‘Au revoir.’ She held out her hand and I was conscious again of the steel grip of those thin fingers. ‘You are his friend. I know that now. And when you find him you will warn him?’ I nodded, not saying anything. ‘And you can give him my love also,’ she said with a sudden flash of gaiety. And then serious again: ‘The boy Akhmed will be waiting each morning for you at the ‘otel. I have arranged it. He knows many people and he can help you if you wish. And remember please,’ she added, ‘this is an island very close to the great deserts of Arabia — much closer than Algerie is to the Sahara. And the desert is Arab. Your Eenglish officials and the oilmen, they know only what ‘appen on the surface. They can see the bees swarm, but they do not know when the old queen die. You understand?’ And with that she pulled back the bead curtain and I was out in the passage again where the dance music sounded faintly. She took me as far as the alleyway where the boy was waiting and then with a final touch of those fingers, a flash of white teeth, she was gone.
It was only after I was back in the car that I realized I didn’t know her name. I got it from the boy — Tessa; a very European name for a girl of her mixed parentage. Later I learned that it was a shortened form of Tebessa, the town on the Algerian-Tunisian border where she had been born. I lay awake a long time that night wondering about David, about what had really happened. Three women — his mother, his sister, and now this girl Tessa — all convinced he was alive. And the picture she had sketched of him, the warning of trouble brewing. I went to sleep with the unpleasant feeling that I was being caught up in the march of events. And in the morning Mahommed Ali drove me to the airport.
3. The Empty Quarter
We took off shortly after ten, skimming low over sand flats that ran out into the shallows where fish stakes stood in broad arrows. The white coral buildings of Muharraq vanished behind us and after that the waters of the Gulf stretched away on either side, a flat sea mirror shimmering in the heat, and the colours were all pastel shades.
The plane was piloted by the Canadian I had swum with the previous day — Otto Smith. He had joined me on the apron just before take-off and realizing that I’d never seen what he called ‘this Godforsaken country’ before, he had offered to make it a low-level flight. We flew, in fact, at less than a thousand feet. A white-winged dhow swam like a child’s toy on the sheet steel surface below, and where the water shallowed to islands banked with sand it was translucent green, the sand banks sugar white.
We crossed the Qattar Peninsula; a glimpse of an oil camp, the airstrip marked out with oil drums, the camp a wheel of concentric buildings and the rig a single lonely tower. A sheikh’s palace standing on an empty beach, square like a military fort, the mud of its walls barely discernible against desert sand. The palm frond shacks of a barasti fishing village, and then the sea again, until the white of gypsum appeared on the starboard side and miniature buttes of sand standing out of the water marked the mainland coast of Arabia.
The plane was full of equipment and stores bound for an oil camp along the coast towards Ras al-Khaima, beyond Sharjah. There were only three passengers besides myself — an officer of the Trucial Oman Scouts and two oilmen who were straight out from England and could tell me nothing. I sat in silence, in a mood of strange elation, for the sight of the desert so close below the plane gave me the illusion at least that Saraifa was within my reach.
We followed the coast all the way. Shallow sand dunes replaced the glare of gypsum flats, the coast became dotted with palms and here and there a pattern of nets spread out on the shore to dry marked a fishing village. About an hour and a half out Otto Smith called me for’ard to look at Dubai. The Venice of Arabia,’ he shouted to me above the roar of the engines. A broad estuary dog-legged through the sandbanks, dwindling amongst the town’s buildings which crowded down to the waterfront, capped by innumerable towers, slender like campanili — the wind towers that Tessa had talked of, a simple system of air-conditioning brought from Persia by the pirates and smugglers of the past.
Ten minutes later we reached Sharjah; another estuary, but smaller and with a sand bar across the entrance, and the mud town crumbling to ruin. We came in low over a camel train headed south into the desert, the glint of silver on guns, the flash of white teeth in dark faces, and a woman, black like a crow, with a black mask covering her face, riding the last camel. Watch towers stood lone sentinels against the dunes, and far away to the east and south-east the mountains of the Jebel were a hazy, dust-red wall. We came to rest close by the white glare of the Fort, and behind it lay the camp of the Trucial Oman Scouts.
Sharjah Fort was like any desert fort, only now it was an airlines transit hotel. Two rusty iron cannon lay in the sand on either side of the arched entrance and all the interior was an open rectangular space with rooms built against the walls. Otto took me to the lounge and bought me a beer. The room was large, the walls enlivened with maps and coloured posters; the tiled floor gritty with blown sand. ‘How long are you going to stay here?’ he asked me. And when I said I was waiting for Gorde he looked surprised. ‘Well, you’re going to have a darn long wait,’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Didn’t they tell you? He sent a radio message through yesterday to say he’d changed his plans. He’s being flown back to Bahrain tomorrow.’
So that was it… that was why Erkhard had changed his mind. A free ride in a Company plane and I’d be in Sharjah by the time Gorde got back to Bahrain. ‘Thank God you told me in time,’ I said.
‘In time? Oh, you mean you want to ride back with me.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, fellow. I got a full load from Ras al-Khaima. And not to Bahrain either — to one of the off-shore islands.’ And he added, ‘It’s too bad. They should have told you.’
I sat, staring at my beer, momentarily at a loss. ‘Is there any way I can get to Abu Dhabi from here?’
‘Today?’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, you haven’t a visa, have you?’
That was no good then. ‘When’s the next flight back to Bahrain, do you know?’
‘Civil? Oh, there’ll be one through in a day or two. The manager will have the flight schedules.’
I asked him then who would be flying Gorde back to Bahrain, but he didn’t know. ‘Might be Bill Adams, might be me.’ He took a long pull at his beer. ‘Probably me, I guess. He likes to have me fly him. Reminds him of the old days when he was boss out here and we flew everywhere together.’ And he began telling me about an old Walrus they’d flown in the early days just before the war. ‘One of those push-prop amphibians. Boy! We had fun with that old kite. And Gorde didn’t give a damn; he’d let me slam it down any old place.’
‘Could you give him a message?’ I asked, for I was quite certain now that the note I’d left with Erkhard’s secretary would never be delivered.
‘Sure, what is it?’
I hesitated. ‘Perhaps I’d better write it.’
‘Okay. You write it. Then whoever picks him up tomorrow can give it to him.’ His freckled face crinkled in a grin. ‘You might’ve been waiting here for weeks. Not that there aren’t worse places than Sharjah to be marooned in. This time of year the bathing is wizard. Know what I think? I think that in a few years’ time this coast will be one of the world’s great winter playgrounds.’ I finished my note whilst he was extolling the tourist attractions of the Persian Gulf, and then he began talking about the strange places he had landed in. ‘Have you ever been to Saraifa Oasis?’ I asked him.