Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

She nodded. ‘One of them from the GODCO Office is ‘ere las’ night. He tol’ me about you.’ She didn’t say anything after that, but sat staring at me with her big, dark eyes as though trying to make up her mind about me. ‘You like some coffee?’ she asked at length.

‘Please.’ I needed time, and I think she’d guessed that. She was gone only a few moments, but it gave me a chance to collect myself and to realize that she was perhaps the one person in Bahrain who could tell me what sort of a man David had become in the four years since I’d seen him. She put the coffee down between us, two small cups, black and sweet. I gave her a cigarette and sat smoking and drinking my coffee, waiting for her to start talking. I had that much sense. If I’d rushed her she’d have closed up on me.

‘Have you seen his sister?’ she asked finally.

‘Not yet.’ It wasn’t the question I’d expected.

‘But you ‘ave ‘card from her, no? Does she think he is dead?’

I sat there, quite still, staring at her. ‘What else could she think?’ I said quietly.

‘And you? Do you think he is dead?’

I hesitated, wondering what it was leading up to. ‘His truck was found abandoned in the desert. There was a ground and air search.’ I left it at that.

‘I ask you whether you think he is dead?’

‘What else am I supposed to think?’

‘I don’t know.‘She shook her head. ‘I jus’ don’ know. He is not the sort of boy to die. He believes too much, want too much of life.’

‘What, for instance?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’ know what he want. Is a vair strange boy, David. He have moods; sometimes he sit for hours without saying nothing, without moving even. At such times he have a great sense of-of tranquillite. You understand? I have know him sit all night, cross-legged and in silence without moving almost a muscle. At other times he talk and the words pour out of him and his eyes shine like there is a fever in him.’

‘What did he talk about?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘So many words. I don’ understand half of what he say. About the desert mostly, and the Bedou. Water, too; he loved water — much more than oil, I think. And the falajes; he often talk about the falajes and about Saraifa — how the desert is moving into the oasis.’

I asked her what the word falaj meant, but she couldn’t explain it. ‘Is something to do with water; tunnels I think under the ground because he say it is vair hot there, like in a Turkish bath, an’ there are fishes. And when you look up you can see the stars.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know what it is, but he say once it is like the wind-towers at Dubai — something brought from Persia. But I have never seen the wind-towers at Dubai,’ she added.

‘And this was in Saraifa?’ I asked.

‘Out. Saraifa. With David it is always Saraifa. He has a — a folie for that place.’ She said it almost sadly, and she added, ‘He wish to prove something there, but what I do not know — ‘imself per’aps.’ For a while she sat quite still and silent, and then she said very softly: ‘He was a man with a dream.’ She looked up at me suddenly. ‘And dreams don’ die, do they? Or are men’s dreams like the seed in a place like this — all barren?’

I didn’t know what to answer. ‘You loved him, did you?’ I asked gently.

‘Loved?’ She shrugged. ‘You want everything black and white. What is love between man and woman — and in a place like this?’ Her shoulders moved again, slight and impatient. ‘Per’aps. But sometimes he could be cruel. He had a vein of cruelty in him — like the Arabs. At other times-’ She smiled. ‘He showed me a glimpse of what life could be. And when he talked about his dreams, then he is near to God. You see,’ she added, her voice suddenly tense, ‘he is important to me. The most important thing in my whole life. That is why I cannot believe he is dead.’

I asked her when she had last seen him and she laughed in my face. ‘You don’ see a man when he is lying in your arms. You feel — feel … if you are a woman.’ She stared at me and then she giggled like a girl. ‘You look so shocked. Have you never been with a woman like me before? But no, of course, you are English. I forget. You see, I am Algerienne, from Afrique Nord. All my life I am accustomed to Frenchmen — and Arabs.’ She spat the word ‘Arabs’ out as though she hated them. ‘I should have been still in Algerie, but when the Indo-China war is on, they send us out to Saigon, a whole plane-full of women like me. We come down at Sharjah because of engine trouble and we are there in the Fort for two weeks. There I met a merchant from Bahrain, so I don’ go to Saigon, but come ‘ere to Bahrain, and later I am put into the al-Menza Club as hostess. That is ‘ow I come to meet David.’

‘Yes, but when did you last see him?’ I asked again.

‘In July of las’ year. And it was not ‘ere, but at the place where I live.’

That was just before he sailed for Dubai?’

‘Oui.’ Her eyes were searching my face. ‘He was — how you say?’ She hesitated, searching for a word. But then she shrugged. ‘Vair sad I think. He say that there is only one man in the ‘ole world that ‘e can really trust and that this friend is in England.’

‘Didn’t he trust his father?’ I asked.

‘Le Colonel?’ She moved her shoulders, an expressive shrug that seemed to indicate doubt. ‘When I see him that las’ time he trust nobody out here — only this friend in England. You are from England and yesterday you are at the Company’s offices enquiring about David.’ She leaned forward so that the deep line between her full breasts was a black shadow. ‘Tell me now, are you this friend?’

‘Didn’t he tell you his friend’s name?’

‘No, he don’ say his name — or if he do, I ‘ave forgot.’

‘Well, I’m his lawyer. Does that help?’

‘A man of business?’

‘Yes. His Executor, in fact. That means that I carry out his instructions when he is dead.’

‘And now you carry them out? That is why you are ‘ere in Bahrain?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you never his friend — before?’

‘Once,’ I said. ‘Four years ago.’ And I told her how I’d helped him to get away in the Emerald Isle. Evidently she knew this story, for she nodded her head several times and her eyes were bright with the memory of his telling of it. ‘Yes,’ she said when I had finished. ‘Now I know you are the man.’ And then she leaned forward and gripped hold of my hand. ‘Where you go now — after Bahrain?’ she asked. ‘You go to find him, yes?’ And she added, ‘You will give him a message pleez? It is important.’

I stared at her. Her dark face was so intense, her belief in his immunity from death so tragic.

‘Pleez.’ Her voice was urgent, pleading. ‘It is vair important.’

‘He’s dead,’ I reminded her gently.

She dropped my hand as though she had hold of a snake. ‘His truck is found abandoned in the desert. That is all.’ She glared at me as though challenging me to destroy her belief. ‘That is all, you ‘ear me? Pleez.’ She touched my hand again, a gesture of supplication. ‘Find ‘im for me, monsieur. There is trouble coming in the desert and he is in danger. Warn him pleez.’

There was no point in telling her again that he was dead. ‘What sort of trouble?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘War. Fighting. What other trouble do men make?’ And when I asked her where the fighting was going to break out, she said, ‘In Saraifa, I think. That is the rumour in the bazaar. And that boy who bring you ‘ere, Akhmed; he is the son of a famous pearl-diver. He knows the naukhudas of all the dhows and there is talk of sambuqs with arms coming across the sea from Persia. I don’ know whether it is true or not, but that is the talk. And ‘ere in Bahrain we hear all the talk. That is why I ask to see you, to tell you that you must warn him. He is in great danger because of ‘is father.’