Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

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 eye-balls 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 them 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 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 a 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 crowds 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 almost see 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 mucked 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.’