Then one day the oil company changed, and at once the whole of al-Ghazira was agog. New men arrived. They looked over the Oiltown, and it was as clear as daylight they weren’t happy with it. They surveyed al-Ghazira for a few weeks and eventually they found a new, better site for an Oiltown. You don’t have to wonder where that site was.
Soon after the Oilmen were seen going into the Old Fort, with a carload of money to buy the land, people said — but after barely ten minutes shots were heard in the Fort and the cars came hurtling out. No one was hurt, but the Malik had made a mistake. These men weren’t lightly to be shot at. For them life was a war. Nothing was going to stop them getting what they wanted; certainly not the Mad Malik of al-Ghazira. The battle for the site was no longer a game. It had become a feud, like the old desert feuds: a battle of honour.
The first move came soon after. One night a helicopter landed in the desert, far outside the city, and Nury the Damanhouri, who happened to be chasing a chicken, saw the Amir, the Malik’s almost-forgotten half-brother, and his friends step out. The Oilmen’s cars were waiting for them, and they were whisked away to a huge glittering new palace which had sprung up overnight on the far side of the city.
Who can describe the excitement, the near-frenzy of curiosity which gripped al-Ghazira then? People crowded into mosques and cafés, talking feverishly through the night; rumours blew like hurricanes through the Souq and you had to pay to stand under the Bab al-Asli. We heard stories of strings of pearls being given away for one little driblet of news. But there was no news to be had. The ornate silver doors of the New Palace stayed firmly shut, the Malik stayed in the Old Fort and the Oilmen in the Oiltown.
That was when Nury made his fortune. Inevitably, he was the only man in al-Ghazira to go freely in and out of the New Palace — it turned out that in his years away our Amir had developed a terrible weakness for boiled eggs.
In a matter of days Nury was a celebrated man: the café he went to had to build an extension over the road; the mosque he prayed at was always full to bursting; and soon we saw a new floor rising on Nury’s little house. Nury’s name became a byword, for he was always truthful and always right. When he said the Amir had been appointed Oil Minister, people laughed at him, for no one had heard of an Oil Minister before. But in a week there was a proclamation and Nury was proved right. It was Nury who first said that one of the Amir’s friends was going to become Defence Minister, and he was right. He was right about the Education Minister, the Culture Minister and the Foreign Minister as well. But, still, when Nury said the Amir would soon become Public Works Minister, doubt was born again. Why would the Amir want to be Public Works Minister as well as Oil Minister? It seemed meaningless, so we assumed it to be untrue, and suddenly Nury found himself alone in his café again.
Meanings are never apparent.
Late one night, when the whole town was asleep, Nury galloped out of the road to the New Palace on his donkey, hoofs flying, eggs scattering, dogs barking, through the harbour, straight towards the Maidan al-Jami‘i, past the Souq, heading directly for Jeevanbhai’s house. There, without so much as tethering his donkey, he flung himself on the door and hammered with all his feeble strength.
But no one can reckon for chance. Unusually for a man so quick and alert Jeevanbhai sleeps like a dead man, and it so happened that just a few days earlier his wife had gone to India on a visit. She was a rather suspicious woman, so before leaving she had gone around al-Ghazira looking for a woman of suitable age and decrepitude to work in the house while she was away. She found Saneyya, grandmother of Ali the taxi-driver and Nasser of the blue café, then a woman of seventy-five, famed in all the kingdoms for her astonishing ugliness, much loved of the pearl divers and boatmen because she could scare sharks into tearing out their own entrails simply by grinning into the water; widowed at sixteen, on the dawn after her wedding, when, after the darkness of a night in which she conceived her son, her bridegroom rose eagerly to lift the veils from her face and died at once, of shock (blinded, some say). For Jeevanbhai’s wife, Saneyya seemed God’s gift. Poor woman: little did she know what fires smouldered in Saneyya.
On that night when Nury hammered on the door, with fate hanging in the balance, the only person in the house apart from Jeevanbhai was Saneyya, and it was she who awoke and came to the door, creaking and complaining, it was she who whispered, hoarse and suspicious: Who’s there?
It’s me, Saneyya, Nury answered, I have something terribly important to say, can’t wait another moment. Open the door a crack, ya Saneyya, and as God is Great let me in.
There was something in those words, some hint of a memory, which played havoc in Saneyya’s heart. Trembling with disbelief, her voice shaking with eagerness, Saneyya whispered: At last, at last, Nury, you dilatory Damanhouri. At last after all these years. Say it again, ya Nury, let me hear you again.
And Nury, as though he were reciting a poem, whispered: Quick, Saneyya, quick, I can’t wait any longer. Open up, open, let me in.
At that Saneyya could not keep herself from giggling, and giggling she said: Wait, ya Nury, there’s no hurry. We have the whole night.
Outside, Nury was beside himself: Saneyya, there’s no time to waste. Open up. I tell you, you’ll be well rewarded.
Talk of rewards already, ya Nury? Do you think I need a reward? Your heart’s enough, no less than the other things. Hold tight and wait a little. What can I do with my petticoats all tied up?
Nury was desperate; his eyes had gone wild and sweat was streaming from his face. He started to explain what he had overheard at the New Palace, but then he stopped himself, for there was no telling who might overhear him. Instead he spoke in riddles: Listen carefully, Saneyya, and use your mind. What happens when you have a pot of rice about to boil over and somebody calls you to the door? Do you stand there chattering? No, you run back because you have to stir your pot. It’s like that, Saneyya. Now, stop talking, open this door and let me in.
Like a whip Saneyya’s hand flashed through the door, slapped him and shut the door again. For shame, Nury, she cackled. Why all this dirt? Boiling or not, you’ll have to wait.
Then Nury understood, and he understood, too, that if Saneyya were denied she would drive him from the house and make sure he didn’t meet Jeevanbhai for as long as she could. There was no escape for Nury. When Saneyya opened the door at last, he screwed his courage together and resigned himself to his fate.
What had to happen happened: Nury the Cross-Eyed Damanhouri and Saneyya, Terror of the Deep, coupled. It was no ordinary coupling: after a little awkwardness in the beginning, during which Saneyya learnt not to look into his eyes, and he got used to the gaps in her teeth, they so lost themselves in ecstasy that people say they shook the whole of the Souq, and Nury almost forgot his errand.
Some things happen for the best even though it doesn’t seem so at the time. Even if things had taken a different turn later, Nury was a ruined man, a beggar, egg-less for life, because Saneyya was not the woman to be silent about a conquest so long in the coming.
When Nury recovered from his raptures he woke Patel and told him what he had overheard at the New Palace. Years after, people often spent whole days talking about what he said that night, but still nobody knows exactly what it was; most of it is just guesses and conjecture. Some say it was this: that night the Oilmen were planning to fly in two aeroplanes full of specially grown date palms; unique palms, which could thrive on any soil, however inhospitable. The Amir’s part was to rush the palms to that empty bit of land by the sea and plant them there, all in one night. Then in the morning he was to make proclamations in all the squares of the city inviting the townspeople to witness the near-miracle; to have a glimpse of the things the world could do for the forgotten land of al-Ghazira. Then, as the Public Works Minister, he was to lay claim to that empty bit of land and fence it off. The Malik was bound to resist, they calculated, perhaps by force. But by then the townspeople, so long loyal to the Malik, would hesitate, dazzled by their glimpse of the Amir’s power to turn the desert green, and in the end would rally to his side. And then together, with a little help from the Amir’s bodyguards and the Oilmen, they would storm the Old Fort, banish the Malik and the past, and install the Amir and the future.