112 DAHLAK 



Accompanied by our inseparable Tesfankièl, we reached 

 Gembeli at lo a.m. I took presents with me for women and 

 girls — necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets and various trifles of 

 cheap jewellery which make up the out-dated heritage of 

 many women in the west, especially my wife and my 

 mother-in-law. 



The thousand and more inhabitants of Dahlak Kebir are 

 all fervent Mohammedans and almost all fishermen. They 

 know nothing of agriculture (which is impossible anyway) 

 and they know nothing about industry. They live in nine 

 very old villages that have sprung up here and there appar- 

 ently by sheer accident, since they are not near patches of 

 vegetation, oases or water-holes, nor are they near the inlet 

 of some landing point, but bang in the middle of the desert 

 or on the edge of some impossible stretch of coast. The reason 

 for this dispersion is probably to be found in the raiding of 

 the old Abyssinian pirates. Until the sixteenth century 

 Dahlak Kebir enjoyed the benefits of an independent sultan, 

 evidence of which is to be found inscribed in Cufic lettering 

 on tomb-stones now lying abandoned in the desert. 



Three-quarters of Gembeli has been destroyed. Plaster 

 walls stand crumbling, stone houses have been dismantled, 

 the roofs and all the fixtures have disappeared and as you 

 walk through the solitary streets, your footsteps echo and a 

 hundred eyes watch you from the darkness of open doors and 

 windows. 



The mortality rate among these people is high, poverty 

 is acute and building materials are scarce, the small quarry 

 at Mersa Nasi being the only one in the islands. When, 

 therefore, a family has been devoured by the desert and 

 naisery, its house is dismantled by the rest of the community. 

 Stone, fixtures and anything else that might enrich the 

 houses of the survivors is carried off. Three-quarters of each 



