Whispers from the Tent

The War Mare in the Desert

I had not yet made friends with my mare. She fretted and was nervous. I was on her back without the flowing robes usually worn by the riders she was used to. Jack and Arthur had donned Arab costume, but at the last moment I could not give up my flannel shirt and my comfortable ragged coat and trousers. So I broke the rule of the desert and went as I dressed.

I argued to myself that some time Wadduda would have to get used to me and my clothes and that she best begin at once. So I let her fret. We rode on for miles over the dirt and rock and Wadduda still seemed fretful. She wanted something; that was evident, but what it was I could not quite make out. Then suddenly I was enlightened.

Just as the big red sun was setting we came to the desert. Wadduda stopped as if she were paying some tribute to the closing day. The faint roadway now seemed to disappear and before us was a vast barren plain. The sky was of a soft blue, tinted to gold by the sun, which had just set. I turned in my Oregon-made saddle as easily as I could, that I might see where the rest of the caravan was. The mare did not notice my turning. With a quick and graceful toss of the head she began to play. I sat deep down in my saddle and let her frolic uninterrupted. She finally stopped short and snorted twice. 

Turning slightly to the left she started galloping with a delightful spring.  It was the return home, the call of the wild life with its thrills of wars and races; with its beautiful open air as compared with the musty stuffed corral she had been picketed in. She was getting away from civilization and back to the open. Once in a while she stopped short apparently to scent the rapidly cooling atmosphere. Now and then she pranced, picking her way between the camel thistles. Her ears were alert; her eyes were blazing with an expression of intense satisfaction. All this time, I found by my wet cheeks, that I had been crying without knowing it. I was wrought up to a state of much excitement. I was again a boy and felt the presence of my parents, and recalled the stories of the Arab horse they used to tell me when I was a child.

I remembered the drawings I had made of them as a boy. It was hard to realize that I was I was I, and that I was astride the most distinguished mare of the desert. I seemed then to realize what she was and what she meant to me. My face was dripping again and I felt glad I was alone. 

Wadudda stopped short again and was scanning the horizon. I touched the mare with my heels but she did not move. She was thinking. Of what, who knows? Perhaps of her wars; or of combats on the desert, or of the keen edge of the Bedouin lance given when she had seen both horse and rider fall from the thrust of the spear of the great Sheikh who had ridden her. 

So for a long time we waited together – the mare and I, in the gathering dusk, and as we waited I almost wished that we could always be alone. The call of the desert came strong to both of us then.

From Homer Davenport’s Annotated Quest of the Arabian Horse.

*Wadduda (A Dahman Khumayis x A Saqlawiyah Al-Abd) was foaled in Syria in 1899 and imported to the U.S. in 1906 by Homer Davenport. She was a gift to Mr. Davenport from the Governor of Aleppo via Akmet Haffez, a distinguished Bedouin. In the photo above, Davenport and *Wadduda are on the right.