Oasis

by Katya de Becerra

  “Why wouldn’t they be? I’m very likable, and besides, being part Jordanian helps, I guess?” I laughed at the memory of trying to speak Arabic with an airport migration officer who just wanted to stamp my passport and be done with it. “It was all right, Dad. Thanks for letting me come and bring the gang.”

  “So sorry I couldn’t come pick you up. Archer and I, we’re living a logistical nightmare here.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I take it you’ve also heard the bad luck rumors?”

  When I nodded in affirmation, he kept on.

  “And now we’ve got this guy who’s apparently walked out of the desert and right into our camp. He’s barely alive!”

  “Is he in the med tent now? How is he?” I’d been wondering what else the Desert Man had to say to his rescuers, aside from the Dup Shimati whisperings or whatever that was. I held back a flurry of questions that was building into a storm in my head.

  “We called for a medical team from Dubai to come and collect him,” Dad explained. “Their chopper will be arriving shortly. Like I said, he’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “Can I check in on him?”

  “Why?” Dad eyed me, surprised.

  “He said something to me, and I want to clarify what he meant.”

  Dad gave me another wide-eyed look and chuckled. “Alif, he’s been hallucinating since he walked into the camp, or so I’ve been told. Raving on and on about some trove of treasures and curses or whatnot. I doubt he can sustain an engaging conversation with you, let alone clarify anything.”

  I kept a whining note out of my voice when I said, “But, Dad, he mentioned something really weird to me, something about … Dup Shimati? Or something that sounded like that. I just want to know what he meant. The archaeologist in me wants to know.”

  While my father’s face kept its composed expression, his right eyebrow arched up, giving away a spark of recognition. Yup, Dad definitely knew what the Desert Man was mumbling about. To me he said reluctantly, “Linguistically, those words come from Mesopotamian folklore. It has something do to with control over destiny. Or is it control over the universe?”

  “Hang on a sec…,” I protested. “Mesopotamian folklore? That doesn’t make sense. Not geographically at least. The current Dubai territory wasn’t part of ancient Mesopotamia.”

  “Exactly.” He looked at me with a certain pride. Dad was always hoping I’d follow in his footsteps and study ancient history and archaeology, so whenever I demonstrated any specialist knowledge on the topic, he was extra proud. “You are correct,” he continued. “But it doesn’t change the fact that the man is dehydrated and hallucinating. Plus we don’t really know anything about him. He could be dangerous.”

  The distant roar of a chopper on approach made us both look up. The chopper had a bright red cross painted on its side. The Dubai medics were almost here. I was running out of time to wrestle my answer out of the Desert Man’s dry lips. Frowning as he followed the chopper’s trajectory with his eyes, Dad squeezed my shoulder. “I need to check up on our temporary helipad. I left Tommy in charge of that, so it must be all set up by now, but still … You’ll be fine?”

  “Of course. I’ll go rejoin my merry band of misfits,” I said to him. Only, instead of walking away I lingered nearby, waiting until Dad had wandered off. A buzzing sensation returned to my hand, a reminder that I had a question or two to ask the badly sunburned stranger who was currently battling dehydration fever in the med tent. My plan of action formed quickly, but I didn’t have much time to execute it.

  I pulled my hair into a high ponytail, uncaring that a few strands immediately escaped my elastic band, rolled up my sleeves, and ran, leaving a trail of overturned sand behind me. I ducked into the cafeteria and, without changing my pace, rounded the service counter and snuck into the kitchen.

  I walked right into Lori and Rowen engaged in an intense make-out session. They were alone, and thankfully they didn’t even notice me, despite the ruckus I made skidding to a sudden stop and gasping. I couldn’t spare a moment to tease them, though the temptation to jump out and scare the shit out of them was huge. I grabbed what I came for and left.

  Outside once more, I kept an eye on the chopper as it was prepping to land on a makeshift helipad by the camp’s outer eastern border. The “helipad” was a gigantic plastic circle stretched out on the ground by a band of volunteers. Helipad aside, Dr. Palombo’s red scarf was once again the only patch of color against the muted beige hues of the desert. But I saw Tommy in the crowd too. In a move of rare recklessness on his part, he wasn’t wearing a cap, his black hair standing out against his light clothing.

  Tearing my eyes away from Tommy, I pushed the med tent’s curtain-door out of the way and stepped inside. I found him straightaway. The man lay completely still in one of the cots. His chest, rising and falling in slow motion, was the only sign he was alive. Here, in the shade, he looked even worse for wear. His face was sunburned into an angry red mess and his eyes, wide open, were so bloodshot it was as if they had no whites, just pupils surrounded with red. But the most disturbing thing was his mouth, lips moving without making a sound.

  A suspicious voice came from the corner to my right: “You don’t look like you’re with the Dubai medic team.” I whirled around to find a young woman there. How could I have missed her earlier? She was sitting in a foldout chair, a book open on her lap. The look she gave me was one of deep unwelcome.

  “Medics are landing right now. Dr. Scholl sent me over with this.” I lifted up the bottle of water that I’d procured from the kitchen. “He also said you’re needed at the landing site, so you can brief the medics about this man’s condition while they’re making their way over here.”

  “Yeah?” Her expression changed from hostile to doubtful. The fear of not following an order from Dr. Scholl must’ve been stronger than her doubt though, because she stood up and placed her book on the chair. “I’m not supposed to leave him alone.” She swung her head in the direction of the man, but I already knew she’d made up her mind. This was almost too easy.

  “I’ll look after him till they get here,” I assured her.

  She stared at me, eyes roaming, searching for a sign on my face that I could be trusted. I guess she found it, because she gave me a quick nod and left, letting some scalding-hot air into the tent in her wake.

  I lowered myself to the floor, kneeling by the man’s side. His eyes remained open, unblinking, but he didn’t acknowledge me.

  “What’s your name?” My question didn’t get a reaction out of him either. I persisted. “I’m Alif Scholl. You spoke to me when you first came to the camp. You must’ve been through a lot … If you can hear me, can you tell me what you meant when you said those things about Dup Shimati?”

  It was the unfamiliar words spilling off my tongue—Dup Shimati—that brought him back to life. He sat up in a jerky motion, but his eyes stayed as they were—open but unseeing, unfocused, looking straight ahead and not at me kneeling by his side.

  “Dup Shimati?” I repeated. “What does it mean?”

  “The voice of the universe is trapped in there … Once you touch its beating heart, it begins to sing, and it sings things into existence … It called for us from where it’s buried … It took what we had and then it let me go, but it wants … needs … more. It’s never sated…”

  The man started to whimper as if in pain or tormented by a memory. The horrid sounds coming out of his mouth brought me to my feet. Somehow through the man’s increasingly desperate sounds, I managed to hear approaching footsteps. I rushed away from the tent, anxious to get out of there before the medics and my father arrived and caught me red-handed.

  EXODUS AND THE POWER OF THE INTERNET

  Dup Shimati … Dup Shimati … Dup Shimati …

  In my head the words sizzled the way fire-hot coals do when they’re being extinguished by rain. I wandered off without really looking where I was going. What was Desert Man’s name? He didn’t say. Who was he?
How long was he alone in the desert? I didn’t get any of the answers I’d been hoping for.

  He was delusional, severely dehydrated, and scared, that’s for sure. His perception warped, he could no longer distinguish between what was real and what was unreal. Or so I kept telling myself. Tommy’s Dig It post was turning out to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. But if Tommy knew more than he was letting on, he was doing a great job feigning innocence.

  I regained my bearings once I reached the outer edge of the camp. I forced myself to stop and retrace my steps, setting out to find Minh and Luke. My mind kept wandering as I walked through the busy camp. I ran an absentminded hand over my hair. My ponytail was a mess, my hair clinging to my cheeks with sweat. The top of my head felt like I’d been sitting under one of those heat lamps at a hair salon for so long that it had fried my brain. I gave up and extracted my cap from my back pocket, placing it over my head. Heatstroke was worse than a bad fashion choice.

  Instead of finding anyone I actually wanted to see, I ran into Tommy. The expression he was wearing made me uncomfortable in my own overheated skin. The guy never smiled, I swear—at least not when I was around. Tommy’s face was half hidden under a low-sitting cap, dark hair curling from underneath the tight fabric. As he neared, he showed no signs of acknowledgment. I played along. Maybe being invisible to Tommy Ortiz wasn’t such a bad thing: I could wear my ill-fitted cap in peace, not caring what it looked like.

  “Alif?” My name rolling off Tommy’s tongue stopped me in my tracks.

  I lifted my head to look at him as he flinched in surprise, like I was a robber attacking him from the shadows. “Didn’t recognize you at first,” he said, unsettled for some reason.

  “Oh, hey.” I gave him a brisk nod, trying to look and sound busy. “How did the evacuation go?”

  “They came and took him away. He’s not in good shape, but he’ll live. Too much excitement for the camp though. Ever since the chopper took off, Dr. Scholl’s been ushering volunteers back to their stations, but they’d rather talk than work. It’s like herding cats, I swear.”

  His confiding in me was so unusual that I stumbled on my words, struggling to sound casual around him. “It’s not like it’s every day a random guy walks out of the desert and raves about some hidden treasures or whatever.”

  “What did he say to you, exactly?” Tommy’s eyes zeroed in on me. He looked so interested in what I had to say that it gave me a boost of confidence. I didn’t even waver when he took a step closer. Despite my rattling heart, I stood my ground.

  “Not much. Nothing coherent anyway. Though he did mention a voice of the universe that sings. He called it Dup Shimati, and then…” I was about to say that the man started to whimper and cry and how it had been my exit cue, but I stopped, reminding myself that I wasn’t supposed to have been in the tent with him.

  “And then what?” Tommy prodded.

  “And then they carried him away,” I lied.

  “Dup Shimati, huh?”

  “Yes, the fate of the universe. Or something like that.” I tried to sound quirky or at least funny, but mostly I just came off like a five-year-old attempting to dazzle a teenager.

  Tommy didn’t look dazzled. A frown of concern was tugging his mouth down at the corners. “Something’s off about all this. First we have that freak accident, then a bunch of volunteers just up and leave the dig, and it’s not only that they refuse to come back; it seems everyone else around here is now against working the site. And now this guy … On the way to the chopper, he told us that he was with some tourist group from France, that his name was Noam Delamer, and that he was in Dubai for a hotelier conference…”

  “What part of that story do you find strange? Sounds kind of reasonable, all things considered.”

  “I looked up the conference and … well, it took place two years ago. Two years.”

  “That’s impossible. I mean, he does look awful, but not two-years-lost-in-the-desert awful. If he was lost in the desert for that long, he’d be dead.”

  “I know. But then again, there have been very rare instances of people wandering the desert for even longer than that.” Tommy’s eyes were intense, as if testing me, his expression carrying just a hint of something.

  I stared back at him blankly. Then it dawned on me. “Was that an Exodus reference?”

  “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  Actually, I did appreciate it, but I was simply too stunned by the fact that Tommy Ortiz had made a joke that was perfectly tailored to my specific taste to reply. I let out an awkward laugh, but it was too late, as the moment had already melted away. Tommy became distracted and tight-lipped once more, announcing we should head to dinner. At least he’d made no mention of walking in on my make-out session with Luke last night. I was grateful for that.

  I followed Tommy to the cafeteria, which was already filling with the camp’s residents and abuzz with excitement. I looked around, feeling cagey and hoping to avoid running into that girl I’d tricked earlier. Thankfully, she was nowhere to be seen. Not counting Tommy, I was the first of my group to get to our table. A couple of volunteers I remembered from breakfast were quick to join us, and soon Minh arrived, disheveled but in a good mood, followed by the rest of the gang pulling up. We ate our dinner and enjoyed one another’s company, and even Tommy looked like he was relaxing.

  CERTAIN BENEFITS COME WITH WORKING IN THE KITCHEN

  The dinner was Moroccan lamb tagine with rice followed by a “dessert” of imported apples and oranges with stickers still attached to their glossy skin. Tommy was quick to finish up. He stood up to leave but lingered by our table, and it occurred to me that maybe he was trying to come up with a reason to stay. Was our ragtag group the closest thing he had to friends around here? I’d assured Minh during our flight that it was unlikely Tommy was single, but the reality was I knew as little about him as he probably knew about me. And my crush on him was based on what, then? It was something chemical, I guess, as most irrational attractions are.

  Finally Tommy started to walk away, his shoulders sagging a little. Aside from me, no one seemed to notice except Minh.

  She turned to me. “He’s cute to look at.”

  A couple of other volunteers overheard her and giggled, but I was embarrassed. I tried staring her down, but Minh was bold and unstoppable this evening.

  “Who knows, maybe in the sunburned desert Tommy Ortiz will find love at last in the arms of his mentor’s wayward daughter…”

  “What’s gotten into you?” I asked, wondering if Minh was drunk. But she wasn’t saying all this for my benefit, as I quickly figured out by studying her. She was trying to catch Rowen’s attention. He was oblivious, too invested in his own fast-blooming relationship with Lori.

  When we finished eating, we stayed seated until it was just us five left. That’s when Rowen caught my gaze and gave me a meaningful look.

  “So I heard that an elusive ninja got into the desert survivor’s tent and interrogated him about the location of a hidden treasure,” he said.

  “Oh god … How did you know?” I took a sweeping look around the table. My friends’ faces confirmed it. They all knew. And if Rowen, who was in the kitchen the whole day going at it with Lori, was somehow aware of my detour into the med tent, then probably everyone else knew too. Everyone, including Dad.

  “I was trying to be discreet!”

  “Oh, so it is true!” Lori edged closer. Rowen placed his hand over hers, and she added in a whisper, “All we heard was that a dark-haired girl wearing a London Grammar tee was snooping around the med tent. And since it’s likely you’re the only person around here who owns a Grammar tee…” Lori’s grin was triumphant.

  Feeling ridiculous at being exposed so easily, I folded my arms around myself to hide the shirt’s design. My friends’ faces reminded me they were still waiting for an explanation, so I said, “The man said something to me before they carried him into the camp. I just wanted to ask him what he meant.”

/>   Luke, quiet till now, scowled. “So where’s the treasure buried?”

  Resigned, I relayed everything I’d heard from Noam Delamer, including his mentions of Dup Shimati. In case it wasn’t common knowledge yet, I also repeated what I’d heard from Dr. Palombo and from Tommy about volunteers refusing to work the dig because of the bad luck rumors and whatnot.

  Luke shook his head. “Superstitions are for the weak-minded.”

  Minh gave him a lingering look. “Maybe. But there’s usually a grain of truth behind every superstition.”

  “Or a grain of stupidity,” Luke retorted.

  Lori yawned. I knew her well enough to know she’d forced that yawn because the conversation no longer interested her.

  “How about we head to our tents?” I proposed. “It’s been a long day, and we’ll have to compensate tomorrow for all the work we didn’t do today.”

  “I have a better idea!” Rowen pulled up his backpack from the floor and rummaged inside. He gave us a little preview. It was the neck of a bottle. Hard liquor.

  “Where did you get that, man?” Luke sounded impressed.

  “Let’s just say there are certain benefits that come with working in the kitchen, especially when you compare it to sorting through dusty bones all day.”

  “And by benefits you mean you can steal whatever’s not nailed down or glued to the wall?” I kept the judgment out of my tone. Mostly. Rowen’s family was wealthy, and yet he had the stickiest fingers of us all. It wasn’t kleptomania exactly, but he didn’t think twice before grabbing something unattended.

  “You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to, Alif.” Lori’s voice was a tad condescending.

  “Drinking is not what I have a problem with. It’s stealing,” I insisted. “I brought you all here. Can you at least try not to embarrass me in front of my dad and everyone?”

  “Whatever.” Rowen rolled his eyes before turning to Lori. “We’ll come by your place once everyone’s settled down for the night.” He studied me, as if measuring the likelihood of my telling on him.