by Kim Barnes
“Abdullah will be joining us,” Mason said.
“You are very kind,” Abdullah said, “but I do not wish to impose.”
“No imposition at all,” Mason said, and led us to the table before Abdullah could protest further. “Hey, Yash, check the weather outside. See what’s happening.”
Yash seemed relieved to exit the room. He came back to report that the locusts were lessening and that the pin boys from the bowling alley were sweeping them into garbage cans.
“A feast for the Bedu,” Abdullah said. He waited until Mason and I had begun eating before forking a bite of rice.
“Let me guess,” Mason said. “They taste like chicken.”
Abdullah cocked his head. “Why would they taste like chicken?”
Mason looked at me and grinned. “What do they taste like, then?”
“Besides tasting like locusts, you mean.” Abdullah considered a long moment. “I would say they taste like still-green grain.”
Mason broke into a smile. “I know exactly what that tastes like,” he said. “I used to chew the heads to test the fields for harvest.”
“But bugs,” I protested.
“If you remove the legs and wings,” Abdullah said, “you have a small shrimp.”
I looked quickly at Yash, who raised one eyebrow and turned for the kitchen.
Abdullah rested his wrists against the table’s edge. “To the Bedu, a locust swarm is nothing less than manna from heaven. We eat what we can, then dry and grind them to powder for when food is scarce.”
“You make the most of what you’ve got,” Mason said. “We butchered our hogs right down to the bone. Cracklins, chitlins, trotters, jowls. You name it, we ate it.”
“You must come to the tent,” Abdullah said, “and my mother will fry for you the female locusts full of eggs. They are by far the best.”
“When?” I asked.
Mason cleared his throat. “I think it’s Abdullah’s turn to tell a story.”
Abdullah took up his coffee. “Locust swarms in the desert are too numerous to count, but I remember one especially.” He paused to listen to the rippling drone as though it might call back his memory. “When spring rains came to Wadi Ab, the caravans stayed for days. The merchants wished to buy our textiles and fine camels and consider our women, but more than that, they wanted to feast their eyes on the beauty of the oasis. I would lie beneath the stars and listen to the men recite poems and tell of their journeys. I planned to join a caravan, travel to distant places, perhaps even Egypt.” He dipped his head. “I had not yet heard of America.” His voice had taken on the tone of a storyteller, soft and rhythmic. “I remember that during this season, the emir’s representative had visited our settlement, bringing with him promises of gold without measure. Behind them came a group of white men, who camped nearby.” He nodded as Yash poured more coffee. “Some of our elders believed the Americans had come by the grace of Allah to bring us a life of good fortune, while others believed they were demons. We were amazed by the loudness of their voices and the pinkness of their skin. We knew nothing of their instruments and were filled with curiosity.” He smiled to himself as though amused, then lifted his face and grew more solemn. “In the days before the locusts, an angry heat had descended, as though the sun meant to burn us to ash. Birds fell like cinders from the sky. There were other omens. The mother of Hammad al-Salib had fallen into the fire, and the skin of her arms fell off like sleeves shorn from a dress. Abu Kareem dreamed that his eldest son, who had gone to work for the Americans, had drowned in the sea and that his body was being beaten against the rocks. The old man had left that morning for Jubail against all persuasion.”
I looked up to see Yash standing in the shadows of the hallway, the coffeepot still in his hands. I caught his eye, glanced at the empty chair, but he shook his head and put a finger to his lips as Abdullah continued.
“That evening, the locusts came with the wind like smoke from Allah’s fire. My young sister, tending sheep, spied the black cloud massing on the horizon and came running to tell our father, who ordered us to rope the mare. We gathered in the tent and draped the doorways. We knew the locusts would strip the date palms and grasses, as they always do, but rather than mourning what was lost, my family chose to spend the time just as we have here, drinking coffee and sharing stories.” Abdullah raised his cup to the blinded windows. “After a time, we opened the tent to find that the locusts had gone except for those that we gathered and roasted over the fire. I led out my mare and fed her a few from my hand.”
“Badra,” I said, and Abdullah nodded. Mason lifted his chin and looked at me. I had forgotten that he didn’t know about my conversation with Abdullah in the Land Cruiser.
“I remember that the evening sky had cleared to nothing but stars,” Abdullah went on, “and the moon rose fat and sated. We slept well that night, as though a purging had taken place, knowing that the locusts come and go like the rains.” He lowered his eyes, touched the rim of his cup. “Nothing could prepare us for what would be visited upon the wadi the next morning.”
Mason raised his eyes, leaned forward with new interest.
Abdullah took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “At dawn, we awakened to a noise we had never heard before, louder than the locusts, louder even than the fiercest shamal. The children held their ears, and the women wept in fear. It drowned out the cries of our infants. I went with my father to where the men gathered, each shouting louder than the other. It was Hammad who came running from the far end of the wadi, and we feared that his mother had died of her wounds, but when he told us that monsters were tearing the earth, we feared he had lost his mind. We took up our weapons and followed him, but all we could do was watch as the giant machines devoured what remained of the date palms and tamarisks, along with the shade that travelers had sought for thousands of years.” Abdullah half lidded his eyes. “By the time the sun had set that day, our home as we knew it was gone, and with it the heart of Wadi Ab.”
We sat in silence, Sinatra’s voice filling the room. Mason looked down at his hands. “That shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I guess this oil company is like any other. Takes what it wants, leaves the people behind.”
“Inshallah,” Abdullah said quietly. “As God wills.” When Yash stepped in with more coffee, Abdullah shook his cup. “You’ve been very kind,” he said, and stood to go. “I hope I may someday return the favor and welcome you to my tent.”
“I would love that,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mason said. “We’ll stop by next time we’re on our way to Cincinnati.” He laughed at the look of confusion on Abdullah’s face, clapped his shoulder, and walked with him out to the Land Cruiser.
I went to the kitchen to find Yash up to his elbows in soapy water. I picked up the dish towel and began drying. “Dinner was delicious,” I said.
He considered for a moment, then spoke quietly. “It is the first time I have served an Arab,” he said. “They look upon me with disdain.” He wrung a cloth and began to wipe the counter. “The Saudis do not wish us here except to do the work they see as beneath them.”
“But Abdullah, he’s different, isn’t he?”
Yash stopped his cleaning to look at me. “Do you think that an educated Bedouin is any less a Bedouin?” He began scrubbing the counter in earnest. “I heard what he was saying. He is a noble savage schooled by enlightened beings who misses the Eden he has lost. How very unique.” He glanced up, saw the look on my face, dropped his shoulders. “Forgive me,” he said. “I speak out of turn, and he is your friend.”
“No more than you are,” I said, and caught the hint of a smile before he turned away.
Chapter Nine
In the desert, this is what I learned: the wind never stops, blowing in hot from the north, a fine talc sifting in from Damascus, Baghdad, Kuwait. It stirs the hems of robes, whips the flags ragged. The Bedu line their eyes with kohl, protection against sun and sand, and still their children walk blinking and blinded, their
ankles dangled with red garnets, triangular bits of turquoise, lapis lazuli to ward off evil. The boys’ ears studded with stones. The young girls still showing their faces.
As the furnace of late spring forged toward summer, the wind sapped the moisture from my mouth, and the heat that had seemed intolerable became impossible—it staggered you in your tracks, filled you with such dread and discomfort that you doubted your ability to survive. Yash biked in each morning, his crisp shirt clinging to his back. “It’s quite all right,” he said when I worried. “The faster I pedal, the cooler the breeze.” When he told me that the houseboys, bunked four to a room, had no air-conditioning, I bought him an electric fan at the suq, watched him balance it atop his handlebars and weave his way out of the gate, whistling all the while.
Late one night in May, Mason came home wound tight as a top, taking his drink in quick swallows. I sent Yash home and finished cooking our dinner while Mason showered, felt myself caught in the limbo of that transition Ruthie had talked about. He came out rubbing his head with a towel, the dark line of hair down his stomach still damp, and just like that, I was torn between resistance and desire.
I turned to the stove, took the lid off the casserole Yash had made. “Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Will be.” Mason fingered a cigarette from his pocket. “Let’s go out back, why don’t we? There’s got to be some stars.”
I replaced the lid, hearing something different in his tone. I followed him out into the yard, where we stood together in the grass, the air like bathwater, the blue-aster sky hewing to black, pinpricked with light.
Mason lifted his head and pointed. “Tell me the name of that constellation.”
I followed his direction. “Virgo,” I said. “The brightest star is Spica.”
He wrapped one arm around my shoulder, pulled me to him. “How did you get so smart?” He kissed me, kept me close. “You doing okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Sure,” I said.
“Garden looks swell,” he said.
“Mostly sand,” I said, “but the spuds love it.” I didn’t tell him that I had given up tending the skeletal plants only to wake one morning to find the plot neatly weeded and trenched, a wheelbarrow load of rich compost mulched in, the vegetables already greening under Faris’s care.
“Think you can stick it out for a while?” he asked.
I looked at him, sensing some undercurrent of meaning. “Why?” I asked.
He took another drink. “Abdullah and I were talking on the way home. He told me that some years back, the Arabs tried to organize, not just the Saudis but the Syrians, Lebanese, the whole lot of them. Fifteen thousand men walked off the job, struck the company to a standstill. Militia shot a few on the spot, arrested the leaders, sent them into exile, and the king outlawed labor unions.” He looked at me. “You know what they were asking for? They wanted to ride to work instead of having to walk, maybe get a cost-of-living raise every now and then. Wanted washing machines and radios and cars.” He grew quiet. “They wanted to be like us, imitation Americans. That’s the guts of it.”
I crossed my arms. “It’s not like Texas,” I said.
“Or it is,” he said. “MLK had it right. Labor-busting is about keeping the working poor in their place.” He tapped out another cigarette. “You remember Tiny Doty, the guy who took over for Swede as drilling superintendent?” He tipped back his head, exhaled. “They’ve made his position permanent, and Ross says he’s considering me to take Doty’s place as assistant.” His voice was clear, lighter than it had been for some time. “What do you think of that?”
“It’s great,” I said, but I had no idea what such a promotion might mean. The amount of Mason’s salary remained a mystery to me, and what expenses we had were billed through the company. What was more of more?
“Wouldn’t have a set schedule like I do now,” he said, “but at least I’d be home more often.”
I raised my eyes, dropped them quickly, confused by what I was feeling. It was the hours he spent away that allowed me to do what I wanted as long as I was waiting when he returned. “How long would we have to stay?” I asked.
Mason let out a slow breath. “If I start working my way up the ladder, we could stay as long as we want to.” He squinted my way. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m beginning to see how things work in this place. I’m never going to make a difference sitting on the sidelines. I’ve got to be in the game.” He rocked me against him. “Listen, I invited the Fullertons over for dinner tomorrow night. Yash can do the work. All you have to do is look pretty.”
“Ruthie and Lucky?” I asked.
Mason sucked through his teeth. “Might as well. One way or the other, Lucky isn’t going to be happy that they’ve moved me to the head of the line.”
It hadn’t dawned on me to think about it that way—the senior foreman getting passed over for an upstart twenty years his junior.
Mason dropped his cigarette, heeled it out. “Think I’m ready to call it a day.”
“I’ll be right in,” I said, and stayed long enough to find the constellation I had named and name it again, orienting myself, before moving toward the glow of the kitchen, where Mason stood at the window, peering out into the night. I raised my hand, but he turned away as though he hadn’t seen me, as though I weren’t there at all. I resisted the urge to wave my arms, call out, “Here I am!” Silly, I thought, and measured my steps to the patio like a lost child, feeling my way through the dark.
The next afternoon, Mason at a meeting, I tried to help Yash prepare the dinner but succeeded only in getting in his way.
“I can’t stand just sitting around and watching someone else work,” I protested.
“You are not required to watch,” he said.
I pulled up a stool. “I’m not sure I like having servants,” I said. “It makes me feel funny.”
He raised his eyes. “Mrs. Gin,” he said, “my family had three servants, and each servant had a servant of his own. In your next life, who knows? You may go to bed a master and wake up a slave.” He cored a mango and cubed it neatly. “I would offer to draw your bath,” he suggested, “but memsahib would probably rather do it herself.”
I gave up and trudged to the shower. I took my time with the razor, running it under each arm and over my legs, a chore I despised, but I wasn’t going to take the chance that Candy Fullerton might be smoother than I was. By the time Mason came home, I had pulled myself together: sleeveless silk dress the color of champagne that Ruthie had picked out for me in al-Khobar, high-heeled pumps, the single pearl at my neck, and new matching earrings from the suq.
Ruthie and Lucky arrived first, and I was bringing them a dish of almonds when I heard the doorbell ring. Ross Fullerton boiled in like his tail was on fire, blew past Yash, and drafted up to me.
“The little lady!” He lifted his cowboy hat, balding pate shiny with sweat, and kissed my hand. I resisted, pulling away from the wet mash of his lips. I looked over his head, but Candy was nowhere in sight. Yash had bottled a third run of liquor—as smooth as we could get it—and Ross watched with avid attention as Mason poured.
“To the denizens of this charming abode!” Ross knocked back the shot and held out his glass for another. Ruthie drifted to the couch and lifted two fingers. “Double for me. Easy on the ice.”
Ross dumped down into the easy chair and fixed his eyes to the tapestry. “Kept Betsy’s needlework, I see.”
Mason took the other chair. “It’s a reproduction, one of seven panels in The Hunt of the Unicorn,” Mason said. “This one is called The Unicorn Is in Captivity and No Longer Dead. They think the unicorn represents Christ.”
I don’t know why I was surprised—Mason had been to college, after all—but I felt the same spark of attraction that I had the first night we talked, as though if I listened long enough, he would fill me up with all that he knew.
Lucky grunted, tucked himself in on the couch beside Ruthie. “How about you, Ross? Seen any unicorns lately
?” he asked, easy, familiar, like he was talking to an old chum.
“Hell, I’ve seen about everything.” Ross settled deeper, his neck sinking into his shoulders. “Seen a two-headed calf once, down in Gainesville.”
“Seen a two-headed rattlesnake,” Lucky said, and squinted at Mason. “Wouldn’t you hate to get bit by that sucker?”
Yash bent carefully between us and positioned a tray of salted bread, eggplant raita, and roasted chickpeas. “The Two-headed Boy of Bengal,” he said.
Ross seemed to notice Yash for the first time. “How’s that?”
“Two heads, connected crown to crown.” Yash straightened but kept his eyes down. “One head had its entire body. The other ended at the neck, but it could yawn and suckle,” Yash said. “He was bitten by a cobra and died at age four.”
“Goddamn.” Lucky slapped both knees. “Now that’s a good story.”
Ross settled back into his chair and lifted his glass. “How about some more of that hooch, boy?”
Yash drew himself upright. “Of course, sahib.” I watched him go into the kitchen, then looked at Ross.
“Yash knows a lot of interesting things,” I said.
Ross hitched the crotch of his pants. “Not as much as he thinks he does.”
“So, Ross”—Ruthie cut her eyes at me, then canted his way—“is Candy traveling?”
“She’s got problems with her Pekingese.” He rolled his lips around an almond. “Told her the desert’s no place for a lapdog. Pebbles must have tangled with a wildcat because he came in the house last night, eyeball hung clean out of his head. Slathered it with shortening and popped it back in, but he don’t look so good today. Kept Candy up all night with his squalling.” He cleared his throat. “That damn pirate is coming over tomorrow to take her portrait, and she thinks she needs her beauty sleep.”
Ruthie twitched her eyebrows, and I hid my grin, glad when Yash informed us that dinner was served. We took our places at the table, Ross at the head. It was all I could do to keep my seat and not rise to help with the tureen of curry, the side dishes of yogurt and fruit. Lucky piled his plate with rice and chicken, emptying the small bowls of raisins, sliced bananas, coconut, and chutney, which Yash refilled with growing exasperation. Ross picked over the curry but shoveled in the yams Yash had gleaned from the garden.