Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [55]
Kay looked over, let out a distinct "Eeek!" then turned pale. She realized that in moving things about in the tent, she had been—dozens of times—within striking range of the creature now coiled in the dust.
"Get Guru!" the cry went up from our Airwork volunteers. Guru was never without his curved snake stick, which he now used to coax the snake in the tent into a large bottle. "Nasty creature," he noted as he capped the bottle with a perforated lid. "Carpet viper. Hemotoxic. Neurotoxic. Hits you and you turn black."
"Oh, yes?" said Kay.
"No known antidote," Guru continued. "Hits you and you're dead in twenty minutes."
"Then it's nice," said Kay, "that he's in your jar just now."
"Yes, it is," concurred Guru, patting the sweat from his forehead. "Deadliest snake in the world."
Curiously, there was a lesson to be learned from Kay's carpet viper. Several classical authors had reported that the incense groves of southern Arabia were "guarded by flying serpents." The natural historian Diodorus of Sicily wrote that "in the most fragrant forests is a multitude of snakes, the color of which is dark red, their length a span, and their bites altogether incurable; they bite by leaping upon their victim." The historian StTabo added that they "sprang as high as the thigh, and their bite is incurable."3 Despite such warnings by Diodorus and Strabo, the presence of any snakes in this land had long been disputed; it had been suggested that the "flying serpents" were in reality infestations of locusts. Or that they were apparitions concocted by ancient locals to warn outsiders to keep their distance. No, we learned, the "flying serpents" were really flying serpents. The mountains of Dhofar were full of them; on another occasion we saw one coil and strike. Though the creature didn't become airborne, it was fully capable of Strabo's "high as the thigh."
Classical Greek and Roman civilizations were well aware of Dhofar's coastal mountains, snakes and all, for they blocked the way to Arabia's fabled incense groves. These mountains were, in fact, almost certainly "Sephar, the eastern mountain range" that in Genesis 10:30 was taken to mark the edge of the known world. Throughout history, this escarpment had guarded a land stubbornly and persistently unknown, the heartland, we hoped, of our People of'Ad.
While investigating the well of the Oracle of 'Ad, we had visitors, tribesmen who drifted down from the mountains. Their bearing was elegant; their hair, done up in fine braids and tinted blue, had the fragrance of frankincense. Members of the Shahra tribe, they spoke, in addition to Arabic, their own peculiar chirping, singsong language, called by early explorers "the language of birds."4 They confirmed that, indeed, the well was still known as a well of the People of 'Ad ... and one of their number, speaking in crisp, Cambridge-accented English, matter-of-factly told us, "You know, we are the People of 'Ad." His name was Ali Achmed Mahash al-Shahri, and where he would take us provided a major breakthough.
Like generations of Shahra before him, Ali Achmed was born and raised in the Dhofar Mountains. But as a young man he left his homeland to join the Trucial Oman Scouts, a military force that patrolled what was once a British protectorate in eastern Arabia. Commissioned as an officer, he was sent for further training to England. There he was surprised by the regard people had for traces and fragments of the distant past and by the great museums of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, built to house these artifacts. Ali Achmed realized that his people, the Shahra, had their own legacy: ancient writings hidden in the mountains of his childhood.
After mustering out of the Trucial Oman Scouts, Ali Achmed returned home. He sought out and hand-copied these pictographs, then acquired a Nikon 35-millimeter camera, taught himself how to use it, and went on to describe, document, and map dozens of sites.
Now he asked, could he show them to us?
With Ali Achmed as our guide, we drove up and over