The Doomed Oasis (32 page)

“What do you plan to do?” I asked him. “You'll go to your father, I take it?”

“Yes. He's still got a few of his bodyguard left. A dozen men and I could create a diversion that would keep the Emir busy until my father has time to make his influence felt in Bahrain. Khalid's right. We must work together now—my father and I.” The mention of Khalid's name seemed to bring his mind back to his friend. “He said he was my brother, didn't he? Unto death?”

“Your brother, yes,” I said. “But as I remember it, he used the words ‘into death' in connection with the Emir—‘my enemy into death.'”

“Well, pray God it doesn't come to that.” There were tears in his eyes, and, standing there, staring straight into the flaming sunset, he quoted from the Bible: “‘
The Lord be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever
.'”

Dimly I recognized the quotation as the oath sworn by his namesake; I didn't realize it then, but this was the covenant, sworn in the midst of the quicksands of the Umm al Samim, that was to take him to that fort on top of Jebel al-Akhbar and to the terrible final tragedy.

I saw the sun set and the quicksands turn to blood, and then the sky faded to the palest pastel green and the stars came out. Lying there, it was like being stranded on a coral reef in the midst of a flat lagoon. Sometime in the small hours the wind woke me, blowing a drift of sand in my face. The moon was up, but its face was hidden in a cloud of moving sand. There was no question of our leaving, and I lay till dawn, unable to sleep, my eyeballs gritty, my nose and mouth clogged with sand, and when the sun rose all it showed was a sepia haze. We ate in extreme discomfort, the sand whistling like driven spume across the flat surface of the Umm al Samim.

The storm lasted until almost midday, and then it ceased as abruptly as it had started. We cooked a meal of rice and dried meat, and then we started back, collecting our camels on the way and struggling through the quicksands to the solid desert shore. We mounted then and, keeping the Umm al Samim on our left, rode till dusk, when we camped. A meal and a short two-hour rest and then on again, with Salim arguing sullenly.

“The old fool thinks the beasts will founder.” David's face was grim. He was in a hurry and he had no sympathy for men or beasts. “Like all the Bedou, he loves his camels more than he loves himself.”

We marched all night and there were times when I hoped the camels would founder. My muscles were stiff and aching, and where the wooden saddle chafed my legs, I was in agony. The starlight faded, swamped by the brighter light of the risen moon, and in the grey of the dawning day we reached the big well at Ain. Salim went forward alone to water the camels, for, early as it was, there were others at the well before us. “Men of the Duru tribe, I expect,” David said as we sat on the ground with the loads stacked round us, brewing coffee. “Salim will bring us the news.”

I dozed, and woke to the sound of the old man's voice. “What's happened?” I asked, for his face was lit by the excitement of some great event. “What's he saying?”

“He's talked with some men of the Rashid, back from selling camels at Saraifa.” David's face was grey in the dawn. “They say there's been fighting already—a battle.”

“Between Hadd and Saraifa?”

“It's hearsay, that's all. They don't know anything.” He didn't want to believe it, but his voice was urgent as he gave the order to mount.

We loaded the camels in a hurry, and as we started out again, I saw that our direction had changed. I asked him where we were going, and he said: “Dhaid. We'll get the news there.” And after that he didn't talk. His mood was sullen and withdrawn, his temper short, and he answered Salim angrily whenever the old man protested at the pace of our march.

We rode all day and far into the night, and in the morning the camels were almost done, their pace painfully slow. We reached Dhaid a little after midday. Nobody came out to meet us. Camels dotted the limestone slopes of the hill, and men lay listless under the walls of the village. Inside the arched entrance, the little open place was packed with people; whole families with their beasts and chattels were crowded there in the oven heat that beat back from the walls.

They were all from Saraifa—refugees; the atmosphere was heavy with disaster, the news bad. Two more
falajes
, they said, had been destroyed and a battle fought, out by one of the wells. Khalid was reported dead, his father's soldiers routed.

“Old-fashioned rifles against automatic weapons.” David's tone was bitter. “For months the Emir has been receiving a steady trickle of arms. And we've done nothing about it. Nothing at all.”

“They're independent states,” I reminded him.

“That's what the political boys said when I told them arms were being smuggled in dhows to the Batina coast and brought by camel across the mountains. A perfect excuse for doing nothing. And now, if Khalid is dead …” His voice shook. His face looked ghastly, the skin burned black, yet deathly pale. “Sheikh Makhmud's an old man. He can't fight this sort of war. And the Emir has only to block two more
falajes
and his men can just sit and wait for the end.”

We left Salim with the camels and fought our way through the crowd to Sheikh Hassa's house. We found him in the room where I had left Khalid a few days before. He was sitting surrounded by a crush of men all talking at once. The new rifle lay forgotten on the floor. Beside him sat a young man with long features that were tense and pale. “Mahommed,” David whispered. “Khalid's half-brother.” He'd fled from the battlefield, but he'd seen enough to confirm the rumours we'd heard in the market place. The battle had been fought by the ninth well out along the line of the Mahdah
falaj
, and the casualties had been heavy. Sheikh Makhmud himself had been wounded, and the latest reports of survivors indicated that he had retired to the oasis with the remnant of his forces and was shut up in his palace and preparing to surrender.

David talked to the two of them for about ten minutes, and then we left. “Sheikh Hassa's scared,” he said as we pushed our way out into the shade of the alleyway. “All these frightened people flooding into his village … It's knocked the fight right out of him. And Mahommed's only a boy. Hassa will hand over Dhaid without firing a shot.” He said it angrily, with deep bitterness. And he added: “Fifty resolute men could defend this place for a month—long enough to preserve its independence from Hadd.”

“What about Khalid?” I asked. “Did his brother say what had happened to him?”

“No. He doesn't know.” His face was grey and haggard. “All this killing and destroying—it's so bloody futile, a lust for oil. Can't they understand the oil won't last? It's just a phase, and when it's past they'll be faced with the desert again; and the only thing that will matter then is what they've built with the oil against the future.” And he added angrily: “The Emir didn't care a damn about that border until my father got Gorde to sign a concession. It was just sand, and nothing grew there. And then to cancel it … I can still remember the look on Sheikh Makhmud's face that night. God!” he exclaimed. “The callousness of men like Erkhard—Gorde, too. They don't care. These people are human beings, and they're being buggered around by hard-faced men who think only in terms of commerce and money.”

We were out of the alley, back in the glare of the crowded market place. He spoke to Salim and gave him money, a handful of Maria Theresa silver dollars poured from a leather bag, and then we settled ourselves in the dust by the entrance gate, leaning our backs against the crumbling mud walls amongst a crowd of listless refugees who watched us curiously. “I've sent Salim to buy fresh camels,” David said. “We'll leave as soon as he returns.”

“How long will it take us to reach the Hadd border?” I was feeling very tired.

But his mind was on Khalid. “I must find out what's happened to him.” He was silent a long time then, tracing patterns in the sand with his camel stick. And then abruptly he rubbed them out with the flat of his palm. “If he's dead …” His emotions seemed to grip him by the throat, so that the sentence was cut off abruptly. And then, his voice suddenly practical: “In that case, there are his men. He had more than a score of them, a paid personal bodyguard. Wahiba mostly and some Rashid; all good fighters.” He was staring hungrily out into the burning distance of the desert. “I need men,” he whispered, his teeth clenched. “Men who'll fight. Not these—” He gestured with contempt at the listless figures around us. “A score of men properly armed and I could put the fear of God into that bloody little Emir.”

I didn't bother to ask him how, for I thought it was just wishful thinking and all in his imagination. My eyes were closing with the heat and the weariness of my aching muscles. I heard him say something about getting me to Sharjah as soon as he could, and then I was asleep.

I woke to the voices of Salim and the two Wahiba; they were arguing loudly whilst David sat listening, a tattered Bible propped on the rifle across his knees. Two camels stood disdainfully in front us. “They've become infected with the mood of this place, blast them!” David closed the Book and got to his feet. A crowd was beginning to collect. He said something to Hamid and the man looked suddenly like a dog that's been beaten. And then David took his rifle from him and handed it to me. “Come on!” he said. “Let's get going.” He spoke angrily to the two Wahiba and then we mounted.

The camels were thoroughbred Oman racing camels. I could feel the difference immediately. The crowd parted, letting us through, and we picked our way daintily down the rocks. Out on the flat gravel of the desert below, we moved into an ungainly canter, circling the hill on which Dhaid rested and heading northeast again.

“These people,” David said, “they're so damned uncertain—full of guts one minute, craven the next. Salim I didn't expect to come. But Hamid and Ali …” He sounded depressed. “My father now, he can handle them the way I'll never be able to.” There was admiration, a note of envy in his voice. “They'd never have left him in the lurch.” We rode in silence then and at a gruelling pace, the heat very great, so that I was thankful for the water we had got at Dhaid.

We camped at dusk and David had just lighted a fire when he turned suddenly and grabbed his rifle. I heard the pad of camels' feet and then the riders emerged out of the gathering darkness. There were three of them, and David relaxed. “Salim, too,” he whispered. He didn't give them any greeting, and they slunk to the fire like dogs. I gave Hamid back his rifle. He took it as though it were a gift and made me a long speech of thanks. “They're like children,” David said. His voice sounded happy.

We had a handful of dates each and some coffee, that was all. And then we rode on.

In the early hours of the morning, with the moon high and a white miasma of mist lying over the desert, we approached the ninth well of the Mahdah
falaj
. Hamid and Ali were scouting ahead on either flank. David and Salim rode close together, their rifles ready-to-hand across their knees. The tension had been mounting all through that night ride, for we'd no idea what we were going to find at the end of it.

For the first time I rode my camel without conscious thought of what I was doing, my whole being concentrated in my eyes, searching the mist ahead. The desert was very still and, half concealed under that white veil, it had a strange, almost eerie quality. From far ahead came a weird banshee howl. It rose to a high note and then dropped to an ugly cough. “Hyena,” David said and there was loathing in his voice. The sound, repeated much nearer and to our flank, checked my camel in its stride. It was an eerie, disgusting sound. A little later Salim stopped to stare at some camel tracks. There were droppings, too, and he dismounted, sifted them through his fingers, smelt them, and then delivered his verdict: men of the Bait Kathir, and they had come south the night before with two camels belonging to Saraifa.

“Loot,” David said, and we rode on in silence until about ten minutes later Hamid signalled to us. He had sighted the first corpse. It had been stripped of its clothes and there wasn't much meat left on the bones, which stared white through the torn flesh. The teeth, bared in the remains of a beard, had fastened in agony upon a tuft of dried-up herb.

It wasn't a pretty sight with the sand all trampled round about and stained black with blood, and after that the bodies lay thick. They had been caught in ambush and slaughtered as they rushed a small gravel rise where the enemy had lain in wait. There were camels, too, their carcasses bared to the bones and white and brittle-looking like the withered remains of dwarf trees dead of drought. The whole place smelt of death, and things moved on the edge of visibility. Two men slunk away like ghouls, mounted their camels, and disappeared into the mist.

We let them go, for David's only interest was to discover whether Khalid had been killed. Methodically he and Salim checked every corpse, whilst the two Wahiba scouted the edges of the battlefield. David could put names to most of the bodies, despite decomposition and the mutilations of scavengers, and one I recognized myself: the leader of Khalid's escort. He lay face down in the tire marks of a Land Rover, and close beside him were the bodies of three more of Khalid's men, stripped of their clothes and arms.

We hadn't far to go after that. The tire marks lipped a rise, and a little beyond, the burnt-out remains of the Land Rover itself loomed out of the mist. They had sought cover behind it, and their bodies had been ripped to pieces by a murderous fire. Khalid lay with eyeless sockets and half his face torn away. The near-naked body was already disintegrating, and where the stomach had been torn open the rotten flesh crawled with maggots and the blood was dry and black like powder. Four of his men lay near him in much the same state of putrefaction.