In the Kingdom of Men

by Kim Barnes

“In the black tent,” Abdullah said.

  Mason considered. “But you’ve been with the company for a while?”

  “First as an errand boy in Dhahran,” Abdullah said, “where I was allowed into school.” He offered a modest smile. “I was selected to attend university in Texas.”

  Mason squinted against the smoke of his cigarette. “You have a degree?”

  “Petroleum engineering,” Abdullah said.

  Mason studied him for a moment before going back to his cigarette, and I knew that he was thinking about that life he had left behind, who he might have been if not for me.

  More miles, more sand, and we all grew quiet, as though the heat that screwed down and the expanding emptiness were nothing worth noting. I had seen stretches of barren plain in Oklahoma and Texas but never the kind of infinite sweep that lay before me, the sand that moved like an animal rippling its hide, sloughing its skin, shifting, lying down, rising again. We were thirty minutes southwest of the airport when I saw a settlement erupting from the flatness.

  “Abqaiq,” Abdullah said, and steered us toward the compound, backlit by the steady blow of flames from the nearby plant that filled the air with the stench of sulfur.

  “Will it always smell like that?” I asked.

  “It is the smell of money,” Abdullah said. “Abqaiq is where the crude oil from the southern fields is piped to be stabilized before being pumped on to the port at Ras Tanura.”

  Mason eyed the intricate network of valves, drums, spheres, and columns. “That’s one big operation,” he said.

  “The largest in the world,” Abdullah said.

  Mason nodded. “Like everything else in this place.”

  Sand gave way to portable trailers and a series of small apartments. As we neared the main gate, I saw the bunkerlike suqs that functioned as a private marketplace, enclosed and attached to the main compound, Abdullah said, so that the company wives could shop without leaving camp. We approached the tall gareed fence made of chain-link woven with palm fronds, where Abdullah nodded to the pleasantly rotund Arab manning the guard station. He was no taller than I was, his mustache like twin exclamation points punctuating his mouth. He smiled broadly and waved us through.

  “His name is Habib walud Tariq walud Khalid Al-Jahni,” Abdullah said, “but with Americans, he goes by Habib. He is my cousin. We Bedu are like the sand, you see. We are everywhere, part of everything, beginning to end.”

  Abqaiq opened itself like an onion, at its center an oasis of green. Sand drifted against the buildings’ foundations, powdered the driveways, sidewalks, and lawns that were broken by hedges of jasmine, clutches of periwinkle, hibiscus, and oleander. The road, lined with acacia and date palms, smoothed into an avenue wide enough to land an airplane in case of emergency. In the distance, we could see the golf course, barren as a moonscape, its greens nothing more than oiled sand.

  Abdullah gave us a motor tour past the post office, commissary, medical clinic, fire station, taxi stand, and bus stop. He pointed to a flat-roofed complex. “Your recreation center and pool,” he said, then circled around to a large ranch-style that sat a little more separate from the others: white stucco, flowering vines creeping up its sheltering veranda, a row of young roses just beginning to bud. Mason pointed across the street to where a basketball hoop stood anchored in asphalt and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Your new home,” Abdullah said. “With your permission, the houseboy and gardener who attended the previous residents have asked if you will consider keeping them on.”

  Mason looked at me, shrugged. “Guess they know the place.”

  Abdullah removed his dark glasses. “Please,” he said, and led us from the car to where two men appeared on the front lawn. He gestured respectfully to the elder. “This is Faris bin Ahmad, who will tend your flowers.”

  The old Arab, grizzled beard resting on his chest, mumbled a few words before dipping away and disappearing around the back of the house. I looked to Abdullah, who nodded, his manner more stiff. “And this is Yash Sharma,” he said, “the houseboy.”

  I expected to see just that—a boy—but Yash was older than Mason by a decade, his dark hair fixed with pomade. He gave a slight bow while balancing a rusty bicycle against his hip. “I have left a light meal for you and will arrive in the morning to prepare your breakfast,” he said. He straddled his bike and rode for the gate, wheels squeaking, the creases of his white shirt and khaki pants still crisp despite the sweltering humidity. I looked to Abdullah, who tightened his smile. “The departure of their previous employer was unexpected,” he said. “The furniture, too, has been left behind. You may decide whether or not to keep it.”

  He waited as we stepped to the porch. When I turned to invite him in, Mason caught my arm. “We don’t know the rules,” he whispered. It seemed rude to leave Abdullah in the heat, but I followed Mason inside. On our left, a gilded mirror hung above a burled console table, across from a deep coat closet, empty except for a large umbrella whose use I could not imagine. Straight ahead was the big kitchen with its four-burner range, frost-free Frigidaire, breakfast bar, and walk-in pantry stocked with flour, sugar, spices, and canned goods. On our left, the living room with its TV, console hi-fi, red ginger-jar lamp, matching easy chairs, and sofa positioned atop a Persian rug, and then the dining room with its swinging doors back to the kitchen. Down the hallway hung with an elaborately embroidered tapestry of a white unicorn in a pen, past the linen closet that held plush towels and percale sheets, was the guest bathroom and bedroom, a furnished study, and then the master bedroom with its double closet and our very own tub and shower. Mason rested his hands on my shoulders.

  “Think it will do?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been inside a place this nice,” I said, as though he might not know.

  “Well, it’s ours now.” Mason smiled so big that the scar at his mouth disappeared. “I’ll tell Abdullah we’ll take it,” he said.

  The meal that Yash had left in the refrigerator was neatly arranged on a platter that I pulled out and placed on the counter. When Mason returned, he lifted a sandwich wedge, sniffed, took a bite, and shrugged. I savored the meat mixed with tart pickles and spices. We ate standing, cleaning the plate of everything, including every slice of whatever it was that wasn’t apple or orange or even pear but something like a peach that wasn’t a peach. I washed the dishes before following Mason to the shower, confused by the twin toilets, or the toilet that wasn’t a toilet but a porcelain bowl that seemed something I might wash my feet in, then crawled between the sheets that were somehow crisp and soft at the same time. We kissed and rolled to our backs, still holding to each other’s hand as though we were tethered and might float apart if we dared to let go. I thought I was tired, but I lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds outside our window, rustles and reeps and mewls. Lizards, Mason said when I asked, or maybe a desert fox.

  Instead of feeling frightened by the foreignness of it, I felt a kind of anticipation I hadn’t known since stealing away to his car, the world larger than it was before. Already, our last night in Houston seemed years ago, and I remember how Mason had taken me to see The Sound of Music, how I had been mesmerized by the dream unfolding before me. When I look back and think of us in that dark theater, I feel the air beginning to shift. Mason was still the man I thought I knew. And who was I? A girl I no longer recognize, her blank face flickering in the light of the movie screen.

  If I could stop this story right here, would I? “The education of Mrs. Gin,” Yash once answered when I asked him what it all would come to. It would be the last time I saw Yash, but I didn’t understand that then. All I knew was that he could sometimes tell me what I wanted to know, and sometimes what I needed to know, and, in the end, nothing that would save me from myself.

  Chapter Two

  I don’t remember falling asleep that first night in the desert, only Mason up and showered, prodding me awake. I heard an echoing chant, resonant as the distant chorus of a choir, and rose up
on my elbows to listen. White walls, white ceiling, the room as big as the shack in Shawnee and filling with muted light—it took me a moment to recall where I was, to believe what I remembered. “Arabia,” I whispered, as though saying the word would make it true.

  I stumbled into the bathroom and washed my face, thinking how wondrous it was to have the toilet and sink right there, not even a hallway to wander down, so unlike the bellyaching cold of early morning visits to the outhouse, the candle set to burn in a cutout Folgers can doing little to break the chill. Sometimes I stole wads of paper from the girls’ restroom at school, hid them in my coat, welcome relief from the rough cobs and ripped catalogs that my grandfather hoarded and stored in a wooden crate.

  What to wear? I dug through my disheveled suitcase for a modest skirt and blouse, did my best to snap out the wrinkles, thinking about all the ironing I had to do, then joined Mason in the dining room, where I found the table set with eggs sprinkled with bits of chive, strange little biscuits and jam, Yash pouring our coffee. His Mother Hubbard apron embarrassed me for reasons I couldn’t quite explain except that I had never seen a man wear one before. When I shyly asked for cream, he returned with a little pitcher of it, so thick that I dipped it out with a miniature spoon. All of the silverware shiny as new, the china we ate on slip-thin, goblets of water reflecting the light—everything I touched rang like a bell.

  Mason rested back in his chair, didn’t seem to mind a bit that someone was cooking his meal, refilling his coffee, and why would he? Even though his own household had been only a scratch and a peck less poor than mine, he had been waited on all of his life, first by his mother and then by his sisters and then by me. He lifted his cup.

  “Guess we got lucky,” he said. “Abdullah told me that this place just came open, so they moved us to the head of the line.”

  “It’s not real,” I said.

  “It’s real, all right.” He wrinkled his eyes. “They’ll work me hard enough to earn it, but that’s what I’m here for.”

  Behind him, the sun slanted beneath the heavy drapes. When I finished my breakfast, I rose to draw them back, see what the day was made of, but Yash was quick at my side.

  “Oh, not good,” he said, and lowered the blinds. “AC is much better.” And that was when I realized that every window was sealed and slatted, battened tight against the sun and sand. It made me feel like I was suffocating. When I followed Yash into the kitchen, he looked at me from the corners of his eyes.

  “Why two separate taps?” I asked, working the faucets.

  “One is sweet water,” he instructed, “for drinking and cooking. The other is unfiltered for laundry and dishes.” He watched me as I perused the cabinets, as though he suspected I was up to no good.

  “Do you need help with anything?” I offered.

  “No, memsahib, thank you.” He waited stiffly until I took my leave and went into the living room, where I stood for a long moment, disoriented, not sure which way to turn. Even with the heat, I was glad when Abdullah came to the door to fetch us for orientation, glad to step out of the close house and into the Land Cruiser. I sat in back—the place I would always be when outside the compounds unless my husband was driving—studying Abdullah’s draped head, Mason’s shoulders and neck, the sunburned tips of his ears.

  Again, the open desert, the sand-dusted road. We were alone, whipping up a rooster tail of dust behind us, until we drew closer to Dhahran, and the traffic increased. A commotion broke out in front of us as a brilliant white Mercedes, windshields tinted, bullied its way toward us, taking its half of the road right down the middle, my grandfather would say. Abdullah slowed to the side.

  “One of our many princes,” he said.

  Mason craned to see. “How many princes are there?”

  Abdullah rested his wrist on the wheel. “I fear we have lost count,” he said. “Nonetheless, the wealth that is divided among them seems never to diminish.”

  Mason shifted in his seat, lit a cigarette, and looked at Abdullah. “Have you ever been to one of these orientation meetings?”

  “This is senior staff only. It is like your country,” he said, and made descending hash marks with his hand, “upper class, middle class, lower class. American senior staff are at the top. Intermediate staff are internationals such as Yash who live outside the compounds. And then there is general staff, which is made up of Arab laborers and service workers. You, of course, are senior staff.”

  “And you?” Mason asked.

  Abdullah hiked his chin. “I am Bedu,” he said, and then more seriously, “They say we must work our way up, and so we shall.” He pulled around a fenderless pickup, a full-grown camel crouched in its bed. “At first, it was very difficult. The company needed information to pay us, but we didn’t understand the reason for their questions. They wanted the names and ages of our mothers and our wives, our girl children.” He blinked as though he still could hardly believe it. “They didn’t understand that to talk of our women in front of an unrelated male is haram.” He glanced at Mason. “Of course, all progress is precarious.”

  Mason’s face lit up with recognition. “Martin Luther King,” he said, and Abdullah nodded.

  I scooted forward. “So I can’t ask you about your wife while Mason is here?” I asked.

  Mason scowled at me, but I held my place.

  “I don’t yet have a wife,” Abdullah answered evenly. “I am my mother’s only son, and my father is dead.” The muscle of his jaw flexed, and I saw his eyes move to the side mirror as though there were something more that he wasn’t willing to say. I tried to imagine him among the Bedouins we had seen the day before, living out in the open desert, and my head flooded with questions—How did he get water? What did he eat? How did he keep his clothes so clean?—but I feared another warning look from Mason. Instead, I peered out the window and listened to them talk, taking in the long road ahead, thinking that the drive from one compound to the other was more like a journey from outpost to outpost. If the sand had been snow, we might be in Antarctica. I was relieved when the desert gave way to a crush of tight, flat-roofed buildings outside of what looked like a small city that was enclosed by a high fence, gridded as a military base. The tidy homes gleamed in the sun.

  “Dhahran,” Abdullah said, “and the Prosperity Well, where Aramco first struck oil. Like a prize she-camel, it still produces. Here, executives and engineers live. It is the capital of Aramco operations.” He held up his fingers. “Three camps: Dhahran, the stabilization plant at Abqaiq, and the port at Ras Tanura.”

  Mason turned in his seat. “What do you think, doll?”

  I wanted to say not what I thought but what I felt, that our car was a boat, the desert an ocean, Dhahran a small island, sand lipping its shores, but I lifted my shoulders and smiled, saw Abdullah’s eyes flick up in the rearview then back to the road. I wondered what he thought of me—that I was pretty or plain, too forward, too shy? Always as a girl I was warned to be seen and not heard, that even to be seen was too much. I had learned to fold my hands in my lap, cross my legs at the ankles, suppress whatever glee possessed me because a woman who laughed with her mouth open was inviting the demons in.

  Abdullah stopped for a moment to chat with the uniformed Bedouin who stepped from the guardhouse before driving through the fenced main gate with its overhead arch that read in both English and Arabic: TAKE SAFETY HOME. We passed an area of industrial buildings and went into the main compound, where the sidewalks were swept clean, the hedges trimmed into uniform neatness. The few American men I saw braving the heat were dressed in crisp shirts and smart pants, the women in stylish culottes and bright floral dresses. The palm trees lining the avenues, the green lawns and modern houses—it struck me as a movie set, as though I had stepped into a postcard of Hollywood.

  Abdullah dropped us at the Oil Exhibit building, where we were handed our copy of Aramco and Its World and joined other new employees and their wives, along with a welcoming committee of Aramcons who had lived in Arabia
for years. I held close to Mason as we settled into a row of folding chairs. A large American man, flushed in his Western-cut suit and red-and-white-checked head scarf, took the microphone.

  “I’m Ross Fullerton,” he said, “district manager of Abqaiq. Welcome to the Aramco family!” His Sunday-go-to-meeting cowboy boots clapped across the stage as he pumped his fist in the air like he was preaching a revival. “We are your home away from home, and you will never find a better one!”

  He called several men to the front of the room and introduced them like an auctioneer lining up his stock. I focused on Burt Cane, a silver-haired man with the posture of a colonel who managed personnel and stood in stark contrast to Swede Olson, Mason’s drilling superintendent, an aging giant with a brawler’s face whose fists hung like hams at his sides, and his assistant, Tiny Doty, who stood a foot shorter and had the grin of a naughty schoolboy.

  The lights dimmed for a film, What Aramco Is All About. The booming voice of the narrator related the story of discovery, how in the beginning, there was nothing but the sand and the promise of oil beneath it, the Bedu who journeyed for centuries through the steep jabals and over the carbonate Dammam Dome. And then, in the 1930s, the American engineers and geologists, the tinkerers and gadgeteers filtering in a few at a time, their women following like the pioneer wives they were. We saw old photos of King Ibn Saud, already blind with trachoma, signing the concession, footage of the Standard Oil rigs drilling down through layers of grainstone, mudstone, limestone. What they found was exceptional porosity, the narrator said, exceptional. Texas Oil joined in, and the Arabian American Oil Company was born, not a corporation, the voice reminded us, but a special friendship. The Aramco family went to work with a single-minded objective: two million barrels of oil a day.

  But first, the roads, platforms, derricks, refineries, eight hundred miles of pipeline—all had to be built atop the dunes, the evaporated lakebeds and dry wadis. We watched grainy footage of the Aramco Mobile Drilling Platform No. 1 being tugged ten thousand miles from Vicksburg, Mississippi, at a steady three and a half knots to the Persian Gulf, the largest offshore oil field in the world—Safinaya, where Mason would work. Impossible tasks, the labors of Hercules, but we had won the war, the narrator reminded us, would someday land a man on the moon. What challenges could the desert present that we could not meet? The call went out for operators to man the machinery, men to oversee the men. Roughnecks from Halliburton, Standard, and Shell. Farmers from the Philippines, Danish journeymen, an entire village of Italians from Eritrea. Laborers to build the camps and compounds where the laborers and supervisors would live. Gardeners and houseboys, drivers and cooks—a cadre of servants and servers. Aramco enticed the Bedouins from their caravans with the promise of pay and all the water their camels could drink, imported Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians. Who could resist the promise of such prosperity? Workers from every continent and of every faith flowed in as readily as the oil flowed out. The American dream became the dream of the world.