The three grinning boys staring at the two of us through the open windows of the Jeep were strikingly good looking. Startlingly white eyes set in finely chiseled features were set off by the voluptuous masses of glossy black curls framing their faces. Even white teeth contrasted with their flawless olive complexions.
And they had flowers in their hair.
I had only ever seen photos of the flowermen of Asir and had never really expected to meet any. Yet after several hours of hard driving over mountain tracks and through shallow rivers, the myth became a reality, the point of a journey into one of the wildest areas of the Kingdom.
This is an area rarely, if ever visited, by Westerners, so we arrived having only done background reading, looked at a few black and white photos of Asir tribesmen and a wish to find out what it is really like in the Souda mountains.
What we discovered in a short but busy trip was a warm welcome, friendly inquisitiveness and an air of polite confusion. Clearly we were travelers and the traditional courtesies were meticulously extended to us. The confusion arose from the reason for our visit. Why should anyone want to travel into the mountains with no apparent purpose? "For the experience and to see what was there" was simply not a reply that seemed credible to these hardy mountainmen. It was met with giggles from the young men and a slow, sympathetic shaking of the head from the older ones.
Ad Dair, situated along the floor of a steep-sided wadi, is the last town before the tarmac road, with no warning and on a steep slope, changes to roughly graded dirt. From Jizan to Ad Dair, the road is busy with traffic supplying the town, which acts as the provisioner for the hundreds of square kilometers of mountains to the northwest.
Climbing toward Ad Dair, cylindrical watchtowers and grain stores stand precariously on conical outcrops of rock above vivid green terraced gardens. Built from the black basalt of the surrounding rocks, the towers seemed to be extensions of the surrounding landscape rather than constructed on it.
On the northwestern stretch into the mountains, mercifully we encountered no vehicles at all, save a lonely looking bulldozer with a crew of cheery Bangladeshi roadmen, who were busy widening the track after a rock-fall. We waited patiently while they cleared a path for us to move onward.
The quality of the track declined in proportion to the distance from Ad Dair. Forty-five degree inclines, loose shale slopes and at times it was so narrow that the wheels straddled the entire width; it careered wildly over the mountains down vertiginous slopes and through shallow streams. Eventually, we took the wrong fork and, laboring up a tortuous goat-track, we arrived in the courtyard of a tiny homestead.
With the engine off, the silence of the mountains was immense. Cool still air with not a sound but the rushing of blood in the ears. As if condensing out of the ether, two wide-eyed children appeared and stood silently staring. Their father appearing shortly afterward greeted us warmly and, having overcome his surprise at seeing two white strangers in his farmyard, proved more than helpful.
The road to Najran? Yes, he knew it and was perfectly happy to guide us there with his ancient beige Landcruiser. It seemed too much to accept, so he pointed out the way instead. It transpired that the "road" was a riverbed and we were to drive in it for a few kilometers to the next section of track.
We emerged from the riverbed, underside clean and several kilometers further into "bandit country" as the area was later described to us. The scenery was dramatic, harsh rocky slopes strewn with angular boulders towered over oases of sandy soil that supported clumps of trees and low grass. The difficulty of patrolling or administering terrain like this was strikingly obvious. With few access tracks and being extremely difficult to travel over on foot, it is not surprising that contact with the people who live here is infrequent and difficult.
It certainly looked perfect bandit country — but where were they? We had met only charming goat-herders who without any hint of hostility had gone out of their ways to help us or strike up conversation.
After hours of annoying the Jeep by pushing it remorselessly over dreadful tracks, we saw him. Sitting perfectly still on a rock by the road and watching us intensely, he was clad in shirt, shin-length cloth around his waist and a wreath of fresh herbs round his head.
The existence of the flower-people of the Souda mountains has been known for many years. Their history over the last half-century is a troubled one. Neither of us really knew whether they were still in existence or whether they had been completely absorbed into the mainstream culture of modern Saudi Arabia. There, however, sitting motionless in front of us was living proof that they had not.
Once halted, warm greetings and courtesies were exchanged and, when the pleasantries were over, he wanted to know why we were there. Again, his reaction was a look of profound sympathy tinged with a lack of understanding as to why we would want to travel into the mountains.
We were the second visitors to the area that he had seen in his long life. Once many years ago, he recalled that a man had come with some Saudis on an educational trip. They had asked some questions and gone. No one else, though.
Were we on the right path to Najran, we asked? He furrowed his brows and thought. "Where is that?" He remembered going to Jizan once as a boy, but Najran, no.
The terrain is so rugged that Najran, although only 50 km away, is an impossibly difficult and unnecessary trek. Isolated valleys are separated by precipitous slopes connected by very rough paths. Dwellings are kilometers apart and exist in splendid and self-sufficient isolation, surviving on goats, small gardens and abundant water from the streams that thread through the rocks. Urbanization is another world and one that we had the impression the old man wanted little to do with.
He did though, he announced, have a shop.
In the mountains, the word has been redefined. With the dignified confidence of proprietorship, he opened a rusting door to a barn and, with a gracious wave of his arm, showed us the shop.
Piled in a corner with complete disregard for display or convenience was an eclectic mix of goods from lentils to shirts, an ancient freezer with soft drinks as well as sharp looking instruments designed to perform unspeakable acts on goats. But it was his shop, and he was justly proud to be a man of business in the area.
We bought water and various other odd items we could use but when the question of change arose, it seemed he had none. A matter of only SR2, we were inclined to forget. He looked at us in disbelief and then treated us to a gentle lesson in humility, rectitude and correct behavior.
"In the matter of business, things must be done correctly," he told us. With that, he patiently looked in boxes, behind boxes, under boxes and finally, at the back of a decrepit chest, found two crumpled riyals, which with the gravity of a bank manager, he presented to us. "Now it is done," he beamed.
Our presence had attracted the attention of three young men in a pickup truck. Their immaculate and brightly colored shirts and waist-cloths contrasted strangely with the harsh dusty surroundings. All were very fit and healthy looking and had a distinctly feminine grace to their movements. Over their glossy jet hair, all wore carefully woven wreaths of dry flowers and herbs, knotted so that the cut stalks formed an upturned peak on the foreheads.
Openly friendly and giggling continuously throughout our conversation with them, they only expressed interest and amusement at our presence, not a hint of threat or animosity. They finally scampered away in great good humor, even thought we had declined their offer to buy the Jeep.
The very challenging topography of the Souda mountains and its isolation from the Kingdom’s mainstream life makes the area a good place to hide. This same topography also limits the number of places it would be possible to hide as life is concentrated in very specific areas around water and grazing. Access to water and food mean that any group of different people in the area would be known about very quickly. This same remoteness seems to have preserved a simple generosity of spirit in dealing with strangers who appear to offer no threat. "Sophistication" in the sense of "polluting an original purity" doesn’t appear to have reached the mountains even today. For my part, long may it remain so.
The inhabitants of the mountains we encountered were nothing but charming and friendly. Their lifestyle produces a quiet toughness necessary to survive in an extreme environment. Sir Wilfred Thesiger, when asked in a recent interview for his view of the most important piece of wisdom he had gathered in his years of exploration under harsh conditions, replied, "Companionship and relationships are everything. Your life often depends on them."
We had experienced just a hint of what he meant.