Secret of the Sands

by Sara Sheridan

  ‘God Save our Dear Great King

  Long Live our Noble King

  God Save the King

  Send Him Victorious

  Happy and Glorious

  Long to Reign Over Us

  God Save the King.’

  Jones is felled with a brutal blow to the stomach before he can stir himself to the second verse. The emir clearly does not appreciate an anthem. He might be an old fellow, but he can move quickly if he wants to. Apart from feeding himself, it is the only time Jones has seen the ruler take any kind of action. Normally, his minions do everything. The emir retakes his seat and Jones watches, curled up, from ground level. There is an enticing scent on the air of jasmine oil, which he vaguely remembers as the scent used to perfume the emir’s robes. While it transports Jones to a lately unvisited place of fresh, clean linen, two of the tribesmen pull the stinking lieutenant to his feet and this time he stands silently, trying not to tremble.

  When a man approaches with a knife in his hand, Jones wonders fleetingly if it is worth fighting the grinning hyena that wants to cut him, though it quickly becomes apparent that the intention is to lop a lock of blonde hair from the lieutenant’s matted head. Once that is done, the emir considers his investigations completed. He waves away the white man and Jones is thrown his tattered old jubbah, given a drink of water and a handful of dates and walked back to the stifling furnace of the tatty, grey tent where Jessop remains tied to the stake. On the way, the guard pushes him roughly, his hand groping Jones’ genitals. This action, slyly repeated at any opportunity, has ceased to surprise the lieutenant and he only motions to be given a few more dates, with which the guard generally complies before laying his hand firmly on Jones’ arse. He never seems to want anything more and there is, Jones tells himself, no harm in it. Or at least, no more harm than in anything else to which Jones is being subjected.

  Best not to say anything, the lieutenant thinks, the soles of his feet burning on the scorching sand. The whole inspection scenario is bizarre and the guard’s actions afterwards even more so. Jones always makes the same decision – just to keep schtum. Otherwise, he would have to share the dates with Jessop, quite apart from bear the humiliation of admitting he’s been inspected like a farm animal and manhandled like a whore. He wonders for a second what the emir wants. Perhaps, Jones thinks somewhat optimistic ally, he will be forced to mate with one of the emir’s dusky women. He remembers reading somewhere about the propensity in tribes of welcoming strangers in this way. He saw a book one time in Bombay, with engravings. It was an illicit night fuelled by whisky and the sheer boredom of the officers’ mess when he and his friend Lieutenant Whitelock took to the slums in a tanga and bought what Whitelock referred to later as ‘a charming time’. Charming. It cost, if he recalls correctly, a mere handful of Indian rupees – not even a proper, English coin. Now what did that book say? Something about healthy breeding strains, if he remembers rightly, though everyone here seems a relatively uniform pale coffee colour, bar one or two of the slaves. And since Jessop healed the children (well, almost all of them) Jones hasn’t once on his (admittedly limited) excursions seen any evidence of illness. Still, he could be just the shot of fresh blood that the emir wants for his people. It would certainly explain the damn fellow’s interest in his naked flesh. Yes, he thinks, indulging the schoolboy fantasy and blocking out the humiliation he has just endured with the humiliation he doled out in happier times to the shy 15-year-old whose father sold her first to Jones and then to Whitelock. Yes – breeding strains – that’s probably it.

  The jailer pushes Jones roughly as they enter the tent. He falls easily into place, next to his confederate.

  ‘You all right, old chap?’ Doctor Jessop grunts.

  Jessop is concerned for Jones’ welfare. After all, he is the man’s doctor. The Navy has solid, scientific information about how long a man can go without much food and Jessop is fully appraised of the details though the statistics don’t account for the heat or the fetid conditions. Such squalor, Jessop feels, can only add to the pressure on the body to succumb. Still, Jones looks quite perky and, the doctor thinks vaguely, the fellow smells different from when he left. There is a sweet aroma from his breath. Can it be possible? Jessop wonders what they gave him. The thought of something that tastes sweet is most diverting. He finds himself fantasising about Turkish delight as the lieutenant shrugs and submits himself willingly to being tied up by the guard. Why not?

  ‘God Save the King,’ he mumbles.

  ‘And our good men in the field,’ Jessop replies automatic ally.

  It is, after all, a standard military toast.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Farida has been patient for weeks now but she can’t stop thinking about it. Mickey leaves the letter addressed to Lieutenant Wellsted on the low side table. The next day, she transfers the missive to the shelf of books by the window and there it sits ever since. She does not know if her husband has left the lieutenant’s correspondence in her care deliberately (for surely it belongs in his office) or if he has simply forgotten that the letter has arrived. What Farida does know is that it is his expectation that Wellsted will not return alive to Muscat and perhaps for that reason he has been careless with the fellow’s mail. Whatever his thinking, Farida is drawn to the sealed paper on a daily basis. She passes it through her fingers as if it is of the finest silk and turns it over again and again to read the enticing address of the sender. Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, London. The wax seal is slightly uneven when she runs her finger over its face and the edge of the paper beside it sports a small, tattered edge, which, most likely, has worsened with her repeated handling. Farida sniffs it tentatively and then slips the letter back onto the shelf again between two volumes that Mickey is unlikely to take down. It is, she thinks, as she slinks back across the cool, tiled floor, like being sent a daydream.

  Farida has never been to London. When she left Cork it was for Dublin and then the port of Liverpool. From there, she worked her way down the west coast of England and into Wales, coming to Bath, she remembers, on her nineteenth birthday. There, she and her friend Maria worked a particularly efficacious scam, posing as ladies. Dressed to the nines and apparently guileless they agreed, upon much coaxing, to ride in the carriage of one gentleman or another (the gentlemen being always married, of course, and invariably the worse for drink). The story was that they were sisters from the North of England and happened to be out in the park without a chaperone. Both Maria and Fanny were dab hands at making themselves sound like they were born and bred in Yorkshire rather than Galway and Rowgarrane respectively and that they were respectable, if somewhat naïve. Generally what ensued in the carriage, of course, was most improper. The next day, a ne’er-do-well called Edward Brand would call on the gentleman and make an unholy fuss about what the fellow had done with his sisters, taking the poor, innocent girls off like that and compromising them cruelly as if they were strumpets and harlots, by God, instead of good, clean English ladies too innocent for their own good and now ruined forever. Such is the traffic of gentlemen in Bath that it was clear that if they didn’t milk it dry, it was entirely possible for this glorious scam to work for months on end, if not years.

  ‘You’ve picked the wrong family, sir,’ Edward would spit, ‘and I can promise you, your wife will hear of what you have done, and her family too. Yes indeed. It is a disgrace, sir, a disgrace, and no compensation is possible. Our family may be poor but our silence cannot be bought.’

  This last statement was, of course, untrue. Mr Brand wrought compensation every time for no man wishes to be unmasked to his parents-in-law and his wife.

  ‘It’s a doozy,’ Maria laughed. ‘Works every time.’

  It worked almost every time, that is, until the last, when poor Edward got carried away in his role and foolishly duelled for his sisters’ honour. The gentleman who killed him had some title or other. Farida has forgotten his name now. After the funeral, the ladies moved to the south coast and it was there that
Fanny bought a passage to India with the remainder of her monies. Leaving England was an easy decision.

  ‘And why not?’ she loses her temper when Maria said she wouldn’t want to go to any of them nasty, foreign places. ‘Is Portsmouth so lovely?’ Fanny gestures around the shabby room the women have taken for a tanner a week. ‘I’d as soon see the world as stay in this stinking hole.’

  ‘But, Fanny, we can go to London,’ Maria intones it like a Hail Mary. London is her holy grail.

  ‘London! London is the same as all the rest! And me getting no younger and you neither. London will eat us up, my girl. I’m for some adventure, Maria, and some heat on my bones. Won’t you come with me and try something different?’

  Maria declines.

  I wonder what happened to her? Farida smiles. It has worked out very nicely indeed, in all possible manners. She never in her life thought she’d actually fall in love and with such a good man. Mickey is a treasure. ‘So,’ she wonders out loud, catching sight of the letter, ‘am I homesick or just a nosey old woman? What’s drawing me to you, like a postmistress with an undeliverable?’

  It is a testament to Farida’s ability to defer pleasure that the letter lasts as long as it does – well over a month. In the end, she makes it till the air cools very slightly and the late summer sun does not rise quite so early or set quite so late. One Monday morning, she steams the wax seal carefully and flicks it open with tremendous satisfaction. The top of the paper is dated in June and Farida thinks it is a shame that Mr Murray had not roused himself to write earlier, for the letter missed the lieutenant by only a matter of hours. What seems nothing in London can make all the difference in the dominions.

  ‘Ah well,’ she sighs as she folds open the stiff paper and settles down with relish to read the letter on the leather seat by the window.

  Dear Lieutenant Wellsted,

  I am writing to thank you for sending to me your account of the trip you made to the island of Socotra. It is a well-constructed and informative piece of writing and I will be honoured to prepare it for publication and will arrange to forward you two guineas in return.

  Yours, etc.,

  John Murray III

  Guineas, eh? Farida ponders. A guinea is a gentleman’s coin. Out of habit, she turns over the paper, as if to check that the money is not somehow attached. Still and all, two guineas is hardly overgenerous, she thinks, for a fellow who has written an entire book by hand and risked his life, most likely, in the process. She sniffs at the paper to see if she can catch a whiff of London town from the pages on the inside but there is nothing. Then she reads it again. He’s an interesting fellow this Lieutenant James Raymond Wellsted. He’s not bad-looking, clearly very brave and a writer too. Farida laughs at herself for being such an old con woman. Even now, she can’t help looking for an angle when something unexpected falls in her lap. She reseals the letter very carefully, with a tiny stick of burning wood, and places it in clear view so that Mickey will come across it when he next visits her. He’ll probably take it away, of course, but that’s only fair.

  I’d say a fellow like that will make it through the desert, Farida ponders. And if he does . . . The notion trails. She has been thinking for the last while about writing a letter home – just to let her family know what happened.

  They think I’m dead, she says to herself with finality.

  For a moment she considers the words she’d use in the letter – how to encapsulate everything into a few sentences that wouldn’t sound crass or crazy. Farida cannot quite form the words.

  Feck it, she dismisses the notion. I’ll worry about it if Lieutenant James Raymond Wellsted makes it back to Muscat, poor soul.

  And Mickey Al Mudar’s favourite wife turns her attention to the climactic kharja of a poem she has been studying. It is written in Arabic but is clearly Spanish in its deri vation. The interplay of the Semitic and European is of interest to Farida for obvious reasons and it will, she thinks, take up most of her afternoon. Some of these Arabic verses are very racy, she murmurs with satisfaction as she draws close to the window and settles down for the afternoon.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At home the weather eases in September, but the same cannot be said for the desert. It is a very long journey, Wellsted has come to understand, not simply on account of the time it takes as on account of the effort. The caravan slowly follows the emir’s trail across the baking wilderness from one oasis to the next for a month. It surprises Wellsted to find the traffic of men and animals so constant. The chance encounters with groups of Bedu following the trade routes slow progress but there is no question of not succumbing to the custom of brewing coffee with the strangers, for they can tell the party what is up ahead.

  Wellsted takes notes. It seems that families and sometimes whole villages of nomads trail across the wilderness along the criss-cross of unmarked and unseen paths that from custom or sheer expediency are the routes all travellers follow. These family caravans are engaged on simple enough business. They are asserting their rights to the falaj – the water courses – or driving their camels and goats to market, wherever they believe they can make the best trade. Many are simply looking for some grazing – a scrap of land with small-leaved bushes or patches of sweet grass – somewhere they can settle for a few days. They are like cawing birds, wheeling seagulls that land to eat and swap their news before they carry on across the sands, a flash of white, crying their news as they go.

  At first, whenever they meet another party, Wellsted’s appearance attracts attention. The leather-skinned Bedu eye the thin Turk and his straggly beard with curiosity. It is only natural, for in this environment, when presented with anything that is not sheer sand and sky a man will become fascinated by it. The first time they reach a thin oasis of a few, scattered palm trees, Wellsted thinks he has never seen anything like it. Still, the truth is that as soon as the Bedu hear the names of Kasim and Ibn Mohammed they are more interested in the slavers than the effendi and their faces split into wide grins. This action displays more often than not, a startling paucity of teeth and a range of expressions so interesting that the lieutenant wishes he had better skills as an artist than a cartographer.

  Kasim finds it amusing that though he is known as a slaver the men they meet do not ask if he is here about his business. They have no fear that their wives and daughters will be borne away. In fact, there is a charming simplicity in the manner they express delight to have come across such distinguished company with whom to drink their coffee and swap news. Perhaps the customs of the desert are so ingrained here it is simply impossible for a Bedu to imagine anyone breaking faith.

  After the third week, Wellsted senses that he is finally accepted. He settles into the persona he has been given and adopts the ways of his fellows as if they are second nature. Now, whatever caravan they meet, the Bedu no longer stare at the Turk to assess him. His accented Arabic is more easily understood and the second-hand clothes are as if his own. He is certain he has acquired a swagger, though without seeing himself in a glass (there is no reflective surface for hundreds of miles in any direction) he cannot decide whether his Arabic gait has arisen from prolonged periods of riding his camel or simply the more general change that has come over him, living on the sands. Whatever has made the difference, he is no longer acting a part when he bows, clasps his hand to his heart and says salaam aleikhum before introducing himself.

  Keen for company, he keeps a weather eye to the horizon. Most of the caravans tell more or less the same tales and the main news is that of a wild sandstorm, a simoom, which hit the desert six months before. It raged to the south, near Niswa, the ancient capital – a deadly, wind-driven wall of sand almost a mile high as it moved across the Empty Quarter like a force of God.

  ‘You could not breathe, nor see the hand before your face,’ they swear.

  Several families have not been seen since and the tribes are still taking stock, trying to clarify who survived as whole dunes shifted, smothering those caught in t
he direct path of the storm. If you were not lucky enough to find shelter, it is unlikely you came through.

  ‘We had only a few minutes,’ one old man shakes his head. He has the kind of face that makes it difficult to believe that he hasn’t seen everything in his time, but he swears the sandstorm took him completely by surprise. ‘There was hardly any warning at all, when we saw it coming towards us. We were lucky and were in a place we could hide, though my son’s eyes were damaged – a rip in the cloth he had used to cover his face. It pleases Allah now that he can only see with one eye. My brother, though, we have not seen my brother since the day before the storm hit. Do you know Hanif Ibn Mussaf? Have you seen him?’

  It is a hopeless quest, of course, but you have to have sympathy with the asking. Many of the strangers are on the lookout for lost children or slaves who have gone astray either in the simoom or simply in the more general course of their travels. These people are abandoned with a stoic nonchalance that is curious to a naval man. Wellsted is reminded of how a cry of ‘Man overboard’ marshals an entire crew in the Navy and no one asks if the man in question is the cabin boy or the captain before they respond. Here, rank is more important to the prospects of rescue (for who would retrace their steps miles across the burning terrain for a mere slave boy?). In the main, it seems those who fall by the wayside are left to fend for themselves, especially if they are expendable and defenceless (poor, enslaved or simply very young). How anyone could survive alone without at least a camel to provide milk and find the way to a watering hole, Wellsted cannot see. But still, they ask about their lost ones. This is not because they believe that the lost souls are alive (though curiously, there are stories, myth-like in their lack of likelihood, of survival against the odds), but rather because they are hoping you have taken a passing interest in any tattered jubbah or pile of bleached bones that might have caught your eye. ‘His jubbah was blue,’ they insist. ‘Have you seen a blue jubbah?’ Or, ‘The child was only seven. The bones will be very small.’