The Doomed Oasis

by Innes, Hammond;

  There were other camels; they seemed to be all round me, humped shades in the dark, champing and belching. I seized the headrope of the one facing me, forced it down, and, stepping onto its neck the way the Arabs did, I found myself sprawled across its back as it started into motion with a bellow of fear and rage. There was a guttural Arab cry. A shot rang out, the bullet whining close over my head. But the only thing I cared about at that moment was whether I could hang on, for the brute had gone straight into a gallop.

  If it hadn’t still been saddled I should undoubtedly have come off, but the saddle gave me something to hold onto, and after a while the crazy motion slowed and I was able to get my feet astride and, by means of the headrope, obtain some control. And when I had finally brought the animal to a halt, there was no sound of pursuit. There was no sound of any sort. That wild, swaying gallop seemed to have carried me right out into a void.

  And then behind me, the sound of shots, carrying clear and hard on the still night air. The rip and blatter of a machine gun. Twisting round in my saddle, I saw the firefly flicker of the attackers’ guns high up on the black bulk of Jebel al-Akhbar. Distant shouts and cries came to me faintly. More firing, and the sharper crack of small explosions. Three of them. Grenades, by the sound of it. The cries faded, the fire slackened. Suddenly there was no longer any sound and I was alone again, riding across an endless dark plain, haunted by the thought of David, wondering what had happened.

  The silence and the sense of space were overwhelming now, particularly when the curtain of cirrus moved away and the stars were uncovered. Then I could see the desert stretching away from me in every direction and I felt as lost as any solitary mariner floating alone in an empty sea. Far behind me the Jebel al-Akhbar lifted its dark shape above the desert’s rim, for all the world like an island, and all around me were small petrified waves, an undulating dune-scape that seemed to disappear into infinity.

  In the darkness, without any stars to guide me, I had trusted to luck and let the camel have its head. Now I saw it had carried me westward—towards the big dunes of the Empty Quarter and Whitaker’s lonely camp. I kept going, not changing my direction. It was a dangerous decision. I knew that. I’d only the one bottle of water and there were no wells where I was heading, no caravan routes to guide me, nothing but empty desert. My decision was based on the fact that Whitaker’s camp was much nearer than Buraimi—and, after all, he was the boy’s father.

  I had two chances, that was all—our own camel tracks and the tracks of Whitaker’s trucks. If I missed both of these, or if they had become obliterated by wind-blown sand, then I knew I’d never get out of the desert alive. I rode through the night without a stop, guiding myself as best I could by the stars, and when the dawn came I turned so that the rising sun was behind my right shoulder. If my navigation was right, then I had placed myself to the south of the line between Jebel al-Akhbar and Whitaker’s camp. Some time during the morning my new course should intersect the tracks made by our camels three nights back.

  It was the first time I had ridden in the desert alone. The solitude was immense, the emptiness overpowering. The heat, too—it came at me in waves, so that time had no meaning. It seared my eyes and beat against the membranes of my brain. I drank sparingly from the water bottle, rinsing the tepid liquid round my mouth. A wind sprang up and small grains of sand were lifted from the gravel floor and flung in my face, a fine-ground dust that clogged nose and throat and made the simple act of swallowing an agony without any saliva. To look the desert in the face, searching for our old tracks, was like pricking needles into my eyes.

  By midday I’d finished the water and still no sign of our tracks. I was trembling then, but not with the heat. I had reached the sands, and the dunes were growing bigger, like an ocean’s swell building up against the continental shelf. Dune followed dune, and the sense of space, the feeling that this petrified world of sand went on and on without end, appalled me.

  A dirty scum formed in my mouth as I rode, and my tongue became a swollen, leathery mass. The camel’s pace was slow and reluctant. We had passed no vegetation, no sign of anything growing, and as the sun slanted to the west fear took hold of me, for I knew I was headed into a desert that was four hundred miles across. Memory plagued me with the vision of a stream I knew in the Black Mountains of Wales where the water ran over rocks brown with peat and fell tinkling to a cool, translucent pool. The sun sank into a purple haze, and the sense of space, with the dark, shadowed dune crests stretched out in endless ridges ahead of me, was more terrifying than the close confinement that produces claustrophobia.

  And then a chance turn of the head, a sudden glance, and there it was: a diagonal line ruled faintly across the back of a dune away to my left. I stared at it through slitted, grit-swollen eyes, afraid I was imagining it. But it was real enough—a single, scuffed-up thread scored by the feet of camels and half obliterated by sand. In the hard gravel at the foot of the dune I counted the tracks of six camels. I had actually crossed the line of our three-day-old march without knowing it. If the sun had been higher I should never have seen that faint shadow line. I should have ridden on to certain death. I realized then why David had insisted on my making for Buraimi. I had been very fortunate indeed.

  I headed into the sunset then, following the tracks, knowing they would lead me to Whitaker’s camp. The camel seemed to know it, too, for its pace quickened.

  The sun set and darkness came. I camped at the foot of a dune, not daring to go on for fear of losing the faint, intermittent line of those tracks. The desert lost its warmth immediately. I ate a few dates, but my mouth was too dry and sore to chew on the meat. Tired though I was, I couldn’t sleep. The moon rose just before the dawn, and I went on. The tracks became more difficult to follow; at times I lost them and had to cast about until I came upon them again. A wind was blowing and the sifting sand was covering them moment by moment. The sun rose and it was suddenly very hot.

  Long before I reached Whitaker’s camp, the sound of the drilling-rig was borne to me on the wind. The steady hum of machinery was utterly incongruous in that empty, desolate world. One of his Bedouin guards brought me into the camp, and as I slid exhausted from my camel, I saw Whitaker himself coming towards me from the rig.

  I must have passed out then, for the next I knew I was lying in his tent and he was bending over me, holding a mug of water to my cracked lips. The water was warm, but its wetness cleaned my mouth, eased the swollen dryness of my tongue, and as I began to swallow, I suddenly wanted to go on drinking and drinking, for my body was all dried up. But he took the mug away. “Are you alone?” he asked. And when I nodded, he said: “What happened? Is he dead?”

  I sat up, staring at him. Something in the way he’d said it … But his face was in shadow and I thought I must have imagined it. “He was alive when I left him.”

  “I see. So he’s still up there.” And he added: “He’d made his gesture. He’d carried out a successful attack on the wells. Why couldn’t he leave it at that?”

  I started to explain about David’s determination to keep the wells from being repaired, but he cut me short. “I know all about that. I got the news from Hadd yesterday. My chap said the streets of Hadd were deserted and no man dared, venture out of his house for fear of being fired at. He also said that the inhabitants had made a daylight attack on the fort and had been driven off by heavy fire.”

  “There were just the four of us,” I said. And I told him how Salim had been killed at the outset and Ali fatally wounded.

  “And he’s alone up there now with just Hamid and his brother, bin Suleiman?” He was silent for a moment, and then he said: “I gather the Emir sent to Saraifa for Sheikh Abdullah. Had his forces arrived before you left?” And when I nodded, he said: “What happened? Were you there when they attacked the fort?”

  “No.” And I explained how I’d got out just before the attack started. “I don’t know what happened. But if David did manage to beat off that attack, there’ll be ot
hers, or else they’ll just snipe at him from the rocks until they’ve worn him down or his water runs out.”

  “So he’s got himself trapped.” And then almost irritably: “What’s wrong with the boy? Does he want to die?”

  “He will,” I said angrily, “if you don’t get help to him somehow.”

  “I’ve done what I can. Yousif was just back from Sharjah and I sent him straight off with letters to Colonel George, who commands the Trucial Oman Scouts, and to Gorde. It’s up to the authorities now. Fortunately, I don’t think the Emir has any idea yet who it is holding that fort.”

  It was something at least that he’d notified the authorities, and I lay back, exhausted. He gave me some more water and then left me, saying he’d arrange for some food to be brought. When it came, it was a half-cold dish of rice and camel meat. I ate it slowly, feeling my strength beginning to return, and then I slept. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but the food and the heat in the tent … I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  I woke to the sound of voices speaking in English. It was almost three in the afternoon. The camp was strangely quiet. The drilling-rig had stopped. I peered out of the tent. An Army officer in khaki shirt and shorts and a peaked cap was standing talking to Whitaker. There was an RAF officer there, too, and resting on the gravel beside the silent rig was a helicopter.

  Whitaker saw me as I came out of the tent and called me over. “This is Colonel George of the TOS.”

  He was a short, thick-set man, bouncing with energy, of a type that a Frenchman in Zanzibar had once described to me as a typical officer of the bled. Small, protruding eyes stared at me curiously from beneath the peaked cap. “I was in Buraimi when I got Whitaker’s message. The RAF had loaned me a helicopter, so I thought I’d fly down and see what it was all about.” His words were sharp and crisp. “Understand young Whitaker’s alive and that he’s playing merry hell with our aggressive little Emir. Correct?”

  I didn’t answer, for I was staring past him to a strange figure walking towards us from the rig—a short, fat figure in a powder-blue tropical suit that was now crumpled and dirty and sweat-stained. “Ruffini!” I called.

  He came almost running. “Mister Grant!” He seized my hand. I think he would have liked to embrace me, he seemed so pathetically glad to see somebody he knew. “’Ow are you? I ’ave been so concerned for you. When you don’t return with Gorde, I am asking questions, making a dam’ nuisance of myself, and nobody tell me nothing.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What is a newspaper man ever doing? Looking for a story. I go to Buraimi, by invitation of the sheikh and an Italian oilman who is there also. Then this gentleman is sent by the British authorities to remove me. They don’t wish for Ruffini to be in Buraimi or anywhere else in the desert. So I am under arrest.”

  “No question of arrest,” Colonel George snapped. “I’ve explained to you …”

  But Ruffini wasn’t listening. “I tell you once before, signore,” he said to me, still holding on to my hand, “I think you are sitting on the story I want. Now I talk to some of the Bedouin ’ere and I know it is true. What is this boy doing? They say you are with ’im in that fort, that you come from Hadd this morning.”

  I could have wished it had been a British journalist. But that wasn’t so important as the fact that chance had put me in touch with the outside world. Ruffini might be prevented from filing his copy immediately, but the knowledge that sooner or later David’s story would become known might stir the authorities to action.

  But when I suggested this to Colonel George, he shook his head. “I don’t think you quite understand the official view.” We were back in the tent then and I’d been talking and answering questions for more than an hour. The TOS, he said, had been reinforced with Regular Army units some time back and had been standing by for more than a month, ready to move at short notice. The attack on Saraifa and the battle at the Mahdah falaj were just the sort of trouble their Intelligence had expected, and as soon as he’d received the news he’d given the order to prepare to move. “It was two nights ago. We’d everything lined up, the convoy spread out round the perimeter of Sharjah airfield and everybody ready to go. And then the Foreign Office clamped down, the Political Resident called the whole thing off.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Why? Because of Cairo, Saudi, the Americans, the United Nations, world opinion.” Cairo Radio, he said, had first referred to the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute two weeks back. There were reports from Riyadh that Saudi intended to raise the matter at the next meeting of the UN.

  The Political Resident came under the Foreign Office, and to the Foreign Office this wasn’t just a local problem, but a small facet in the pattern of world diplomacy. Until that moment I had seen the attack upon Saraifa as it appeared to David, a personal matter; now I was being forced to stand back mentally and look at the situation as a whole, from the viewpoint of authority.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Colonel George said. “That’s all we needed. In twenty-four hours we could have put paid to the Emir’s little game and saved a hell of a lot of lives. I know we’ve no treaty obligation so far as Saraifa is concerned, but it lies within the British sphere of influence and we’ve certainly a moral obligation to protect them against this sort of thing.” He shrugged. “Well, there it is. I’m just a soldier, not a politician.” He glanced at his watch and then at the RAF Pilot Officer. “Time we were moving, eh?” Outside the tent, he turned to Whitaker. “That boy of yours. He’s going to get himself killed if somebody doesn’t do something.” The protruding eyeballs stared. “You’ve been out here a long time, Colonel. Couldn’t you see the Emir? Talk to your son? You must have considerable influence still.”

  “A little. But not with my son, it seems.” Whitaker was clearly disconcerted. “He’s acting contrary to my advice—contrary to my express orders, in fact.” He hesitated. “Of course, if the Political Resident authorized me to negotiate a settlement of the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute, I have some influence with the Emir. But,” he added, “a just settlement for Saraifa would almost certainly require the backing of British military forces.”

  “That’s out of the question at the moment.”

  “Then …” Whitaker gave an awkward little shrug.

  Colonel George grunted, a small, peremptory sound. “Pity! That boy’s got a lot of guts and he’s going to die.” He started towards the helicopter, but then he stopped and faced Whitaker again. “I’ve heard stories about you.… And if half of what I’ve heard is true, your son’s doing just the sort of thing you’d have done yourself in your younger days, eh?” He paused, and then in a harder voice: “I’ll tell you something, Whitaker: if that boy holds out for a week, he’ll go down in desert history, his name remembered long after yours is forgotten.” He stared at him hard for a moment and then marched off across the gravel towards the helicopter. “Sorry I can’t give you a lift out, Grant. No room. We’ve got to deliver this damned journalist to Sharjah. But I’ve got one of my company commanders with a wireless truck up at Buraimi. I propose to send him down to patrol Hadd’s northern border and keep tabs on the situation. I’ll tell him to pick you up, if you like. Name’s Berry. Sound chap. Understands the Bedou. That do you?”

  I nodded, and behind me Whitaker said: “You might tell him to keep an eye out for my two vehicles. My fuel tanker and the supply truck should have been in two days ago.”

  The rotor blade of the helicopter began to turn. Ruffini gripped my hand. “A rivederla. I see the story of this David Whitaker reaches London. Don’t worry. We ’ave an arrangement with one of your newspapers.” He was sweating already as he ducked into the oven heat of the fuselage.

  Colonel George paused in the open door. “Want to give me a message for his sister? I could send it straight down to the hospital. She’d get it this evening.”

  I hesitated. “Just tell her he’s alive. That’s all she needs to know at the moment.”

  “I should have t
hought something more personal was called for.” He stared at me, playfully tapping my arm. “Probably you don’t realize it, but she’s been raising hell on your account. As soon as she knew you were missing, she came straight down to Sharjah. She caught that oil chap, Gorde, just as he was boarding his plane, and the story is she tore him off such a strip for abandoning you that he dropped his stick and took off without it. Since then she’s been badgering the life out of me. I’ll be damn glad to be able to tell her you’re safe. Well?” He cocked his eyebrow at me and grinned. “I’ll give her your love—will that do?” And without waiting for a reply he got into the helicopter and slammed the door.

  Whitaker and I watched it take off, a mechanical dragonfly whirring in the clean, bright air. I turned then, conscious of the quickened beat of my pulse, the sudden desire to be alone. It was strangely heart-warming to know that somebody had been concerned about whether I got back safely or not. I walked to the steep, shadowed edge of the dunes and lay there, longing for a cigarette. The drill, so useless now without its fuel, stood like a toy, dwarfed by the dunes, the Arab crew lying about, listless with nothing to do. Whitaker had gone to his tent. The shadows lengthened and I wondered what was happening on that hilltop forty miles to the east. Was David still alive?

  The answer came next day, just after Whitaker’s two trucks had pulled in and the noise of their arrival had wakened me from the first long, uninterrupted sleep I had enjoyed in well over a week. Everything was confusion, stores being unloaded, the rig started up, when a bullet-scarred Land Rover appeared, flying the Emir’s green flag. Out of it stepped a big, portly man with very black features under a large turban. “The Emir’s secretary,” Whitaker said and went forward to greet him. A bodyguard of four askari sat silent in the back of the vehicle—wild-eyed men with greasy locks hanging to their shoulders, who fingered their weapons nervously.