In the Kingdom of Men

by Kim Barnes

  “Yash?” I called.

  He cracked one door. “More coffee?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to say thanks,” I said. “Sometimes I forget.”

  “A votre service,” he said. He lifted his nose. “French, I can teach you.” And he let the door pip shut.

  Instead of walking to the recreation center that afternoon, I drove the Volkswagen as though a few blocks might gain me some distance. Without Ruthie, the camp felt even smaller, as though it were closing in around me. The pool was empty, the Arab workers standing about with little to do but watch. Whenever my eyes met theirs, they looked away, and I felt an unease settle into the pit of my stomach. The Bedouin boys at the snack bar, the old Arab we called Tommy who ran the movie projector, Faris in my garden, Habib at the gate—they were part of my every minute, made my life in that place possible. I remembered Abdullah’s words: We are everywhere, part of everything, beginning to end.

  I practiced swimming underwater, came up for a breath, and saw Candy Fullerton mincing toward me in a lemon-drop bandeau and matching mules, her blond hair pushed back by a polka-dot band. I groaned when she waved brightly and settled her beach bag on the lounger next to mine. I climbed the short ladder and wrapped the towel at my waist, wanting more than anything to make a quick exit, but I took a deep breath and settled in beside her, thinking that she, if anyone, would know what was happening outside the gates.

  “What’s going on out there, anyway?” I asked.

  She stopped applying Coppertone long enough to look at me blankly.

  “Israel and Egypt?” I said.

  “Oh, that.” She flapped her hand, then dug through her bag for her compact. “You live here long enough, you don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore. If it gets too bad, they’ll evacuate.”

  “Ruthie already flew out,” I said.

  “It’s just as well. She doesn’t really belong here, anyway.” When I stiffened, she brought up her mirror, applied a thick layer of white cream to her nose. “Don’t get huffy. I’m just saying she doesn’t fit in, that’s all.” She rolled out her lipstick, bowed her mouth, and made three perfect swipes of pearly pink. “Maybe now you’ll have time for that golf lesson,” she said, and smoothed the pouch of her stomach. “I haven’t had a putting partner since Betsy flew the coop.”

  I waited for a moment, thinking that I could ask her about Buck Bodeen, remembered what Mason had said about keeping quiet. I rolled my towel and pulled on my dress. “I really need to get home,” I said.

  “Too bad,” she said. “Your tan is fading out.” She pushed up her breasts and dipped a finger into her cleavage as though she were checking its depth. “Carlo Leoni is retaking my portrait this afternoon. The first time, the light was all wrong.” She hardened her mouth. “Maddy told me you brought your houseboy on the bus.”

  “I was sick,” I said.

  “Next time, just stay home.” She pushed on her dark glasses, then lifted her chin. “Not that you care,” she said, “but I got a telegram from my mother. Pat’s boat got hit. They flew him out to Japan.” She jerked her head. “It wouldn’t have killed you to be nice, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but she acted like she didn’t hear. I stood for a long moment before turning for the exit. As bad as I felt about Pat, I was glad to be back in the Volkswagen, glad to be leaving Candy behind. Back home, I found Yash in the kitchen, frowning down at a large manila envelope.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He handed it to me. “I am not in the habit of opening your personal correspondence,” he said, his voice notched with irritation.

  I tore the flap, pulled out the photo that Carlo Leoni had taken of me and Ruthie on the dhow, the Arab boy tucked at our knees, all of us smiling, close to laughter, and in the corner in flowing cursive: Amo le mie due belle ragazze! Carlo.

  “Who delivered this?” I asked.

  “The pirate,” Yash said.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “I know of him.” He bent to check the drip of the still, adjusted the coil.

  “He’s not a pirate,” I said, “not really.”

  “If he is not a pirate”—Yash straightened and looked at me—“then what is he?”

  “A great photographer.” I held out the print. “See?” But he waved it away.

  “Virtue is in the subject, not in the man who captures it.” He pulled out a can opener and punctured a tin of tomatoes.

  “Did he say where he was going?” I asked.

  “Sometimes it is better not to know,” Yash said, then reluctantly cast his eyes to the back porch. “He has asked for coffee.”

  I hesitated a moment before rising. When I swung open the door, I jumped back like I had stepped on a snake. Carlo sat on the step, placidly smoking. He flipped his cigarette to the grass and stood to face me, the brow of his green scarf stained with sweat, his shirt unbuttoned down his chest, his camera hanging heavy and loose.

  “Bella,” he said, “I knew you would come.”

  I pressed my hand to my chest, tried to quiet the hammering. “I wanted to say thank-you for bringing the photo,” I said.

  He reached for my fingers, held them at his lips, peered up at me. “You are like a madonna, you see. It is in the young boy’s eyes. I want it to be cherished.”

  I felt a giggle coming on, heard Yash make a coughing noise behind me, and eased back my hand.

  “I have an appointment,” Carlo said, looking around as though the yard stretched for miles. “I wonder if you might help me find my way.”

  I remembered Candy and her portrait and then thought of the Volkswagen parked at the curb, the rare chance to talk with Carlo about his photographs. I wouldn’t be going far, I told myself, only inside the compound.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, and went in and grabbed my camera, ignoring the look of disapproval on Yash’s face. Carlo followed me to the car and opened my door, watched me slide in before walking slowly around, a diminutive swagger, and settling into the passenger seat. When I glanced at the dagger that rode his hip, his eyebrows leaped and settled. “An unarmed man is like a castrated bull, good only for slaughter,” he said, then laughed when I popped the clutch, killed the engine, and started it again. “Ah,” he said. “You drive like an American.”

  I smoothed out in second gear and kept our speed at a steady ten miles per hour. “What’s going on out there?” I asked. “Anything new?”

  Carlo struck a match. “There is nothing new. It is a story as old as the sands.” He waved the match in an extravagant gesture of extinguishment, inhaled deeply. “Israel has attacked Egypt and destroyed its air force. The Bedouin Militia has been called in to protect Aramco’s compounds from Arab malcontenti, but it will be over soon enough.” He considered me from the corner of his eye. “You Americans worry that in the face of your Zionist sympathies, the Saudis will banish you from the country.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said. I hit third gear, took a left without slowing, fearing I would never get us started again if I stalled. Carlo let out a low laugh and pointed toward the rec center.

  “We should stop for a swim,” he said casually, “to relax.”

  “I don’t think you’re allowed in,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Who can refuse me?” He eyed my bare arms. “I can tell by the strength of your shoulders that you are a strong swimmer.”

  “I’m learning,” I said. I drove even more slowly as we approached the center, pulling to the curb behind a pickup in hopes we wouldn’t be noticed. I couldn’t imagine what rumors Candy would spread if she spied me in Carlo’s company.

  Carlo cocked his head and gazed at me, a cigarette between his teeth. “I have seen your photographs,” he said. “There is a spirit in them, a spark of genius.”

  I felt my cheeks pink, the smile break out across my face before I could stop it. “I’ve still got a lot to learn,” I said.

  He ran his tongue over his molars, flared his nostrils. “Let C
arlo teach you.”

  I stared straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel as though I might be torn away. “When?” I asked.

  He measured the horizon. “The sun is right,” he said, “and now is always the right time.”

  “What about your appointment?” I asked.

  “It will wait,” he said. He gazed at me, his eyes half-lidded. “I could take you to my studio, show you how to use my darkroom. Mia casa è tua casa, sì? It is business between professionals.”

  I held my breath, my head swirling with possibility and a chance to get back at Candy. I considered Carlo’s face, open now, as though he were allowing me to see all that I wanted—the noble breadth of his forehead, the chasteness of his intent, the way his eyes lifted when he smiled.

  “You’ll have to drive,” I said. I swung open my door and went around to the passenger side, but Carlo remained in his seat. He pinched his cigarette, let out a slow curl of smoke, and squinted up at me.

  “Tell me, bella,” he said. “Where is your husband? You know I would need his permission.”

  I felt myself flush as though I were the one who had been caught in flagrant seduction. I held his gaze for a moment, then rummaged my purse for a scrap of paper, wrote a few sentences, and signed Mason’s name. “There,” I said.

  Carlo considered the note. “You are crazy,” he said. “Sorrow for me, I value this in a woman.” He slid out, eyeing me as he passed, eased into the driver’s side, and tapped the car into gear. When we reached the gate, he stopped and presented the paper to Habib as though he himself were convinced of its authenticity. They exchanged a few sentences of Arabic, Carlo’s voice loud with good nature as he gestured my way and then at the note, until Habib stepped back and watched us pass. I craned around to see him peering after us as though he wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

  We broke out onto the road in first, the transmission screaming, until Carlo bucked us into second, then third and fourth, the Volkswagen rattling with speed. He never slowed as we headed up the highway that would lead us north but dodged and darted, hunched and gesticulating. “Stupido! Idiota! Imbecille!” I turned my attention to the landscape flying by: low-lying hills, piles of stone, animals grazing on scrub—I might have believed myself back in Shawnee. I looked at Carlo, leaned over the wheel like Odysseus guiding his ship through the straits, wind furling his scarf, and felt my own hair tugging free. I held to the window frame, but he swayed with the car, loose and easy.

  “I didn’t bring any water,” I said.

  “Did you bring your camera?”

  “It’s in back,” I said.

  “Then we will survive.”

  I looked toward the horizon, took a deep breath to settle my nerves. What am I doing? I thought. If the company caught me, I’d be on the next plane out, and Mason could lose everything he had worked for. But the farther we traveled from Abqaiq, the less worried I was, as though the desert itself might protect me, take me in. When low black shadows broke the sandy swales like a fleet of black ships, I pointed, and Carlo nodded.

  “Bedu,” he said.

  “Have you ever visited them?” I asked, searching for the tent with the single white stripe.

  “Many times,” he said. “They are like family to me. In the beginning, we Italians lived here like Roma, like Gypsies, sì?” He gestured to the air. “We were divided into camps by race and nationality.”

  “Segregated,” I said, and he nodded.

  “Saudi Camp, Indian Camp, Italian Camp, all of us clustered around American Camp like beggar dogs.” His face took on real seriousness. “The king allowed the import of Italians on one condition: that our food and housing remain poorer than that of the Saudi laborers.”

  “Not an easy trick,” I said.

  He lifted his shoulders. “To the Americans, we were all of us coolies,” he said, and the corners of his eyes creased. “Yet they came to the Italian camp for our spaghetti and our wine. We had once fought as enemies, but now we celebrated each night as though we had ended another war, dancing until dawn.” He chuckled. “The single girls, how they swooned for me!”

  I tried to imagine a younger Carlo. “Were you a pirate then?” I asked.

  He clucked his tongue. “I was born a pirate,” he said.

  I laughed, sucked my lips, tasted salt, told myself not to think about water. I reached for my camera, placed the lens at the edge of the open window, and adjusted the shutter. An acacia, a jut of rock, the common sky—nothing I could frame until a gazelle broke the plane, zigzagging before us like a rocket on springs. Three camels appeared in the distance and watched our approach with lazy curiosity. I snapped a shot as we tracked by.

  “What do you see in the camels?” Carlo asked.

  “I don’t know. Just that they are there, I guess.”

  “That is no reason to waste film,” he said.

  “Their shape,” I said, “their color.” I considered for a moment. “The way they stand like a three-dimensional triangle. A pyramid. They aren’t casting shadows, just the dark patches beneath their bellies, like little pools of oil.”

  “Buono. I like how you learn,” he said, and I felt a spark of pleasure.

  “Ruins?” I asked. “Is that what we’re looking for?”

  He held out his hand. “It is all ruin,” he said, then motioned that I should pay attention. A series of wavelike dunes captured the light in an apricot pool. Each second, the division of sky, sun, and sand shifted, demanded that I adjust, open, allow a shadow, make it disappear. When I turned in my seat and focused on Carlo, he drew himself upright.

  “I am piccolino,” he said, “a small man. It is up to you to capture my grandezza.” He gave me his profile, peering into the distance, then slowly turned his eyes on me, and I felt a jolt of expectation, as though something were about to be revealed.

  “Am I a robber?” he asked roughly, and lifted his chin. “Perhaps.” He pinched his eyebrows, darkened his gaze. “A beggar? Never.” He creased his broad forehead. “Always remember that seeing is not knowing. You are piccola, but I will teach you to be big.” He relaxed, lit a cigarette. “There is a diver,” he said, “who works on the drilling platform to secure the pipes underwater, a fellow Italian from the coast of Amalfi. A big man with fists like this,” he said, and placed his own fists together. “As a boy, he worked with his kinsmen to haul the big boats to harbor with the strength of his bare hands.” Carlo paused, caught in a moment of wonder. “What a thing it must have been to pull a ship from the sea!”

  “Like landing a leviathan,” I said, remembering Jonah’s whale.

  “Yet he is afraid,” Carlo said with some pity, “of the smallest spider and must be rescued and calmed like una bambina.”

  I looked out across the desert, empty as any ocean. “It’s strange,” I said. “I feel safer out here than I do inside the compound.”

  “That is because you think you have somewhere to run,” he said, and winked. “Like Carlo, you are a rascal and live by your wits.”

  I rolled my eyes, but the truth was that I liked being compared to Carlo, his sense of invention and adventure. I porpoised my hand through the current of air, thought about what I knew of Carlo’s life.

  “Is it true,” I asked, “what they say about you?”

  “That I’m a great photographer?” he asked, but I saw the amusement in his face. He tilted back his head, gave me a rapscallion smile. “I have captured the affection of an American beauty who is foolish enough to love me and keeps me clothed. I have my studio, my camera, my dagger. It is enough.”

  “Do you ever get lonely living on the beach by yourself?”

  “Who among us lives without loneliness?” he asked.

  I thought of my nights without Mason, then opened my purse and took out the cigarettes, handed one to Carlo. “Do you know Abdullah al-Jahni?” I asked.

  “I have known him since he was a boy,” Carlo said. “He used to come to my studio, curious and unafraid. We pretended great battles with
our weapons.”

  “I like him,” I said, “and his sister, Nadia.”

  “Ah, I remember her.” Carlo smiled with the memory. “She took the veil so young. Maybe because of her father’s death, maybe because her face captured the hearts of too many men.” He grew more serious. “They never should have married her to that ruffian Alireza.”

  “He’s rotten to the core,” I said.

  “Alireza is a dangerous man,” Carlo agreed. “It is better that Nadia has returned to her family. She is safer there.”

  “She wants a divorce,” I said. “Can you do that in Arabia?”

  “Easier than in Italy,” he said. “We must plead our case to the pope himself, but here it takes little more than the speaking of the words ‘I divorce you’ three times. Still,” Carlo said, “a man of Alireza’s reputation would find it a great insult.”

  “Abdullah told me that Alireza is going to take away her baby,” I said. “I don’t care what the law says. It’s not right.” I was surprised by the sharpness of my voice, the orphan’s grief flooding back. I thought for a moment that I should tell Carlo about the scam, that maybe he would help, but I turned my eyes back to the desert, held my tongue. “Nadia is teaching me to swim,” I said more quietly.

  “Splendido,” Carlo said, his humor restored. “You and I, we will swim together.” He began singing what I thought must be some kind of opera, his voice rising and falling with the wind, and I felt the sadness blow away, laughing aloud with Carlo when his voice broke at the highest note. “An aria,” he said. “I am no Caruso, but I have the passion.” He looked at me. “Photography is like poetry, but poets we must also be.”

  I smiled, laid back my head, closed my eyes, and let the wind cool me. I didn’t realize we were nearing Dhahran until Carlo began to gear down. I looked to where he pointed and saw a queue of official vehicles parked along the sandy shoulder of the road that led to the main gate.

  “Hide the cameras,” he commanded. In the distance, I could see flames leaping, and then I heard the shrill call of the disaster whistle.