The Chabir, or leader, chose to notify his approach to the town by beating drums, (two of which he had borne before him as marks of his office, and as occasion might require, to collect the travellers when dispersed,) and by other tokens of joy, as firing small arms, shouting, &c.
-Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the Year 1792 to 1798, William George Browne
Browne traveled the reverse of the Darb al-Arba’in, the Way of the Forty (Days), along its original inland route, from Egypt’s Kharga Oasis to Darfur and Kordofan. I rode in the opposite direction, from south to north, almost 200 years later and along a more Nile-sided route, but I found its sands and its gravels, its stones and flints, its petrified rocks and ostrich egg shell shards were no different than before.
Nor was the job of the khabir, the leader of the caravan, who chose which path of stones and rocks and sands to follow- in my case a man named KhairAllah KhairaSeed (spelled al-Sayyid), the Goodness of God, the Goodness of the Prophet.
Browne and his caravan were approaching Kharga Oasis, coming off the Asyut Plateau, when he described how its khabir notified the townspeople of his arrival by beating drums and firing small arms. KhairAllah when approaching a village with his herd of 150 camels would be much more discreet. He and his four drovers carried no drums or guns, only knives and, in one man’s saddle bag, a flute.
But out in the open desert, where thieves often lay by to cut out a camel or two from our night march, or where in broad daylight we might find ourselves approached by men unknown, most likely armed with Enfield rifles left over from WW2, but perhaps with automatic weapons- kalash, as they were called- spilled over from Libya, KhairAllah did indeed want to make a show of military force. That is when he asked Ned to shoulder his film camera as if it were a stinger missile and to get out in front of the herd for all to see.
This worked well for us in several ways. Ned always got good footage of approaching camel men. The camel men would greet us with genuine emotion- fear- on their faces, rather than the slack-jawed looks of curiosity that a foreign film crew in the desert usually elicited. And KhairAllah would get the jump on whoever might be approaching, friend or foe.
Lucky for us, they were always friends, and we all got good laughs when they finally figured out our weapon only shot 24 frames per second.
Aaton
Stinger