There was a little spur of the mountains, separated from the rest, that extended almost into the sea a few miles north of the city, pushing the coastline out into the Gulf. The coast road ran past this promontory another forty-five miles, all the way to the Zaathah border. As the expatriate population expanded, residential compounds began to spring up on the far side of the promontory. Some people wouldn’t live there. At night you couldn’t see the lights of the city and the airport. But the land was cheaper, the swimming pools were larger, and most didn’t mind. To the east of the Jebel, as the spur was called, there was open desert, and a road ran inland from the city, turned north after a few miles, and met the coast road on the far side. It was longer in terms of distance, but a lot quicker during rush hour. Jeremy Walters was an American and owned a Porsche, so of course he used this inland route.
“Clueless,” he later confessed to Philip. One night, coming home in the dark, he swerved to avoid a pile of drifted sand and went off the road. Someone came out of the brush at the foot of the Jebel, checked he was all right, and disappeared.
Jeremy was a foreign exchange dealer, and by instinct and training a man who never showed all his cards. He didn’t tell anyone about the incident right away. He wasn’t married. His mysterious Samaritan had disappeared before he really had his wits about him.
Three nights later he went to dinner at the Fujiwaras. Miyoko put him next to the girl from Bristol who ran the unisex barbershop at the Regency. She asked him about the bruises on his arm. Within twenty-four hours, every foreigner in Alidar knew there was someone living near the Jebel who dressed like an Arab, wore a gold Rolex, and spoke English. Sophisticated opinion had it he must have been a smuggler. But the story was unsettling enough that a lot of people stopped using the inland road any more. The wife worries, you understand...
Jeremy had watched the story spread, change, spawn new rumours and begin to fade away. Then one evening he stopped by Philip’s house, which was also beyond the Jebel.
“There was somebody out there with him,” Jeremy said. “He never came into the light, but I think he was blond. I thought you should know,” he added, “since you work for the government.”
“Why didn’t you mention that the other night?”
“I thought it might excite people. I hadn’t meant to say anything about the matter at all. Ought to be ashamed of myself, really, talking to impress a girl. I suppose the story will die out pretty soon. Everything does here. Whole country’s sort of a flash in the pan.”
After his visitor left, Philip continued to play a hose over the small, brilliant garden outside his front door. If Jeremy Walters thought he worked for the CIA, then presumably everyone thought he worked for the CIA. No doubt they all had great fun winking to each other about his jeep. No wonder he got so many invitations.
It occurred to Philip, with the benefit of a beer, that he and Alidar were in roughly the same position. The surface of life was gleeful lunacy: frequent parties, easy negotiations with eager foreigners, unbelievable Allison to run with, the desert when he wanted it. But somewhere ahead there was probably an ambush. Which did lend dignity to the situation. Philip had no idea what to make of Jeremy Walters’s story, but he liked being the person Jeremy brought it to.
Sheik Fawzi was giving Philip no such satisfaction. He consistently refused to take advice, much less ask for it. He left many matters entirely to Philip’s discretion, but excluded him from others. Because Philip’s job allowed him to get enough sleep – still a novel experience for an associate at a major New York law firm – he was able to recognise how much he minded exclusion. Every time Fawzi turned away, or closeted himself with the chief of police, Philip felt actual pain. Silly, but true. Like being the “new kid” each fall. Only now he was presumably old enough not to have to get in fights.
Fawzi periodically “took him in.” They would go to lunch at Ian’s, and Philip would laugh so hard he got the hiccups. Or he’d insist Philip come to a dinner at some wealthy merchant’s house, where he’d introduce Philip as if he were Arthur, and insist the other guests listen to his opinions on a stream of unconnected subjects. How long is a baseball game? Did American girls who’d gone to college make better wives? What did it mean that President Carter was a southern Baptist? Hard to know who the show was for. One of the other guests would turn out to be a displaced Iranian who’d gone to Wellesley or something, and she’d give him a wry look as if to say, how do you like being exhibited?
So Philip had no idea what to expect when he took Jeremy’s story to Fawzi.
“Have you had your briefing from Elliot?”
“No, actually,” said Philip.
“I wasn’t joking, you know.”
“But shouldn’t you have soldiers search the area where it happened?”
“I do not control the army.”
“How about the police?”
“Police do not go to the desert.” Subject closed.
Philip talked to Ian, who opined that “it may well have been Suleiman himself, doing reconnaissance with one of his mercenaries.”
“Why in the world would he show himself to Jeremy?” said Philip, finding the whole story increasingly unreal.
“Maybe he likes sports cars,” said Ian.
Philip decided he wasn’t getting anything out of Ian either, and shifted topics. “Maybe you should lend me some of those ‘necessary books’ the prime minister mentioned,” said Philip.
Ian gave Philip eight volumes from his personal library, specifying that he did want them back. “You’d have to go to London to replace them,” he said, meaning that they were irreplaceable. On close inspection, several of them appeared to have been privately printed. Philip had a momentary vision of Ian in a tweed suit, fossicking in second-hand bookstores. It was no more improbable than anything else he knew about the man.
Two of the books were the work of scholars – dense but with useful maps. The rest were the memoirs of men who had served Great Britain around the Gulf, written in retirement for a mixed audience of professional colleagues and grandchildren. Precise accounts of arcane arguments and nervy confrontations alternated with cheerful descriptions of camel races and eccentric servants. You had to infer the history. The authors tended to assume you already knew most of it and only sought to fill in the bits they had helped make.
Surveying his bland house, Philip found himself envying these extraordinary diplomat adventurers, living nineteenth century lives as recently as the nineteen fifties. So far, his sojourn in Alidar had been pretty tame. He devoted his free afternoons to Ian’s books until he had finished the lot, jumping back and forth and making notes. Perhaps he should try to learn Arabic. Perhaps he should move into a traditional house near the souk. At the very least, knowing the history of this obscure but now important corner of the world would make a good party trick when he got back to New York. He resolved to acquire some souvenirs.
The history turned out to be quite interesting. The sheiks who lived on the west coast of what had then been called the Persian Gulf had long been…ahem, seafaring. Around 1800, the Wahhabis came into the area. This is the same very strict sect – extreme Sunnis, you might say – whose founder converted the al Saud in the late eighteenth century and who continue to dominate life in Saudi Arabia today. They converted the Qawasim tribe, which at that time controlled Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, two constituents of today’s United Arab Emirates. The Qawasim quickly decided that Allah wanted them to step up their piratical activities, and essentially declared jihad against European shipping. Among other things, this involved sailing through the Strait of Hormuz and making trouble in the Indian Ocean.
The British launched a naval expedition against these pirates, as they regarded them, in 1809 and another more forcefully in 1819, leading to a treaty in 1820, upgraded in 1835 to a “Maritime Truce,” amended in 1837 to include the banning of slavery, and in 1853 replaced by the optimistically named Treaty of Peace in Perpetuity. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Britis
h made it their business to resist Saudi and Wahhabi influence, and to encourage the sheiks not to murder each other. Because of the truce the treaties established, the British came to refer to the area as “Trucial Oman” or the “Trucial Coast.”
The ships the British were trying to protect belonged to the East India Company, so the original punitive expeditions came from India, and the India Office took responsibility for the management of the Gulf. They sent a few officials to live there, understand the local feuds, and practise a light-handed form of colonialism. A British officered native formation called the “Trucial Oman Scouts” was created, and various line regiments were rotated through Sharjah.
In the early twentieth century, the Foreign Office began to interfere. It saw the Saudis as crucial to British interests throughout the Middle East, and sought to placate them. The Saudis wanted to control as much of the Arabian peninsula as they could, especially after it became clear there was oil involved. Throughout the nineteen-thirties, the Foreign Office and the India Office fought a war of memoranda – which as an apprentice bureaucrat, Philip found interesting in itself – and the boundary between Saudi Arabia and the westernmost sheikdom, Abu Dhabi, was drawn and redrawn half a dozen times.
This administrative tussle went on pause when World War II started, and effectively ended when India achieved independence, but even if the India Office had existed and been able to resume the argument, the “winds of change,” as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan called them in his famous speech, would have brought an end to British dominance. As it was, they continued to maintain garrisons in the Gulf and exercised significant, if gradually diminished, influence. Their last adventure in the region was in 1966, when they conspired to have the increasingly unstable sheik of Abu Dhabi replaced by his brother in a bloodless coup. By that time they had already withdrawn their Political Agent from Kuwait. The Kuwaitis celebrate 1961, which is when that happened, as their year of independence. The British announced a more general plan of withdrawal in 1968 – a move that sent shivers round the sheikdoms – and brought their troops home in 1971 – shortly after Philip returned from Vietnam.
“So why does Alidar survive?” Philip asked Ian on his next visit to the restaurant.
“Your table has missed you,” said Ian, ignoring the question and pouring Philip a glass of wine.
“I’ve done my homework,” said Philip. And then: “Is this really my table? I suppose I do always get put here.”
“And no one sits at it when you aren’t here,” said Ian.
“Such prestige,” said Philip, feeling foolish.
“You’re actually quite important,” said Ian. “Alidi who are old enough regard you as America’s ‘political agent.’ He jumped up to greet one such elder statesman before Philip could respond. Philip realised he didn’t know the names of most of the people in the room, especially the Arabs, and that perhaps he should.
The lamb and rice dish Philip often ordered arrived unbidden and Ian sat down with him again.
“Two reasons,” he said.
Philip looked blank.
“Why Alidar still exists, remember?”
“Right.”
“First, the Americans won’t let the Saudis swallow us up, we think – that only works as long as it works, to be honest – and second, Mubarek is very good at playing the Saudis off against Zaathah.”
“I thought he’d be more afraid of Zaathah.”
“Not under its current leadership. Fayez is no threat to anyone. What Mubarek and the Saudis both worry about is Suleiman. There are scores to settle that go back hundreds of years, and the Saudis reckon Suleiman would see that as part of his destiny. Also they think Suleiman is probably a communist. Mubarek has persuaded the Saudis that if they are seen to be pressuring Alidar, it will embolden Suleiman and any left-leaning adherents he has here. Assuming he gains the throne of Zaathah, that is, which…” – here Ian dropped his napkin and leaned to pick it up, so that his next words were uttered quietly into Philip’s lap – “any thinking person recognises he will do if he’s patient enough.”
“Oh.” Philip thought for a minute. “Is Suleiman a communist?”
“I doubt it, but Mubarek encourages that interpretation, at least with the Saudis, and of course, it fits with the theory that Suleiman is a crypto-Shia.”
“Taqqiya,” said Philip.
“You’ve been listening to Mrs. Baxter.”
“I think I did learn about it from her.”
“You Americans love conspiracy theories. Yes, there is valid archaeological evidence that the mountain Zaathi were Shias who went into hiding.”
“When the Wahhabis arrived?”
“Much earlier – but it doesn’t matter. The Shia temperament is susceptible to Marxist notions: exploitation, sacrifice, underclass, heroic struggle. So if Mubarek can persuade the Saudis that Suleiman’s a communist, it just confirms them in the belief that he’s of Shia descent, which makes him that much more an enemy, but also a sort of untouchable. They would prefer to have Mubarek deal with him.”
“If the Saudis are, to borrow your phrase, thinking people, wouldn’t they rather draw a line in the sand by establishing a presence here, and limit Suleiman to Zaathah?”
“If they were the English and this were the previous century, of course they would.”
“England will always go to war to protect the Low Countries,” Philip quoted.
“Go to the head of the class,” said Ian.
“But…?”
“As the politics of the al Saud family are now configured – or as we think they are configured, because nothing that happens in Riyadh is all that clear – they would rather keep the Americans on side in case the Russians or one of their proxies tries to muscle them (not likely), or their guest workers turn out to be revolutionaries the way the Palestinians in Jordan did ten years ago (probably unlikely) or the Wahhabists inside Saudi Arabia decide the al Saud are no longer appropriate guardians of the true religion (not impossible). Autocrats tend to become paranoid.”
“Mubarek isn’t,” said Philip.
Ian didn’t answer right away. “His Majesty makes large contributions to Wahhabi charities – both in Saudi and in other countries.”
Philip took all that in. “So how did the Mubareks get to be kings? Everyone else is a ‘Sheik’ or a ‘Ruler’ or an ‘Emir.’
“Sheer balls. Just called themselves that. Same principle as who gets to wear a mashlah, that gold-bordered wrap Allison tells me you’re curious about. You wear one if you think you can carry it off. Same principle as who’s a ‘sheik.’ You’re a sheik if you can get people to call you one. Force of character matters more than rules out here. Anyway, Alidar was too small for anyone to care.”
Having had the childhood he had, Philip knew that being too small for anyone to care about was not totally comforting.
12
Maloof took Allison to Europe, just as he had promised. “Brussels” existed, and he took her there too. He had bought her a necklace and a designer dress for the occasion. Everyone in the restaurant was fully clothed. She decided he had been making the naked bit up. Anyway, she’d got her first piece of real jewellery out of the bargain, so if he teased her for being gullible, that would be all right. Also, she was supposed to be innocent. That’s what he claimed he liked. Or at least partially innocent.
After the first course, the woman at the next table got up and went to the powder room. “Follow her,” said Maloof. “There will be a maid to help you with your dress.”
Allison nearly swooned. Up to that moment, everything she’d done had been in private.
“This is why we came,” said Maloof.
She stood up immediately.
The woman from the next table really was only powdering her nose. She was an extremely handsome woman in her early forties, who probably still looked pretty good at the beach, but her clothes were staying firmly in place. Allison looked at herself in the mirror, and then at the woman. Allison spoke
no French.
“You seem at a loss, my dear,” said the women unexpectedly in English. It sounded from her accent like she might be German. “I do not think I have ever seen you here before. You are very young and very pretty.”
“And very frightened,” said Allison.
“You are American, I think. I am Swiss. We are also prudes. You will find the experience floods your brain. You will not be able to think of anything. You may stumble. I have seen one or two women faint. People here pretend to be nonchalant. That is part of the game. But you are so young that everyone will look at you. You will find it quite insupportable. I am not exaggerating.”
“Thank you so much,” said Allison.
“Ah, but then,” said the woman, “after you return to your table, and the man you are with admires you, and you take a sip or two of wine, your entire body will begin to pulsate. It is better than any kind of sex.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, how perfect,” said the handsome woman. “I must tell the man I am with – we use no names here – and he will send you Champagne.”
She spoke in French to the maid, who knelt at Allison’s feet to help her out of her shoes. Allison noticed that her own fingers were beginning to unbutton her dress.
It was worse than the woman had said. Conversation in the restaurant lapsed. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t or she would walk into something. Also that probably wasn’t allowed. Keep moving. Faces floated past her. Breathe, relax, let the feeling spread. At last, her table. Maloof stood up and a waiter materialised to pull out her chair. “Very nice, Allison,” he said, as if there were some sort of skill to it. “You are flushing from head to toe. Such courage.”
“Can I have some wine, please?”
“Not yet. It will spoil the effect.”
Submission Page 6
