The Nomadic Alternative – Page 74

Paradise passes through a Valley of the Shadow of Death. It twists

up gorges that glint in the heat or traverses ashen landscapes

where bleached thorns alone survive. The horses drop first, then

the sheep, the goats and the camels. Vultures hover in thermals

awaiting the moment of death before they swoop down to plunge their

blood-coloured heads into steaming carcasses. And the nomads

never look back.

An ordeal by water follows the ordeal by land. When the spring

sun strikes the mountain flanks, the snow-melt turns placid streams

to torrents; but the herds must cross to the opposite bank. Behind

the pasture is withering and the plains cracking in the heat. "Here's

the problem", wrote M.G. Cooper of the Bakhtiari migration in Persia

about forty-five years ago, "on this side of the river are five

thousand people with all their worldly goods and perhaps fifty

thousand animals. There are women here, children, babies. It is spring,

and the herds and flocks have any number of baby animals. The people

have no boats. But they must cross and cross quickly at that.

There's little or no grazing on this side of the river ... They must

cross ... It would have given any army commander heart failure."

Swimming or floating on rafts of inflated skins, the whole tribe

survives this multiple baptism to face another ordeal on the melting

snows of the mountain. The procession of men and animals, from the

distance like a column of ants, snakes up over the high pass. At

times a speck detaches itself and the animal which has missed its

footing hurtles down. The high pass is the 'eye of a needle' for

the migrants who pass to the freedom of the further side.

"A narrow path is this the poets declare." This famous line of

the Katha Upanishad refers to the final effort of the spiritual

hero before he achieves release. But the nomads who take the narrow

path to the mountains are all heroes following their road of trials.

The ascent to the mountains celebrates the renewal of life and

triumph over the forces of death. The journey also coincides with

the vernal equinox when the Hebrews celebrate the Passover - itself

a migration in microcosm - and the Persians the Nowruz or New Year.