Saudi Arabia: He Sings about His Gun (cont.)

From the first level of the house, raised just slightly above the welcome area, several other houses were visible, positioned on the peaks of the surrounding hills. Mohammed looked over the valley, pointed from his eyes to the houses, and slowly brought his hand back. Three fortresses dotting the valley ensured the protection of the village. In the past rival tribes, rogue camel traders, or greedy travelers all threatened local villages. The village’s survival depended on keeping out unwelcome guests, while welcoming those that provided trade.

Above the door hung a large iron ball, hanging by a chain from a higher window. “Unwelcome visitors,” Mohammed said, as he mimed the ball dropping onto his skull from above.

I bent down to enter the small doorway. It was four feet high and framed with a thick tree trunk that held up the tons of stone in the stories above. I walked through a narrow passageway into a small room. Dark clay covered the walls and black holes were set in the floor on one end of the room. Hunching down, Mohammed mimicked the actions of cooking and, taking a handful of grain and a rock, began grinding on the stone work-surface with vigor.

Meats would be salted and then hung in this room; the smoke and heat from the cooking would gradually preserve them.  He also pointed outside towards a series of blackened holes that were receded in the walls, which served an outdoor stove and cooking area. Traditional Asir cooking utilized the small amount of ingredients that either grew in the region or came from passing traders.

The second room housed relics from the turn of the century; when Mohammed’s father had welcomed other tribes into his home rather than groups of tourists. The walls displayed knives and an impressive array of old rifles.

“Four persons,” said Mohammed as he pointed to a single gun on the opposite wall with a glint of pride. The group adorned blank expressions for a moment.

“What? Four people were killed with that?” someone finally asked. After a translation, Mohammed smiled and moved on.

The museum was divided into 19 sections dealing with different areas of Asir culture and heritage, including: religion, weapons, construction, agriculture, handicrafts, pottery, traditional dress, and wildlife. Some artifacts were carefully placed in glass cabinets; others simple hung on the walls or laid haphazardly around the room.

In some rooms old pictures of Asir luminaries hung next to clothes, weapons, and other possessions. The pictures showed men on horseback or in groups waving their weapons.
“Very bad wars happen here,” Mohammed told us, as he pointed to pictures of men wielding knives and guns, and then mimes the way they fought. He does his best to instill upon us the gruesome nature of the combat.

After hitching up his robes, Mohammed sprinted up a set of stairs; and we followed.  A room on the top floor was one of the smallest we had seen and consisted of just a bed, with ropes wrapped over a wooden frame and a small chair beside it. “This is where the man of the house lived. His wife would sit here to give him food, to talk to him or—, ” Mohammed explained, and a smile returned to his face.

The butt of a gun poked out of the wall in each corner of the room, they pointed to other buildings in the complex. “The man would look after his neighbor’s house. They would do the same—they were often starving, so villages would fight each other for food.”  The length of chain we had seen over the entrance also lead to this room.

This was the last room that we would see in the house, and Mohammed ran down the stairs ahead of us. As we made our way through the flights of uneven steps that switched back through the building, I noticed several other rooms. Most were covered in dust and straw, and in some the ceilings were beginning to cave in.  Back on the first floor I looked up at the ceiling. “It’s iron; the wooden beams have rotted. It had to be saved,” explained Khalid

“How long will it stay up?” I asked

“Forever now, some of the others are already falling down”

I looked out the window at the other buildings on the hillside and wondered how long they would stay.

“The outside will stay, the inside won’t be as fortunate.”

I left the house and turned to Mohammed, holding out my hand. Instead of bidding me farewell, he handed me his gun: one last chance!

I stood back, grasping the barrel of the gun at the end, my arm out straight. This time as I began to lift I let my hand bend back to my wrist, continuing to lift until it reached waist height. I then twisted my body, preparing to swing the gun upwards with the momentum; but this achieved nothing; and the rifle began spinning round wildly. Those watching ducked out of the way, and I decided to give up before anyone got hurt.

“Masalama,” I said and handed back the rifle.

“Masalama,” said Mohammed as he lifted the gun, this time with his left hand, and waved me on my journey with the rifle slung casually over his shoulder.

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