Cumin, Camels, and Caravans Read online

  Al Taie, Lamees Abdullah. Al-Azaf: The Omani Cookbook. Muscat: Oman Bookshop, 1995, p. 49.

  CHAPTER 2

  Caravans Leaving Arabia Felix

  Following the trail of smoke rising from the tears of frankincense and myrrh, I leave the Arabian Peninsula, cross over to the Horn of Africa, and put my feet back on the lava-strewn earth along the volcanic rim of the Blue Nile Gorge. Near the seven-hundred-year-old monastery of Debre Libanos, I smell a mix of spices being shared on ancient market grounds beneath a gigantic tree within sight of the Abay River, a tributary of the Blue Nile. A clamor of brilliant color and strange sounds welcomes me as I enter the grounds where merchants from near and far have come for the morning spice market.

  I continue to follow my nose. It picks up an earthy, mustardy smell. I have a hunch that it is emanating from turmeric (Curcuma longa), a gingerlike rhizome. It is used around the world to reduce inflammation among the tired and the elderly and to stimulate the immune systems of children after they have been sick.

  Searching for the source of this pungent fragrance, I wander up and down the crowded aisles of the makeshift bazaar. It seems more like a motley swap meet or picnic than a formal marketplace. I spot a young black woman gesturing toward me and giggling at the out-of-place stranger in the midst of the bazaar.

  My eyes focus on her and what she is selling. She is seated on the ground, wearing a blue-and-gray gown decorated with crescent moons and six-pointed stars. Her eyes peek out from beneath a long piece of purple cloth draped over her head. She is beckoning me to pause and taste what looks like a heap of gold dust piled up on a towel before her. I bend down and take a pinch, lick my index finger, and warm to the earthy, peppery, slightly bitter, somehow brilliant flavor that it offers. It is the turmeric that I have been seeking.

  Suddenly, I feel connected to traditions of trading that stretch out far beyond my own life span. Spices, incenses, medicinal teas, and other aromatics that have been harvested nearby have also been traded, bartered, bought, and sold in this place for upward of ten thousand years. And yet, their time-tried value in cross-cultural exchanges persists to this day. Some, like ginger and turmeric, originally came from far away, before they found their way into dooryard gardens. Today, the locals consider them theirs, as if these aromatic roots had always been available to their ancestors.

  This weekly spice exchange is held among Amharic-speaking Ethiopians who live in clusters of huts nestled in the slopes above the Abay River. The river at the bottom of the barranca is known to the outside world as a major tributary of the Blue Nile. The spice traders congregate on the hard-packed earth in the shade of a giant wild fig that teeters on the edge of the Blue Nile Gorge. The women here live within walking distance of Debre Libanos, the Coptic monastery of the “Lebanese Brothers.” Once a week, they load up their shawls with freshly harvested goods, hike to the tree, and spread out their wares in front of their laps, placing them on handmade cloths or in woven baskets.

  I tiptoe among the various vendors, for there is so little room around their piles of chile peppers, turmeric powder, ginger, myrrh, and fenugreek. I can smell the subtly bitter butterscotch aroma of roasting fenugreek seeds nearby. The Ethiopians whom I have met like to roast and grind fenugreek seeds to add to many of their foods. This roasted abesh is destined for their crepelike injera, a flat bread made of fermented teff flour.

  As I look around at the mulling of hundreds of people under the branches of the massive fig, I sense that this open-air market has been going on ever since mankind first began to boil potherbs in clay pots and to exchange stories as well as foods around the campfire. The umbrella-like canopy of the old tree that arches above the traders may just be the fabled “tree where man was born.”1

  How can something this ancient still be so animated and engaging, not just to me as an accidental participant but to most of the locals as well? Is it something deeply wired in our genes that make us want to taste the exotic, the pungent, the aromatic? Somehow, exchanges such as this, replete with mounds and mountains of spices, incenses, green coffee beans, grains, pulses, poultices, and teas, seem to have always been the primary means of bringing diverse peoples together from neighboring valleys, gorges, and mountain ranges.

  Something new began to happen to these localized spice exchanges around thirty-five hundred years ago, although minute changes in many locally isolated economies had been gradually accumulating for some forty-eight hundred years. Perhaps it first occurred on the eastern reaches of Africa, or somewhere along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. I do not presume to know the first place in which it occurred, or among whom it emerged. But when this phenomenon spread, it shifted the trajectory of the world’s economies and ecologies.

  While still in southern Oman, I had a chance to visit one of the many earliest spice-trade centers on the peninsula, where this shift presumably occurred during early prehistoric times, irrevocably changing the nature of the marketplace as we know it today. This particular spot was on a gentle rise above the Arabian Sea, with a small estuarine inlet edged by volcanic outcrops. That inlet, which had been selected by people who knew how to choose sites for both their beauty and their utility, formed the most naturally protected harbor I had ever seen.

  When I arrived there many millennia after its first settlement, boats were no longer coming into the harbor. Instead, the inlet had become a refuge for herons, egrets, and buzzards that were perhaps attracted to many of the same features that had drawn the earliest human inhabitants. A hyena ran from the edge of the estuary up onto one of the volcanic ridges and disappeared into a cave, nook, or cranny. The harbor offered an abundance of shellfish and finfish, as well as comfortable shelter and easy but protected entry from the sea. Feral dromedaries came near, looking for freshwater in pools near the coast. This remarkable spot once functioned as the harbor of Zhafar, which served the prehistoric port town of al-Balid. The ancient name Zhafar gave rise to that of the province of Dhofar, contemporary Oman’s southernmost trading hub. Just a few miles away I had bought my supply of hojari fusoos.

  As sunset cast its lemon-and-rose-colored light over the sea that evening, I wandered through the al-Balid ruins where caravans of camels once met seaworthy dhows, just as the great pilgrim-writer Ibn Battuta had seen during the fourteenth century. The dhows would then sail away with frankincense and other aromatics, taking them beyond their natural ranges, across gulfs and seas to other continents.

  FIGURE 2. The ruins of al-Balid, one of the earliest ports for transcontinental trade across the Indian Ocean. (Photo by the author.)

  The name al-Balid was an early Arabic term for a permanent town, something altogether different from the seasonal camps that preceded it. It is not surprising that archaeologists have confirmed that this 160-acre site was indeed a major population center four thousand years ago.2 At that time, Oman was called the Land of Magan. It was already known in the wider world for trading copper northward to the prosperous city-state of Dilmun, an ancient trade center in a fertile agricultural valley not far from Qalat al-Bahrain, in the present-day island nation of Bahrain.

  Remarkably, the ancient cuneiform texts found at al-Balid have been partially deciphered, and they confirm that long-distance trade of tons of staple foods had begun by 2800 BCE. Sumerian and Akkadian inscriptions from the same period report maritime trade from Mesopotamia to the north, on to the island of Dilmun; southward to Magan, on the Arabian Peninsula; and then eastward across the waters to Melukhkha. This latter place name may have referred to the legendary Spice Islands, now known as the Moluccas.3

  Indeed, some of these Sumerian and Akkadian inscriptions may be the earliest written records of long-distance globalized trade. They indicate that the Semitic tribes of Magan were exchanging copper, and perhaps incense medicines or spices as well, for hundreds of tons of barley. Those enormous quantities of cereal grain traveled down the coast of the Persian Gulf southward past the Straits of Hormuz and along the shores of the Arabian Sea as fa
r as Zhafar harbor.4

  Minds were traveling as well. Perhaps the traders’ minds leapt to consider the possibility that asafetida from one land might be as valuable as their own fine zedoary, and so a complete alphabet of comparable values for totally dissimilar substances could potentially come into play.

  Simply put, Semitic tribes from the driest of lands had learned how to trade the few precious metals, gems, and potent plant products they had—resins, seeds, cinnamon-like bark, colorful stigmas of flowers and their bracts or buds, aromatic herbs, gums—for the surpluses of staple foods produced in better-watered pockets of the world.

  Let me speculate for a moment on the significance of the phrase “learned how to trade.” As spice traders gained rudimentary marketing skills, perhaps they came upon psychological strategies to convince a farmer that he needed a copper bell for his wife’s necklace or an anti-inflammatory for the pain in his back as much as he needed enough teff or millet to keep his family from starving during the coming season of hunger. Could it be that people became willing to imagine that someone in another part of the world had something as desirable, potent, and worthwhile as the finest product they could harvest or produce on their own home ground? Perhaps this was the first moment that they sought out staples that they themselves could not easily grow: sorghum, barley, wheat, and teff, as well as fava beans, garbanzo beans, and lentils. They found these grains and beans on islands of irrigated lands in the middle of a desert sea. There, oasis dwellers expressed a desire to acquire spices that might break up the monotony of consuming the same old staples every day and thus brighten an otherwise dull meal.

  Dates and goat meat, goat meat and millet, millet and dates. Sorghum and goat meat, mutton and sorghum. Cracked wheat and quail meat, quail eggs and garbanzo bean stew. What might have a certain shadhan, that is, an irrepressible pungency or unforgettable flavor that could provide some pleasurable relief to an otherwise unrelenting sequence of staples? What could break up the dietary monotony and the drudgery of processing, preparing, and eating nearly the same stuff every day?

  We can now imagine that there might be a psychological risk to asking such questions on a regular basis. Could it be that such questions made people more apt to be dissatisfied by what lay before them and prone to crave something that was almost out of reach? Semitic peoples, at least some of them, seem to have succumbed to a thirst that could never be quenched—the grass would always be greener on the other side of the desert. It could never be quenched because of one simple fact: they tended to create a psychological desert wherever they went and could therefore reach neither the “grass” nor the happiness.

  Thus, like nomadic herders, the traders were motivated to travel far and wide, not only to bring in a larger set of foods to their larders but also to spice them up. As economic historians have recently confirmed, early Semitic traders did indeed find a marvelous way to adapt to the patchy distribution of agricultural and wild resources on the Arabian Peninsula. They became effective traders between or among the peoples living in dissimilar patches, redistributing diversity and wealth in the process.5 To succeed, they appear to have adopted not only a certain kind of mobility but also a mindset that was, until then, rather uncommon elsewhere in the world.

  I did not fully fathom the significance of what these early traders had done until I left the Dhofar region to visit the souks of northern Oman, well beyond the range of frankincense itself. At that time, my wife, Laurie, and I were traveling with a brilliant agricultural scientist, Sulaiman Al-Khanjari, who, like many Omanis, had family ties and roots in Zanzibar. Once we had arrived in the coastal metropolis of Muscat, Sulaiman asked if we wouldn’t mind visiting yet another spice souk. “The products you’ll see will be much like those in Salalah, but there is someone who may be working in this souk today whom I particularly want you to meet.” Did I detect a certain twinkle in Sulaiman’s eye as he mentioned this?

  Once in the souk, we wander down its narrow aisles, past groups of Arab youths looking to purchase cloth, jewelry, electronics, watches, slippers, shoes, and, of course, spices. Laurie and I try to keep up with Sulaiman, but crowds of Omanis press in on us, wedge in between us, and leave us yards behind our friend and guide. When at last we catch up to him, Sulaiman pulls us into a close huddle to explain the next step. “I want to take a moment to look for an acquaintance, one who has a shop just up at the top of that little stairway. . . . Do you see? There, yes, that one. If he is up there, I will have a word with him, then wave to you to come up to join us.”

  I see Sulaiman wave to another man in a white kandora robe, white skull cap, and slipperlike shoes. Dressed identically, the two of them embrace for a moment and then speak quietly for a while. At last, Sulaiman waves for Laurie and me to come up to where they stand.

  “Dr. Nabhan of Arizona in America, meet your long lost cousin, Mr. Nebhan, the frankincense trader of Muscat, Oman.” Sulaiman grins. He then translates his words in English back into Gulf Arabic to the middle-aged man standing next to him. This man is shorter than I am, with a full head of black hair and with bags under his eyes that remind me of some of my closest relatives. His skin, like my father’s, is olive colored.

  “Al-hamdu lilah! [Praise be to God!]” The smiling spice and incense merchant hugs me, then grabs my hand and holds on to it. He beckons for Laurie to take a picture of us together. Then he offers us some of his frankincense as a gift. We begin to ask questions of each other, with Sulaiman kindly translating and adding his own commentaries to provide some context.

  “Are there many of the Banu Nebhani clan here in Oman?” I ask.

  The merchant nods. “Well, yes, he supposes so,” Sulaiman explains. The merchant continues nonstop in Arabic while Sulaiman tries to listen, then paraphrases, “Your namesakes have been here a long time . . . maybe fifteen hundred years, maybe two thousand years. So that makes a lot of Banu Nebhani who have lived here . . . in some villages nearby.” Sulaiman then adds some commentary that is clearly his own: “They are like the Smiths or Joneses in your country! They say that the Banu Nebhani came from Yemen with other al-Hadr tribes, I don’t know how long ago.”

  My presumed distant cousin, the frankincense vendor, offers more commentary, which Sulaiman tries to translate a bit more literally: “Old tribe . . . clan of what do you call them? Big shots, you know? Many sheikhs.” Our host then asks if there are many Banu Nebhani in my country, and if there are, where they sailed from.

  As I answer, Sulaiman translates back into Gulf Arabic: “My grandfather, grandmother, and aunts were born in Lebanon, near the border with Syria. They sailed to America about a century ago, from Beirut to Marseilles and then on to New York. Others went to Mexico or to Brazil.”

  After Sulaiman finishes translating my answer, he and Mr. Nebhan banter back and forth for several more minutes. Sulaiman finally turns back toward Laurie and me and grins. “He wants to know what your family trades in your shops in America.”

  As I think about how to answer Mr. Nebhan, this Omani merchant, I remember that when the first members of my family came through Ellis Island to New York, some of them worked peddling spices, packaging spices, and retailing spices in corner grocery stores on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

  I have paid my dues as well, digging up sassafras roots when I was young, and later harvesting wild chiltepin chiles and wild Mexican oregano with Native American friends in Sonora, Mexico, then serving as a middleman to get them into retail outlets. And now I grow two dozen kinds of peppers, mints, and oreganos on a small farm in the desert highlands of Arizona.

  I look up and see that Mr. Nebhan and Dr. Al-Khanjari are still waiting for me to answer. I realize I cannot explain all of that in a manner that makes sense in Arabic, so I respond succinctly: “Well, yes, my family has traded spices in America, but I am a teacher . . . and a farmer.” I ask Sulaiman to explain this to our host. “First, my grandfathers and then my uncles did so. I myself have harvested fulful [peppers] and za’atar [herbs] in America, and have dr
iven truckloads of them from one country to another.”

  Mr. Nebhan, a trader of frankincense who has never left his motherland, knowingly smiles, as if he were now sure that I am indeed his distant cousin.

  Without access to Arabic genealogies still housed in archives in Yemen, there is no easy way to learn the degree to which we are related, or how many generations ago his ancestors and mine in the Banu Nebhani tribe took up this profession—a predilection, really—of trading spices. All we know is that several thousand years ago some unprecedented developments had begun to affect how Semitic peoples behaved in the places where incense, herbs, musk, dyes, and spices were gathered.

  First, traders began to use semidomesticated camels and small sailboats to take these goods far beyond their areas of origin. They moved across continents to cultures that spoke languages they had never previously heard. At first, they retained camels as their sole mode of travel, for they could cover twenty-two miles of roughly level ground a day. But the traders ultimately sought other means to move heavier loads of spices, incense, and herbs longer distances than were possible with their beasts of burden.

  They began to build and equip small dhows to sail the open waters of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Their goal was to travel even farther each day than the strongest camel could, that is, if the winds were in their sails. Of course, by this time, many other cultures around the world had figured out how to navigate the shallow shoals along their open coasts and the backwaters behind nearby barrier islands. They employed boats of buoyant animal bladders and sown-together skins, bundles of reeds, or hollowed-out palms or tree trunks.

  And yet, I imagine, the sailors from the southern and eastern reaches of Arabia began to do far more than that. They erected masts with broad, maneuverable sails on them that could be shifted with the direction of the winds. They set out to sail directly across a sea, using the seasonal winds to take their dhows back and forth. Soon, no longer content to navigate along the shores of a bay or shoals of a peninsula, they began to use distant landmarks and stars to maneuver their way over open waters.