In the Kingdom of Men (28 page)

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 Carlo 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.

“Another explosion,” I said, but Carlo shook his head.

“No. It is something else.” We slowed as a Bedouin militiaman, bandoliers strapping his chest, separated himself from the cluster and waved us down. Carlo narrowed his eyes, took out the note I had written, and drew out his dagger, laid it alongside his leg, said, “Don’t speak a word,
bella
.” I gathered my scarf over my hair, pulled it across my face, tucked it at my throat as the man approached.

Carlo handed him the paper and gestured to the road, joking and offering cigarettes, but the man remained unsmiling as he bent to peer in at me, then walked back to confer with his fellows. Carlo’s voice grew more serious.

“Listen to me,” he said. “These are not local men. I have no sway with them. If they threaten to arrest us, you must act furious.
Say that I am your driver, that your husband is an important Aramco executive, that he will be angry when he finds out your virtue has been questioned. It won’t matter that he can’t understand you.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said.

Carlo nodded to where the guards conferred. “If you don’t fear for yourself, then fear for me.”

We watched as the guard walked back to the car. I pressed my shoulders straight, readying myself to act their superior, someone who might make them pay. The man leaned into Carlo’s window, and I could smell his sour breath as he barked a few words. He glared at me, then dropped the paper into Carlo’s lap and stepped away. We crept forward until we had cleared the queue, and I heard Carlo let out a sharp sigh.

“Mio Madre,”
he said. “You have taken years from my life, and the day is not yet over.”

“But it worked,” I said. “We fooled them.”

He looked at me sideways and allowed a grin. “If you are a good clown, they accept you as a clown.”

“What did he say is happening?” I leaned out my window and peered across the sand to the compound’s boundaries, struck again by how much like an island it was, a fenced oasis moated by sand.

“The protests have spread to Dhahran,” Carlo said, peering through the windshield. “These are university students. You have educated them well.”

“But why the compound?” I asked.

“Because of Aramco’s ties to Israel,” he said. “They want King Faisal to stand with his Arab kin and join the oil embargo.”

As we approached the turnoff leading to the main gate and guardhouse, I pulled out my camera. “Drive closer,” I said.