Page 14 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

4 Arabian Studies IV
form of marriage, but I refer to it to give a clearer picture of the
kind of change which took place in customs and traditions).
Contact with the cities resulted in the adoption of bad habits
unknown to the Bedouin all their lives. They learned about wine
and heard obscene language. Their ways of bringing up their male
children and daughters altered—and there is a vast difference
between the child brought up in the ‘house of hair' in a desert and
the child bom and growing up in a house amongst sedentary
companions.

Migration in reverse
As a result of this a migration in reverse has commenced, and a
return to the desert began when it was all too late and conditions
had already so deteriorated that the Bedouin has now to build up
himself anew.
In this article I do not attach blame to the State nor do 1 wish to
arouse suspicions about its good faith. To tell the truth is always
hard, and I do not want to go to jail as a result of writing this
article, for I am a Bedouin who lives in the desert stretching from
the Gulf to the Ocean.
What I want to show and to stress is that it is a duty and a wise
course to revive Bedouin life through aid to the Bedouin in the
place where they were assured of a livelihood—namely by digging
wells for them in grazing areas where they always used to pasture
their animals. They should be further aided by the provision of
medical treatment through mobile medical dispensaries which
would visit them regularly, even if only once a week. Medical
veterinary services should also be extended to their animals.
Mobile schools should be sent to them to provide elementary
classes—after which pupils would go to boarding schools.
It is my belief that such a system as this would form the basis,
initially, for the transfer of the Bedouin from the life of the
Badiyah to settled life, if it is proposed to persist in the policy of
sedenterisation of the Bedouin.
But—I must ask a question. Why should the Bedouin be settled?
Do they constitute a force to be feared if they remain together? Or
are they an evil society that must be destroyed? These are
questions to which I find no answer.
I mourn the Bedouin in their new life. Farewell to our noble old
traditions—I have loved you as a child and as a young man. What
can I do but bid you farewell, you life of the Badiyah? My heart is
bitter with sorrow for you and my sole consolation is that books
and histories have preserved some of our traditions and customs.