With Thesiger into the Rub' Al Khali
By Peter Hellyer
Contributors to Oman Bird News may have read in the local press that British author and explorer Wilfred Thesiger visited the United Arab Emirates in February 1990, for the opening of an exhibition of photographs taken on his historic journeys in the Rub' Al Khali, the Empty Quarter, more than 40 years ago. Thesiger, eighty this year, had visited Abu Dhabi in the 1970s, when it was in the middle of its post-oil building boom, and went away disillusioned, calling it an 'Arabian Nightmare'.
This time he was much happier, impressed by the greenery and development, albeit not wanting any personal part of it.
The highlights of the visit were two-fold. First of all, three of his old companions, Salem bin Ghubaisha, Musallam bin Al Kamam and Salem bin Kabina of the Rawashid, came up specially from Mughshin to meet him, by plane this time, not by camel! He'd seen the two Salems in 1977, but hadn't met Musallam, now a Rashid sheikh, since 1950. To see the four old men together was, to understate, a moving experience.
The second highlight, for Thesiger and his companions, (and, I must admit, for a few, including me, who were fortunate enough to accompany him), was a return to the sands – a trip courtesy of the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations, ADCO, to the edge of the Rub' Al Khali south of the Liwa Oasis, which he had reached at the end of his first great journey back in 1948. He had not returned to the area for over forty years.
The visit included a meal with another old Rashidi friend at his encampment deep in the sands (well, deep for me), complete with tents, camels, saluki dog and, of coruse, the inevitable couple of Toyota pick-ups.
Wilfred Thesiger has been a hero of mine (and, I suspect, of many other Western residents of the UAE and Oman), since I first read Arabian Sands, and to have the opportunity to travel with him, albeit by Range Rover, into the edge of the Rub' Al Khali was an honour and a privilege, a high point of my fifteen years in the region.
He's an old man now, weather-beaten and a little stooped, careless of his attire, yet still hugely impressive. If his eyes seemed to mist over a little as he looked on his beloved Sands with his Rawashid beside him, none of those who accompanied him thought it anything but utterly natural.
There had been heavy rains shortly before his visit, and the sand was firm under foot, with the Tribulus in flower everywhere, as it was, he recalled, on his great journeys. Of the birds he saw forty years ago, he had little to say, but I suspect that then the hardship was such that unless the birds were potential food, they may not have made much impression on him.
To put the icing on the cake, as far as I was concerned, anyway, I even managed to see a few birds. A pair of Brown-necked Ravens, over the Rashidi encampment, were a first record for Square TB22 of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Arabia project; and a pair of Namaqua Doves at the Shah oilfield, also TB22, were the first pair ever seen in the UAE, and only the fourth record. I sought fruitlessly for House Sparrows at Shah, suggesting that they haven't yet reached this outpost of civilisation, unlike Palm Doves which have, and I also managed to see a Grey Heron and a White Wagtail, proving the existence of a cross-desert migration route.
Birds apart, however, it really was QUITE a trip.
Oman Bird News 8:1-2 (1990).