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Updated: June 26, 2025
The teherane would seem to be the favourite and only Sokotran instrument of music if we except flutes made of the leg-bones of birds common on the opposite coast, and probably introduced thence and finds favour alike with Arab, Bedou, and Negro. The people here did not torment us by staring at and crowding round us.
After our somewhat long experience of life on a dhow we were delighted to become Bedou once more, and wander amongst the fine rocky range of mountains, but we were disappointed that our guide would not take us far behind this range for fear of the Dervishes; and, as shortly after the outbreak of the war a party of Dervishes came right down to Halaib, there is every reason to believe that had we gone far inland at this point we might have been compelled to pay the Khalifa a not over-pleasant visit at Omdurman.
It consisted of a hot, seething mass of brown bodies writhing about and apparently enjoying themselves. Stone tobacco pipes are made here of a kind of limestone, very curly silver powder-flasks, rather like nautilus shells, and curious guns without stocks. The Bedou women wear tremendously heavy belts and very wide brass armlets.
Every Bedou, male or female, has a ring or charm of cornelian set in base silver, and agates and small tusks also set in silver. The root with which the women paint themselves yellow is called shubab. It is dried and powdered. It only grows when there is rain.
A lame Bedou brought us some green oranges and potatoes, which were really the roots of a convolvulus: they were not bad when baked in the ashes, but hard when boiled. He also brought us a sweet herb which they use to stuff pillows with.
When a Bedou has committed a murder, he runs to the houses of the seyyids, where there is sanctuary, and gets absolution on paying four or five hundred dollars, according to the rank of the murdered man. Thus travelling is difficult unless you have paid siyar, and a relation of the siyara is kept in prison at Sheher.
We retired in due course to our tent and our beds, but not to sleep, for in addition to their discordant songs, in rushing to and fro they would catch in our tent-guys, and give us sudden shocks, which rendered sleep impossible. Exasperated at this beyond all bearing, my husband at length rushed out and caught a Bedou in the very act of tumbling over a guy.
Bedou women crowded around us, closely veiled in indigo-dyed masks, with narrow slits for their eyes, carrying their babies with them in rude cradles resembling hencoops, with a cluster of charms hung from the top, which has the twofold advantage of amusing the baby and keeping off the evil eye.
I have seen a householder after trying to hammer the key in with a stone, at last in despair climb over his own garden wall. Perchance a shark-skin or wooden buckler may be picked up from a Bedou from the mountains, and there are chances of obtaining the products of many nationalities, for Maskat, like Aden, is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the East.
Once we were settled, there was the usual run on the medicine chest. A very nice Bedou soldier, Aman, the head one, was given five pills into one hand by my husband, and as he insisted on grasping his weapons with his other, he had such difficulty in consuming them that I had to hold the cup of water for him to sip from. Madder trees grow about, and the Bedouin make clothes from the silky fibres.
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