The Doomed Oasis

by Hammond Innes

  He took me back to the hotel and I lay and sweated on my bed till dinner time, wondering how I was to contact Gorde and thinking about Ruffini. Was there really trouble brewing? But it all seemed remote - as remote as Colonel Whitaker out there in Saraifa and utterly inaccessible. And next day, after a full morning’s work, I was no nearer either of my objectives.

  I rang the Passport Office, but nothing had been decided. And when I checked on transportation I found that even if I were willing to charter a plane, there was none available with sufficient range to fly direct to Saraifa, and in any case flights there were prohibited. I went to the bank then and settled David’s affairs as far as I was able. It was the same bank that his father dealt with and the manager was helpful. He confirmed that Colonel Whitaker was living in Saraifa, this contrary to his very strict instructions. But he could tell me little else and I went back to the hotel and had a drink with two RAF officers and a civilian pilot, a Canadian named Otto Smith. After lunch we all went down to the Sailing Club for a bathe.

  Half the English colony was there, for it was Saturday, and amongst them was the girl from the GODCO reception desk sprawled half-naked on the cement of the old seaplane jetty. ‘So you’re off to Sharjah, Mr Grant?’ And when I told her I was having visa trouble, she smiled and said, ‘I think you’ll find it’s all right.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, I know everything.’ She laughed. ‘No, I happened to see your name on the flight list for tomorrow’s plane.’

  She was perfectly right. When I got back to the hotel that evening I found my passport waiting for me, stamped with visas for Sharjah and Dubai. There was also a message, signed by Erkhard’s secretary, informing me that ‘owing to the Company’s desire to help you in every possible way’ free passage was being granted to me in a Company plane leaving for Sharjah at 1030 hours the following morning, Sunday. The message added that accommodation would be available at the Fort and it was not anticipated that I should have to wait long before Sir Philip arrived from Abu Dhabi.

  There was no doubt in my mind that Erkhard had intervened to get me the necessary visas. But why? The day before he had made it clear that he didn’t intend to help me. And after the way I had cross-examined him I hadn’t expected it. And yet here he was giving me a free ride on a Company plane. I sat on my bed and smoked a cigarette whilst the hot evening breeze blew in through the open window, and the only conclusion I came to was that they had sent my note to Gorde and he had given the necessary instructions. Whatever the reasons, it was a great relief to me and I got up and started to pack.

  I had just closed the larger of my two suitcases when there was a knock at the door. It was one of the house-boys to say there was a young Arab asking for me at the desk. ‘It is a boy from the bazaar, sir. From the al-Menza Club.’ And he grinned at me.

  I had a wash and then dressed. The boy was still there when I got down quarter of an hour later. He was little more than an urchin and none too clean, and when he realized I didn’t speak Arabic, he seized hold of my wrist, pulling at me and hissing the words al-Menza and girl-want. Girl-want seemed to be the sum total of his English and I told him to go to hell. He understood that for he grinned and shook his head. ‘Girl-spik. Spik, sahib.’

  I got hold of the house-boy and then he said the boy had been sent by one of the girls at the al-Menza Club. ‘She wishes to speak with you, sir.’ This time he didn’t grin. And he added with a puzzled frown. ‘It is a personal request. This boy is from the house where she lives.’

  I didn’t like it. ‘Tell him No,’ I said and I went over to an empty table and ordered a beer. It took two house-boys and a lot of argument to get rid of the boy. I drank my beer and then went in to dinner, a solitary, dreary meal. I had just finished when the waiter came to tell me a taxi-driver was waiting outside for me. It was Mahommed AH. ‘There is a boy in my taxi,’ he said. ‘Is wishing you to go to the al-Menza to meet a girl.’

  ‘I’ve already told him I’m not interested.’

  ‘You should go, sir. She ‘as something to tell you.’

  I hesitated. But after all the man was a taxi-driver attached to the hotel. ‘You’ll drive me there, will you?’

  ‘Okay, sir.’

  It wasn’t far to the bazaar area and we finished up in a side street that was barely wide enough for the car. The al-Menza was sandwiched between a cobbler’s shop and a narrow alley, the door guarded by a turbanned Sudanese. I told the driver to wait and the boy took me by the hand and hurried me down the alley and through the black gap of a doorway into a dark passage. He left me there and a moment later footsteps sounded, high-heeled and sharp, and then a girl’s voice, low, with a peculiarly resonant quality, almost husky. ‘Monsieur.’ She took my hand, her fingers hard, not caressing. ‘Through ‘ere, pleez.’

  A door was pushed open and there were soft lights and the faint beat of Western music, a jive record playing somewhere in the building. A beaded curtain rattled back and we were in a little room no bigger than a cell. The floor was bare earth with a rug and a few cushions. A naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling showed me my companion.

  I don’t know quite how to describe that girl. She certainly wasn’t beautiful, though I suppose that is a matter of taste, for she was obviously Arab; Arab mixed with something else - European, I thought, with a touch of the real African. She stood very straight with a lithe, almost animal grace. She was the sort of girl you could picture at the well drawing water and striding across the sand with a pitcher on her head. She was that, and she was the other sort, too - the husky voice; dropped a shade it would be totally erotic, a vicious invitation. No point in dramatizing; she was just a Middle Eastern tart, but I’d never met one before and it made an impression.

  We sat cross-legged on the cushions, facing each other.

  She wore a queer sort of dress and I had a feeling that at the touch of a secret button she’d come gliding out of it like a butterfly out of a chrysalis. Her hands were pressed tight together and she leaned forward, her eyes, her lips devoid of invitation, hard almost and urgent. ‘You know why I ask you to come ‘ere?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You do not guess?’ There was the ghost of a smile on her half-open lips. But when I said, ‘No,’ she snapped them shut. ‘If you are not the man,’ she blazed; ‘if you ‘ave come ‘ere because it is the sort of place—’ At that moment she didn’t look at all nice. ‘All right,’ she said, biting on her teeth. ‘You tell me now - is it because of David you come to Bahrain or not?’

  David! I stared at her, beginning to understand. ‘Did David come here then?’

  ‘Of course. He was an oilman and this place is for oilmen. They ‘ave the same devil in them as other men where the sun is ‘ot - but David was nice, a vair nice boy.’ She smiled then and the hardness went out of her face leaving it for a moment like a picture of Madonna-with-child, despite the slightly flattened nose, the thickened lips. It was a queer face, changeable as a child’s. ‘How did you know I was here on account of David Whitaker?’ I asked her. ‘It is David Whitaker you’re talking about?’

  She nodded. ‘One of them from the GODCO Office is ‘ere las’ night. He tol’ me about you.’ She didn’t say anything after that, but sat staring at me with her big, dark eyes as though trying to make up her mind about me. ‘You like some coffee?’ she asked at length.

  ‘Please.’ I needed time, and I think she’d guessed that. She was gone only a few moments, but it gave me a chance to collect myself and to realize that she was perhaps the one person in Bahrain who could tell me what sort of a man David had become in the four years since I’d seen him. She put the coffee down between us, two small cups, black and sweet. I gave her a cigarette and sat smoking and drinking my coffee, waiting for her to start talking. I had that much sense. If I’d rushed her she’d have closed up on me.

  ‘Have you seen his sister?’ she asked finally.

  ‘Not yet.’ It wasn’t the question I’d expected.

>   ‘But you ‘ave ‘card from her, no? Does she think he is dead?’

  I sat there, quite still, staring at her. ‘What else could she think?’ I said quietly.

  ‘And you? Do you think he is dead?’

  I hesitated, wondering what it was leading up to. ‘His truck was found abandoned in the desert. There was a ground and air search.’ I left it at that.

  ‘I ask you whether you think he is dead?’

  ‘What else am I supposed to think?’

  ‘I don’t know.‘She shook her head. ‘I jus’ don’ know. He is not the sort of boy to die. He believes too much, want too much of life.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’ know what he want. Is a vair strange boy, David. He have moods; sometimes he sit for hours without saying nothing, without moving even. At such times he have a great sense of-of tranquillite. You understand? I have know him sit all night, cross-legged and in silence without moving almost a muscle. At other times he talk and the words pour out of him and his eyes shine like there is a fever in him.’

  ‘What did he talk about?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘So many words. I don’ understand half of what he say. About the desert mostly, and the Bedou. Water, too; he loved water - much more than oil, I think. And the falajes; he often talk about the falajes and about Saraifa - how the desert is moving into the oasis.’

  I asked her what the word falaj meant, but she couldn’t explain it. ‘Is something to do with water; tunnels I think under the ground because he say it is vair hot there, like in a Turkish bath, an’ there are fishes. And when you look up you can see the stars.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know what it is, but he say once it is like the wind-towers at Dubai -something brought from Persia. But I have never seen the wind-towers at Dubai,’ she added.

  ‘And this was in Saraifa?’ I asked.

  ‘Out. Saraifa. With David it is always Saraifa. He has a -a folie for that place.’ She said it almost sadly, and she added, ‘He wish to prove something there, but what I do not know - ‘imself per’aps.’ For a while she sat quite still and silent, and then she said very softly: ‘He was a man with a dream.’ She looked up at me suddenly. ‘And dreams don’ die, do they? Or are men’s dreams like the seed in a place like this - all barren?’

  I didn’t know what to answer. ‘You loved him, did you?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Loved?’ She shrugged. ‘You want everything black and white. What is love between man and woman - and in a place like this?’ Her shoulders moved again, slight and impatient. ‘Per’aps. But sometimes he could be cruel. He had a vein of cruelty in him - like the Arabs. At other times—’ She smiled. ‘He showed me a glimpse of what life could be. And when he talked about his dreams, then he is near to God. You see,’ she added, her voice suddenly tense, ‘he is important to me. The most important thing in my whole life. That is why I cannot believe he is dead.’

  I asked her when she had last seen him and she laughed in my face. ‘You don’ see a man when he is lying in your arms. You feel - feel … if you are a woman.’ She stared at me and then she giggled like a girl. ‘You look so shocked. Have you never been with a woman like me before? But no, of course, you are English. I forget. You see, I am Algerienne, from Afrique Nord. All my life I am accustomed to Frenchmen - and Arabs.’ She spat the word ‘Arabs’ out as though she hated them. ‘I should have been still in Algerie, but when the Indo-China war is on, they send us out to Saigon, a whole plane-full of women like me. We come down at Sharjah because of engine trouble and we are there in the Fort for two weeks. There I met a merchant from Bahrain, so I don’ go to Saigon, but come ‘ere to Bahrain, and later I am put into the al-Menza Club as hostess. That is ‘ow I come to meet David.’

  ‘Yes, but when did you last see him?’ I asked again.

  ‘In July of las’ year. And it was not ‘ere, but at the place where I live.’

  That was just before he sailed for Dubai?’

  ‘Oui.’ Her eyes were searching my face. ‘He was - how you say?’ She hesitated, searching for a word. But then she shrugged. ‘Vair sad I think. He say that there is only one man in the ‘ole world that ‘e can really trust and that this friend is in England.’

  ‘Didn’t he trust his father?’ I asked.

  ‘Le Colonel?’ She moved her shoulders, an expressive shrug that seemed to indicate doubt. ‘When I see him that las’ time he trust nobody out here - only this friend in England. You are from England and yesterday you are at the Company’s offices enquiring about David.’ She leaned forward so that the deep line between her full breasts was a black shadow. ‘Tell me now, are you this friend?’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you his friend’s name?’

  ‘No, he don’ say his name - or if he do, I ‘ave forgot.’

  ‘Well, I’m his lawyer. Does that help?’

  ‘A man of business?’

  ‘Yes. His Executor, in fact. That means that I carry out his instructions when he is dead.’

  ‘And now you carry them out? That is why you are ‘ere in Bahrain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you never his friend - before?’

  ‘Once,’ I said. ‘Four years ago.’ And I told her how I’d helped him to get away in the Emerald Isle. Evidently she knew this story, for she nodded her head several times and her eyes were bright with the memory of his telling of it. ‘Yes,’ she said when I had finished. ‘Now I know you are the man.’ And then she leaned forward and gripped hold of my hand. ‘Where you go now - after Bahrain?’ she asked. ‘You go to find him, yes?’ And she added, ‘You will give him a message pleez? It is important.’

  I stared at her. Her dark face was so intense, her belief in his immunity from death so tragic.

  ‘Pleez.’ Her voice was urgent, pleading. ‘It is vair important.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I reminded her gently.

  She dropped my hand as though she had hold of a snake. ‘His truck is found abandoned in the desert. That is all.’ She glared at me as though challenging me to destroy her belief. ‘That is all, you ‘ear me? Pleez.’ She touched my hand again, a gesture of supplication. ‘Find ‘im for me, monsieur. There is trouble coming in the desert and he is in danger. Warn him pleez.’

  There was no point in telling her again that he was dead. ‘What sort of trouble?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘War. Fighting. What other trouble do men make?’ And when I asked her where the fighting was going to break out, she said, ‘In Saraifa, I think. That is the rumour in the bazaar. And that boy who bring you ‘ere, Akhmed; he is the son of a famous pearl-diver. He knows the naukhudas of all the dhows and there is talk of sambuqs with arms coming across the sea from Persia. I don’ know whether it is true or not, but that is the talk. And ‘ere in Bahrain we hear all the talk. That is why I ask to see you, to tell you that you must warn him. He is in great danger because of ‘is father.’

  ‘What’s Colonel Whitaker got to do with it?’ I asked.

  ‘He is drilling an oil well in Saraifa. Oh,’ she said angrily, ‘the greed of you men. Money, money, money - you think of nothing else and you must cut each other’s throats to get more and more. But with David it is different. He don’ want money. He want something … I don’ know. I don’ know what he want. But not money. He don’ care about money.’

  It was extraordinary; this girl telling me what Colonel Whitaker was doing, confirming what I had already guessed. ‘How do you know Colonel Whitaker is drilling for oil?’ I asked.

  ‘How? I tell you, this place is for oilmen. They ‘ave their intelligence and because they are ‘omesick and half dead with ennui, they talk.’ She gave a little laugh. There is so much talk in this ‘ouse that I can almost tell you what each oilman eat for breakfast from Doha right down the Gulf to Ras al-Khaima.’

  I sat for a moment thinking about the rumours she’d heard, remembering what Ruffini had said out there on the Jufair jetty.

  ‘You will tell him what I say
. You will warn him?’

  ‘Of course.’ What else could I say?

  ‘Do you go to Saraifa? If you go there, pleez you should talk with Khalid. He is the sheikh’s eldest son. He and David hunted together when he is first in the desert. They are like brothers he always say.’

  I gave a little shrug. How would Khalid know? How would anybody know what had happened? The boy was dead. ‘I’ll see his father,’ I said. ‘If I can.’

  ‘Non, non.‘ There was urgency, a sense almost of fear in her voice.

  I stared at her hard. ‘Why not?’ But if she knew anything, she wasn’t saying. And because I didn’t like the way my thoughts were running, I asked her where David had been going that last time she had seen him.

  ‘To Dubhai,’ she answered. ‘By ship.’

  The Emerald Isle?’ She nodded.

  ‘And after that - after Dubhai?’

  Again that slight, impatient movement of the shoulders.

  ‘He don’ say. He don’ tell me where he go.’

  ‘Was it Safaira?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’ know.’

  There’s some suggestion that he was on loan to his father, that he was doing a survey for Colonel—’

  ‘Non, non.’ Again the urgency, the leap of something stark in the wide dark eyes. ‘C’est impossible.’ She shook her head emphatically.

  ‘Why is it impossible?’

  ‘Because—’ She shook her head again. ‘He cannot go to work with him. I know that now.’ And she added under her breath: ‘Que le bon Dieu le protege!’ I felt I had to know the reason, but when I pressed her for it, she shied away from the subject. ‘I must go now.’ She got to her feet in one easy, balanced motion. It was as though my questions had started an ugly train of thought - as though to admit that he’d gone to Saraifa to join his father was to admit the fact of his death. And as I stood up I was remembering again the nagging suspicion that had been in my mind that day Griffiths had come to see me in Cardiff.

  ‘Au revoir.’ She held out her hand and I was conscious again of the steel grip of those thin fingers. ‘You are his friend. I know that now. And when you find him you will warn him?’ I nodded, not saying anything. ‘And you can give him my love also,’ she said with a sudden flash of gaiety. And then serious again: ‘The boy Akhmed will be waiting each morning for you at the ‘otel. I have arranged it. He knows many people and he can help you if you wish. And remember please,’ she added, ‘this is an island very close to the great deserts of Arabia - much closer than Algerie is to the Sahara. And the desert is Arab. Your Eenglish officials and the oilmen, they know only what ‘appen on the surface. They can see the bees swarm, but they do not know when the old queen die. You understand?’ And with that she pulled back the bead curtain and I was out in the passage again where the dance music sounded faintly. She took me as far as the alleyway where the boy was waiting and then with a final touch of those fingers, a flash of white teeth, she was gone.