The Doomed Oasis

by Innes, Hammond;

  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 some 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, folding his legs neatly under him with the ease of a man who has never known a chair.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did they set fire to Gorde’s plane?”

  “Is a mistake. They are angry and they fire some bullets into it.” He was very tense, coiled up like a spring too tightly wound. Somewhere a child was crying and I heard women’s voices, soft and comforting. “You ’ave been to see Haj Whitaker, is not so?” And when I nodded, he said: “I understand you are concerned in the management of his affairs?”

  “His financial affairs.” I didn’t want him to think I was responsible for anything that had happened out here. His manner, his whole bearing had changed, the surface layer of a university education gone entirely. I glanced over my shoulder. My three guards were still there, squatting in the open doorway.

  Khalid was staring at me out of his dark eyes. The kohl had worn off. Lacking that artificial lustre, his eyes looked sad and sombre. “I have spoken with my father. I understand now what it is Haj Whitaker try to do for Saraifa. Unfortunately, I am not before tonight in my father’s confidence.” And he added with a trace of bitterness: “Better if he had told me. Better also if Haj Whitaker explain to David what he is doing.” He paused there and I was conscious again of the strain he was under, of the tension building up in him. He leaned suddenly forward. “What will he do now?” he asked me. “Now that Meester Erk-hard don’t honour the concession he sign. What will Haj Whitaker do?”

  “That’s his affair,” I said. I didn’t want to become involved in this.

  “Please, Meester Grant. I must know.” “I don’t think he’s made up his mind yet.”

  He stared at me. “Do you think he may leave Saraifa?” And when I didn’t answer, his eyes clouded and he seemed to sag. “We have very much need of him now,” he said quietly. “He has the ear of many sheikhs, of some of his own people also.” And he added: “Since ever I am a small boy I have known about this great man Haj Whitaker. I can remember the feast to celebrate the original concession. He is young then and full of fire. But always, always the people here—my father and myself also—we have looked to Haj Whitaker. He is known from the Persian Gulf to the Hadhramaut, from Muscat on the Indian Sea to the water holes of the Rub al Khali and the Liwa Oasis, as a great man and the friend of all the Bedou. Particularly he is known as the friend of Sheikh Makhmud. If he desert us now …”

  “I’m sure he’s no intention of deserting you.”

  But he didn’t seem to hear me. “There must be some reconciliation. It is altogether vital.” He leaned suddenly forward, staring at me hard. “Meester Grant. There is something I must know. It is if I can trust you.”

  “That’s up to you,” I said, wondering what was coming. And I added: “I’ve been virtually a prisoner since I returned from seeing Colonel Whitaker.”

  He gave me a quick, impatient shrug. “Is for your own safety.”

  But I wondered. “Where’s Sir Philip Gorde?” I didn’t want to be involved in this any further. “I’d like to be taken to him now.”

  “First you will listen, please, to what I have to tell you.” He seemed to consider, his dark eyes fixed on me, searching my face. “I think you are a friend to David before you work for his father, is not so?”

  “It was because I befriended David that Colonel Whitaker asked me to look after his financial affairs.”

  “Yess. Yess, I believe that.” But his eyes still searched my face as though he wasn’t sure.

  “What is it you want to tell me?” I wanted to get this over. Presumably Gorde and Otto would be leaving with Erkhard, and I wanted to be on that plane, away from the dark feuds of this desert world.

  He didn’t answer at once. But then he suddenly seemed to make up his mind. He leaned forward. “David is alive,” he said.

  I stared at him, too astounded for the moment to utter a word. “Alive?” Those three women … but, remembering their attitude, I remembered Whitaker’s too. “What do you mean?” I was suddenly extremely angry with Khalid. “How can he be alive?” And when he didn’t say anything, I added: “It’s more than six weeks since your father sent an armed guard to arrest him and they found his camp deserted.”

  “I know. But is alive.” He said it very seriously.

  “Where is he, then?” I still didn’t believe him. I thought it was a damned stupid lie he’d thought up to try and keep Whitaker in Saraifa. As if Whitaker, with all his experience of the desert, would believe it. “You tell me where he is and—”

  “No.” His voice was flat and decisive. “No, I don’t tell you—not yet. But is alive. That I promise, Meester Grant.” I suppose he realized that just stating it wouldn’t convince me, for he went on quickly: “When Haj Whitaker is gone to visit the Emir, I am much disturbed for David’s life. He is already on that border almost two moons with the truck that was brought by his father across the Jebel Mountains from Muscat. He is altogether alone, and his father I believe to be hating him for things he has said.”

  “What sort of things?”

  He shrugged. “He don’t tell me. But he is very much unhappy, I know that. He come here to this room to see me before he leave, and he warn me there is no oil where Haj Whitaker is drilling, that the only place there is any probability of oil is on that border. He says also that his father is an old man now and has lost faith in himself and that he is drilling to cheat the Company, for revenge again
st this Meester Erk-hard and nothing more.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “He is as my brother. He don’t lie to me.” And then he told me how he’d taken two of his men and a spare camel and had ridden to the border as soon as he knew David was to be arrested. He’d found David alone, deserted by his crew. After emptying the spare cans from the seismological truck, David had driven it into the Rub al Khali desert until it had run out of petrol on the side of that dune. “Then he leaves the truck and rides on with us. It is all as we arrange it together.”

  “You mean you planned it in advance?”

  “Yess. It is all arranged between us because I am afraid for this emergency.”

  The details fitted. They fitted so well that I was forced to accept what he’d told me as the truth. But he wouldn’t reveal where David was hidden. “He is with my two men—Hamid and a boy called Ali. They are of the Wahiba and altogether to be trusted.”

  “Why have you told me this?” I asked.

  “Because everything is gone wrong, everything David planned—and now I need your help. You are David’s friend, and also you work for his father. I think per’aps only you can bring reconciliation between them. And without reconciliation …” But he seemed reluctant to put his fears into words. “What do you think now, sir?” he asked abruptly. “Is reconciliation possible? How will Haj Whitaker act when he finds David is alive?”

  “How would you react if you thought your son were dead?” But I realized I’d no idea what Whitaker’s reaction would be. I didn’t know enough about their relationship, how he’d come to regard his son in those last months. If Sue were right and they really had been close at one time … “It’ll come as a hell of a shock to him.”

  “Yess, but is it possible—a reconciliation?”

  “Of course. Particularly now that Colonel Whitaker …” I hesitated, wondering whether I ought to tell him what was in Whitaker’s mind. But I thought he’d a right to know that Whitaker was considering drilling on his son’s locations. After all, it was what David had wanted. They’d be able to work on it together now.

  With this thought in mind, I was quite unprepared for the violence of Khalid’s reaction when I told him. “Is imbecility!” he cried, jumping to his feet. “He cannot do that now. Is altogether too late.” He was pacing up and down, very agitated and waving his arms about. “Sheikh Abdullah has already left to return to Hadd. He will report to the Emir all that has occurred here. If then Haj Whitaker remove his oil rig to the border …” He turned to me, still in great agitation, and said: “It will mean war between us and Hadd. War, do you understand? For my father is guided by Haj Whitaker. The Emir knows that. And if Haj Whitaker himself is on that border, then the Emir will know there is oil there and that my father will concede no revision of the boundaries between Hadd and Saraifa. You understand? You will help me?” He didn’t give me time to answer, but summoned my escort. “We leave at once, for there is little time. Excuse, please. I go to my father now.”

  He left then and I was alone with my three Arab guards. The child had stopped crying. There was no sound of women’s voices. The palace slept, and, sitting there, thinking about David, convinced now that he was still alive, I gradually became resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to get away in the plane that morning.

  Khalid was gone about ten minutes. When he came back his face was pale, his manner subdued. “I tell my father I am going to Dhaid to gather more men.”

  “Did you tell him about Whitaker?”

  “No. I don’t tell him. And I don’t tell him about David either—not yet. Is very much disturbed already. Come!”

  “Is David at Dhaid?” I asked.

  “No. But Sheikh Hassa holds that village for us. He will give us camels, and perhaps Salim bin Gharuf is there. I don’t know. We have to hurry.” He gave an order to my escort and I was hustled out of the palace into the great courtyard where his Land Rover stood. The escort piled in behind us, and as we drove down into the date-gardens it was difficult to believe that the people of this peaceful place were threatened with extinction, that they had been so roused that night that they’d set fire to an oil-company plane. The breeze had died and the whole world was still. Nothing moved. And when we ran out into the desert beyond the palms, it was into a dead, white world, for the moon was high now. We headed south, Khalid driving the Land Rover flat out, bucking the soft sand patches, eating up the flat gravel stretches at a tearing speed.

  We were held up for a time by a choked petrol feed, and the first grey light of dawn was taking the brightness from the moon when a needle-tip of latticed steel showed above the grey whaleback of a dune. It was Whitaker’s oil rig, a mobile outfit—the sort they call an “A” rig, truck and drill combined. It stood up out of the desert floor like a steel spear planted in the sand as a challenge to the vast wastes of emptiness that surrounded it. Beside it was a barasti, two Bedou tents and some tattered wisps of black cloth that acted as windbreaks.

  As we neared it we heard the sound of the diesel, could see the Arab drilling crew busy drawing pipe. Other Arabs were loading a second truck with lengths of pipe. Early though it was, the place was humming with activity, and when Khalid stopped and questioned them, he learned that Yousif had arrived just over an hour before with orders for them to prepare to move.

  Whitaker had made his decision. He was moving his rig to the Hadd border, and up in my empty turret room there were doubtless letters waiting for me to take to Bahrain. “Is crazy!” Khalid cried, jumping back into the driving-seat. “Why does he do this now? He should do it before or not at all.” He drove on then, passing close below the derrick. It looked old and battered, the metal bare of paint and burnished bright in places by the drifting sands. The derrick man was up aloft stacking pipe, his loincloth smeared with oil, his turbaned head a bundle of cloth against the paling sky.

  Dawn was coming swiftly now, and beyond the shallow slope of a dune I saw the tinsel gleam of Erkhard’s aircraft. It stood at the far end of a cleared stretch of gravel, and the sight of it brought back to me my urge to escape from the desert. But when I demanded to be taken to it, Khalid took no notice except to give an order to the Arabs in the back. I reached for the ignition key. A brown hand seized my arm, another gripped my shoulders, and I was held pinned to my seat whilst we plunged at more than thirty miles an hour into a world of small dunes, and the plane vanished beyond my reach.

  After that the going was very bad for mile after weary mile. And when finally we came out of the little-dune country, it was on to a gravel plain ribbed by crumbling limestone outcrops. A few dried-up herbs, brittle as dead twigs, bore witness to the fact that it had rained there once, many years ago. The land was dry and dead, flat as a pan, and as dawn broke and the sun came up, I lost all sense of horizon, for the whitish surface reflected the glare in an endless mirage.

  All the way from the rig the going was bad. We had more trouble with the petrol feed, and it was past midday before we caught sight of the low hill on which Dhaid stood. It throbbed in the heat haze, looking like the back of a stranded whale surrounded by pools of water. The crumbling mud walls of the village were merged in colour and substance with the crumbling rock on which they were built, so that it wasn’t until we stopped at the foot of a well-worn camel track that I could make out the shape of the buildings. There was a single arched gateway, and we had barely started up the track on foot when the villagers poured out of it and rushed upon us, leaping from rock to rock, shouting and brandishing their weapons.

  Khalid showed no alarm, walking steadily forward, his gait, his whole bearing suddenly full of dignity. And then they were upon us, engulfing us: a wild, ragamuffin lot, teeth and eyes flashing, dark sinewy hands stretched out to us in the clasp of friendship. They were dirty, dusty-looking men, some with no more than a loincloth, and they looked dangerous with their black hair and bearded faces and their animal exuberance; and yet the warmth of that unexpected welcome was such after that empty, gruelling dri
ve that I greeted them like brothers, their horny, calloused hands gripped around my wrists. It was the beginning of my acceptance of desert life.

  Sheikh Hassa followed behind the rest of the villagers, picking his way sedately over the rock, his gun-bearer just ahead of him carrying his new BSA rifle, which was his pride and joy. He was a short, tough-looking man with a shaggy black beard that gave him an almost piratical appearance. He greeted Khalid with deference, touching his hand with his fingers, carrying them to his lips and to his heart. “Faddal.” And we went up the track and through the gateway into the village. A crowded square pulsating in the heat, a cool, darkened room spread with a rug, camel milk in bowls still warm from the beast’s udder, and talk—endless, endless talk. I leaned back on the cushions, my eyelids falling, my head nodding. The buzz of flies. The buzz of talk. Not even coffee could keep me awake.

  And then Khalid called to me and introduced me to a sinewy old man who stood half naked in the gloom, a filthy loincloth round his waist and his headcloth wound in a great pile above his greying locks so that he looked top-heavy. This was Salim bin Gharuf. “He is of the Dura,” Khalid said, “and he knows the place.” I asked him what place, but he ignored that. “Is better now that you wear these, please.” He produced a bundle of Bedou clothing, holding it out to me.

  They were cast-off clothes and none too clean. “Is this really necessary?” I demanded.

  He nodded emphatically. “Is better you look like one of us now.”

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “I tell you later. Not here. You will change, please.” He helped me off with my European clothes and wound the loincloth round my waist; the long, dusty robe, the length of cloth twisted about my head, sandals, too, and an old brass-hilted knife for my belt. Sheikh Hassa watched me critically. I think the clothes were his. Men came and peered, and the crowded room resounded with their mirth. Khalid sensed my annoyance. “They don’t mean any disrespect, sir. And you are going where no faranji has been before—save David.”