Lowell Thomas in Khartoum

One afternoon a representative from the British Intelligence Office took me a few miles distant from Khartoum to call on “the holiest man in the Sudan.”

Continuing Lawrence Launches Arab Desert Campaign,
our selection from With Lawrence in Arabia by Lowell Thomas published in 1924. The selection is presented in fifteen easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Lawrence Launches Arab Desert Campaign.

Time: 1917
Place: Along the Hejaz Railway

Our first stop up the Nile was at Luxor, where we were given a welcome that had not been equaled since “Teddy” Roosevelt stopped there on his way back from hunting big game in East Africa. A swarm of haggard guides, who had been waiting four long years in vain for American tourists, mobbed us from sheer joy. Our welcome resembled a battle royal, and the runners from the Luxor Hotel eventually succeeded in dragging us into their ramshackle gharry, and off we careened through streets lined with deserted tourists’ shops, with the rest of the crowd howling and gyrating behind us like dancing dervishes.

Our visit to Hundred-gated Thebes, the Temple of Karnak, and the Tombs of the Kings the following day was rather spoiled by a pitiful tale that our guide poured into our ears.

“American tourist he no come no more. All we guides starve. Oh, woe! Oh, woe!” wailed this melancholy old Arab. “Me guide here thirty-five years, and so help me Allah, the only real tourist in the world is you Americans. The Inglisse [English], German, and French spend all their time counting their centimes. If American see something he want he say, ‘How much?’ You tell him and, praise be to Allah, no matter what price is, he say, ‘All right, wrap ’er up!’ All us best guides specialize on Americans. Before the war me no more bother guiding anybody but American than you bother to shoot baby elephant if you see big one. Why President Wilson no stop the war; and why,” he added in a pleading voice, “you Americans send money and food to Armenians and nothing to us poor starving guides of Egypt?”

On the first evening after our arrival in Khartoum we were dining with the chief of the Central African Intelligence Department at the House of the Hippopotamus Head when suddenly I noticed his face turn pale. Glancing at the sky to the east I saw the reason. Coming straight toward Khartoum was a great black wall that looked like a range of mountains moving down upon us. It was the dread huboob, a terrific African sand-storm. The dinner party broke off abruptly, and the other guests raced for their homes. Jumping on a donkey which was awaiting me in the outer court, I made a dash for the Charles Gordon Hotel, half a mile away.

It was a glorious moonlight night with stars twinkling radiantly all around to the north, west, and south, but straight ahead to the east I could see that mountain wall of sand churning toward me. It looked as though the crack o’ doom were approaching. Soon it was only a few hundred yards away, and then it broke over us.

Flying sand stung my face like needles and blinded me. Leaning forward over the neck of my diminutive mount, I tried to offer as little resistance to the storm as possible, but it was all we could do to fight our way against that whirling mass of sand and reach the hotel.

The heat indoors was so unbearable that every one tried sleeping with his windows open, and the sand threatened to bury us, beds and all. When I closed the windows the atmosphere was stifling, and the sand still swept in sheets through the crevices. The storm raged for hours. There was not a house in Khartoum that the sand did not penetrate. I have been through cyclones, cloud-bursts, arctic blizzards, fierce gales in the Southern Ocean, monsoons, typhoons, and Sumatras; but none of them could hold a candle to that huboob. In Alaska when a newcomer, or cheechacko, remains in the Far North through the long dark winter he becomes a “sourdough” and is admitted to the fraternity of Arctic Pioneers. In the Sudan there is a similar saying that he who survives a huboob forthwith becomes a pucka African. But seventy below in the Yukon is preferable to one hundred above in a Sudan huboob!

One afternoon a representative from the British Intelligence Office took me a few miles distant from Khartoum to call on “the holiest man in the Sudan.” So rich had the natives grown from the war that they were refusing to sell their grain supplies, which were badly needed by the armies in Palestine and Arabia. I had expressed a desire to meet this holy man, and it occurred to the authorities that a visit from a foreigner might flatter him and put him in a sufficiently pleasant frame of mind to enable them to wheedle him into selling his store of grain, which would cause the other natives to follow suit.

We set out in the governor’s gharry, a picturesque victoria drawn by high-spirited white horses. Our driver was a wild-eyed fuzzy-wuzzy with a mop of crinkly hair full of mutton fat, with long wooden skewers sticking out at all angles. Off we galloped across the desert to the village of Berri, where we found Shereef Yusef el Hindi, the holy man, awaiting us at the gate of his mud-brick palace. The shereef, a tall, thin-faced, distinguished-looking Arab with hypnotic eyes, garbed in sandals, a robe of green and white silk, and green turban, ushered us into his garden, where we were invited to review the most bewildering array of drinks that I had ever seen. There were concoctions of everything from pomegranate-juice to sloe gin and from rose-water to a horse’s neck. They were of every shade from mauve to taupe. They were served in every sort of container from cut-glass tumblers to silver goblets. Fortunately, custom only required us to take a sip of each; otherwise the result would have been catastrophic for many were of subtle potency.

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