The Doomed Oasis (23 page)

“Do you know Arabia much, sir?” he asked suddenly. And when I told him this was my first visit and that I'd only arrived a few days ago, he nodded and said: “You are from a town called Car-diff, yess? David speak of you sometimes.”

That mention of Cardiff, the knowledge that this young Arab knew who I was … Saraifa seemed suddenly less remote, my position here less solitary.

“When David first come here, he is like you; he speak Arabic a little, but he don't understand our customs or the way we live here in the desert. The
falajes
mean nothing to him and he has never seen the big dunes when the
shamal
is blowing.” He had stopped and he was smiling at me. Despite the wide-spaced, fang-like teeth, it was a gentle smile. “I am glad you come now.” He offered me his hand and I found my wrist gripped and held in a strong clasp. “You are David's friend, and I will see that no harm come to you.”

I thanked him, conscious that he had given me the opening I needed. But already I was becoming vaguely aware of the subtlety of the Arab mind, and this time I was determined not to make the mistake of asking direct questions. Sue's words came unconsciously into my mind:
David wanted to defend Saraifa, too
. I saw his face soften as he nodded, and I asked: “What was it about this place that so captured his imagination? His sister said he could be very emotional about it.”

“His sister?” He smiled. “I have seen his sister once, when I am taking a plane at Sharjah. She is with the doctor, and I do not speak. A very fine person, I think.”

I knew then that David had spoken of Sue to Khalid. “What is there about Saraifa,” I said, “that he fell in love with it the way other men do with a woman?”

He shrugged. “He came here for refuge and we made him welcome. Also his father live here. It became his home.”

But that didn't explain it entirely. “It was something more than that,” I said.

“Yess.” He nodded. “Is a very strange chap. A
Nasrani
—a Christian. He live very much by your Book, the Bible.” That surprised me, but before I could make any comment, he added: “I should hate him because he is an infidel. Instead, I love him like my own brother.” He shook his head with a puzzled frown. “Perhaps it is because I have to teach him everything. When he first come here, he knows nothing—he has never hunted, never owned a hawk; he does not know how to ride a camel or how to make a camp in the desert. For six months we are living together, here in Saraifa, in the desert hunting, up in the mountains shooting wild hare and gazelle. But he is very good with machines, and later, when he is on leave from the oil company and we are working for the reconstruction of one of the old
falajes
, then he spend all his time down in the underground channels with the family who specialize in that work. You see, sir, this oasis is one time very much bigger, with very many
falajes
bringing water to the date-gardens. Then Saraifa is rich. Richer than Buraimi to the north. Richer perhaps even than the Wadi Hadhramaut to the south. It is, I think, the richest place in all Arabia. But nobody can remember that time. Now it is …” He stopped abruptly, his head on one side, listening.

And then I heard it, too—the soft pad-pad of camels' feet on gravel. Down the slope towards us came a bunch of camels moving with that awkward, lumbering gait. A dozen dark shapes swayed past us, the riders kneeling in the saddles, their robes flying, their rifles held in their hands. For an instant they were like paper cutouts painted black against the stars, beautiful, balanced silhouettes. Then they were gone and the pad of their camels' feet faded away into the sand as they headed towards the mountains.

“
Wallahi, qalilet-el-mukh!
” Khalid muttered as he stared after them. And then to me. “That man, Mahommed bin Rashid. You heard him when my father give the order.
Inshallah
, he said, we will kill every harlot's son of them. But he is more like to die himself, I think.” And he turned away, adding as he strode angrily up the hill: “Allah give him more brain in the world hereafter.”

The sight of that handful of men riding east into the desert along the line of the
falaj
had changed his mood. He was preoccupied, and though I tried to resume our conversation, he didn't speak to me again until we reached the gates of the palace. Abruptly he asked me what sleeping quarters I had been allotted. And when I told him none, he said: “Then I arrange it. Excuse my father, please. He is very much occupied.” He asked about Entwhistle. “Good,” he said when I told him he'd gone. “He is not a fool, that man. He knows when it is dangerous.” And he added: “It would have been better perhaps if you had gone with him.”

“I'm not leaving here,” I said, “until I know what happened to David.”

There was a moment then when he hesitated as though about to tell me something. But all he said was: “Is best you talk to his father—
Haj
Whitaker.”

“I intend to,” I said. And when I asked him whether Colonel Whitaker was in Saraifa, he replied: “I don't know. He has his house here, but is most times at the place of drilling.”

“And where's that?”

“To the south of 'ere, about ten miles towards Sheikh Hassa's village of Dhaid.”

We had entered the great courtyard. A man sidled up to us, made his salaams to Khalid. He was dark and toothy, with a ragged wisp of a turban on his head, and his eyes watched me curiously as the two men talked together. My name was mentioned, and finally Khalid turned to me. “Now all is arranged. Yousif speak a little English. He will show you where you sleep.” His hand gripped my arm. “Ask
Haj
Whitaker why he goes to see the Emir of Hadd almost two moons past. Ask him that, Meester Grant.” It was whispered to me, his lips close against my ear and a hard, angry glint in his eyes.

But before I could question him he had drawn back. He said something to Yousif and with a quick
salaam alaikum
he left me, moving quickly through the campfires, the only man in all that throng who wore a European jacket.

“Come!” Yousif seized hold of my hand. Heads were turned now in my direction, and here and there a man got up from the fireside and began to move towards us. I had no desire to stay there, an object of curiosity. Yousif guided me through dark passages and up to a turret room by a winding staircase where the plaster steps were worn smooth as polished marble by the tread of many feet. The floor was bare earth, the roof beamed with palm-tree boles. A slit of a window no bigger than a firing-embrasure looked out on to the flat, beaten expanse of the village square. I was in one of the mud towers of the outer wall, and here he left me with no light but the glimmer of moonlight filtering in through the embrasure.

Strange, disembodied sounds drifted up to me on the warm night air: the murmur of Arab voices, the grunt of camels, a child crying—and in the distance the weird “chuckle of a hyena. I knelt on the firing-step, peering down. Beyond the mud houses I could see the darker mass of the palms. Bare feet sounded on the turret stairs and the yellow light of a hurricane lamp appeared; the room was suddenly full of armed men bearing bedding, which they laid on the floor—a carpet, some blankets, an oryx skin, and a silken cushion. “May Allah guard you,” Yousif said, “and may your sleep be as the sleep of a little child.”

He was halfway through the door before I realized what that long speech in English must mean. “You're Colonel Whitaker's man, aren't you?”

He checked and turned. “Yes, sahib. Me driver for Coll-onel.” He was staring at me, his eyes very wide so that the whites showed yellow in the lamplight. “I tell Coll-onel you are here in Sheikh's palace.” He was gone then.

There was no doubt in my mind that he'd been sent to find me. Whitaker was in Saraifa, and Khalid had known it as soon as Yousif had sidled up to us. I sat down on the silken cushion, staring blindly at that cell-like room. There was nothing to do now but wait. I felt tired; dirty, too. But I'd no water with which to wash. No soap, no clothes—nothing but what I was wearing. Yousif had left me the hurricane lamp, and its light reached dimly to the palm-wood rafters. A large desert spider moved among them with deliberation. I watched it for a long time as it went about its unpleasant business, and finally I killed it, overcome with a fellow-feeling for the flies caught in its web. And then I put out the lamp and rolled myself up in a blanket.

It was hot, but I must have fallen asleep, for I didn't hear Yousif return; he was suddenly there, his torch stabbing the darkness, almost blinding me.

“Coll-onel say you come.”

I sat up, glancing at my watch. It was past eleven thirty. “Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Down in the courtyard the fires were almost out, the Sheikh's retainers lying like corpses wrapped in their robes. A few stirred as we crossed to the gate, now barred and guarded; a brief argument and then I was in a battered Land Rover being driven at reckless speed across the deserted village square, down into the date-gardens. Behind us the palace fort stood bone-white in the moonlight, and then the palms closed round us.

Whitaker's house was an old mud fort on the far side of the oasis. Most of it seemed to be in ruins, the courtyard empty, the mud walls cracked and crumbling. There was sand everywhere as we hurried through a maze of passages and empty rooms. The place seemed dead, and I wondered that a man could live alone like this and retain his sanity, for he seemed to have no servants but Yousif and to live in Spartan simplicity in one corner of this vast, rambling building.

We came at last to a room where old portmanteaus and tin boxes stood ranged against the walls, and then I was out on a rooftop that looked out upon the desert. He was standing against the parapet, a tall, robed figure in silhouette, for there was no light there, only the moon and the stars. Yousif coughed and announced my presence.

Whitaker turned then and came towards me. His face was in shadow, but I could see the black patch over the eye. No word of greeting, no attempt to shake my hand. “Sit down,” he said and waved imperiously to a carpet and some cushions spread on the floor. “Yousif.
Gahwa
.” His servant disappeared, and as I sat down I was conscious of the stillness all about us—no sound of Arab voices, none of the tumult of the Sheikh's palace, no murmur of the village below the walls. The place was as isolated, as deserted as though we were the only people in the whole oasis.

He folded himself up, cross-legged on the carpet facing me, and I could see his face then, the beard thinning and grey, the cheeks hollowed and lined by the desert years, that single imperious eye deep-sunken above the great nose. “You had a good journey, I trust.” His voice was oddly pitched, hard but unusually high, and he spoke the words slowly, as though English were no longer a familiar language.

“It was interesting,” I said.

“No doubt. But quite unnecessary. It was clearly understood between us that you would make no attempt to contact me direct. And though I admit the financial situation must have seemed—”

“I came about your son,” I said.

“My son?” He looked surprised. “Your letter merely said you were worried about the amount of money I was spending.”

“Your son appointed me his executor.”

He moved his head slightly, the eye glinting in the moonlight, bright and watchful. He didn't say anything. Behind him the low parapet hid the desert, so that all I could see was the great vault of the night studded with stars. The air was deathly still, impregnated with the day's heat.

“I'm not convinced your son died a natural death.” I hadn't meant to put it like that. It was his stillness, the overpowering silence that had forced it out of me.

He made no comment and I knew that this was going to be more difficult than my interview with Erkhard, more difficult even than my meeting with Gorde, and some sixth sense warned me that this man was much more unpredictable. The clatter of cups came as a distinct relief. Yousif moved, silent as a shadow, on to the rooftop and poured us coffee from a battered silver pot. The cups were handleless, the Mocha coffee black and bitter.

“Does his mother know he's dead?” It surprised me that Whitaker should think of her; and when I told him that I'd broken the news to her myself, he asked: “How did she take it?”

“She didn't believe it at first.” And because I had an overwhelming desire to break through his strange aura of calm, I added: “In fact, she seemed to think it was your own death I was reporting.”

“Why? Why did she think I was dead?”

“The stars,” I said. “She believes in astrology.”

He sighed. “Yes, I remember now. I used to talk to her about the stars.” And he added: “It's a long time ago. A long time.”

“Do you believe in astrology, then?” I asked.

He shrugged, sipping noisily at his coffee. “Here in the desert we live a great deal by the stars. It is very difficult not to believe that they have some influence.” And then, abruptly changing the conversation: “How did you get here? It's not easy to get to Saraifa.” I started to tell him, but as soon as I mentioned Gorde, he said: “Philip Gorde? I didn't know he was out here.” It seemed to upset him. “Did he tell you why he was here?” He mistook my silence. “No, of course not. He'd hardly tell you that.” He shook his cup at Yousif to indicate that he'd had enough, and when I did the same the man departed as silently as he had come, leaving a dish of some sticky sweetmeat between us. “
Halwa
. Do you like it?” Whitaker made a vague gesture of invitation.

“I've never tried it.”

We were alone again now and the silence between us hung heavy as the thick night air, a blanket through which each tried to gauge the other. I let it drag out, and it was Whitaker who finally broke it. “You were telling me about your journey.” He stared at me, waiting for me to continue. I broke off a piece of the
halwa
. It was cloying on the tongue and it had a sickly-sweet taste. “You arrived here with Entwhistle, one of the Company's geologists. What was he doing on the Hadd border, do you know? The fellow had no business there.”