A Hologram for the King (25 page)

—Very good, Alan said.

Hamza ran to set up the can again.

—Now you? Yousef handed him the gun.

Alan took the gun and loaded one of the small, gold-cased .22 bullets. The rifle was very light. He wanted to stand, or lay on his stomach, but felt that custom dictated that he follow Yousef's way.

It was comfortable enough, mimicking the shape of a tripod. Alan found the can in the sights, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. A small fist of dust rose just left of the can. Yousef and Hamza seemed mildly impressed, but also appeared satisfied that Alan was an inferior shot. What would it look like to them if Alan, middle-aged, heavy and wearing khaki pants, could sit down, pick up a gun and outdo them?

This was what Alan was determined to do.

—Can I have another? he asked.

Yousef shrugged and nodded toward the box of bullets. Alan loaded another into the chamber, and again took aim. He sighted, he breathed, he squeezed. This time the can took a bullet to its gut and fell from the wall.

Everyone, even Salem, murmured their approval. Alan handed the gun to Yousef, who was smiling broadly.

They continued this way, trading turns, replacing the can, filling it with holes, for about twenty minutes, until a truck barreled up the driveway. It was the white pickup that Alan had encountered earlier. As soon as the man emerged, looking agitated, Alan knew that he would soon be explaining himself. It did not help that when the man pulled
up, Alan was holding a gun. As the man strode toward them, Alan placed it on the tablecloth, as close to Yousef as he could, but within his own reach. How could he know what was about to happen? He needed options.

First the man threw a barrage of Arabic at Yousef, pointing at Alan all the while. Then Yousef was standing, and Salem was standing, and all three men were yelling, and Hamza was unsure what to do. The man from the white pickup was surely someone whom Hamza saw every day, a man living in the town, and he couldn't openly defy him, no more than he could blindly side with Yousef. Alan sat, trying to appear as harmless as possible.

Finally Yousef came to Alan.

—Did you tell this guy you were from the CIA?

Alan rolled his eyes. —He asked me if I was from the CIA, and I joked that I did some freelance work for them.

Yousef squinted at Alan. —Why did you say that?

—I was joking. It was a joke. He asked me. It was a ludicrous question.

—It's not ludicrous to
him
. Now I have to convince him that you're not from the CIA. How do I do this?

Alan wanted to be gone, up on the roof, anywhere. But an idea came to him. Tell him that if I was from the CIA, I wouldn't go telling the first guy who asked me about it.

At this, Yousef laughed. Thank God, Alan thought. There had been a moment when the whole thing was getting away from him, from them all, and there would be all kinds of trouble for Yousef, for Yousef's father,
for Alan. By lunch he'd be in the next cab back to Jeddah. But Alan's explanation had broken through, had reminded Yousef who he was, and who they both were. They were friends and there was trust.

Yousef turned to the man, put his arm around him, and walked him back to his truck. The man got in, sat behind the wheel for the next five minutes as Yousef talked to him through the window, calmly and with occasional emphatic gestures Alan's way. Yousef tamped down the remaining embers of the man's fury, and was soon finished.

—When the pickup was gone, Yousef returned, sat down, and exhaled theatrically. You shouldn't have said that.

—I know.

—People don't like jokes like that.

—I knew it as soon as I said it.

—It's like joking about having a bomb when you're in airport security.

—That was the analogy I had in mind, too.

—So we agree.

—We always do.

—Most of the time.

—I'm sorry.

—Okay. Let's shoot some more.

And they did, until Salem said he wanted to at least see some of the town or land. So they got in one of Yousef's father's trucks, Hamza driving, and descended into the flats of the valley and through the village. The truck ambled over the rough road so slowly that there seemed to be no point in all of them riding in a vehicle at all. Walking would have been faster and less ridiculous. They passed by the humblest dwellings
and an array of well-made adobe homes and apartment buildings. The whole village couldn't have been more than two hundred people, but there was a tidy school, a clinic, a mosque, even what Alan took to be a hotel.

After the main cluster of buildings, they drove up the dusty road to the other end of the valley, and after passing through a narrow passageway between two enormous stones, they were in another, smaller valley. They descended briefly, the next village in view, and Yousef stopped the truck.

—This is my grandparents' home, Yousef said, indicating a small and ancient dwelling. It had been constructed of a few thousand flat stones, without mortar. It was probably no more than eighty years old, but would not have been out of place in an entirely different epoch.

They got out, and Alan followed Yousef through a window and into the shelter. The home was one small room. The roof was gone, but the round beams remained. Yousef took off his sunglasses and hung them on his thobe. He took a pull of water from his plastic bottle.

—I would have no idea how to live that way, he said. Can you imagine?

They got back into the truck.

They spent the next few hours driving lazily through the valleys, up and down the terrible roads. Along the way they passed a succession of improbable rock formations. Two-story stones that had been half hollowed, sitting like empty helmets. They drove to the upper ridge of the valley of Yousef's father and looked down on the village. From their vantage point, it looked impossibly small and fragile, the kind of settlement
that would be swept away in seconds by a flash flood, buried utterly by any kind of minor avalanche. It seemed a ludicrous place to live for a day or two, let alone for centuries. The people here would have been acutely vulnerable to drought, to the one road out being made even temporarily impassable by mud or falling rock. Looking over the valley, the work of humans so small next to the work of wind and water, Alan had the reaction he had had so often, which was
People shouldn't live here
. People should not settle in a rocky terrain devoid of water or rain. But then where should they live? Nature tells man that she will kill him anywhere. In flat land, she will kill him with tornadoes. Live near a coast and she will send tsunamis to erase centuries of work. Earthquakes mock all engineering, all notions of permanence. Nature wants to kill, kill, kill, laugh at our work, wipe itself clean. But people lived wherever they wanted, and they lived here, too, in this impossible valley, and they thrived. Thrived? They lived. They survived, reproduced, sent their children to the cities to make money. Their children made money and came back to level hilltops and build castles in the same impossible valley. The work of man is done behind the back of the natural world. When nature notices, and can muster the energy, it wipes the slate clean again.

On the way back to the fortress, they passed a pair of men erecting a stone wall. The setup looked remarkably like the one Alan had used — a stack of rocks, a wheelbarrow full of mortar.

—Can we stop? Alan asked, before he had fully formed the reason why.

Hamza stopped. The two men looked up from their work and waved. Yousef greeted them from his window, making some joke in Arabic. The men laughed and came over.

—Ask them if they need help, Alan said.

—I'm not helping them! Yousef was momentarily puzzled. You mean you? You want to help?

—I do. I really do.

And after a few minutes of Yousef and Salem trying to reason with Alan, Yousef made the offer to the men, and the men accepted. They put Alan to work, and Hamza and Yousef and Salem drove off.

Alan's job was to keep the mortar from hardening, stirring it, adding water periodically, and when that was taken care of, to help find the appropriate stones to place next on the wall. The work was slow, and the language barrier made it frustrating for both sides, but Alan felt good being outside, using his arms and legs, sweating through his shirt and khakis, and by the end of the day, they'd completed about eighteen feet of the wall. It was three feet high, it was solid, it was far better than the one he'd built in his own yard. They nodded to him, shook his hand, and he was done.

The sun was setting as he walked back to the castle. Getting lost was not a possibility: the fortress could be seen from every corner of the valley. In twenty minutes Alan reached it and Yousef and Salem were, as always, perched on the wall of the balcony, Salem strumming his guitar.

—Have fun? Yousef said.

—For a while I did. Then it was a fucking pain in the ass, he said.

Yousef and Salem both laughed. They were looking at a fool.

Yousef had a light in his eyes. —After dinner, I have a treat for you. You'll love this.

Salem, in the know, raised his eyebrows, agreeing that Alan was about to be made very happy.

—What is it?

—You want to hunt some wolves?

—Why? Where?

—There are apparently some wolves killing sheep lately. They're organizing a hunt. They need anyone who can shoot.

Alan hadn't heard a more intriguing invitation in years.

—I do want that, he said.

—Told you, Yousef said to Salem.

—I didn't deny it, Salem said. He picked up his guitar and composed a song, on the spot, about Alan and the hunt.

It was not half bad.

A
FTER DINNER, TWO PICKUP
trucks pulled up to the house. Again Salem hurried to hide his guitar. Both trucks were white, but neither was driven by the man who suspected Alan of being a CIA operative. There were about four men in each, as old as Alan or older, with a few teenagers mixed in.

Alan was offered the front seat in the first pickup, but he wanted to be in the open air. It was a crisp and clear night and he wanted to see everything. Voices were raised among the men, but finally Yousef intervened and assured them that this was indeed what Alan wanted, that their hospitality was best expressed by granting him this wish. Normally he wouldn't have forced the issue, but tonight he did, because after weeks of life in that sterile hotel, he wanted the night air, and the stars, and the bouncing around in the truck bed.

And so he crawled into the back with the two youngest cousins and an older man. All three had rifles. Yousef sat in the passenger seat.

—You coming? Alan asked Salem.

—You kidding? Salem said, see you later.

The pickup rumbled alive and began a slow amble down the driveway. The man across from Alan, about his own age and build, was smiling at him. Alan extended his hand. —Alan, he said.

The man shook it. —Atif.

A pothole sent them all into the air. When they landed, they all laughed. Atif, Alan hoped, had not been apprised of the possibility that Alan was CIA. He wanted the simplicity of being who he was: no one.

Atif raised his chin to Alan. —Did you hunt a wolf before, Mr. Alan?

Alan shook his head.

—But you have…

The man couldn't find the word for shot so instead pretended to shoot his own gun. —You do this?

—Yes, many times, Alan said.

The man tilted his head, not quite adding it up.

—But no kill the
animal
?

—No, Alan said.

The man smiled. He was missing most of his teeth.

—Kill the
man
?

Alan laughed. —No.

—Eat
the animal? the man asked.

—Yes, Alan answered.

The man seemed satisfied for a moment, then a shard of mischief appeared in his eyes. —Eat the
man
?

Alan chose to laugh. —No.

The man smiled. —Never
once
eat the man?

Alan chose to laugh again.

The man reached out and took Alan's hand, shook it again.

—Good, he said.

The roads were a mess and got worse as they rose higher through the mountains. The truck whinnied and grunted, and Alan wondered aloud if any wolves would remain within miles of their loud convoy.

Finally, high atop the ridge, they stopped, and the cousins got out, helping Alan down. Yousef appeared from the other truck. He was loading his rifle.

—The farm below is where the sheep were taken last.

Alan sighted the pen, and guessed they were about seventy yards away.

—So the plan?

—Just to wait here, I guess.

—But won't they smell us? Alan asked. No one answered, and he assumed the question was irrelevant.

—You and I will go over here, Yousef said.