Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [106]
Journeying to Hud's tomb, the pilgrim entered a symbolic world of the past, the psyche, life, and death. The pilgrimage lamented the death of the prophet Hud in a landscape of death; the word "Hadramaut"—appearing in Genesis as Hazarmaveth—has been taken to mean "Valley of Death." Yet this landscape also served as a landscape of life, of fertility. Robert Serjeant tells of the Karat Mawla, a conical (phallic, he says) hill in the Wadi 'Aidid. If a woman does not become pregnant within two or three years of marriage, she may elect to climb to the top of this hill, strip herself naked, and lie on her back as if anticipating intercourse. In some cases, the husband is there and materially enhances the chance that the woman will become pregnant. A pilgrim confided to Serjeant succinctly, "Some people have tried this out and benefited."
If a curious and diligent researcher could have unrestricted access to Hud's contemporary pilgrims and their pilgrimage, there would be enough material for a major study of ancient belief and rites, transmitted from the time of belief in betyls to the time of Islam. We were content just to be here and to sense the abiding power of Hud, prophet of Ubar. As a social reformer, he challenged a people who may have been not only "arrogant and unjust" but who had probably fallen into the barbarism of infanticide and Lord knows what else.
As to Hud's condemnation of the worship of multiple gods, the question can be raised: what, inherently, was wrong with worshipping as many gods as one wished? (In the old days, who didn't?) But consider the nature of Arabia's gods: they were identified with celestial and natural forces (scorching sun, comforting moon, storms that could be either destructive or life-giving). Offerings were made to please them, to gain their favor. Whether the petitioner was avaricious or dissolute didn't matter. The gods had little or no interest in morality. By contrast, a single God, particularly a Jewish-inspired single God, historically called for the judgment of human behavior. What mattered in life came to be moral order and elemental human decency. Faith might be important, but decency was even more important. So it has been said in Arabia, by pious prophets and free-spirited bedouin alike: when the vanity of the world fades and is gone, nothing remains of an individual but his good name.
For Kay and me, this was the day we reached the end of a fifteen-year trail, for it was that long ago that Virginia Blackburn, the crusty bookseller in Los Angeles, had insisted I buy a book I didn't want to buy. A few nights later Kay and I first came upon the story of the ancient lost city of Ubar. Between then and now we had had many doubts whether Ubar, much less Hud, really existed, and in pursuing this quest, had often been but a step ahead of the "We would like to remind you ... perhaps you overlooked..." people at American Express and Visa. But now the search was, as they say in Arabic with a clap of the hands, "Khalas!" Finished. "Khalas!" an Omani good friend told us, has a double meaning. As well as "Finished!" it means "Salvation!"
As we wandered about exploring the environs of Hud's tomb, our driver, Hussein, napped in the shade of Hud's petrified camel, his Kalashnikov his pillow. At our return, he blinked awake and asked, "We go?" We bumped over the desert track back to Tarim, where we spent the night at a derelict palace now being run as something resembling a hotel. It was, lugubriously but appropriately, named the Qasr al-Qubba, the "Castle of the Grave." A sign over the front desk read: "All weapons to be left with the Management."