Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

But looking up it wasn’t quite so incredible. That tower hung right over the town. All the way to the gates of the palace we could see it perched there above us. The narrowness of the streets was no protection; it looked right down into them.

Berry’s appreciation of the Emir’s situation proved correct. After keeping us waiting for over an hour, he received us in a small room off one of the palace rooftops. There were armchairs in the Western style and a table on which stood an expensive German camera and some models of tanks and armoured cars. The walls were hung with finely silvered guns and pictures of the Emir driving through Hadd in a glossy American car.

The man himself was small and wiry, with a face that somehow managed to combine craftiness with great dignity; it was a long, rather cruel face, its length emphasized by the big nose and the little pointed beard glistening black with oil. His eyes were heavily made-up with kohl. Sheikh Abdullah was there and several other notables, including the Emir’s secretary, and though I couldn’t follow what was said, I was conscious of the atmosphere, which was distinctly hostile.

The audience lasted a long time, with the Emir insisting at first that Berry storm the fort with his own troops, take David prisoner, and have him shot. When he refused, the Emir launched into a harangue that was so violent that the spittle actually flew from his lips.

‘I thought for a moment,’ Berry said afterwards, ‘that we were for it.’ Threatening us, however, didn’t solve the Emir’s problem, which was that he was being made to look a fool before his own people and all the desert world. After a long argument he finally agreed that if we were able to persuade the defenders to evacuate the fort they would be allowed to go unmolested.

We waited whilst Sheikh Abduallah gave one of his men orders to climb the slopes of Jebel al-Akhbar under a white flag and announce a cease-fire. Berry had guessed that there were snipers posted among the rocks below the fort walls and he was taking no chances. ‘The extraordinary thing is,’ he said as we hurried out of the palace, ‘that they’re convinced there are at least a dozen men up there in the fort.’

We drove back through the silent town, out past the deserted wells and the askari encampment, and took the dusty track that led round the shoulder of the hill. We left the Land-Rover at the foot of the camel track on the north side and started up on foot. The sun was high now and the heat throbbed back from the bare, scorched rock, beating up through the soles of our shoes. For a time the fort was lost behind ridges, but as we climbed higher the walls gradually came into view. There was no sign of Sheikh Abdullah’s snipers, no movement on the hilltop. The air was very still, the silence and the heat appalling. It was just over five days since I had come down this very track in the dark. Five days — just over one hundred and thirty hours to be exact, and under constant attack … It didn’t seem possible that David, or any of them, could still be alive. And yet Hadd was deserted and the Emir had agreed to Berry’s terms. We climbed fast, hoping for the best — fearing the worst. They must be out of water by now, wounded probably, perhaps only one of them left alive.

The timbers of the main gate sagged open, splintered by the rocks that lay at the foot of the two crumbling bastions. As we climbed the last steep rise, the tower appeared, framed in the gateway, pale yellow in the sun with the shadowed opening halfway up yawning like a mouth agape. No sign of life. No sound. I called out. ‘David! It’s George Grant!’ The rocks echoed back his name and nothing stirred. ‘David!’

And then unbelievably, he answered — a hollow, croaking sound from the interior of the tower. ‘I have Captain Berry of the Trucial Oman Scouts with me.’ My throat was parched, my voice hoarse. ‘The Emir offers you a safe conduct.’ Even as I said it I wondered, the stillness and the heat beating at my nerves. Concealed amongst the rocks below us were men with rifles. How did we know they wouldn’t open fire on us? The hairs at the back of my neck crawled; treachery seemed to hang in the hot air and even as David told us to come in through the open gateway, I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the Emir.

The open expanse of the fort’s interior was a shambles. There were the remains of fires, the tattered remnants of camels’ carcases — those things I remembered. But now there were bodies of Arabs, too, lying where they had fallen, unburied and rotting, buzzing with flies. I counted nine of them; the place smelt of death, was littered with the debris of attacks beaten back. And the sun — the cauterizing, sterilizing sun — blazed down.

Something moved in the black mouth of the tower and the rickety ladder was thrust out of it. It fell the last few feet to the ground and David appeared, climbing stiffly and very slowly down it. At the bottom he paused as though to gather his strength together, and then he turned and faced us, standing very stiffly erect, a blood-stained strip of cloth round his right forearm and blood showing in a black patch below his left shoulder.

Berry took a tentative step forward. ‘We’ve just seen the Emir. If you leave with us now, he’s agreed to allow you to cross the border into Trucial territory unmolested.’

‘And you believed him?’ David started to move towards us, but then he stopped. He was swaying slightly, too weak to walk.

‘He’s ordered a cease-fire.’

He nodded slowly. ‘That’s true. I heard the order given. A man came up by the path from Hadd a little while back. He carried a white flag. But then he disappeared; went to earth amongst the rocks.’ His voice was thin and very weak. ‘I don’t trust the bastards,’ he added, coming towards us very slowly.

Close-to he looked ghastly. His eyes had gone quite yellow, the skin of his face yellow, too, and all the flesh fined away so that the cheeks were sunken, the bones staring. His body seemed smaller, dried up and shrivelled. He looked about half his normal size, completely desiccated. The death’s head face, the yellow, burning eyes, the croaking voice … I thought he couldn’t last much longer and I pleaded with him to take his chance. But he was like a man in a trance. ‘Have the authorities decided to act? Will they support Saraifa?’ And when we told him No, all he said was, ‘They will. They will. If I hold out long enough, they’ll be forced to act.’ The eyes fastened on me. ‘Why didn’t you go to Sharjah? Why come here? This isn’t what I wanted.’ His voice sounded desperately tired, utterly dispirited. ‘Didn’t you understand? I wanted the world to know. If people at home don’t know what I’m trying to do The people at home do know,’ I said, and I told him about Ruffini and how the story had been taken up by the national press and a question asked in the House. His eyes lit up, his whole bearing suddenly changed. ‘Wonderful!’ he breathed. ‘Wonderful!’ He was standing erect now, his head up, his voice much stronger. ‘Time,’ he said. ‘Time and a little luck. That’s all I need now.’

Time is against you,’ Berry said. ‘This is your last chance to get out of here alive.’

‘Is it?’ The dry, cracked lips produced a twisted smile. ‘Do you really believe the Emir would let us get out of here alive — particularly when they see how few we are? He’d lose too much face. Anyway I’m not going. I’ll stay here till I die unless the Emir agrees to my terms or the authorities make some move to safeguard Saraifa.’

‘Surely to God you’ve done enough,’ I said, and gave him the rumour we’d heard about the two falajes running again at Saraifa and the people returning to the oasis. Berry, more practical, said, ‘How much water have you got left?’