SO said The Little Prince (by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Kathrine Woods); here is the full quote):
“The desert is beautiful” the little prince added. And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs and gleams…. “What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince,” is that somewhere it hides a well…” I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands.
This was written about the Sahara Desert, we live in the Negev Desert, we also have sand dunes:
The Big Sand Dune of Nahal Halavan.
On a recent trip 4X4 from south of Ashalim along the dry riverbed of Nahal Besor we realized that we also have hidden wells in our desert.
There is not much information about these wells, but I did find in Amnon Livne’s book from 1993 ‘Ramat HaNegev’ (The Negev Highlands) some stories connected to these wells (I use his numbers).
To stay in the world of the Little Prince we are explorers who want to know our neighbor, the Desert; as travelers we seek the geographer to tell the stories that are worth telling about places we visit to remember and to be amazed even more because we know.
The first well we came upon was “Bir Hadadge” (מס. 158: ביר הדאג’).
During The British Mandate (1920-48) this well was owned by a local man (Msalem Even-Ewaid) who sold the water to neighbors who needed it for their herds.
In August 1989 the local Bedouin tribe cleaned the well and dug down to a depth of 20 meters.
When we were there at the end of March 2021 it was dry without water.
It is a very nice site except for the perpetual littering by the Light House or should we call it the Eye of Sauron. The well is open without a fence, so we had to hold on to our grandchildren to prevent them from falling inside. Unfortunately, there are no explanations, not even the name which we found on our map.
Driving west we came upon a herd, perhaps descents of the animals who got water from the well during the British Mandate !
As we continued along the wadi we came upon this huge beautiful acacia tree,
Close to the tree we found the second well, which is not hidden as it is located in the middle of the wadi, Bir Hayal or Ait’mila ( מס 142: ביר חייל או אית'מילה).
This well is situated in a very unusual location in the middle of the dry riverbed close to where an accessory, Nahal Hayal, joins Nahal Besor; when a severe flashflood will happen, it might take down the structure and destroy the well.
According to Livne this well was dug by the British wanting a public well free for everyone. but the local tribes earned a living by selling water from their private wells to neighbors who needed it for their herds. They were not interested in having competition from a public British well, so they joined forces and misled the British into digging well in the middle of the wadi, well aware that the next flashflood would take it down. It is still standing almost 2 meters high. It is covered so we could not see how deep it is or if there was water inside. My son did hop up to see how far he could see; the structure did not crumple under his weight.
The last well we saw on our exploring was Bir Gatawii (מס. 79 ביר גטאווי)it is not exactly near the wadi but 200 meters away, so it is kind of hidden from the eye. According to Livne this well was built in 1946 by Salah El-Gatawii. He sent his little daughter out to find a good place to dig a well, where she said, he dug the well we see it today.
It is flat, like a hole in the ground without a fence; next to it there is pool into which water could flow. There was no water in it when we were there. This was the least interesting of the wells we saw on our exploring. As for the other two wells there was no name and no explanation.
The Little Prince is right, the desert is beautiful and somewhere it hides a well, or rather 3 wells. We found it interesting, but it could be so much more interesting if explanations were put in place as well as names of the well. We enjoyed a few hours in the desert.
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