[4] XVI. iii. 4.
[5] Hist. des langues sémitiques, ii. 183.
[6] Perrot, History of Art in Phœnicia.
CHAPTER III
OUR VISIT TO RUFA'A
During the time that we spent at Ali we had numerous visitors. The first day came five camels with two riders apiece, and a train of donkeys, bringing rich pearl merchants from the capital; these sat in a circle and complacently drank our coffee and ate our mixed biscuits, without in any way troubling us, having apparently come for no other object than to get this slender refreshment.
Next day came Sheikh Mohammed, a young man of seventeen, a nephew of Sheikh Esau, who was about to wed his uncle's daughter, and was talked of as the heir-apparent to the throne; he was all gorgeous in a white embroidered robe, red turban, and head rings bound in royal gold. He played with our pistols with covetous eyes, ate some English cake, having first questioned the bazaar-master as to the orthodoxy of its ingredients, and then he promised us a visit next day.
He came on the morrow, on a beautifully caparisoned horse, with red trappings and gold tassels. He brought with him many followers and announced his intention of passing the day with us, rather to our distress; but we were appeased by the present of a fat lamb with one of those large bushy tails which remind one forcibly of a lady's bustle, and suggests that the ingenious milliner who invented these atrocities must have taken for her pattern an Eastern sheep. This day 'Prince' Mohammed handled the revolver more covetously than ever, and got so far as exchanging his scarlet embroidered case, with red silk belt and silver buckle, for my leathern one.
Sheikh Mohammed was very anxious to see how I could shoot with my revolver, so a brown pot containing about half a pint of water was put on a lump of rock as a mark. I was terrified; for I knew if I missed, as I surely expected, I should bring great discredit on myself and my nation, and there was such a crowd! My husband said I must try, and I am sure no one was more astonished than I was that I shattered the pot. If I had not it would have been said that I only carried the revolver for show.
That afternoon a great cavalcade of gazelle huntsmen called upon us. The four chief men of these had each a hooded falcon on his arm, and a tawny Persian greyhound, with long silky tail, at his side. They wore their sickle-like daggers in their waistbands; their bodies were enveloped in long cloaks, and their heads in white cloths bound round with the camel-hair straps; they were accompanied by another young scion of the El Khalifa family, who bestrode a white Arab steed with the gayest possible trappings. Thus was this young prince attired: on his head a cashmere kerchief with gold akkal; he was almost smothered in an orange cloth gown trimmed with gold and lined with green, the sleeves of which were very long, cut open at the ends and trimmed; over this robe was cast a black cloth cloak trimmed with gold on the shoulders, and a richly inlaid sword dangled at his side, almost as big as himself, for he was but an undersized boy of fifteen. The sportsmen made a very nice group for our photography, as did almost everything around us on Bahrein.
Any excavator would have lost patience with the men of Bahrein with whom we had to deal; tickets had to be issued to prevent more men working than were wanted, and claiming pay at the end of the day; ubiquity was essential, for they loved to get out of sight and do nothing; with unceasing regularity the pipe went round and they paused for a 'drink' at the bubble-bubble, as the Arabs express it; morning, noon-tide, and evening prayers were, I am sure, unnecessarily long. Accidents would happen, which alarmed us at first, until we learnt how ready they were to cry wolf: one man was knocked over by a stone; we thought by his contortions some limb must be broken, and we applied vaseline, our only available remedy, to the bruise; his fellow-workmen then seized him by the shoulders, he keeping his arms crossed the while, shook him well 'to put the bones right again,' as they expressed it, and he continued his work as before.
The bazaar-master and the policeman would come and frantically seize a tool, and work for a few seconds with herculean vigour by way of example, which was never followed. 'Yallah!' 'hurry on' (i.e. Oh God); 'Marhabbah!' 'very good,' the men would cry, and they would sing and scream with a vigour that nearly drove us wild. But for the occasional application of a stick by the bazaar-master and great firmness, we should have got nothing out of them but noise.
One day we had a mutiny because my husband dismissed two men who came very late; the rest refused to work, and came dancing round us, shouting and brandishing spades. One had actually got hold of a naked sword, which weapon I did not at all like, and I was thankful 'Prince' Mohammed had not yet got the revolver. For some time they continued this wild weird dance, consigning us freely to the lower regions as they danced, and then they all went away, so that the bazaar-master had to be sent in search of other and more amenable men. Evidently Sheikh Esau, when he entrusted us to the charge of the bazaar-master and sent policemen with us, was afraid of something untoward happening. Next day we heard that his majesty was coming in person with his tents to encamp in our vicinity, and I fancy we were in more danger from those men than we realised at the moment, fanned as they are into hatred of the infidel by the fanatical Wahabi; thirty years ago, I was told, no infidel could have ventured into the centre of Bahrein with safety.
Another important visitor came on Saturday in the shape of Sheikh Khallet, a cousin of the ruling chief, with a retinue of ten men, from Rufa'a, an inland village. We sat for awhile on our heels in rows, conversing and smiling, and finally accepted an invitation from Sheikh Khallet to visit him at his village, and make a little tour over the island. Accordingly, on Sunday morning we started, accompanied by the bazaar-master, for Rufa'a, and we were not a little relieved to get away before Sheikh Esau was upon us, and escape the formalities which his royal presence in our midst would have necessitated.
We had an exceedingly hot ride of it, and the wind was so high that our position on our donkeys was rendered even more precarious than usual. The desert sand whirled around us: we shut our eyes, tied down our hats, and tried to be patient; for miles our road led through the tumuli of those mysterious dead, who once in their thousands must have peopled Bahrein; their old wells are still to be seen in the desert, and evidences of a cultivation which has long ago disappeared. As we approached the edge of this vast necropolis the mounds grew less and less, until mere heaps of stones marked the spot where a dead man lay, and then we saw before us the two villages of Rufa'a. Of these, one is known as Rufa'a Shergeh, or South-western Rufa'a; the other, which belongs to the young Prince Mohammed, is called Rufa'a Jebeli. The Rufa'a are much older than Moharek, or Manamah; they are fortified with castellated walls of mud brick. Many of the El Khalifa family reside here in comfortable houses. South-western Rufa'a is quite a big place, and as our arrival became known all the village turned out to see us. The advent of an English lady among them was something too excessively novel: even close-veiled women forgot their prudery, and peered out from their blue coverings, screaming with laughter, and pointing as they screamed to the somewhat appalled object of their mirth. 'Hade bibi!' ('there goes the lady'), shouted they again and again. No victorious potentate ever had a more triumphant entry into his capital than the English 'bibi' had on entering South-western Rufa'a.
Sheikh Khallet was ready to receive us in his kahwa or reception-room, furnished solely by strips of matting and a camel-hair rug with coarse embroidery on it; two pillows were produced for us, and Arabs squatted on the matting all round the wall, for it was Sheikh Khallet's morning reception, or majilis, just then, and we were the lions of the occasion. Our host, we soon learnt, rather to our dismay, was a most rigid ascetic—a Wahabi to the backbone. He allows of no internal decorations in his house; no smoking is allowed, no wine, only perpetual coffee and perpetual prayers; our prospects were not of the most brilliant. Some of the Wahabi think even coffee wrong. After a while all the company left, and Sheikh Khallet intimated