by John Harris
‘Is that how you became their leader, Aziz?’
‘That is exactly how.’
‘How many men did you murder?’
Aziz grinned again, enjoying the leg-pulling. ‘Not many,’ he said. ‘Not more than two or three dozen of my relations. They were old and useless, though. Is this how Bin T’Khass became a leader?’
‘A few elderly majors,’ Pentecost explained with a straight face. ‘Not more than a dozen. I am not the great warrior that Aziz is.’
It was a strange friendship, between two most unlikely human beings. Pentecost put down its success to the fact that he had managed to ignore the thudding of his heart and hide the flinch of fear when Aziz’s horse had first thundered towards him. But, oddly enough, he also actually managed to like the black-bearded old rogue who could have cut him down easily if he’d wished and, before the poor marksmanship of his Toweida Levies, probably have got away with it, too.
Aziz was an entertaining old rogue, but even in his craziest exploits – and he didn’t hesitate to boast of them to Pentecost – there was always a factor of hard-headedness. Despite his reputation, though, he accepted criticism with a smile that was surprisingly captivating. Only when they talked of Thawab abu Tegeiga did he become angry and then he shook with passion as he described how the younger man was trying to do away with the pattern of tribal life.
‘He seeks to destroy our standards,’ he said. ‘Yet he has nothing of value with which to replace them.’
Pentecost sympathised. It was a cry he’d heard more than once from his own father, and he was just beginning to reach the age himself when he could see what it meant. The knowledge served to draw him closer.
‘When I am old,’ Aziz said, ‘they will want to do away with me. Even Aziz cannot live for ever. It is written in the Book. When we have back the Toweida Plain, I shall step down and retire to my lands.’
It was clear life was a heroic thing to him, and any event with which he was not connected was, in his narrow Hejri way of thinking, insignificant. He told tales of long-forgotten raids and forays into Khaliti territory, of his quarrels with the Hawassi and the Dayati and the Jezowi. Sometimes he even sang – in an embarrassingly loud baritone that could be heard in the fort – traditional songs of Hejri and Zihouni warriors. Sometimes he beat his breast as he confessed that he had no control over his tongue and made constant enemies with its use. Yet he was also so sure of himself he didn’t hesitate to tell stories against himself, even mischievously to invent legends that could not possibly have been true, and recount appalling libels about the sexual appetites of Thawab or Sultan Tafas el Taif. It was easy for Pentecost to see where his reputation came from. Despite his lies, despite his boasting, despite his cunning, his villainy and his casually held attitude to life, he was honest, humble, direct, and even surprisingly kind.
As it was difficult for Pentecost to see the reason for it all, so it was for Aziz. He believed in Allah, the One and the Merciful. He believed in Mohammed the Prophet, the Book and the Reading which was the core of all knowledge. He prostrated himself to Mecca, praying in a raw primitive faith, and believed in the Chosen of God who had once rolled across North Africa and into Europe almost to Madrid, and his natural enemies were the Khaliti to the south and the Roumis, the white men who were their masters.
Never in his life had the Hejri – old by the standards of his tribe – ever shown any interest in the pale-haired, pale-eyed, pale-skinned peoples, save for the Circassian boys who had interested him in his youth. All his adult life he had believed that the white-skinned races were to be distrusted, yet here he was, smoking the cigarettes of this peeled-nosed beardless young man with the soft yellow hair, and the bony knees of an elderly camel. Here they were, exchanging gifts and confidences, laughing with each other, trusting each other. In all the years of skirmishing round Hahdhdhah, Aziz could never remember holding a parley with anyone from inside, not even when they had wished to collect the dead or wounded from one of their affrays. For a century, Hejri tribesmen had waited in the hills staring at the fort. Hahdhdhah had always been a thorn in their side and it had always been unthinkable that they should treat with its defenders.
Yet, due to the accident of his son being eager to prove himself in his father’s eyes, here he was, Abd el Aziz el Beidawi, cracking jokes with this downy-haired prim young man from a country two thousand miles away whose precise mannerisms and slightness of stature would have fitted one of the Hawassi dancing boys.
Two months before, if he’d caught Pentecost in the open he would have shot him without compunction. Yet, because of this minor accident, they had talked with each other normally and without distrust, and to the wonderment of Aziz they had found they liked each other.
Three
1
Though Pentecost wasn’t aware of it, down in the shabby tortuous city of Khaswe, the commanding British officer, Major-General Alan Cozzens – known to his troops as ‘Teeth and Trousers’ – had also heard of the strange friendship that had grown up along the northern frontier.
The decaying atmosphere of Khaswe, with the Nationalists waiting to rush in when the British left and the Sultan living under the sword of Damocles, was enough to give Cozzens nightmares at times. The latest information in his possession was that, despite all the reassuring noises from Whitehall, Tafas was going to repudiate the agreement he’d made and demand that they stay. Tafas was noted for his slipperiness and the impermanence of his decisions. He was forgetful, changeable, stubborn, brave, and so secretive it was said his Ministers had to spy on him to find out what he intended. And with the Arab Nationalists flaying him for the presence of the British and ready to throw bombs like confetti if he went back on his word, good news was more than welcome. Especially about Aziz.
Aziz el Beidawi’s Zihounis were the notorious Black Men that Lawrence had so distrusted fifty-odd years before and, in their time, they had indulged in sensuality and the grossest kind of murder, treachery and sudden death. Yet, despite their cold-blooded cruelty, Cozzens had also heard that they were strangely poetic in their language, liked music and were given to wearing flowers in their hair, and enjoyed stories of fairies and djinns. But they were also vain, vengeful and venal, and their history was a monotonous record of perfidy, naked treachery and wholesale betrayals, and men of importance in Khusar were still said to sleep during the day and stay awake at night holding a loaded gun. Their whole life was one of warfare and gloom. Every tribe had its enemies, every family its blood-feud, every man his assassin. Hejri and Khaliti didn’t mix and never could. They had loathed each other through all their history and there was a story of how, when one of each had been murdered in the Fajir Pass, even their blood had refused to mingle as they had lain together on the stony ground.
In all this hatred, Cozzens found the news from Hahdhdhah deeply satisfying because he was also aware of the restrictions placed on the frontier garrisons in an attempt to keep the atmosphere up there sweet. People like Pentecost were conducting their affairs with one hand tied behind their backs and the Hejris were far from being out of practice. They had never lost interest in murder, rape and looting, and with Abd el Aziz el Beidawi sitting in the hills Cozzens realised he would be quite wrong to imagine they’d lost their old hostility. The last man who’d had to face Aziz had come back broken in spirit and health, but there was a calm self-confidence in Pentecost’s reports – almost a smugness, dammit! – that made Cozzens decide that the boy had a kind of genius. He had somehow made contact with the grim old warrior when a dozen political agents before him had failed, and they were now not only on speaking terms, they were actually even exchanging gifts.
As he thought about Pentecost, Cozzens thought also about his wife. Charlotte Pentecost was the daughter of an old comrade from the last war and he guessed she wasn’t enjoying herself alone, with her husband two hundred and fifty miles away to the north, sitting on a bomb. She was a pretty young woman with a lively mind and a tremendous zest for living, as attract
ive as her mother had once been and, judging by two children in three years, just as eager. Cozzens’ eyes grew distant with nostalgia, then he coughed hurriedly and rubbed his hand across his face.
‘Hm! Hah! Yes!’
‘Charlotte Pentecost,’ he said aloud, trying to keep his mind on the present when it persisted on straying to the past. He knew she kept herself to herself and never placed herself in a position where any of the brash young officers in the city, encouraged by the heat and Pentecost’s absence, might try to take advantage of her loneliness. Yet Cozzens knew she wasn’t happy either, because Khaswe was no place for a young woman with two young sons, and he made a note on his pad that it might be a good idea to have her to the next party they held so that she could meet a few other wives of her own age – in an atmosphere of safety away from the dangers of the old town where she had a flat.
Charlotte Pentecost, he wrote in his diary in his cramped square hand. Dinner? Drinks?
He wondered if she’d accept. His wife was known to the Command – most unfairly, because they thought quite wrongly that she ran it – as ‘Machine Gun Maggie’, and he knew that the wives of many of his officers failed completely to see beyond her hearty facade to the kindness beneath and ducked her receptions.
As he put down the pen, he noticed at the top of the sheet another entry – Bishop of Harwick – and he sighed.
Oh, God, he thought, that bloody man! With his dog collar and holier-than-thou face, the Bishop of Harwick was one of the younger men in the top echelons of the Church and well known to Cozzens for being far more concerned with racialism, aid to backward nations and world starvation then he ever was with the spiritual needs of his own flock. Until he and his friends had started preaching ‘Love our black brothers’, it had never occurred to the blunt and forthright Cozzens to do anything else. The same applied to backward nations, world starvation and bad housing. Cozzens had been prepared to accept them all, even to offer his mite towards their alleviation, but the Bishop of Harwick had finally begun to convince him that everyone was right but the British.
And the Bishop had now arrived in Khalit on what he liked to call a fact-finding tour, together with Forester Hobbins, who was Britain’s arch-protester, member of the Nancy Left, intellectual and leader – from the back – of every assault on the American Embassy that ever took place. With them had come all the hordes of newspapermen who hung on their words, eager to make capital out of well-chosen criticism, among them Alec Gloag, the one television commentator Cozzens actively detested. His clipped Glaswegian voice sent shudders up and down Cozzens’ spine as he tore to shreds the reputations of men who, not having the advantage of television’s speedy growth, had taken a lifetime to make them. There were others too – Lewis, Garbitt, Hatchard and Diplock – already in Khalit and sending home snippets of news that gave Cozzens sleepless nights as he saw in them provocation for the Nationalists who were just waiting in the back streets of the Khesse district for something to go wrong.
Staring at the Bishop of Harwick’s name, Cozzens wished he could send him across the Toweida Plain to Hahdhdhah on an ass carrying a palm branch, which was all he seemed to think was needed to ensure peace. It might have worked for Jesus Christ, the General decided bitterly, but it certainly wouldn’t work for Harwick.
And finally, Westminster’s representative, a senior Minister of the Crown who was on his way to reassure the Sultan of the British Government’s honourable intentions with regard to the treaty but to beg him not to have second thoughts about it because such treaties had long since become embarrassing.
Cozzens had heard that the British Government would much have preferred a more enlightened rule whether they were there as peacekeepers or not, and only the fact that the Sultan’s son in Rome refused to return home had prevented a palace revolution.
He glanced at the dates again and grinned maliciously as he decided he might kill several birds with one stone. Rasaul Pasha, the Sultan’s Minister for the Interior, had been after him for some time to find out British intentions if Tafas proved difficult. Perhaps he could introduce him to the Government’s representative and let them fight it out between them. It might even, he thought spitefully, be enlightening to listen to the ill-humour that would result. Perhaps he could even get Charlotte Pentecost in on it. She was a good talker and pretty enough to take any Minister’s mind off his job.
Rasaul, he wrote after Charlotte Pentecost’s name. Westminster chap. Maybe even the bloody Bishop, too, he thought sourly. And that gadget, Hobbins! At least it would keep them quiet for a while and might encourage Tafas to make up his mind and sign.
2
Though Cozzens didn’t know it, Sultan Tafas el Taif at that moment had just about finally decided not to sign. In the exotic old palace on the headland, furnished with hi-fi and televisions bought with the revenues from American-owned businesses, he and his Minister for the Interior, Rasaul Pasha, were angrily discussing the situation.
The Sultan was an old man who enjoyed the out-of-date comedies of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, dreamed dreams of settling all his problems with the discovery of oil, and handled the affairs of his country like a mediaeval monarch. Rasaul was well aware of the British dilemma. With no one to put in place of Tafas they were stuck with the elderly, old-fashioned man who held back the development of his country, only because he was considered one stage better than the fist-clenching young men from the Khesse district or a junta of ambitious colonels.
‘I didn’t expect to give up the Toweida Plain,’ he was saying. ‘This Sultanate was carved out by my great-grandfather after the troubles between the British and the Italians in the last century. For my father’s work in the First World War the treaty that was made in 1860 was renewed for another eighty years, and because I placed our airfields at the disposal of the British in 1940, they agreed to stretch it for another forty and poured money into the country. Now the Americans are bringing trade. Why should I give it up to the half-wits who get their training in Cairo?’
Rasaul sighed. He knew Tafas well enough to realise that this was all nothing more than the preliminaries to another of his colossal changes of mind.
‘Because, sir,’ he said patiently, ‘if you don’t allow the British to go, you will find these same hotheads who got their training in Cairo will apply it to rise as a body and force them to go.’
‘The British Army?’
‘Sir, the British Army is not the vast organisation it once was. They have commitments elsewhere – too many sometimes and some too close to home. They don’t want to stay. They can’t stay.’
‘They have to stay if I refuse to sign!’
The Sultan stared angrily through the window, hearing the faint wail of a muezzin from one of the minarets silhouetted against the pearly sky. ‘La illa Lah Mohammed rassoul Allah – There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ The tamarisk plumes in the garden below him drooped in the still air and the geraniums made a flare of colour against the white walls. The dusty rose bushes were half in bloom and from the mouth of a stone lion water trickled musically into a stone basin. The garden had an air of faded opulence that went with the rusted metal furniture and the bleached and shabby awnings and the lawns covered with weeds and fallen dates. Beyond, the murmur of the streets and the babble of the bazaars, the water-sellers’ bells and the endless ‘Allah, Allah’ of the beggars were hushed to a soft monotone.
‘If the frontier forts are closed down,’ he said slowly, stubbornly, ‘the frontier will move south of the hills, and once it starts it will never stop until the Sultanate is thrust into the sea.’
‘The British would never guard the frontiers, sir,’ Rasaul pointed out.
‘The treaty says they must.’
‘The treaty terms say clearly, sir, that the British will back up the Sultanate and such borders as are agreed with our neighbours. They will never support disputed or artificial ones, and the Khusar Hills were decided arbitrarily in the last century by your grandfather’s
administrators against the advice of the British and despite the protests of the northern tribes. The British will stand by that clause.’
‘The small print on the back of the contract,’ Tafas sneered.
‘The terms of reference of the treaty extend to the Dharwas, sir, and no further. The British refused to alter them in 1940.’
‘They are opting out of their promise.’ The Sultan’s voice was sulky.
‘Sir’ – Rasaul’s voice rose angrily – ‘you and your Ministers agreed to them going.’
‘Things have changed since then.’
‘I can’t imagine them permitting you to back out now, sir.’
Tafas gave a sly smile. ‘There are ways of making them,’ he said. ‘They believe in sticking to treaties even when they don’t like them. And I need the northern frontier. I need Hahdhdhah. I need those young men up there who put backbone into my troops.’
3
Standing at the window of his office, Pentecost could see the hills reflecting the yellow glow of the late sunshine, and he shivered a little as he felt the evening chill. Hahdhdhah was high enough in the foothills of the Urbidas to be cold in the evenings and through the night. Sometimes, in winter, even, there was snow, and when snow lay on top of the Rass range just beyond the Urbidas the little fortress could be freezing, and the Toweidas stumped around the place with their heads down between their shoulders, wearing every scrap of clothing they possessed, their faces as long as fiddles. Thank God, he thought, they’d be out of Hahdhdhah – and probably out of Khalit – by the time the next winter came.
From Beebe’s quarters he could hear the sound of a radio. Beebe was still with them, still working across the plain, guarded always by a scout car and a lorry, exploding his little canisters, reading his instruments and checking and rechecking his columns of figures. From time to time, a report was sent down to Dhafran for the coast, but as far as they could tell they were all negative and discouraging.