The Doomed Oasis

by Hammond Innes

  It was final, and as though to emphasize the point, he said, ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. No doubt Charles will take care of you, but if you want a lift out… . ‘ Sheikh Makhmud stopped talking and the courtyard was in an uproar again. Gorde’s hand gripped my arm. ‘Hope turned to despair makes men dangerous,’ he said, his small, bloodshot eyes looking into mine. There’s going to be trouble here and these people are in an ugly mood.’

  He turned abruptly away from me and in the midst of the noise and confusion I heard him say casually to Sheikh Makhmud, ‘Mind if we have something to eat? I’m damned hungry.’

  Immediately, Sheikh Makhmud was the solicitous host, courteous and hospitable. ‘Faddal! Faddal! He waved Gorde to the place vacated by Whitaker, found room for Otto, called for food to be brought. Khalid was in the courtyard now, pacifying the tribesmen, shepherding them out. He was quick, decisive, a born leader, but they went sullenly.

  I returned to my place, feeling nervous and ill-at-ease. I didn’t need to be told that they were in an ugly mood. I could feel it all around me. It was like an electric charge. And the uproar had spread from the feasting place into the great courtyard beyond and out into the village of Saraifa. The sound of their voices murmured on the night air, a continual angry buzzing as the whole population swarmed about the palace. Men came in and out to stand and stare, and it seemed to me that their eyes in the lamplight blazed with a wild, fanatical hate. Erkhard felt it, too, for he leaned across to me and said, ‘It’s all very well for Gorde to say he’ll leave at daybreak. He’s got his plane here. Mine is ten miles away beside that rig.’ And he added, ‘Damn the man! A Moslem. I should have guessed he’d be up to every sort of trickery.’

  ‘Did you have to turn him against his son?’ I said angrily.

  But it didn’t register with him. ‘Greed,’ he said. ‘It’s an Arab failing.’

  I thought that was good, coming from an oilman with his reputation. But I didn’t have a chance to reply, for Yousif was suddenly bending over me. ‘Coll-onel want you come,’ he hissed. ‘Very important, sahib.’

  I hesitated, unwilling to leave the protection of Sheikh Makhmud’s presence or to lose contact with Gorde and his promise of a lift out. But I couldn’t very well refuse. ‘All right,’ I said and got to my feet. Courtesy demanded that I pay my respects to Sheikh Makhmud before leaving. He didn’t rise and his eyes regarded me coldly from behind their glasses. No doubt he held me partly responsible for what had happened. His face looked haggard, the line of his mouth bitter. I turned to Gorde. ‘I’m going to see Whitaker now,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to accept your offer of a lift.’

  He had just taken a piece of meat from the dish in front of him and he looked up, licking the grease from his fingers. ‘First light,’ he said. ‘And watch it, Grant. Charles has lost face and anything can happen to a man that’s been hit as hard as he has.’

  Yousif’s hand was on my arm and as I turned I saw Sheikh Abdullah’s dark eyes fixed on me. The men in the courtyard fell back from me, suddenly silent, as we made our way out. Their eyes followed me, gleaming in the lamplight, and once again I caught the whisper of that word - Nasrani. There was no mistaking the significance of it this time. They were hating us all that night.

  5.The Quicksands of Umm al Samim

  Whitaker was waiting for me on that same rooftop over looking the desert, but this time he was pacing up and down it. His movements were caged and restless. He checked only momentarily as I entered. ‘Will Philip Gorde come and see me, do you think?’ he asked, and when I told him No, he resumed his pacing. ‘After all these years, to talk to me like that!’

  It was too dark for me to see his face, but I could tell from the stooped outline of his shoulders, the lowered head, above all the nervous quickness of his movements, the way he spoke, that his mood was one of desperation. ‘All my life I’ve had to use subtlety. It’s been part of my job out here. Always the need to find my way through the maze of Arab politics. Never a straight course. Always the devious approach. These oilmen out from England - stupid men like Erkhard who don’t understand the Arab mentality -they don’t realize the problems of these Bedou sheikhs, the feuds, the vague boundaries that didn’t matter so long as it was desert sand and nothing more. History, culture, race -they go back three thousand years and more, virtually without change, untouched by Western civilization. It’s a culture in which the individual is still dominant, personality and human emotions the overriding factor governing men’s actions. And over all this are the outside factors -international politics, the Foreign Office. Even Philip doesn’t really know the Arab - though he likes to think he does.’

  It was the fact of having somebody with him of his own race. The words came out of him in a pent-up torrent. But what he said was said for his own benefit, not for mine; an attempt to justify his actions. But when he’d said it all, he turned and faced me, suddenly almost humble: ‘Suppose I go to Philip myself?’

  There was no point in raising his hopes. ‘I don’t think it would do any good.’ And I told him about Gorde’s visit to the PRPG.

  His head came up. ‘In other words, I was right. The Company’s not allowed to enter into any agreement involving the Hadd border.’ There was relief in his voice, but it was overlaid by the bitterness of frustration. And he added acidly, ‘Nice of the Political Resident to confirm my own assessment of the situation so exactly.’ His shoulders sagged; he turned his face towards the desert. ‘Then I’ve no alternative now … ‘ He said it to himself, not to me. standing very still, looking out to where the stars met the hard line of the sands. ‘Over thirty years I’ve been out here. Grant. I’m practically a Bedou. I think like them, act like them … I’m over sixty now and I know more about the Arab and Arabia … ‘He stopped there and in the stillness I could hear the breeze rattling the palms. He turned slowly and stared at me. ‘All these years out here and a boy of twenty-four sees it clearer than I do.’ His voice was harsh, his face grim, the lines cut by sand and sun so deep they might have been scored by a knife.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t reach that conclusion earlier,’ I said.

  He took a step forward, his eye bulging, his body taut, gripped in a sudden blaze of anger. But all he said was. ‘Yes, it’s a pity.’ He turned and resumed his pacing, the shoulders stooped again. ‘Heredity is a strange thing,’ he murmured. ‘If we’d been less alike … ‘ He shrugged and added, ‘In that case I don’t suppose he’d have gone back to the locations against my orders.’ He fell silent again then. The breeze was from the east and it brought with it the murmur of Saraifa like the beat of the surf on a distant shore.

  ‘You wanted to see me,’ I reminded him. The sound of that distant crowd made me anxious to get back to Gorde.

  ‘Yes, about finances.’ He kicked a cushion towards me and told me to sit down. ‘Just what have I got left?’ he demanded, folding himself up on the floor beside me.

  I was glad Gorde had returned my briefcase then. I could have told him the position more or less from memory, but all the papers were there and it made it easier. He shouted for Yousif to bring a light and for the next ten minutes I went over the figures with him. He hadn’t much left. But there were some shares I hadn’t sold and they’d appreciated quite considerably, and after repaying back loans, I thought he’d have just enough if he lived quietly. I thought he’d decided to go home, you see, to leave Arabia and retire. It seemed reasonable for a man of his age. ‘I’m sorry it’s not more,’ I said, putting the papers back in their folder.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll have to borrow then.’

  ‘It would be better,’ I said, returning the file to my briefcase, ‘if you could arrange to live within your means.’

  He stared at me, and then he burst out laughing. But the laughter was without humour. ‘So you think I’m beaten, do you? You think I’m turning tail and heading for home like a village cur … ‘ The fury building up in him seemed to get hold of his throat so that the words be
came blurred. That’s what they’ll all be thinking, I don’t doubt - Gorde, Makhmud, that man Erkhard.’ And then in a voice that was suddenly matter-of-fact: ‘I take it you’ll be going back in one of the Company planes?’

  ‘Gorde has offered me a lift.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have letters for you to various merchants in Bahrain. A list of things to order, too. Would you like to wait here whilst I write them or shall I send Yousif up with them later? When is Philip leaving, by the way?’

  ‘First light.’ And because I wanted to make certain I didn’t miss the flight I asked him to have the letters sent after me.

  He nodded. That gives me the night in which to think this thing over.’ He summoned Yousif and gave him instructions to take me back to the palace. ‘By the way,’ he said, as I got to my feet, ‘you mentioned a package Griffith had brought you, something David took to him on board the Emerald Isle. Was that his survey report?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Based on Henry Farr’s old report?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I take it Entwhistle was running a check on David’s locations? You don’t know with what result, I suppose?’

  ‘No. He didn’t say.’

  He had risen to his feet and standing close to me, he seemed to tower over me. ‘I’d like to see my son’s survey report. Have you got it with you in your briefcase?’

  I realized then why he’d considered his finances inadequate. ‘Good God!’ I said. ‘You’re surely not going to start drilling operations on that border … ‘ I was staring at him, remembering what Gorde had said. But there was nothing wild-eyed about him. He was bitter, yes. He’d been humiliated, deeply shocked by the behaviour of a man he’d always regarded as his friend, but the eye that met mine was level and unflinching and I knew that he hadn’t yet crossed the borderline into madness. ‘You haven’t a hope of succeeding now,’ I said. ‘The Emir will be watching that border and the instant you start drilling … ‘

  He smiled thinly. ‘I’m not afraid of death, you know. Being a Muslim makes one fatalistic.’ He turned away, leaning his body on the parapet and staring out across the dunes, grey now with the first light of the risen moon. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I haven’t made up my mind.’ He hesitated and then turned to me. ‘But if I should decide to go ahead then I’d like to have David’s report. He gives the locations, I take it?’ And when I nodded, he said. ‘Do they coincide with Henry Farr’s?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No, of course not. I ran a check survey myself, you know. That was a long time ago now when I had a bodyguard of more than a dozen men, all on the Company’s payroll, and the use of the Company’s equipment.

  In those days - quite soon after the war - I reckoned my chaps could hold the Emir off if it came to a showdown long enough for me to pull out with my equipment. But it never came to that. I got away with it without the Emir knowing. But I knew I couldn’t do that with a drilling rig.’

  ‘Then how do you expect to get away with it now?’ I demanded.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know that I can.’ He was smiling softly to himself. ‘But I’ve been out here a long time, Grant. I know that little Emir inside out. I’ve had spies in Hadd sending me back reports and I think I know enough now … ‘ He gave a little shrug and the smile was no longer soft; it was hard, almost cruel. ‘I’m outside the Company now. It makes a difference. And it’s just possible that I could get away with it where the Company couldn’t.’ He straightened up. ‘Well, what about it? Are you going to let me have David’s report?’

  It wasn’t ethical, of course. He hadn’t been mentioned in his son’s Will. But then I’d failed with Gorde and I could now regard myself as free to take what action I liked. Also I thought that had David known what I now knew, he would have wanted his father to have the locations. I gave him a copy of the survey report and after writing the location fixes out on a slip of paper, I gave him that, too.

  He glanced at it and then slipped it into the folds of his cloak. Thank you.’ He held out his hand. ‘You’ve come a long journey. I’m sorry it didn’t have a pleasanter ending. I’ll send Yousif with the letters in a few hours.’

  I hesitated. But I knew he wasn’t a man to take advice. ‘In that case you’d better let me know what I’m to tell Gorde.’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  I left him then, standing alone on that rooftop with the desert clean and white behind him, and followed Yousif out to the battered Land-Rover. It was cooler now and I felt almost relaxed. In a few hours I should be able to have a bath and a change and sit back with a long, cool drink. And yet, riding down the palm-shadowed track between the date gardens, I found myself filled with a strange nostalgia for the place. It had an appeal I found difficult to define, a sort of poetry, and the dim-remembered lines of a poem came into my mind, something about being ‘crazed with the spell of far Arabia’ and stealing his wits away.

  I was beginning to understand what this place had meant to David, to a boy who’d never had a real home before and who was wide open to the strange beauty of it and as impressionable as any Celt.

  I was still thinking about this when we ran out from the shadow of the palms and saw the square, black with the mass of men standing there. The roar of their voices came to us in a wall of sound. Yousif eased his foot off the accelerator, hesitating, uncertain whether to drive straight to the main gate or not. And then three figures rose from beside the shireeya and stood blocking our path.

  ‘Sheikh Khalid’s men,’ Yousif said and there was relief in his voice as he braked to a stop. They clambered on to the mudguards, talking urgently in the hard, guttural tongue that is always associated in my mind with flies and sand. ‘We go a different way. Is much better.’ Yousif swung the Land-Rover round, circling the gravel rise and approaching the palace from the rear through a litter of barastis, all apparently deserted. We stopped finally at a small door with an iron-barred grille set in an otherwise blank wall.

  Khalid’s three men closed round me as I got out, and when I told Yousif I wanted to be taken straight to Gorde. he said, ‘You go with them now, sahib. Sheikh Khalid’s orders.’ And he drove off, leaving me there.

  Eyes peered at us through the grille. The door opened and I was hustled through the dark passages of the palace and up to my turret room. There my three guards left me. and standing at the embrasure I looked down on what was obviously a very explosive situation. The crowd was being harangued by a man on a rooftop opposite, and another was shouting to them from the back of a camel. The whole square was packed solid. Every man and boy in the oasis must have been gathered there, and many of them were armed.

  Camels were being brought into the square and men were mounting on the outskirts of the crowd. And all the time the agitators shouting and the crowd roaring and the tension mounting. The air was thick with menace, and then somebody fired a rifle.

  The bullet smacked into the mud wall not far from my embrasure. It was all that was needed to set that crowd alight. Other guns were fired, little sparks of flame, a noise like fire-crackers, and a great shout; the crowd became fluid, flowing like water, moving with the sudden purpose of a river in spate. Men leaped to their camels, mounting on the arch of their lowered necks, driving them with the flood tide down the slope to the dark fringe of the date gardens.

  In a moment the square was deserted, and with the murmur of the crowd dying to silence, the dark walls of my room closed in on me. I had a sudden, overwhelming need then to find Gorde and the others, and I picked up my briefcase and felt my way down the black curve of the stairs. A light showed faint in the passage at the bottom. A figure stirred in the shadows. Thick Arabic words and the thrust of a gun muzzle in my stomach halted me. It was one of Khalid’s men, and he was nervous, his finger on the trigger.

  There was nothing for it but to retreat to my room again. In the mood prevailing in the oasis it was some comfort to know that I had a guard. I lay down and tried to get so
me rest. The sound of the crowd was still faintly audible. It came to me through the embrasure, soft as a breeze whispering through the palm trees. And then it died and there was an unnatural quiet.

  It didn’t last long, for the shouting started again. Shots, too. It was a long way away. I got up and went to the embrasure, peering out at the empty square and the dark line of the palms shadowed by the moon. A glow lit the night sky to the east. It grew and blossomed. Then suddenly an explosion, a great waft of flame and smoke beyond the date gardens. And after that silence, the flame abruptly gone and the palms a dark shadow-line again in the moon’s light.

  Voices called within the palace, the sound muffled by the thickness of mud walls, and then for a while it was quiet. But soon the crowd was ebbing back into the square, flowing into it in little groups, silent now and strangely subdued. I was sure that it was Gorde’s plane I’d seen go up in smoke and flame, and I stayed by the embrasure, watching the tide of humanity as it filled the square, wondering what they’d do now - hoping to God their passions were spent.

  Bare feet sounded on the stairs. I turned, uncertain what to expect, my mouth suddenly dry. The beam of a torch probed the room, blinding me as it fastened on my face. But it was only my three guards back again, jabbering Arabic at me and gesturing for me to accompany them. I was hurried along dark passages, past gaping doorways where men sat huddled in dim-lit rooms, arguing fiercely. The whole palace was in a ferment.

  We came finally to a low-ceilinged room lit by a pressure lamp, and in its harsh glare I saw Khalid sitting surrounded by robed figures. They were mostly young men and they had their guns resting across their knees or leaning close at hand against the walls. He rose to greet me, his face unsmiling, the bones sharp-etched in the lamplight. ‘I am sorry, sir, for the disturbance you have been given.’ A gesture of dismissal and the room quietly emptied, the conference broken up. ‘Please to sit.’ He waved me to a cushion on the carpeted floor and sat down opposite me, his legs folding neatly under him with the ease of a man who has never known a chair.