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Updated: June 5, 2025
We therefore encamped, and very soon the Jabberi came and asked my husband for a sheep, but he said he would not give one now, but later in the journey he would do so if he found we were getting on well; so they went away, but soon came back for twenty-seven dollars, as siyar to the Hamoumi.
They must have had siyara, though, from some tribe. Each tribe has its fixed tariff. The Hamoumi have twenty-seven dollars, the Jabberi seventy, the Tamimi one hundred, &c., and when this sum is paid, if you have only one of each tribe with you, you are safe. When we had gone two-thirds of our way we reached a palm-shadowed village called Zarafa.
There was no news of the Tamimi and many told us they would not come, but we still kept up our vain hopes, as they had promised to come and wait a day or two for us, bringing with them a siyara of the Minhali and of the Hamoumi. However, we were never allowed to get to the trysting-place, as we afterwards thought, because the Jabberi wanted to keep the fleecing of us in their own hands.
Talib did not wish to stay there, for the water is brackish, and he wanted us to go on before the camel-men came up, but we waited, and they and the Jabberi had a loud and angry quarrel, and we were told there was no water nearer than Al Madi, and some of them wanted to stop at a place half-way to Al Madi and send for water. We could make neither head nor tail of it.
There was a great deal of gun-firing when the Jabberi went by with the sheikh of the Kattiri, and our next interest was a letter from Al Koton, saying 'that the Tamimi, who had sworn on their heads and their eyes to do so, had never appeared, and that the Jabberi wanted 110 dollars, exclusive of camel hire, to go with us, the camels only to go a short distance, and then we must change.
Starting off early before our caravan with several Jabberi, we intended to ascend to the plateau before the heat of midday came on.
They said they would not let us advance without paying, and we feared to come to terms as our Jabberi first said they were Amri, and then a tribe of Jabberi with whom they were at war.
The Jabberi had gone away, as my husband said he must think over this; so we consulted together. We at first quite decided to return to Al Koton, and try to reach the coast by Wadi al Ain and, if we could not have the camels, to load our own three animals with necessaries and money, leaving all else behind, and perhaps to slip by Siwoun in the night.
My husband said he would camp at Sufeila, but they quickly loaded up for Bir Baokban, they said. The sheikh was given fifteen dollars, and he told us he would send four of his sons with us. I must say that after those four or five hours of being stared at and called bad names, I was pretty tired. We none of us remarked that three of the soldiers, all the Jabberi, and the four sons stayed behind.
The sultan told us there had been a great uproar about us, and all the Yafei tribe were now considered Kafirs. The Kattiri absolutely refused the Jabberi leave to conduct us, and the Nahadi, through whose lands we had passed from Hagarein, said that if they had known how the Kattiri would treat us, they would have treated us just the same.
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