Badawi

by Mohed Altrad

  36

  Outside, the night shone with a thousand fires. The derricks stood at regular intervals, forming a grid over part of the desert: Sector 8 in the huge oil field where Qaher worked. With their red and white lights in the cool of the night, they were a reminder of a mysterious collaboration between man and the earth. Chimney pipes rising up in the night sky occasionally emitted tongues of flame. Drilling arms nodded rhythmically, slowly rising and falling, leaning tenderly toward the earth in a mimicking of a courtship display. From time to time two beams of white light appeared, probing the sky or plunging down ravines: the headlights of a jeep cutting across the oil field. Everything here was alive.

  Qaher particularly liked these solitary evenings when the darkness handed the place over to the machines, and men were few and far between. During the day, all you saw were ungainly constructions standing in the crushing heat and the dust, metallic structures with pistons beating the earth, machines which needed constant monitoring—an exhausting, thankless task. During the day, you could see the electric fences protecting the site, and drawing attention to the danger, to the whiff of money, and to the violation of open spaces.

  But at night! Darkness created a distinctive kind of intimacy. The stigmata seen in daylight were barely visible. When men and beasts were asleep, all the detractions of technology faded. Even power became harmonious, found some legitimacy. Qaher was here, no longer to monitor, like a slave, but to watch over his domain, like an owner. The risks may well have been higher because nocturnal incidents were more difficult to manage, but this harmony, this feeling of reconciliation with the desert, meant he could be subsumed into the vast machine, become a part of it. If he reached out his hand he even thought he could feel it living.

  It could be said that Qaher had been reunited with the desert, but for him the desert was only a secondary factor in his new circumstances. What mattered most to him was what lay at the end of the road: the huge oil-producing complex.

  He was immediately aware of its power, a vast, intense, tangible power which bent thousands of people and machines to its will, making them work to its rhythm, with the same aims, pummeling the ground. As a child, he’d suspected this sort of power existed from the mechanical purring of his father’s truck, from the oil lamps with which his father flooded his guests with light to command respect and parade his wealth, and from the sheer noise of the construction site erecting Raqqa’s law courts, where justice was counted out in banknotes. Here, though, he’d realized how much greater that power was than in his dreams. If power was organized, planned, efficient, and given free rein, it proved capable of prospecting the earth and delving into its entrails. He’d had a taste of this power. He’d been collaborating with it for eight months, it had absorbed him, he was a part of it. More so with every passing day.

  The overseer’s room was behind a hillock. He parked his jeep in a dip in the ground, cut the engine, and climbed out. He felt sheltered here, at one with the hammering he could feel reverberating beneath his feet.

  He had no desire to be hit by the smell of coffee and hot plastic that always pervaded the prefabricated buildings, no desire to inhale the petrochemistry gases that regularly hung over the place despite the technicians’ best efforts. Not yet. He’d read Proust at school: oil and bourbon would definitely be his “madeleine.” But for now he felt a new harmony with the desert, and he didn’t want to disrupt that at any price. If only he could find the words to communicate all this to Fadia! He leaned against the still warm hood of the car and all at once realized he’d never been into the desert with her. They’d really seen only the streets of Raqqa together. One time they went as far as the outskirts of the city, to the ramparts of al-Mansour. The outskirts, no farther. As if the desert had been a frontier, a world in which Fadia didn’t belong.

  He took a deep breath, picked up a handful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, then leaned against the hood again. It didn’t make any sense. And yet he couldn’t picture Fadia here, beside him; the desert wasn’t where she belonged. It was as if there were two separate worlds, and Qaher couldn’t work out whether he belonged in either of them.

  The small device he wore on his belt started vibrating. He was being paged. He took a few steps and the thing carried on vibrating, so he unclipped it and pressed a button to indicate that he’d received the message. He lingered there a moment longer, then turned back and sat reluctantly at the wheel of the jeep, started the ignition, put it in gear, and drove back up the sandy slope. The dull thudding in the ground melted into the throb of the engine.

  37

  The camel sprawling on the ground made Qaher uncomfortable—not the animal itself but what it represented. Fadia had been strolling around it for a while, like any other tourist, occasionally leaning toward the animal to stroke it and scratch its coarse coat. You’d have thought both of them, Fadia and the camel, were trying to taunt him. They made a strange pair, as if artificially playing their allotted roles in this abstract setting. Qaher ran his tongue over his lips. Night was falling, they’d already visited four of the villages around the vast oasis, this was the fifth.

  A red sun was setting the tops of the dunes alight. It would have been magnificent were it not for that aftertaste of fakery, and Qaher’s overriding urge to get away. The manicured space with its too-green grass put him on edge. Why had Fadia insisted on coming here? He knew at a glance it would be a disappointment, and every moment spent here was proving him right. It was so obvious: Fadia, the camel, the grass, the wind, the light, the noisy tourists pouring out of air-conditioned coaches, the locals, the way the place was laid out—every element was a lie, conjuring a borrowed reality. OK, yes the glimmering orange-and-gold wall enclosing the plain with its lush green vegetation was probably very beautiful, and the terraces of date palms promised plenty of sweet fruit. Except what was real about all this? Most people could be fooled. But not Qaher. He was too familiar with the Bedouins’ living conditions, the harshness, even the oppression, to accept this counterfeit version. All they needed now was a nomadic tribe to appear on the crest of the dunes, black silhouettes against a scarlet sky advancing slowly toward the water, for the illusion to be perfect!

  Fadia had decided to spend the day in the area. Qaher didn’t know Liwa and had accepted, thinking they might be able to make a detour past the oil fields to the north on the way back.

  Seen like this, desert life might look idyllic: terraces of greenery on the slopes, palm orchards in the valleys, an abundance of water drawn from wells or pumped from storage tanks, the incandescent sun and the comparative cool inside the tents. Was she trying to convince him of this by dragging him here? She knew where he came from, she knew him, she couldn’t not know that this set-dressing would end up irritating him.

  The desert was hostility that had to be overcome; only someone with no experience of it could believe otherwise. The Bedouin had gained all their strength from their battle with the desert, definitely not from its loveliness. They’d tamed it in their own way, but knew it was still as dangerous as a sleeping snake. And yet he was no longer even drawn to the nomads’ fierce arrogance—yes, Fadia should have realized that too. He’d learned another way of taming the desert, not as picturesque as the one that Liwa illustrated, more arduous, but more modern, more real. Of course the tourist coaches didn’t visit the boreholes, but without them, this picture-postcard place Fadia had taken him to couldn’t even exist. And then there were all the little details he’d noticed, like televisions in the tents, the pump drawing water from the well, and the clearly delineated road used by trucks delivering hay. Nomadic life was a memory here, an image. Fadia should have known that. What was she trying to tell him?

  She lingered next to the tame camel. Under the shade of an awning an old man smoked a cigarette as he stitched a harness. He looked timeless, sitting there on his carpet with his face burnished by the wind; he could easily have lived in Medina in the sixth century. If you’d asked he might even have told you abou
t Mohammed’s armies. Qaher was musing about this when a European rudely asked him to move aside so he could photograph the old man. Everything was ruined here, even dreams, he thought.

  A little girl wearing a rather dirty, torn djellaba had latched onto Fadia. She must have been about ten. Her cropped tousled hair made her look open and honest. She wore a silver earring which shone brightly against her dark skin. She was holding out her hand. Fadia, who’d abandoned the motionless camel, had approached her and seemed to be talking to her. In one swift move, Qaher went over to them and brusquely told the child to go away. The girl opened her eyes wide. He repeated what he’d said, his face even harder, almost threatening. When the child didn’t move, he turned away and, without a word, dragged Fadia back to the car with him, despite her protests.

  “Why did you do that?” Fadia asked when Qaher let go of her to get into the car.

  “She shouldn’t be begging,” he said curtly.

  “She just wanted to feel my dress!”

  “There are lots of ways of begging, Fadia. Let’s go back, I don’t want to talk about this.”

  38

  The horizon was lit up by flames brighter than the setting sun. The evening sky quivered with an unaccustomed heat haze. The wailing sirens carried a long way, an exaggeratedly long way, making them frightening and absurd in this place empty of human or animal life. Cohorts of vehicles sped, all lights blazing, along what was usually such a quiet road. Jeeps, water tankers, ambulances, fire engines. Like a swarm of locusts, they descended on the site of the fire.

  One blood-red truck had toppled into a ditch, and there was a cluster of activity around it, an ambulance with its blue-and-white flashing light, sparks flying where the angle-grinder met steel, frantic shouts from those trying to free the occupants, but none of this seemed to stop the furious pace of vehicles whistling past the scene in a cloud of dust.

  Because there was an emergency. Toward the end of the afternoon, one of the wells in Sector 8 had blown up, although no one yet knew why. For several hours now a huge fire had been dancing above it, a diabolical bacchanal sending up great gusts of flame and threatening the rest of the plant, which it illuminated with its deadly orange glow.

  The heat near the center of the fire was unbearable. Despite their fireproof suits, the firefighters shielded their faces with their arms as they approached. Several of them had already been evacuated, smothered when a sudden wind change blasted them with an acrid cloud of burning oil. Worse than the heat, the toxic fumes, and the sickening smell was the noise. A powerful boom, a deep growl that smothered everything else. Anyone who could get close to the geyser of flame heard it as a roar of anger and revenge unleashed by the entrails of the earth, and set to go on forever.

  The plant was lit up as if in full daylight. The huge oil tanks and steel pipes, the blocks of concrete and prefabricated buildings—all that inhuman architecture which had dug its roots into the vast expanses of the desert—looked otherworldly in the huge squalls of fire.

  After the panic of the first few hours, despondency had set in inside the huts. Particularly among the engineers. The unthinkable had struck. The accident they were responsible for preventing, the accident they were paid to avoid, had happened. What sort of mistake had triggered it? Who was responsible? Because they knew that the Company would be less interested in the financial losses, less interested in injured employees, or even dead ones, than in finding out who was responsible. No point blaming unforeseen circumstances. In this world of perfect efficiency, that was the very last thing you could cite. And even after an inquiry determined it really had been an act of fate, someone would still have to pay. For sure. They could all be blamed for something. Is there any job that involves no risk?

  Some had only just woken. Still half asleep, they watched through the red glow of their windows as the catastrophic fire raged over the complex like a hungry monster. If they’d had any religious convictions, they’d have prayed, but they didn’t have that succor. They could only watch, powerless, as the firemen and ground staff waged their battle. No one had the heart to speak.

  All of a sudden there was an explosion. A jeep had come too close to the fire and a gust of wind had blown flames over it. The three occupants hadn’t had time to react. Trapped in a firestorm, they didn’t manage to get out before the fuel tank exploded like a watermelon, spattering steel, body parts, and blood. Fragments of twisted metal and severed limbs flew up into the sky, then thudded down, digging into the ground. After a short but violent struggle, some firefighters managed to extricate what was left of the charred bodies. These remains were wrapped in white sheets and laid down behind the hospital tent; there wasn’t time to do any more for them because the fire was growing. Exhausted workers gathered out of harm’s way, gazing despairingly as the well that they’d toiled over for so many hours twisted, swayed, and broke up in the blaze.

  Dawn was still a long way off and no one could see the fire being brought under control before then. The thousands of liters of water being poured over the blaze would never get the better of it. They knew that. Only the blast of a carefully planned explosion could put out the flames. And even then the explosives experts would need to get close enough to set their charges. This would have to happen later, though; for now they were pouring on water to stop the fire from spreading. They’d seen fires spread to other wells before, and that’s what they dreaded now. They battled to avoid that, but the flames were so powerful they doubted they’d succeed.

  On a small hill to the north of the complex, a cluster of men, women, and children sat in silence on carpets laid on the ground, and watched the agitation in the plain below. The Bedouin had come to watch the show.

  39

  Qaher had thrown his car onto the narrow dirt road, hurtling along mindlessly, for the pleasure of speed or perhaps simply because he felt hemmed in by the darkness. He’d driven all the way with his jaws clamped, concentrating on the engine sound, trying in vain to hear through it to the crunch of sand and the thrum of the wheels. Fadia had had to settle for looking straight ahead and not uttering a word. They’d left Liwa in a glum mood without mentioning the incident with the little girl.

  Night had fallen as they left the expressway at Hamim and turned onto the track. Fadia was tired and had turned down the dinner he’d offered. It was a long way back to Muscat; he hadn’t insisted. For a long time the car’s headlights lit up only a monotonous series of ridges, then they dropped down toward the sea and habitation.

  They were just getting to the first of the city’s avenues when Fadia broke the silence.

  “I don’t understand what got into you earlier,” she said, not turning her head. “With that little girl, I mean.”

  Qaher’s hands tensed on the steering wheel; he’d been expecting something like this. But that didn’t put Fadia off: she stared at the road ahead and kept talking in a voice that sounded muted and distant to Qaher. Not physically distant, but it seemed to be coming to him across a distance of time, a voice from the past that was drawing him back to the past. She was talking reproachfully, comparing him with the boy he’d once been, reminding him that in Raqqa he’d claimed to hate injustice, and preferred to understand than to judge, but now—now that he was an engineer working for a Western organization at an oil complex—he thought he could get away with being snappy and contemptuous. She disapproved of what he’d become; she thought that he was denying his true nature, that trying to belong to two worlds as different as the desert and the Western world wasn’t doing him any good, was turning him into a rootless stray.

  Qaher listened to her recriminations before eventually reacting as he was negotiating a crossroads.

  “What’s all that got to do with what just happened?” he asked, raising his hand angrily from the steering wheel.

  He couldn’t see the connection, didn’t want to see one. He thought Fadia was trying to find a way to express what she’d felt all these years but had never actually vocalized till now. Her reply—”It
’s the same thing. But you’ve forgotten everything.”—wasn’t really a reply at all, and it only confirmed his suspicions, convincing him that he really did have to talk now. He shouldn’t have retreated into silence as he had since they left Liwa.

  And so, still half concentrating on road signs, he started explaining himself. He wanted to do it without getting angry; he didn’t actually feel angry; he was just wearied by so much misunderstanding. He tried to be calm, almost methodical. No, he hadn’t forgotten anything. Not the law courts in Raqqa, nor his uncle’s fate, nor the humiliations he himself had suffered. None of it. He still remembered that fat jowly judge, his father’s contempt, his stepmother’s scheming, the spitefulness of so many people. But what was the point of going back over all that? He wasn’t in Raqqa now. He wasn’t the little Badawi everyone could make fun of any longer. It was true, he was fascinated by power, but it had already fascinated him as a child, and it had intimidated him too—particularly because it seemed so inaccessible. As an engineer, he now had access to it and reaped its benefits. What was wrong with that? It hadn’t made him cynical as she was implying it had.

  Lit by the orange glow of successive streetlights along the avenue, he tried to explain to Fadia that, even though strength and power may have hurt him in Raqqa, that was because it had been the strength of the weak. True strength was sure of itself, it was productive, and his work …

  “Do you remember the letters you wrote to me when you arrived in France?” Fadia cut in, harshly interrupting the argument he was developing.

  Qaher didn’t reply straightaway, and silence descended on them again. This time Fadia did nothing to break it. She waited. The avenue they were driving along was very well lit, and there was hardly any traffic on it. Lights shimmered all the way down it: orange, green, yellow, and white. Catching sight of a large building ahead, Qaher knew they were on the right road at last, and they’d soon be there. The letters … yes, he remembered. Not really thinking what he was saying, he muttered something that could have sounded like “Yes,” and which Fadia interpreted as acknowledgement.