Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [49]
A patch of green—a tiny oasis—marked Shisur. We circled once and landed by a cluster of one- and two-room cinder-block buildings, a seasonal settlement of the Bayt Musan, a band of the Rashidi bedouin. They greeted us warmly, if a little warily, and offered us the abiding hospitality of the desert. Little boys ran from house to house, rounding up sufficient cups and glassware. Cardamom-flavored coffee was brewed and ceremoniously poured. Sitting in a circle on the floor of Shisur's one-room schoolhouse, we inquired as to one another's well-being. It was a formal, almost courtly gathering. I sat on my left hand to ensure that it wouldn't unwittingly reach for a handful of dates, a breach of bedouin manners.
The Rashidi were pleased we knew of their history. They listened with interest to our idea and hopes of finding Ubar. Yes, they were well aware of the lost city and believed it could lie as close as half a day's drive away. Some day, Allah willing, a desert wind would bare its walls. And did we know that there were ruins here at Shisur? Yes, we had read of the fort here. It had been described by both Bertram Thomas and Wilfred Thesiger. Thesiger noted that it had been built by Badr ibn Tuwariq, a famed sheik of the early 1500s.
The Rashidi walked us over to Shisur's ruined fort. A lot of work had gone into it, considering its location so far out in the desert. Too bad that it dated back only five centuries.
"All right! Yes!" Juri had found a potsherd, burnished in much the same way as the scrap he had found at Khor Suli on the coast.
"Unfamiliar," Juri mused. "Weird stuff."
"How old?"
"Could be the People of 'Ad. It's unique, could have been made very early on, a couple of thousand years ago. But it's also a little bit sloppy, see here? This rim. They didn't finish it as well as they could have. Maybe things weren't going so well, maybe they didn't care anymore. Could be late."
"Late ... What do you mean by late?"
"Medieval, I suppose, or maybe even after that, at about the time Sheik What's-his-name built his fort here." The promise of the Shisur shard faded.
It had been a long day and was still a very hot one. As we returned to the helicopter, everyone dragged a bit, except pilot Nick, whose step was now remarkably sprightly. He said something about a need to conserve fuel, or maybe a need to avoid turbulence. The upshot was that the last leg of the flight was to be fast and low.
A half hour beyond Shisur, we banked and dropped down into the Wadi Andhur, a dry watercourse that originated in the incense groves of the Dhofar Mountains, off to the south. The wadi was once a major caravan route, a branch of the Ubar road.
As we followed the wadi south, I checked my watch: it was a little after seven P.M. The desert was no longer relentlessly bright and shadowless. The dry watercourse was cast in deep relief; boulders and patches of scrub brush were caught in the low sun's golden crosslight. They whipped by, no more than twenty or thirty feet below us. The wadi narrowed. We careened hard to the left, then to the right, then back again, following its twists and turns. Out the side window all was sky. A second later and the view was of the wadi floor, as the helicopter's rotors flattened vegetation and kicked up swirls of sand.
We hurtled on. Kay, by a window, was really enjoying the ride, untroubled by thoughts of imminent physical danger, such as catching a rotor and crashing.
Quite unexpectedly, the wadi widened. Ahead, in its center, rose twin mesas crowned with impressive ruins. We had come to the walled fortress of Andhur, reported by Bertram Thomas in 1930 and yet to be excavated or studied.
Reconnaissance into the Dhofar interior
In an aerobatic climax to the day, Nick spiraled into a deft landing within the walls of Andhur's south mesa. We offloaded our camping gear (and, this time, water). We improvised