Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

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 were 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 cut-outs 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 they 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 camp fires, 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 expanses 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.