Page 23 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

Development or Decline of Pastoralists 13
30% work as drivers, and some 18% have enlisted in the armed
forces, mainly in Abu Dhabi, where a couple of men from the
Wadi Jufrah have been very successful, reaching officer status.
Some have entered the police forces and gendarmeries of the
receiver countries. Although they are generally employed at
relatively low levels of seniority, their cash income is nevertheless
substantial, and has brought the Iqtabls many material benefits.
Thus the population of the Jufrah has in many respects ceased
to be nomadic, or even to be pastoral, having entered a wider cash
economy, and virtually abandoned the subsistence base around
which life used to focus. Even those fariq moves which are made
are anachronisms—the raison d'etre behind these moves, the
animals, no longer assumes a very important role.15 The shifts of
dwelling place are a combination of the desire to inhabit a new
clean site, with more easily available firewood supplies, and the
following of tradition: the families have always moved, and so
continue to do so, albeit in reducing numbers.
Other incidental factors also militate in favour of reduced
household mobility: the absence of so many men means that there
is a vacuum of decision-making on factors such as when and where
to move, and the lack of labour also makes the moves more
difficult to effect. This is especially so as the previously simple,
uncluttered and easily moved fanqs are now encumbered with the
consumer goods bought with the remittances.
Paradoxically, it is increased ease of travel which has caused a
contraction in the pattern of household movement, enabling the
settling of families in dispersed locations away from al-$ubaykhl
and other villages in which the Ban! Qitab have interests. This is
associated with the increasing use of the Land Rover: when a
family gains use of a vehicle, daily trips from the area of pastures
can be made to the groves in the summer to harvest and bring back
fresh dates to the household. The need to live in the immediate
vicinity of the palms is therefore much reduced.
Often a particular mentality or psyche is attributed to the
Bedouin and other pastoralists, in order to explain their refusal to
settle in or near villages; whilst this is so in so far as they do have a
tradition of household movement, one does not need to invoke
such contrived reasoning in this case. Al-$ubaykhl is not owned
wholly by the BanI Qitab, _but is shared with a sedentary tribe
living in the quarter, the A1 Balush. There is a degree of long
standing mutual antagonism between these tribes; the normal
stresses that occur between pastoralist and farmer are in this case
crystallised, aggravated, and transmuted into tribal disagreements
and tensions. Thus the BanI Qitab have dug different wells from