Bahaa Taher - Sunset Oasis

Perhaps you're thinking specifically of the pharaohs! Perhaps you see them as your forebears for being masters who ruled over Egyptian slaves. You too were masters clinging to the skirts of the Turkish masters, and when the slaves rose up against you, you went for help against them to other, British, masters, and you beat them and then became masters too. And me? What did I consider the revolutionaries to be? At the investigation I said they were 'miscreants', so what difference is there between you and me?

How I hate myself!

I was still sitting at my desk when I heard a sudden row in the courtyard, and the strident voice of Wasfi as he issued his training orders ceased. I got up again and looked through the window and saw the soldiers standing at ease while Corporal Salmawi spoke to Wasfi, who was absorbed in reading something. Then he turned and gave an order to two of the soldiers, who set off at a run in the direction of the station while he hurried towards the stairway.

He burst into my office, Sergeant Ibraheem behind him, but Wasfi turned to the latter and said in commanding tones, 'Go out and lock the door behind you. I wish to be alone with His Excellency, so let no one in.'

Ibraheem executed the order, his face filled with astonishment and displeasure, while I tried to look calm as I asked him, 'What's happened, Captain?'

Not forgetting to deliver a salute, he handed me a folded piece of paper, saying, 'Thank God Your Excellency didn't go out on patrol yesterday. A boy threw this piece of paper tied to a stone into the courtyard of the station, then ran off. Corporal Wahba el Salmawi saw him and tried to run after him but the boy was too fast. I have sent two soldiers to try to catch and arrest him.'

I opened the paper, which contained two lines of writing in large sloping letters: 'The district commissioner should not go out alone on night patrol these days. People are waiting to kill him.'

I looked at the piece of paper. How easy it would be to find out who wrote it. The number of those who know how to write here can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But why send this warning? Who in this oasis would not be happy to get rid of me, and fast?

I refolded the paper, placed it on the desk and looked at Wasfi in silence. Rigidly at attention as usual, he asked me, 'What is the meaning of this threat, Your Excellency? I hope that the soldiers will come across the boy who threw the stone and we can interrogate him. Does Your Excellency suspect anyone, so that we can arrest him right away?'

I answered with a smile, 'Can we arrest everyone in the oasis?'

Confused, he responded, 'Of course not. But maybe we could ask Sheikh Sabir to…'

I interrupted him to ask, 'Wasfi, do you really not know the meaning of this threat? Have you not heard till now from Sheikh Sabir or any other of the agwad what happened here before your arrival?'

The confusion was written clearly on his face when he said, 'Your Excellency, I want…'

'You want to help. Thank you, but there's no need to send soldiers either. They'll never find the boy and they won't be able to identify him because they didn't see him. You may leave now, Captain, and resume your training of the troops. The training will be of use if the local people think of making another attack on the station.'

Wasfi went out and I heard Sergeant Ibraheem's familiar knock at the door.

As he entered, extreme agitation on his face, he said, 'Forgive me, Your Excellency, but what's happened?'

I looked at his face for a moment, his anxiety increasing by the minute until his body started shaking. Since he had been saved from death the lines on his faces had increased and his true age become clear, but he interrupted my silence by saying, at the end of his tether, 'Tell me, God reward Your Excellency, what has happened. I think of you — no disrespect intended — like a son, as God is my witness.'

'I know that, Sergeant Ibraheem, without your having to tell me. You too have a special place in my heart. The whole business is…'

Then I decided I couldn't care a damn so I told him everything that had happened, and his face creased and he said in sorrowful tones, 'Do you remember what I told Your Excellency the other day? They never forget. Be on the lookout…'

He paused suddenly, then continued in a rush, 'And be on the lookout too for that captain!'

'Why do you say that? What do you know about him?'

'I don't know anything but all the soldiers complain about him. He isn't a decent man like Your Excellency. And I'm frightened by his eyes, which are like a cat's.'

To reassure him I said calmly, 'Fear nothing, Sergeant Ibraheem. You may go now.' He gave the military salute that he so often forgot but paused again before going out and said, wagging his ringer, 'But you should have no doubts about Corporal Wahba Salmawi. He's a good man and I've known him for a long time.'

'Thank you. You're dismissed now, Ibraheem.'

After he had left, I tried to distract myself by writing replies to the latest correspondence from the ministry so that I could send them with the next caravan, but it didn't work. I couldn't concentrate on anything.

The letter doesn't bother me and the threat has been there since I came. I almost see it as overdue! Better the event than the wait, as we say. If they'd ever wanted to carry it out, nothing could have stopped them. So they too are settling their scores, after the two periods of calm that we've experienced — the first after my supposed heroism in saving their son, and this, which we're still living through, after the firing of the cannon. The disasters that they attributed to Maleeka have stopped happening, though the threat of disasters from Catherine has not. Now she wants to go out again, to Khameesa, and to drag Fiona with her into yet another adventure! I will never permit it. Her nasty surprises never cease; why did I involve myself with her in the first place? And did I get involved with her or did she get involved with me? It doesn't matter. During our first nights together, she reminded me of Ni'ma so I was satisfied with what I had before me. I shall never find Ni'ma again, so I ought to take care to keep Catherine, but since we got to this oasis something has been broken, I don't know what. The daytime of our relationship has reached a sunset at this last stopping place on the western horizon, as Catherine described the place. Our marriage crumbled into sand and then Maleeka's storm wiped it out completely.

Why did Fiona come here at this time?

No. Let me think of something else. To work! But my mind isn't in a mood to calculate the figures and write the reports to the ministry. Why not write a letter to Brigadier General Saeed? From time to time he too writes me letters full of brotherly greetings. I cudgel my brain to read between the lines in them news of the Protected City or even of the ministry but find nothing. It is this caution that he has used to keep himself safe through the vagaries of the times without losing his integrity. Why wasn't I like him? I took out his last letter and read it again:

Your Excellency my dear brother Mahmoud Effendi Abd el Zahir. The expressions of brotherly love now in full measure attached, and the yearnings of which the Creator, glory be to Him and exaltation, alone is aware dispatched, should I attempt an exposition of all that the heart contains, such an exposition for ever would extend, and never reach its end. God willing, you are all, with His help and favour, in the best of health and on the topmost rungs of enjoyment…

'The topmost rungs of enjoyment!' How can I reply to this good-hearted man without lying?

It was no use. I got up and started as usual moving about the spacious office. That too was no use.

Whatever I think about, she comes back to me. What am I to do? Catherine says that her father always used to call her the Saint. Why did this sick saint come here to add more agony to my soul's agony? It's not her saintliness or her goodness of heart which have captured me. My interest in such things is feeble; the period when I used to attend the meetings of the Masons spoiled me. I didn't lose my faith entirely, but I became used thereafter to not giving much thought to what was 'forbidden' and 'permitted'. I abandoned Masonry after reading Afghani's attack on it and his renunciation of it. I hated it too when I saw the European Masons supporting the British in Egypt. Despite this, I retained faith in the mind and in logic above all, and a little of the old faith too has survived. I experience true repentance every year in the month of Ramadan. I don't go near alcohol or women, I perform both the obligatory and the supererogatory prayers, and I read the Koran. At the end of the fasting month, though, I