Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness

1) ''Traditional household necessities made of stone also included a mill-stone (arhi) for grinding millet; a raised platform of rocks (wafadh) to protect food and other belongings from hot sand, ants, and other vermin; prop-stones (hifaayidh) for a cooking pot; and a rock enclosure to shelter young livestock at night against predators (zarb al-baham).
The Bedouins use rocks to communicate. Austin Kennett, an English explorer of the Western Desert, wrote that the Bedouins there had a complete language of cairns, some of which told jokes. Ma'aza rock language is not this sophisticated, but it is essential for survival. Routes to water are always marked carefully with stones at short intervals so that a child or lost adult can find the way. Similarly, over the years Bedouin walkers have marked the best trails to take through difficult mountain terrain.''

2) ''Radios reaffirm the nomads' perception that settled people are foolish. In the winter of 1984 they quizzed me about the toys that were so important that Americans spent hours queued up in the cold to buy them: Cabbage-Patch dolls. Sometimes the information is both strange and unpleasant: 'What is a nuclear weapon?' several people asked me.''

3) ''Bedouins are born geographers and students of the heavens. Spending their lives outdoors, they lack walls and roofs that obscure views of their surroundings. Their night sky lights up to inspire wonder and curiosity. Stars are most important to the Arabs as indicators of the seasons. [...] They believe that stars are smaller and closer to the earth than the moon; each is about the size of Jebel Shaayib, the largest mountain in their desert. The Bedouins asked me what the large stars are which appear, move slowly, and disappear. I presumed these were meteors, which the Ma'aza call 'lost stars' (najma taah). Finally, I was able to identify one as a satellite.''

4) ''Meanings of personal places endure thanks to the nomads' exacting oral traditions. Umm Tahuur Salaama ('Circumcision-place of Salaama') was named for the circumcision of the Khushaymi Salaama 'Iyd, who died about 1960 at the age of ninety; the event would have occurred about 1880. The rock of Aruus 'Ayd ('bride of 'Ayd') is even older: no one is certain to which tribe 'Ayd belonged. My companions explained that 'Ayd had stayed at the rock for a couple of months. He was a bachelor at an age when he should have been married, but in staying at this lonely place he was clearly not in a hurry to wed. Because of the man's intimacy with the place, it was dubbed his 'bride.' [...] Biases reflecting the authors' settled lives are apparent in literature about nomads' relations with space. An anthropologist insisted that the nomad 'does not identify himself with a particular small piece of territory' and suggested that this sense of rootlessness causes nomads to abuse their environment. Khushmaan perceptions of space suggest the contrary: they are deeply attached to particular places, and this rootedness promotes a sense of responsibility for their environment. Although nomads' places are not laid out on grids or marked on maps but exist only in oral tradition, they may be more vital and enduring than the taken-for-granted locations of settled life. Bedouins have no sense of placelessness: their desert is an only home, a landscape of genesis, involvement, and meaning.''

5) ''Despite the hardships their environment poses, the Khushmaan are awed and inspired by it. They seem to have as much an eye for natural wonder and beauty as any culture that produces art and poetry. Of many examples I could offer, two will suffice. When Saalih and I reached the only specimen of the sarh tree (Maerua crassifolia) known in the Ma'aza desert, he was boyishly enthusiastic about our strange find: 'Even if a man wanted to plant this tree here, how could he? Look where it's growing: in solid bare rock! Where's the soil? This tree must be like an oil drill! How did it get here? There are no others. Look, its wood has the color of tamarisk but is stronger than the ben-tree.' The other occasion was a spring day when one of my companions remarked as we passed the flowering ben-trees of Wadi Bali, 'They are beautiful: I wish they were always that way.'''