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Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is the chief of the many families into which the Gara tribe is divided, and consequently he was recognised as the chief of all the Garas.
Sheikh Sehel promised to take us across the Gara border into Nejd if we wished; but as it would have entailed a considerable delay and parley with the sheikhs of the Nejd Bedouin, and as we could see from our present vantage ground that the country would afford us absolutely no objects of interest, we decided not to attempt this expedition.
'You must return to Al Hafa. We can travel no more with you, as Theodore has kicked Sheikh Sehel, for by this time they had become acquainted with our Christian names, and never used any other appellative. We felt that the aspect of affairs was serious, and that in the night season he had been guilty of an indiscretion which might imperil both our safety and the farther progress of our journey.
As to the pills, we had some difficulty in getting the Bedouin not to chew them, but when one man, Mas'ah by name, solemnly chewed five Holloway's pills and was very sick after so doing, it began to dawn upon them that our method was the right one. Most embarrassing of all our patients was old Sheikh Sehel himself.
The trees were loaded with climbing cactus and a large purple convolvulus with great round leaves. Sheikh Sehel maintains that he has seen ghinni in that neighbourhood.
Sheikh Sehel met many of his relatives in the Wadi Ghersìd, and his nose was subject to many energetic rubs, and the novelty of this greeting, about which one had vaguely read in years gone by, excited our interest deeply, but at the same time we were thankful we were not likely to meet any relatives in the valley, and to have to undergo the novel sensations in person.
So we affected to take the matter as a joke, laughed heartily, patted Sheikh Sehel on the back, said that we did not know who it was, and my husband entered into a solemn compact that if they would not catch in our guys again, he would never kick his majesty any more. It was surprising to see how soon the glum faces relaxed, and how soon all ill-feeling was forgotten.
They were all exceedingly obsequious to Sheikh Sehel, and we soon found that he was a veritable king amongst them, and forthwith we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his hands, to take us whither he would and spend as long about it as he liked.
We were for ever hearing stories of jinni amongst the Gara Bedouin, and all we could gather was that when propitiated they are friendly to the human race. Old Sheikh Sehel and his men stuck to it that they had constantly seen jinni, and their belief in them seems deeply rooted. This word is pronounced ghinni in Southern Arabia. On January 4 we were at Beit el Khatan. We had to climb on foot.
He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which he led straight through everything, regardless of the fact that I was on several occasions nearly knocked off by the branches of trees; and if my seat was uncomfortable, which it often was, as well as precarious for we all sat on luggage indifferently tied on we had the greatest work to make Sheikh Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the sheikh of all the Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his dignity was not to be trifled with.
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