Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [10]
Back in Arabia, Harry Philby, at last and too late, was finally given permission to venture into the Rub' al-Khali. He did so, for he saw a chance to even the score with his protégé-turned-rival. He would discover Ubar. His success was, in fact, assured.
Some years before, in a rare year of rain, bedouin dwelling on the northern fringes of the sands had followed their flocks deep into the Rub' al-Khali and had happened upon Wabar (as Ubar was also known). They now agreed to lead Philby back to its ruins, the ruins of a city so rich that pearls still lay scattered in the sand. They described as well a large half-buried camel forged of iron.
In March of 1932, Philby rode south from Riyadh and into the Rub' al-Khali. Forgotten, for the time being, was his grudge against Thomas. He and his bedouin were in high spirits. His companions sang:
Hear then the words of'Ad [Ubar's first king], Kin'ad his son:
Behold my castled-town, Aubar [Ubar] yclept!
Full ninety steeds within its stalls I kept,
To hunt the quarry, small and great, upon;
And ninety eunuchs tended me within its walls
Served in resplendent robes from north and east;
And ninety concubines, of comely breast
And rounded hips, amused me in its halls.
Now all is gone, all this with that, and never
Can aught repair the wreck—no hope for ever!13
In the late afternoon of the nineteenth day of his journey, Philby drew in his breath. Ahead, rising from the sands, were the blackened walls of Wabar, scorched by the fires of its destruction. His bedouin, heartened by the promise of fortune, cheered wildly. Philby, heartened by the promise of fame, raced his camel across the dunes.
His hopes were suddenly and completely dashed. For instead of Wabar, he came upon a circular crater in the sands, "a work of God not man." "I knew not whether to laugh or cry, but I was strangely fascinated by a scene that had shattered the dream of years. So that was Wabar! A volcano in the desert! and on it built the story of a city destroyed by fire from heaven for the sins of its King."
As if Wabar's mythical king were somehow responsible for his bitter disappointment, Philby railed on: "He had waxed wanton with his horses and eunuchs and concubines in an earthly paradise until the wrath came upon him with the west wind and reduced the scene of his riotous pleasures to ashes and desolation!"
But what of the pearls to be found here, scattered in the sands? Philby watched as the bedouin "burrowed for treasure, and took small shiny black pellets to be the pearls of'Ad's ladies blackened in the conflagration that had consumed them with their lord." In reality, worthless globules of crystallized glass ran through their fingers.
And what of the reported great iron camel? The bedouin scoured the site; it was nowhere to be found. They confessed they had never actually seen it, only heard about it from their fathers' fathers. Philby later learned that the great iron camel was in the basement of the British Museum. It seems that in the spring of 1863, a band of Rub' al-Khali bedouin, in the midst of a thunderstorm, had seen a meteorite fall from the sky. They found a large fragment of it—a fragment that resembled a camel—and carted it off. How it found its way to the British Museum is a mystery, but there it was stabled.
What Philby failed to understand was that he had, in fact, made a significant geological discovery. What he first took to be a desert volcano was in reality the impact crater of a meteorite; at the time only four or five had been found worldwide. Yet the discovery of the "Wabar crater" (as it is marked on modern maps) was of little consolation to Harry St. John Philby. On a searing desert day in 1932, his dreams proved only dreams, and he thereafter scoffed at the idea that there ever was such