Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [75]
The prophet Muhammad, incidentally, decried "lofty buildings." In a saying regarding "Signs of the End" (that is, the end of the world) he condemns them for presuming to soar higher than mosques. Given Ubar's mythical repute for arrogance, how fitting that it be known for its "lofty buildings," its towers.
As the week progressed, Juri and his students unearthed the footing of a third tower and more of the fortress wall (see endpaper site plan).
We fell into a routine. Up at first light, we had breakfast in our largest room, where Kay's Christmas tree still twinkled in the corner. Mr. Gomez wore his cook's whites and Chinese slippers and sometimes sported a cowboy hat, a present from Kay. Depending on his mood, there would be cereal, pancakes, even cheese omelets.
Then what became known as "the March of Archaeology" would proceed down the village's main street. Juris not-totally-awake students led the way, laden with buckets, notebooks, and surveying gear. Next came our volunteers, some of whom had driven eight hundred miles across the desert from Muscat to help out. The rear was brought up by our three Baluchis and their wheelbarrows. At the end of Shisur's main street—all of three houses—the March would turn left and soon arrive at the ruins, where the group dispersed to dig, screen, and take notes.
Around ten o'clock we would break for tea and Kit Kats, often joined by Baheet and Mabrook. When digging resumed, they would drift from square to square, help out as the spirit moved them, and contemplate the idea that Ubar, a site celebrated in countless generations of bedouin lore, might actually lie beneath their feet. On one occasion Imam Baheet got surprisingly worked up and proclaimed: "The People of 'Ad were corrupt. We all know it. Allah punished them!" For emphasis he picked up a large rock and thumped it down on the ground, adding "Ubar! Khalas!" (Finished!) Being an imam and warming to the lesson of the Allah-smitten Ubarites, he would sometimes make a stab at converting us. But he always allowed that Islam had great respect for "people of the Book," meaning the Bible.
By noon it was usually uncomfortably hot, and the site offered no shade. We would work as long as we reasonably could, then at one P.M. or a little after, the March of Archaeology would retrace its steps. After a light lunch, everyone would lie low for a few hours, updating their field notes, writing home, or reading Bertram Thomas's Arabia Felix or, for a change of scene, a dog-eared copy of Elmore Leonard's Glitz.
About three-thirty, with the hottest part of the day past, digging would resume. Often Juri would leave assistant archaeologist Jana Owen in charge of the site, while he ranged out across the desert, accompanied by Baheet or Mabrook, who knew its every rise and hollow. He had a hunch that the fortress at Shisur was the center of a large seminomadic settlement. Our space imaging revealed that northeast of Shisur there had once been a large slow-moving river. Neolithic man had been drawn to its banks, and when the river ceased to flow, our People of 'Ad might have camped there, for the land could still have been fertile, a sprawling oasis.5 Drawn up around dozens of rock-ringed fire pits—still clearly visible—caravans would have prepared for the crossing of the Rub' al-Khali.
Around six in the evening, we would often join the daily majlis, or social hour, held by Shisur's Rashidi elders. Though their new houses included special majlis rooms, they were more comfortable taking their coffee around a fire laid in a cut-down oil drum set out in the main street. Their conversation often dwelt on the virtues and vices of the several camels that wandered the village. Displaced by Toyotas, the camels at present had no clear role. If anything, they appeared to be backups if the Rashidi's current rather easy life fell apart.
This was confirmed when the discussion one day turned to water. The water table in the immediate area was measurably dropping, and there was a