The Doomed Oasis (37 page)

He gave me dates and a bottle filled with water, sufficient to take me to the first well, and then began to saddle the camel. “You'll be seeing Sue?”

I nodded.

“Give her my love; tell her I'll be thinking of her and of a day we spent on the Gower. She'll know what I mean.”

“She thinks you're dead,” I reminded him.

“Well, tell her I'm not—not yet, anyway.” And he laughed and slung the heavy blanket over the wooden saddle.

Ten minutes and I'd have been away. Just ten minutes, that was all I needed. But then the sound of a rifle cut the stillness of the night and a man screamed and went on screaming—a thin, high-pitched sound that had in it all that anyone could ever know of pain. Bin Suleiman shouted a warning from the east-facing wall, and David let go the camel and raced to meet the attack. “Get out now,” he called to me over his shoulder. “Get out now before it's too late!” He called something to Hamid, who was posted on the far side of the fort by the main entrance gate, and then the darkness had swallowed him. A stab of flame showed high up on the wall, and the echo of the shot cut through the man's screams as though it had severed his vocal cords. A sudden silence followed, an unnatural stillness.

The camel, startled by the noise, had fled into the night. I found him close under the wall of the tower. Bewildered and obstinate, the wretched beast refused to move, and by the time I had coaxed him to the main gate it was too late. Firing had broken out all round us. A figure appeared at my side, gripped my arm, and shouted something in Arabic. It was Hamid, and he gestured towards the tower. Rocks thundered against the wooden timbers of the gate we had barricaded that afternoon. Hamid fired, working the bolt of his rifle furiously, the noise of his shots beating against my eardrums.

And then he was gone, running for the tower. I let the camel go and followed him, my gun clutched in my hands. Bin Suleiman was at the ladder ahead of me. David followed close behind as I flung myself through the hole and into the darkness beyond. As soon as we were all inside, we drew the ladder up. Bullets splattered the wall—the soft, dull thud of lead, the whine of ricochets. “Didn't expect them to attack so soon,” David panted.

We heard the wood splinter as they broke down the gate. They were inside the walls then, vague shadows in the starlight, and we fired down on them from the embrasures. The shouts, the screams, the din of firing … it went on for about ten minutes, and then suddenly they were gone and the inside of the fort was empty save for half a dozen robed figures lying still or dragging themselves laboriously towards the shelter of the walls.

From the top of those walls our attackers kept up a steady fire. Bullets whistled in through the entrance hole so often that the slap of lead on the opposite wall became a commonplace. They caused us no inconvenience, for they struck one particular spot only, and the convex curve of the wall prevented them from ricocheting. We kept a watch at one of the embrasures, but did not bother to return their fire. “Let them waste their ammunition,” David said. “Our turn will come when the moon rises.”

Once they misinterpreted our silence and left their positions along the outer walls. We waited until they were in the open, and as they hesitated, considering how to reach the entrance hole, we caught them in a withering fire. Our eyes, accustomed to the darkness of the tower's interior, picked them out with ease in the starlight. Very few got back to the safety of the walls or out through the gateway. And when the moon rose about an hour later we climbed the ladder to the very top of the tower, and from there we were able to pick them off as they lay exposed along the tops of the walls.

Below us Hadd lay white and clearly visible. There was great activity round all the wells. David fired one shot. That was all. The people scattered, activity ceased, and in an instant the whole town appeared deserted again.

We took it in turns to sleep then, but there was no further attack, and sunrise found us in command of the whole area of the fort. With no cover from which they could command our position, the Hadd forces had retired. We took the guns and ammunition from the dead and dragged the bodies outside the walls. Nobody fired on us. The hilltop was ours, and the sun beat down and the rock walls became too hot to touch. We buried Ali and retired to the shade of the tower. The camel that was to have carried me to Buraimi had disappeared. There was nothing for me to do but resign myself to the inevitable.

“How long do you think you can hold out here?” I asked.

“Until our water's gone,” David answered. “Or until we run out of ammunition.”

“And Hadd?” I asked. “How desperate will they become?”

He shrugged. “There's a well in the Emir's palace, and they can always evacute the town and camp out in the date-gardens. There's plenty of water there. It's more a question of the Emir's pride. He can't afford to sit on his arse and do nothing.”

And each night we'd be a little wearier, the hours of vigilance more deadly. I closed my eyes. The heat was suffocating, the floor on which we lay as hard as iron. Sleep was impossible. The flies crawled over my face, and my eyeballs felt gritty against the closed lids. The hours dragged slowly by. We'd nothing to do but lie there and keep watch in turns.

Shortly after midday a cloud of dust moved in from the desert—men on camels riding towards Hadd from the south. It was Sheikh Abdullah's main force. They halted well beyond the range of our rifles, and the smoke of their cooking-fires plumed up into the still air. There were more than a hundred of them, and at dusk they broke up into small groups and moved off to encircle our hill. They seemed well organized and under a central command.

It was that and the fact that they were mounted on camels that decided me. I went to where David was standing by one of the embrasures. “I'm going to try and get out tonight,” I told him. “Whilst it's dark, I'll get out on to the hillside and lie up and wait for a chance to take one of their camels.” And I added: “Why don't you do the same? A quick sortie. It's better than dying here like a rat in a trap.”

“No.” The word came sharp and hard and violent. His eyes burned in their shadowed sockets, staring at me angrily as though I'd tried to tempt him. “To be caught running away—that isn't what I want. And they'd give me a cruel death. This way …” Again I was conscious of that sense of mission blazing in his eyes. “This way I'll write a page of desert history that old men will tell their sons, and I'll teach the people of Hadd a lesson they'll never forget.” And then in a quieter, less dramatic voice: “Think you can make it on your own?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But it's dark and there's bound to be a certain amount of chaos when they put in their attack.”

He nodded. “Okay, it's worth trying. But they're Bedou. They've eyes like cats, and they know the desert. And, remember, the moon rises in four hours' time. If you're not away by then …” He left it at that and stood for a moment, watching me, as I gathered together the few things I needed—a canvas bandolier of ammunition, my rifle, the water bottle, a twist of rag containing a few dates and some pieces of dried meat. My matches and my last packet of cigarettes I left with him and also something I'd become very attached to—a little silver medallion of St. Christopher given me by a mission boy in Tanganyika after I'd saved his life. “You're travelling a longer road than I am,” I said.

Ten minutes later I was saying goodbye to him by the splintered timbers of the main gate. When I told him I'd get help to him somehow, he laughed. It was a quiet, carefree, strangely assured sound. “Don't worry about me. Think about yourself.” He gripped my hand. “Good luck, sir! And thank you. You've been a very big factor in my life—a man I could always trust.” For a moment I saw his eyes, pale in the starlight, and bright now with the nervous tension that comes before a battle. And then with a quick last pressure of the hand, a muttered “God be with you,” he pushed me gently out onto the camel track.

Behind me the timbers creaked as he closed the gate. I heard the two palm trunks with which we'd shored it up from the inside thud into position.

I started down the track then, and in an instant the walls had vanished, merged with the dark shapes of the surrounding rocks. Black night engulfed me, and I left the track, feeling my way down the slope, my feet stumbling amongst loose scree and broken rocks.

High overhead a thin film of cirrus cloud hid the stars. It was this that saved me, for I was lying out in the open not two hundred paces from them as they climbed to take up their positions on the north side of the fort. I kept my face down and my body glued tight to the rock against which I lay. My rifle, clutched ready in my hand, was covered by my cloak so that no gleam of metal showed, and the two grenades David had given me dug into my groin as I waited, tense and expectant, for the moment of discovery.

And then they were past and the scuff of their sandalled feet faded on the slope above me.

I lifted my head then, but all I could see was the dark hillside in my immediate vicinity. No sign of the men who had passed, no shadows moving on the edge of the darkness. I slid to my feet, found the track, and went quickly down the hill. And at the bottom I walked straight into a camel. I don't know which of us was the more surprised. It had been left to graze, and it stood with a tuft of withered herb hanging from its rubbery lips, staring at me in astonishment.

There were other camels; they seemed to be all round me, humped shades in the dark, champing and belching. I seized the headrope of the one facing me, forced it down, and, stepping onto its neck the way the Arabs did, I found myself sprawled across its back as it started into motion with a bellow of fear and rage. There was a guttural Arab cry. A shot rang out, the bullet whining close over my head. But the only thing I cared about at that moment was whether I could hang on, for the brute had gone straight into a gallop.

If it hadn't still been saddled I should undoubtedly have come off, but the saddle gave me something to hold onto, and after a while the crazy motion slowed and I was able to get my feet astride and, by means of the headrope, obtain some control. And when I had finally brought the animal to a halt, there was no sound of pursuit. There was no sound of any sort. That wild, swaying gallop seemed to have carried me right out into a void.

And then behind me, the sound of shots, carrying clear and hard on the still night air. The rip and blatter of a machine gun. Twisting round in my saddle, I saw the firefly flicker of the attackers' guns high up on the black bulk of Jebel al-Akhbar. Distant shouts and cries came to me faintly. More firing, and the sharper crack of small explosions. Three of them. Grenades, by the sound of it. The cries faded, the fire slackened. Suddenly there was no longer any sound and I was alone again, riding across an endless dark plain, haunted by the thought of David, wondering what had happened.

The silence and the sense of space were overwhelming now, particularly when the curtain of cirrus moved away and the stars were uncovered. Then I could see the desert stretching away from me in every direction and I felt as lost as any solitary mariner floating alone in an empty sea. Far behind me the Jebel al-Akhbar lifted its dark shape above the desert's rim, for all the world like an island, and all around me were small petrified waves, an undulating dune-scape that seemed to disappear into infinity.

In the darkness, without any stars to guide me, I had trusted to luck and let the camel have its head. Now I saw it had carried me westward—towards the big dunes of the Empty Quarter and Whitaker's lonely camp. I kept going, not changing my direction. It was a dangerous decision. I knew that. I'd only the one bottle of water and there were no wells where I was heading, no caravan routes to guide me, nothing but empty desert. My decision was based on the fact that Whitaker's camp was much nearer than Buraimi—and, after all, he was the boy's father.

I had two chances, that was all—our own camel tracks and the tracks of Whitaker's trucks. If I missed both of these, or if they had become obliterated by wind-blown sand, then I knew I'd never get out of the desert alive. I rode through the night without a stop, guiding myself as best I could by the stars, and when the dawn came I turned so that the rising sun was behind my right shoulder. If my navigation was right, then I had placed myself to the south of the line between Jebel al-Akhbar and Whitaker's camp. Some time during the morning my new course should intersect the tracks made by our camels three nights back.

It was the first time I had ridden in the desert alone. The solitude was immense, the emptiness overpowering. The heat, too—it came at me in waves, so that time had no meaning. It seared my eyes and beat against the membranes of my brain. I drank sparingly from the water bottle, rinsing the tepid liquid round my mouth. A wind sprang up and small grains of sand were lifted from the gravel floor and flung in my face, a fine-ground dust that clogged nose and throat and made the simple act of swallowing an agony without any saliva. To look the desert in the face, searching for our old tracks, was like pricking needles into my eyes.

By midday I'd finished the water and still no sign of our tracks. I was trembling then, but not with the heat. I had reached the sands, and the dunes were growing bigger, like an ocean's swell building up against the continental shelf. Dune followed dune, and the sense of space, the feeling that this petrified world of sand went on and on without end, appalled me.

A dirty scum formed in my mouth as I rode, and my tongue became a swollen, leathery mass. The camel's pace was slow and reluctant. We had passed no vegetation, no sign of anything growing, and as the sun slanted to the west fear took hold of me, for I knew I was headed into a desert that was four hundred miles across. Memory plagued me with the vision of a stream I knew in the Black Mountains of Wales where the water ran over rocks brown with peat and fell tinkling to a cool, translucent pool. The sun sank into a purple haze, and the sense of space, with the dark, shadowed dune crests stretched out in endless ridges ahead of me, was more terrifying than the close confinement that produces claustrophobia.