The Doomed Oasis

by Hammond Innes

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ I asked.

  He hesitated. ‘I don’t rightly know,’ he muttered, eyeing me cautiously. ‘But I know this,’ he added with sudden violence; ‘a chap like David doesn’t drive into waterless desert with empty fuel cans. And to run out of juice just there … except for the centre of the Empty Quarter he couldn’t have picked a spot that was much farther from water.’ He stared at me and I think we were both thinking the same thing, for he said, ‘I’d like to know what his father thinks about it. In fact, when I’ve finished here I intend to drive over to Saraifa and see if the old Bedou knows—’ He stopped and cocked his head on one side, listening. Faint through the noise of the drill came the distant sound of an engine. I didn’t understand at first, but then it grew louder, over-topping the noise of the drill, and in a sudden panic of realization, I dived for the door, just in time to see the plane become airborne.

  It passed so low over the top of the truck that I instinctively ducked, and as I straightened up I was cursing myself for a fool. I should have known. I should have realized Gorde might want to get me out of the way. I turned furiously on Entwhistle, who was standing in the doorway of the truck looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘You knew about this?’

  ‘Aye, he told me.’ He smiled a little doubtfully. ‘He asked me to give you his apologies for any inconvenience.’

  ‘God rot the old man!’ I muttered savagely. To be caught like that, to be fooled into thinking he was just trying to be helpful, and all the time—

  I stared at the plane, which was rapidly dwindling to a speck, feeling suddenly helpless, isolated out here in an oven-hot world that I didn’t understand. ‘A day or two, he said,’ Entwhistle murmured apologetically. That’s all. I’ll try and make it as pleasant as possible.’

  The plane had altered course. I saw it circle once and then it was heading back towards us and for a wild moment I thought perhaps he’d changed his mind. It came in low, flying slowly with the flaps down. But the under-carriage remained up. As it bumbled close over our heads something white fluttered down from the pilot’s window. And then it turned and disappeared low over the dunes, and the sound of it was lost again in the noise of the drill.

  Entwhistle was already running to retrieve the object they had dropped to us. He came back with a cigarette packet and a crumpled sheet of paper. ‘All right. You can stop drilling,’ he shouted. He repeated the order in Arabic and as the drill slowed to an abrupt silence, he handed me the paper. On it was written in pencil: Stop drilling and proceed at once to Saraifa. Concentration of armed tribesmen camped in the dunes two miles north of you. Warn Sheikh Makhmud and give him my salaams. Philip Gorde. A chill feeling crept up my spine as I read that message, and Entwhistle’s comment did nothing to restore my morale.

  ‘Bit of luck, the Old Man flying down here.’ He flipped the coin that Otto had used to weight the packet. ‘Mightn’t have seen the sun rise tomorrow otherwise.’

  It came as a shock to me to realize that he was perfectly serious. They would have attacked you?’ I asked.

  ‘Slit our throats, probably.’ He sounded quite cheerful.

  ‘But—’ I looked about me, at the dunes asleep in the heat of the day, the furnace-hot world of the desert all around me, quiet and peaceful. It was hard to believe. ‘But you’re still on Saraifa territory,’ I said.

  He shrugged. The Emir would dispute that. And the political boys, all those bloody old Etonians - they don’t want any trouble. My name’s going to be mud.’ He stared down at the coin in his hand. And then he put it in his pocket and set about organizing the packing up of the outfit, leaving me standing there, feeling slightly lost, a stranger in a strange world.

  4. The Doomed Oasis

  His crew were all Arab and they went about the business of breaking camp noisily but efficiently. They had done it many times. In fact, it seemed a natural process out there amongst the dunes. They were mostly young men, a colourful mixture of race and dress, their teeth flashing white in their dark faces as they fooled around, making light of the work. They were fit and full of life and laughter; they had a football which they kicked at each other periodically, the guttural Arab tongue coming in staccato bursts from their lips.

  There was nothing for me to do and I sat perched on the Land-Rover’s mudguard, watching them and looking around me at the surrounding country. There was a dune, I remember, that ran away into the distance like the Prescelly hills north of St David’s. I was looking at it, thinking of holidays I had spent in that part of Wales, and suddenly my eyes became riveted on a dark speck that showed for an instant on its back. It vanished almost immediately so that I thought my eyes had played me a trick. In that shimmering heat it was difficult to be sure. And then it showed again, nearer this time. I could have sworn it was a man moving below the crest of the dune. I was just on the point of telling Entwhistle that he had a visitor when I was jolted off my seat; the clang of metal against metal was followed instantly by the crack of a rifle, and I was looking down at a hole the size of my fist in the side of the Land-Rover’s bonnet.

  For an instant everything was still. There was no sound, no movement; Entwhistle and his Arabs just stood there, shocked into immobility, staring at that hole in the side of the Land-Rover. Then Entwhistle shouted something.

  Rifles cracked from the top of the dune, little spurts of sand were kicked up round us. A bullet ricocheted off the truck’s drill and went whining past my head. Entwhistle flung himself at the Land-Rover. ‘Jump in!’ he shouted. His crew were running for the truck. Another bullet smacked into the Land-Rover, so close that the wind of it fanned my trouser legs, and then I heard shouts, saw men running towards us from the line of the dunes. The engines burst into life, drowning all other sounds. I dived for the seat beside Entwhistle as he slammed the Land-Rover into gear. Two Arabs landed almost on top of me as the vehicle jerked forward. Behind us the truck was moving, too, and beyond its lumbering shape I caught a glimpse of longhaired tribesmen dropping on to their knees, aiming their rifles. But I never heard the shots. All I could hear was the revving of the engine as Entwhistle ran through the gears.

  A moment later and we were clear, out of their range. The two Arabs sorted themselves out and I turned to Entwhistle. His foot was hard down on the accelerator and his lips were moving. The bastards!’ he was saying. ‘The bloody bastards!’ And then he looked at me. ‘Dum-dum bullets.’ His face was white under the sunburn. ‘They cut them across to make ‘them soft nosed. Blow a hole in you the size of a barn door.’ It was this rather than the attack that seemed to outrage him.

  ‘Who were they?’ I asked, and was shocked to find that I hadn’t proper control over my voice.

  ‘The Emir’s men. They must have seen the plane turn back and realized we were being warned of their presence.’ He turned to make certain that the truck was following. ‘Fine introduction you’ve had to desert life.’ He grinned, but not very certainly. He shouted something in Arabic to the two men perched on the baggage behind and they answered him with a flood of words. Shortly afterwards he pulled up. The truck drew up beside us, its engine throbbing, excited Arab faces looking down at us, all talking at once.

  He got out then and spoke to the driver, walked all round the truck and then came back and lifted the bonnet of the Land-Rover. ‘Look at that,’ he said. I got out and my legs felt weak as I stared at the hole that first bullet had made. Little bits of lead were spattered all over the engine. ‘Bastards!’ he said and slammed the bonnet shut. ‘Well, it might have been worse, I suppose. Nobody’s hurt and the vehicles are all right.’

  It was only after we’d got moving again that I realized the windscreen in front of me was shattered. Little bits of glass were falling into my lap. I kept my eyes half-closed until I had picked out all the bits. ‘How far is it to Saraifa?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not much more than forty miles by air.’ I gathered it was a good deal more the way we’d have to go, for the dunes ran south-east and we had to get eas
t. ‘Might make it shortly after dark if we don’t get bogged down too often.’

  It was just after four-thirty then. We kept to the gravel flats between the dunes, travelling at almost thirty miles an hour. The air that came rushing in through the shattered windscreen was a hot, searing blast that scorched the face. The ground was hard as iron, criss-crossed with innumerable ridges over which the Land-Rover rattled in an endless series of back-breaking jolts.

  In these circumstances conversation wasn’t easy; the wind of our movement, the noise of the engine, the rattle of stones - we had to shout to make ourselves heard. And Entwhistle wasn’t a talkative man. He’d lived on his own too much. Besides, he had a North Countryman’s lack of imagination. He even used the word ‘humdrum’ when I asked him about his job. And yet I got the impression that he loved it. But it was the job, not Arabia he loved. He’d no feeling for the country or its people. More than once he used the contemptuous term ‘wogs’ when speaking of the Arabs. But though he wouldn’t talk about himself much, he was quite prepared to talk about David.

  He had met him three times in all; once in Bahrain and then later when he was sick and David had relieved him.

  ‘Queer chap,’ he said. ‘Fact is I didn’t like him much when he came out to take over my outfit. But then,’ he added, ‘You don’t like anybody very much when you’re suffering from jaundice.’

  ‘But you felt differently about him later?’ I prompted.

  ‘Aye. Got to know him a bit better then. We were two days together whilst we moved to a new location. Then he went off to Saraifa. He’d got some leave due and he was going to spend it mucking around with an old seismological truck his father had got hold of.’ I asked him what had made him change his mind about David, and he said, ‘Oh, the way he talked. He was a great talker. Mind you,’ he added, ‘he was still too chummy with the wogs for my liking, but you couldn’t help admiring the chap. Wanted to make the desert blossom and all that.’

  ‘Water?’ I asked.

  He nodded. That’s it. He’d got a bee in his bonnet about it. Talked about Saraifa being doomed. Well, of course, it is. I’ve only been there once, but-well, you’ll see for yourself. A few more years—’ He didn’t talk for a while after that, for we had come to soft sand; he took it fast, his foot pressed hard down on the accelerator, and we bucketed through it like a small boat in a seaway.

  We came off the sand on to a hard gravel pan that scintillated with a myriad diamond gleams. ‘Mica,’ he shouted. The glare of it was dazzling. ‘You interested in geology?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Pity.’ He seemed genuinely sorry. ‘Damned interesting country.’ For him there was nothing else of interest in Arabia. We bucked another stretch of sand, ridged into shallow waves, and then he told me what had decided him to check David’s survey report. Amongst the papers in that attache case he had found Farr’s report. ‘Didn’t tell the Old Man. Thought I’d keep it in reserve. God knows where David dug it up. It was twenty years old, the paper all faded; the typing too. Could hardly read the damned thing.’

  ‘Have you got it with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘I wasn’t going to leave that behind. I’ll show it to you later. Can’t think why the Company didn’t do something about it.’

  ‘There was a war on,’ I said. ‘And Farr was killed in Abyssinia.’

  ‘You know about it then?’ He seemed surprised.

  ‘David referred to it in his report.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  We hit another patch of sand, a solid vista of it that stretched interminably ahead of us. We didn’t talk much after that. It was soft sand and the going was tough. Twice the seismological truck got bogged down and we had to lay sand mats. The sun sank slowly down into the desert behind us as we ploughed on, engines roaring, radiators steaming. We were in big dune country that was like a huge, petrified sea, the waves coming up one after the other, yet never moving, always motionless, and the shadows lengthening behind them. It had an eerie, still quality; and it left me with a sense of awe, for it had a certain majesty, a cruel, lost quality that was unnerving. Once I shouted, ‘Is it like this all the way to Saraifa?’

  ‘Christ! I hope not,’ he yelled back.

  ‘But don’t you know?’ I asked.

  ‘How the hell should I? Never been here before.’

  The sun set, a brick-red ball of fire, hazed it seemed with dust. Here and there we came upon the derelict remains of trees, gnarled and twisted in a life-long struggle against crippling odds. Dusk descended swiftly and the light faded out of the dunes. Behind us they stood like downlands etched sharp against the sky’s last light. Above us the stars suddenly appeared. Again the truck behind us became bogged and we dug the sand mats down in front of the wheels and pushed and strained to gain a few yards. And when at last we got it moving there was no light left and it was dark.

  ‘Will you be able to find Saraifa in the dark?’ I asked Entwhistle.

  ‘Inshallah,’ he said, and we pushed on.

  How he did it I don’t know, but about an hour later the dunes became smaller, the stunted tree-growth more noticeable, and then suddenly we ran out on to hard gravel again. And shortly after that the headlights picked up the first of the date gardens, a sad relic of a once fertile place, the walls no longer visible, just the starved tops of the palms sticking up out of the sand.

  We passed between two of these ruined gardens and then we joined a well-worn track where the sand had been ground to a fine powder; there were the marks of tyres, the droppings of camels. The headlights picked out the round bulk of a watch tower with men running from it, their guns gleaming with silver furnishings. Entwhistle slowed as they stood, barring our path. They wore turbans and long white robes and strapped across their shoulders was a sort of harness of leather studded with the brass of cartridges; stuffed into their belts were the broad, curved-bladed khanjar knives, the hilts of silver glinting wickedly. As we stopped they came swarming over us, enveloping us with their harsh guttural speech, all talking at once, white teeth flashing in villainous dark faces.

  ‘What do they want?’ A black-bearded ruffian had the muzzle of his gun jammed against the side of my neck, and though I tried to keep my voice under control I don’t think I was very successful.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Entwhistle was shouting at them. ‘One at a time for God’s sake.’ He didn’t seem in the least bit scared. Finally, after a long conversation with my bearded friend, he said, ‘It looks like trouble. We’re more or less under arrest.’ He spoke to the bearded Arab again and then he was ordering men on to the Land-Rover and others to the truck behind. ‘It seems,’ he said as we moved off, ‘that Sheikh Makhmud sent a party out in two Land-Rovers this afternoon to arrest my outfit and bring me back to Saraifa for questioning.’ And he added, ‘This could be the sort of thing David came up against. They’re scared stiff of the Emir and frightened to death of any activity on the Hadd border.’

  ‘Didn’t you know that before you decided to run a survey there?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I did. But I was reckoning to run the survey and get out before anyone discovered I was there.’ He crashed the gears savagely. ‘I took a chance and it didn’t come off, that’s all.’

  We skirted the crumbling wall of a date garden. The palms were green here, the gardens uninvaded by the desert sand. And then suddenly we were in the open, driving on hard gravel, and straight ahead of us, a black bulk against the stars, was the shadowy shape of the Sheikh’s palace standing like a fortress on its hill. The wooden gate of the arched entrance was closed, but it opened to the cries of our guards, and then we were inside, in a great courtyard packed with men and camels and lit by the flames of cooking fires. In an instant we were surrounded, lapped round by a tide of men, all shouting and brandishing their weapons.

  A big, portly man appeared, his face black as a Sudanese. The Sheikh’s secretary,’ Entwhistle said to me. He looked like a eunuch, fat and soft, his man
ner almost feminine. He gave orders for the care of the men and then escorted us into the palace, along dark corridors sparsely lit by smoking lamps made out of old cans, to a small room that looked out on to a central courtyard. Here the earthen floor was carpeted with rugs, the walls lined with cushions; an Arab rose to greet us. He was a compact, stocky man with almost black eyes and a proudly curved nose. The khanjar knife stuck in the girdle of his finely-woven robe was a beautiful example of the silversmith’s craft. ‘Sheikh Makhmud,’ Entwhistle whispered.

  I found my hand held in a firm grip. ‘You are welcome to Saraifa,’ the Sheikh said in halting English. ‘My house is your house.’ He had an air of command, yet his voice was gentle. But the thing that surprised me most was the fact that he wore glasses. They were silver-rimmed glasses and they drew attention to the blackness of his eyes. His clean-shaven face was long and tired-looking. He was a man of about Gorde’s age, I suppose. The other occupant of the room had also risen, a thin man with a greying moustache and a little pointed beard, his eyes heavily made up with kohl. He was Makhmud’s brother, Sultan.

  We sat cross-legged on the cushions and there was nothing in the Sheikh’s manner to indicate that we were anything but honoured guests. Polite conversation was made, partly in the Arab language, partly in English. Slaves came with a silver jug and a silver ewer. We washed our hands and then they brought in a simple dish of rice and mutton. ‘You eat with your right hand,’ Entwhistle whispered to me, and I tried to copy his practised movements.

  I was hungry enough not to care that the meat was stringy and over-fat. We ate almost in silence and when we had finished, the hand-washing was repeated and then coffee was served in little handleless cups, poured by a slave from a silver pot of intricate native design. And with the coffee came the questions. Sheikh Makhmud’s voice was no longer gentle. It had a harsh, imperious quality, and Entwhistle was soon in difficulties with the language, lapsing periodically into English as he tried to explain his presence on the Saraifa-Hadd border. In the end he passed Sheikh Makhmud the note Gorde had written.