Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [32]
Father Jamme advised that "C. Foster's contribution is best forgotten; its only value being that of a tiny historical dot." The good Jesuit signed off with a hearty "Cheerio!!!" So much for Lieutenant Wellstead's and the Reverend Mr. Foster's inscription. But give Foster credit, at least, for transforming a politician's plaque into a haunting myth. I imagined Charles Foster in a leaky-roofed Victorian parsonage, fitfully preparing a sermon for an indifferent congregation but secretly dreaming of an ancient people in a faraway sunny land, who once were favored by the grace of God.
What initially appealed to me about Foster's version of the inscription was that, had it been as he imagined, it would have bridged the divide between life today and life in the distant past. This, to me, was myth's great promise. Reading his wishful translation, you could fleetingly put yourself in the sandals of a people who "hunted the game, by land, with ropes and reeds" and yet endured "years barren and burned up" and suffered "as though we had never seen a glimpse of good." Though steeped in the fantastic, myth allows you to reach back to touch the lives of ancient people. To smell their spices, get the dust of their towns in your eyes. To dream, even, their dreams. Perhaps Foster felt the same way and was driven to invent what he could not find. His tale was cautionary.
Still, I couldn't help but feel that the Ubar myth offered a realistic promise. Already (I reassured myself) it had offered tangible clues as to the character and location of the site. And some cards remained to be turned over—in particular, the legend's grand flowering in Egypt and Persia in the 1100s. I looked forward to researching this period. There was the prospect that Ubar could convincingly become a real place ... but it could also prove to be a city that never was, a concoction of medieval and ancient imagination.
The myth of Ubar, I was to find, had all the certainty of a desert mirage. It would draw you on, a vision of unexpected wonder rising from distant sands. Then suddenly, as you advanced just one step too far, it vanished. But then, as with a mirage, if you stepped back, the vision would return.
Were not mirages—despite their distortions and shimmering inversions—images of actual places, of palm trees and dwellings hidden beyond the curvature of the earth?
7. The Rawi's Tale
TO FURTHER EXPLORE the myth of Ubar, let us journey now to Cairo in medieval times...
From across the desert, the traveler's view of the city's minarets and domes is filtered by a silvery sepia haze rising from the kitchen fires of palaces and hovels. Nearing Cairo and passing through the Bab al-Futah, the Gate of Conquest, the traveler plunges into a dusky, teeming labyrinth. Merchants crouched in tiny stalls cry out to a stream of passersby to smell their spices and cinnamon, sample their pomegranates and pistachio nuts. Down a crooked street, doctors prescribe leeches for bile in the blood and horse oil for broken bones. Caged birds twitter and shriek. A dark alley becomes so narrow that two people can barely pass, then opens onto a square where ten thousand souls praise Allah in the Great Mosque of ibn Tulun.
In the shade cast by the mosque's walls and pillars, rawis, itinerant storytellers, practice their street theater. Their tales are by turns bawdy, romantic, pious, and edged with suspense. The story of Iram/Ubar is a favorite, oft-told and popular. Says one rawi, "Were I to tell you of Iram's splendors and miraculous works, I fear you would be calling me a liar, and by doing that you would be committing a sin!"
By great good fortune, a sampling of rawis' tales of Iram/Ubar has been preserved.1 The most engaging is by a