{"id":698,"date":"2021-10-18T18:19:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T15:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fawwaztraboulsi.com\/?p=698"},"modified":"2025-03-03T10:11:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T08:11:37","slug":"our-lady-of-the-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/our-lady-of-the-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Lady of the Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Lady of the Rocks<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Dhofar revisited)<\/p>\n

for ‘Abdallah al-Ashtal<\/p>\n

We had to descend a rocky cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea where semi-naked children were playing outside a cave. Greeted the two women inside the cave as our guide engaged them in a conversation. The elder, who was wearing a black robe, began explaining a matter to him in the hope that he translates to the foreign visitors. She was gesticulating and frequently putting her hand on her chest. We will soon be told that she had TB and was asking for medicine.<\/p>\n

It was the same old story: the stranger, believed to be carrying diseases, not to say epidemies, becomes the healer in a mythical reversal. We were not a medical team but a delegation of Arab and foreign militants and journalists on visit to the liberated zone of Dhofar.<\/p>\n

They were carrying drugs that would normally be carried by tourists on safaris: insects\u2019 repellants; vitamin pills to pally for food shortages- they were treated to canned vegetables and fruits, not to speak of han\u00eedh <\/em>(lamb chops roasted on hot pebbles) at the outset of their journey, but had to be content for the rest of it with qad\u00eed<\/em>, strips of beef dried in the sun, cooked and served over a heap of boiled rice, so hot that the visitors barely managed to have the first gobble in their mouths that the rest of the party would have practically finished eating. They also carried pills to purify water- which did not serve them much for they had to compete with cattle over the scant water in the scattered wells. Typical in the baggage of those who ventured into tropical lands, were, of course, quinine tablets and, last but not least, antidotes for snake and scorpion bites.<\/p>\n

A friend who had preceded them on that venture, had warned them: \u201cThe snakes\u201d, he said, still feeling uneasy about them in a Parisian caf\u00e9, \u201cbeware the snakes. The enemy in Dhofar are not the British troops but the snakes.\u201d Indeed, that \u2018enemy\u2019 preoccupied their British colleague as they began escalating the mountains of western Dhofar at Ras Darbat `Ali and he kept his eyes fixed to the ground, wandering where and when they would fall into their first ambush. \u201cFear not, comrade\u201d, assured their guide, \u201csnakes are but paper tigers!\u201d That became the motto for their trip. But paraphrasing Mao’s sayings, effective as they were then in boosting revolutionnary morale in the face of \u2018imperialist and class enemies\u2019, did not dispell their fears of \u2018natural\u2019 enemies.<\/p>\n

The \u2018imperialist and class ennemies\u2019 they did not encounter. But they will discover that the Dhofari \u2018paper tigers\u2019 do bite and kill. In their first encampment, the only youth they met (the others, were on the front fighting) was recovering from a snake-bite which he had treated the traditional way: cut his bitten ankle with a knife, had the poisoned blood sucked and spat out. They cleaned his gaping wound, gave him an antidote and spent the night around a big fire exchanging unending stories about snakes. In his country, the saying goes: \u201cas long as snakes\u2019 tales\u201d (and that is no misprint). Afterwards, they kept enquiring about that youth who remained stranded between life and death until the end of their journey. Thus ended their first and only medical mission in these lands.<\/p>\n

Indeed we carried all that medicine but nothing that could help the tubercolic woman. By that time, the guide had rescued us from our embarassed meditations, as he uttered the magical word rif\u00e2q <\/em>(comrades) in his musical amharic accent. The women had by then realised that no good – health-wise, at least- could be expected from us. Strangely enough, communication became easier.<\/p>\n

Now outside the cave, we learnt that people here resorted to cauterisation to treat widespread chest illnesses. The tubercolic has his\/her chest cauterized by a red-hot iron rod once, twice, thrice even four times usually to no avail. \u201cCauterisation is the ultimate treatement\u201d says the Arabic proverb. An ultimate treatment indeed but one which rarely cures.<\/p>\n

Asked the women about the children:<\/p>\n