels! At the equivalent of a produce stand at the side of the highway. |
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| Momma camel and babies. |
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| Baby camel hanging around Momma. |
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| Camel and Hud with the same facial expression! |
Back on the smaller highway at 100 kmh for a few minutes, then -- in the middle of nothingness -- Hamud slows down to about 10 and pulls off the highway. Let me say that more precisely: Hamud
turns off the highway. He turns directly into the sand, perpendicular to the highway, and guns the engine.
Now, this is beach dune sand, not a thin layer of sand over hard-pack, like KAP. The truck is slipping and sliding sideways and there's nothing ahead of us, just more sand. There are mountain ridges about a half-mile (one kilometer, or "klik") to our left and right, and mountains waaaaaaay out front on the horizon, but right here, right now, there's just sand.
At this point, I started thinking things they taught us in the Navy; things about how to keep from getting kidnapped, killed, or rolled for the cash in your pockets. And I reassured myself that Muharram is a very good friend. A solid friend that I am currently trusting with my life. (Gulp.) I assume Marlon was thinking similar thoughts.
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The sand is arranged roughly into dunes, so we crest a knoll, slew down the back side, and throttle furiously up the next incline. There are some ruts, every now and then, which provide marginally better traction than the naked sand, and contribute marvelously to the roller coaster effect of slipping side to side. Hamud is maintaining a solid 60 kmh (that's about 40 mph) as we go through the desert, bouncing, yawing, and spinning tires.
This continues for about 17 or 18 minutes (I noted the time -- Navy training) and things get a little better: terrain flattens and sand stiffens. I notice some straight-line ridges; nature doesn't do anything in straight lines, so I ask about them. Hamud shouts back over the engine and tire noise, but he shouts it in Arabic. Muharram then shouts it in English: "They are like fences. You build one to separate your property from your neighbor."
People spent money to buy this "property"? I should tell them about my Atlanta Home in the Sky.
At last we come over a ridge and, well look at that!, there's a hut. Clearly abandoned, but a small house that was obviously intended as a dwelling. Hamud pulls up and turns off the truck. He starts talking, and stops every two or three sentences so Muharram can translate.
This was his father's house, and his uncle lived 'around the corner'. He speaks quietly about his father. Hamud and his brothers and sisters were raised here, and his father lived here alone for a few years after Hamud's mother died, until he himself died a few years ago. All of the kids live in Jeddah now; they're city people. Only Hamud and one brother still visit "the Farm".
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L to R: Hud the Stud (USA), Hamud (Saudi Arabia), and Marlon (Costa Rica).
At Hamud's house, with serious desert in the background. |
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My boyz Muharram (Pakistan) and Hamud.
Yes, Muharram wears his "Frosty Frank's Snow Removal" T-shirt a lot.
He thinks it's funny. It kinda is. |
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Those are our tire tracks. That black speck in the left middle background is
a Bedouin-looking tent. There's nothing but rock, sand, and one tent in this photo. |
The place has been used by squatters, Hamud reported, but no one stays long because the well is too deep to pump manually, and someone stole the pump engine soon after his father died.
We hang around a few minutes, then saddle up again. This time the ground is considerably firmer -- it's ground now, not sand.
But it's still desert, and we blow through it at 50 to 60 kmh now that we can get traction. The experience through the windshield is like a Rally Car video game, except the noise and jouncing is real, and the air conditioner can't quite keep the heat out of the truck.
We pass several fences/ridges, crest a small hill and ........................ it's GREEN!
Lots of green! Palm trees, fir trees, bushes, tall grasses, GREEN! Hamud slows down now, because there's clearly a dirt road with grass on both sides and some sprouting between the ruts. There's a lacework of small ditches with water flowing through them. The palms are planted -- nice rows and columns -- with bushes growing around them and interspersed through the array. There are some kind of fir trees along the opposite side of the road.
Holy cow! We've been in uber-desert for at least 30 minutes, driving at a minimum of 35 mph, and, BAM!, here is a sight exactly like low country South Carolina! Unbelievable.
Unbelievable, so I forgive you thinking I exaggerate. But this, following so closely behind the Hamud family home, has smacked me upside the head with a baseball bat, and I am lolling in a la-la land of, "Can you believe this?" "Nope. Can't." And yet here it is.
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| Henna plants. Firs and evergreen bushes in the background. |
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| GREEN! |
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| Date palms at the "house". |
We pull up next to a half-rusted Isuzu pickup that's parked in front of ... a house, I suppose. It's an assembly of sticks, steel pipes used as poles, palm thatching, plywood, and two dozen license plates. There's a big rattan mat - think basketball half-court -- spread on the ground in front of the door, with a large wool rug spread in its center.
A ancient-looking man appears from the date palm grove. My head is spinning now, and I can feel the crazed grin splitting the lower half of my face. My cheeks are straining to remain attached to my skull.
Hamud and the man exchange geetings but not a handshake. Dulal -- that's his name, and he proudly shows us his official Saudi Arabian ID card he got last month, although he's lived in this hut on the Farm for over fifteen years, and he's from Sri Lanka -- invites us to sit on the rug, which we do, while he disappears into the hut. Hamud through Muharram explains that Dulal has tended the Farm ever since Hamud can remember, and has politely refused efforts from the family to move him into Jeddah.
Dulal reappears with a copper teapot, gleamingly polished, and five little glass teacups. He's chattering on and on about how he's a real person now that he has an ID card, and he pours tea into my cup.
"Thank you," I say.
"You're welcome," he replies with excellent pronunciation, and Muharram and Hamud explode!
"Dulal, dude! Where did you learn English?" (Or something to that effect in Arabic.)
He's been listening to Radio Riyadh's English programming at night on his AM radio that is powered by a small Honda generator, that he runs for an hour or two each night. Because -- let's not forget -- he's at least 15 miles into the emptiness of a magnificently blank desert.
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| Tea in the Sahara, with you. |
We have tea and chat, with Muharram as the interpreter both ways. Sometimes he doesn't translate, and no one cares. We five are sitting in a 21st-century oasis, sipping tea on a warm afternoon, barefoot on the rug (which wasn't quite big enough for all five of us), feeling the shade on our skin and listening to the date palms rustle in the wind all around us.
"Can you believe this?" I ask myself. "Nope. Can't." And yet here it is.
After a few minutes, though, I start fidgeting and asking questions. Where is the water source? ("I'll show you in a minute.") How does the irrigation work? ("Dulal tends to the dirt ditches, and blocks or opens them with a shovel and dirt to direct the water flow.") How did your father discover water here? ("It was my grandfather, who just discovered this green valley as he wandered through the desert.") Do you sell the henna for tattoos?, and Marlon tells the story about a henna jemel -- camel -- on my shoulder. ("We used to, but now the Farm really isn't treated as a money-making venture.") All this passes through our interpreter, so it takes a while to ask and answer, and requires extra clarification every now and then.
But no one is in a hurry. We're really, really relaxed in an otherworldly atmosphere.
After two or three cups, the tea is consumed and Hamud decides to show us the irrigation that makes the greenery spread as far as it does.
There's a pump, actually two pumps, powered by an antique marine Yanmar diesel. (Giern: I cannot think of a better product endorsement than a Yanmar Marine Diesel powering pumps in the Saudi Arabian desert.)
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Dulal and the Yanmar: antique guy primes an antique diesel
engine. It's manually cranked, and we took turns starting it up. |
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Engine (background) and belts to drive one pump; belts continue
to another pump behind us to the right. |
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| Engine and well #1. |
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Checking this thing out:
Pipe and hose take water to the irrigation ditches. Belt for
pump #2 leads off to the right behind ... (L to R) Hud the Stud and Hell of an Engineer,
Muharram in his Paki pajamas, and Hamud in his thawb. |
The pumps fill hoses that lead to one or another set of ditches (out of four) and Dulal and his shovel take it from there.
At this moment, my phone/camera battery died. Photos from this point forward are courtesy of my good buddy Marlon Steven Diaz Cordero, ardent fan of Real Madrid.
Hamud broke up my geeky love fest with the pump and hoses, and said we had to go. He said something to Dulal, who (carrying a machete) shinnied up a couple of palms and chopped down ten or so clusters of dates. We tossed them into the bed of the pickup and headed out the way we came.
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I thought about Dulal. He's two or three years older than I am. He doesn't have much, but I wonder if he has an equally smaller set of stresses. I like backpacking; could I possibly live as he does? There's got to be some significant benefits to working 4 or 5 hours a day watching water gurgle down a ditch. I mean shouldn't there be? I wondered if he has kids, and if they live in Sri Lanka, and when was the last time he saw them or spoke to them or hugged them tightly? Could I survive without books or the internet? Without periodic visits to the doctor and dentist ... or periodic visits with my kids?
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As soon as we cleared the greenery, Hamud turned hard left and we spurted across dune sand again. My head was still spinning, but there was a glow in my heart that let me completely release control. I did not care one whit about what was next: contentment and peace were mine. As Jimmy D might suggest, I was "living in the now".
We drove for only a few minutes, skirted close to a rocky ridge, rounded it and a cluster of buildings appeared on the crest of a crusty sand hill. "The Farm," said Muharram.
We pulled up beside a shiny late-model Chevy Silverado and parked. "Hamud's brother," Muharram said. "He comes here almost every weekend, like we do."
The buildings consisted of a dozen fenced pens, several with closed-in areas, a small house, two outbuildings like pole barns, and a building that looked like a 3-car garage. The house was concrete or stucco; everything else was wood or a "collection" of materials like Dulal's home.
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| The Farm |
While it didn't fit a Deep South definition of 'farm', there were goats, chickens, and dozens of pigeons. We fed Dulal's dates to the goats and chickens.
Muharram and Hamud raise the pigeons, but not to eat. They insist they make money by buying and selling pigeons with other collectors. Apparently there's a market in Jeddah on Saturday mornings, and folks come to buy and sell pigeons.
My friends had at least 5 different species; they pointed out colored beaks, curved beaks, eye color, feather colors, and feather arrangements, and they truly had some pretty birds. We wandered around the Farm, looking in on the animals, but this was not green space. It was pretty much desert with a small cluster of 20-foot-tall trees.
I asked about water, and the well was identified. It looked a lot more like a well you'd see on a US farm: electric motor attached to a drive shaft that enters into a concrete block house with a pipe coming out the opposite side. There was a spigot about knee high.
"The faucet is for washing our feet before we pray." Muharram pointed to a small stack of rocks shaped like the corner of a stone wall. "That's our mosque," he explained.
We were invited to sit on an outdoor rug again, and share tea with the farm's caretaker and a fellow from Pakistan who was introduced as "Talibani". He had a deep V-shaped scar running across his forehead; upward from his right eye until it disappeared under his closely-cut hairline in one direction, and to the center of his forehead in the other.
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Chillin at the Farm: Hud, Hamud from Saudi Special Forces, and Muharram the
translator. That's a water truck and the guest house in the background. This
place has electricity; see the overhead wire? |
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Marlon and Hud called on the carpet; china teacups nearby. Leaning on the pillow
results in a pose that's rather unflattering. |
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Tea apparatus: modern electric kettle pours hot water into traditional copper kettle holding
tea leaves; tea is then poured into delicate china cups. Aluminum bowl has water and is
where you put your cup when you're finished. If you don't, your cup keeps getting refilled.
Cell phones are also scattered around. |
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| Talibani |
The conversation filtered through Muharram, as it had all day, but I asked about Talibani's nickname. Muharram, also a Pakistani, laughed and said it was not because our new friend was sympathetic to the Taliban -- no, not at all. Didn't matter what his politics were when the IED exploded under his truck as he drove towards Jalalabad, Afghanistan, last year. His truck crashed and he smashed into the windshield frame. He decided that the current craziness wasn't worth staying in his homeland, and moved to Saudi Arabia, a place where there is a large Pakistani population matched with a large dose of peace.
Not sure how he found his way to the Farm, but I told him the story of my Navy submarine experience and how it -- perhaps like his own experience -- made me value peace very, very highly. He nodded quietly as I offered him another cup of tea. He, in turn, offered a cup to me.
The sun was settling low in the sky, and the conversation stopped. Hamud and Muharram got up to pray. Talibani got up to wander in the opposite direction. Marlon and I looked at each other in silence for a minute. "Wow," I said. "Wow."
"This is like nothing else in my life," he responded. I just nodded and watched our hosts kneel and rise, and kneel and rise.
"You're not kidding," I said after a while.
Long pause. "Can you believe this?"
Another, longer, pause. "Nope. Can't."
After they prayed, Hamud and Muharram returned and walked us to the roof of the guest house. "See that ridge?" Muharram asked. "Three years ago they predicted rain, so we built that dike. It did rain, and we trapped a lot of water. That was a good summer."
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| Dike |
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| Coke and dike and lots of desert |
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| Marlon on the roof of the guest house. Pens in back left housed turkeys and an ostrich. |
The sun was almost gone. "Now we see the camels," said Muharram.
I had completely forgotten about the camels.
We said our goodbyes to Talibani as the sun dropped below the mountains, and began driving over the sand again. This time, however, it was dark and our headlights seemed entirely overmatched by the suffocating darkness.
In a few minutes, I noticed other headlights in the distance off to the left. "Neighbors?" I asked.
Hamud grunted in a way that seemed to say, "Not sure who those guys are." He and Muharram swapped Arabic quickly and we swung the truck around, heading directly towards the lights, that were now flashing on and off.
As we saw the parked truck illuminated by our own headlights, I noted the time again -- and chuckled internally that knowing the time would make no difference if we got killed out here. It would be months before our bodies were discovered -- if they were ever discovered.
Turns out Hamud did know the four young men in the truck; they were just playing around flashing their headlights like a strobe light. Mr. Special Forces spoke Arabic, but the tone of his voice and his body language cleared implied, "Don't be farting around like that in this environment. This is serious desert, and flashing headlights is a serious signal."
We drove another five minutes and stopped. The moon was not full, but almost. The pen full of camels could be clearly seen, especially against the glow of Makkah's lights above the mountain ridge. "There are 110 camels in our pens," reported Muharram.
Hamud called me over to a camel outside the pen. He showed me how to caress the camel's neck and nose. Her hide felt like a short-fiber Oriental rug; bristly and tough.
I talked to her as Hamud walked away. I'm sure she understood my English as well as she understood Hamud's Arabic. I petted her nose and felt her sniffing my hand. She shifted under the moonlight, and I reassured her I was not dangerous. A thawb, a gutrah, and a scimitar, and I would have been Lawrence of Arabia.
Muharram called, "The camel milk is ready, Taylor!" I said goodbye to the camel, and thanked her for sharing a few minutes of her life with me.
We climbed onto a raised platform, perhaps 3 feet off the ground, onto yet another outdoor rug. Hamud had one large aluminum bowl and four small ones. He poured a little of the camel milk into each small bowl, and we picked them up.
The milk was warm -- a mark of freshness, I suppose -- and tasted like full-fat cow's milk: rich with flavor and heavy on the tongue. Hamud laughed and dared us to chug. Marlon couldn't; I had no problem at all, and took a second bowl. That one I sipped reflectively in the silence. Or almost silence; the camels whuffed and growled in the darkness behind me.
We sat for a few minutes. And a few minutes more. The combination was powerful: the moon; the mountains; the desert; warm camel milk; four guys from four nations; whinnies, grunts and growls from 100 nearby camels; and the glow from Makkah, a forbidden city even in the 21st century, just over the ridge.
Then we got back in Hamud's truck, found pavement, and followed it into Jeddah. It eventually led to KAEC and my bed.
Wow. What a day.
"Can you believe it?"
"Nope. Can't."
