Riders of the Pale Horse (25 page)

“Yes, my country is that way,” Leah agreed. “Harsh and unyielding one moment, but then suddenly rain falls on the desert, and the land is transformed into paradise.”

“That's a word I would never have thought to use for here,” Allison said, and then stopped. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I mean, I really think it's beautiful.”

Leah only smiled. “I think after your experience you deserve the afternoon off. Why don't you meet me here at lunchtime, and I will try to show you a little of Jordan's other face.”

Fareed took the gulf road southward toward the Saudi border. Beyond the port area the road rose and fell along a slender plateau, lined on one side by jagged peaks and on the other by the Gulf of Aqaba.

Leah possessed the calm tone of one who could ask almost anything and receive a truthful answer. “Do you mind working so far away from your world?”

“Not at all.” Being so distant from the world she knew granted Allison a welcome opportunity to draw out aspects of her life and examine them in safety.

As though reading her mind, Leah asked, “Do you have someone waiting for you back home?”

“My boyfriend and I broke up a month before my departure.”

Leah examined her. “Should I be sorry?”

Allison turned her face toward the ocher hills. “Probably not,” she sighed.

From the safety of these distant lands, it seemed to Allison that the men in her past were a little less than her. A little less bright, a little less witty, a little less successful. She was the driving force in the relationship. The men depended on her. But in order to reinforce their own masculinity, they spent time putting her down. As a result, even though she knew she had a lot going for her, she wound up being the weaker partner. She was the one who sat by the phone. She was the one who waited for hours when the guy was late, then accepted weak excuses for inexcusable behavior, only because she knew that was all she was going to get. She accommodated them. And tore herself down in the process.

Leah took Allison's diverted face as an answer and granted her silence. Allison found herself thinking once more about the last relationship, which had been with a sociology student at the University of Maryland. He had been in his seventh year of trying to complete his master's and had worked for a roofing company in his spare time. She had liked him because he was cute and funny. Her best girlfriend had taken one look at him and proclaimed him the worst of a long string of losers.

One night he called her up and said she had to come over, he needed to talk. This after almost three weeks of not being able to find him at all. Allison replied truthfully that she could not come, she had to work late on a project due the following day. Then the computer system went down unexpectedly, and she had the bright idea to go out and surprise him. She arrived with a bagful of Chinese takeout and a video. He answered in a state of borderline panic, and despite his best efforts to block her view she saw over his shoulder that another girl was draped on the couch.

The next day during lunch Allison unloaded to her best girlfriend, who responded with something more than the standard pep talk. I'm so glad you're finally rid of that jerk, she said. Why do you keep wasting your time on all of these losers? You're bright, you're beautiful, and you deserve better. Look what you've done in your career. You set a goal, and
then you went for it. That's exactly what you should do in your love life—set a goal and stick to it. Allison returned to work dry-eyed and determined to pick her men more carefully.

And then came the offer to leave it all behind and fly off to London and places beyond. She did not hesitate for a moment.

The question now was, what would she return to? What had she learned?

A few miles later, a crescent-shaped beach emerged from the waters. They pulled in through a gate and started down toward the water's edge, driving on the hard sand. Great metal parasols sprouted from the sand every twenty yards or so. As the drove, Allison noticed that all of the other visitors were Arabs. Many had erected Bedouin-style tents using the parasol as a base. There were no sunbathers on the beach; people emerged from the shade to play in the water, then returned to their little camps.

As they unloaded and set up camp under their own shelter, Leah explained, “It is unwise for women to come to such a public place without a male escort. Also, some of the fundamentalist police have begun to give women drivers a very hard time these days, if one happens to stop us. Now I take Fareed with me almost everywhere.”

“Stuff like that really makes my blood boil,” Allison said.

Leah did not disagree. “The problem is, nowadays many people are beginning to lump all Arabs together under the fundamentalist banner. This is very wrong, and it is very dangerous. Ben and I have many good Muslim friends, people for whom we have the deepest respect, whom we would trust with our lives. The fundamentalists are still a minority. But their numbers are growing, and the people they tend to attract are the vocal ones.”

Allison settled herself down on a towel and began to rub sunscreen on her arms. The breeze was just strong enough to bring in a sweet coolness from the water. “The discontented,” she said.

“Exactly. In most of the Arab world, the poor are trapped
and held down by the system. These are stagnant societies, ruled by corrupt governments. The fundamentalists feed from this angry pool just as the Nazis did in Germany after the First World War. They set themselves up in the poorest quarters of the large cities and in the small villages that are struggling to survive.”

Leah motioned toward Fareed, who sat leaning against the parasol's center pole. “Fareed is from a Christian family, but his father named him after his closest friend, a Muslim. This is a living example of how our two cultures once coexisted.” She then asked the quiet man, “Would you tell our new friend what happened in your village?”

The driver was a very compact man, his age more evident from his graying hair than from his strong unlined face. “I remember before twenty years,” he began, then stopped. “Please to excuse my English.”

“It's fine,” Allison replied. It was the first time she remembered hearing the man speak to her.

“Before twenty years, Karak was still old village. We all live in tents. Christian, Muslim, all together. Peace and good life. Government come, make wells better, build houses; we use tents only when take animals different place. We have many Christian families. Some of them, they come from Palestine very long time. Was quiet village.”

He stirred, made uncomfortable by what he remembered. “Then new mullah come to mosque. New mullah talk, talk. My family, we like to stay. But mullah talk many bad things. We decide city is safer. My family, we rather live in village. Maybe someday go back. But not now. Mullahs no let us.”

Allison asked, “You don't like living in the city?”

Fareed continued to look out at the sea. “In springtime and autumn, village have very nice wind. Also the sun not too hot. Always nice wind in village. In city, wind trapped. Village quiet, no noise all time like city. Very good life in village, very safe, nice for children. But no more.”

“I don't understand,” Allison said. “The mullahs forced you to leave?”

“No, not force. Never say go. Just talk hate. Everybody, they worry, what comes next?”

“What did the mullahs say?”

“Hate things,” he replied impatiently. “Anger things. Not good for me, for family, for whole village.”

“The atmosphere in your village was changing.”

“Yes, yes, whole village change. No more village where I born. Now is new village. Mullahs rule new village.”

“There are many such places nowadays,” Leah offered. “Some struggle against it, but others relish this supposed inspiration from Allah to rise up in anger and hate. In many places, the tide is running in the mullahs' favor.”

“This mullah talk, it not good,” Fareed declared. “Muslim friends, they also not understand. They come to me and say, we not follow this way. We believe in Allah, yes, but we want peace.” Fareed was silent for a time, then, “Why this come? I not understand.”

“A lot of people don't,” Leah agreed. “And even more wish it could be stopped.”

“Is hurt for many people,” Fareed told them. “Too much anger, too much talk for fighting.”

They all sat without speaking for a long moment, then Leah rose to her feet. “Enough of this. We're supposed to be having an afternoon off.” She turned to Allison. “Do you know how to snorkel?”

“I've done it before.”

Leah reached into a sack by her towel. “Good. Come along. I have a surprise for you.”

Allison followed her down to the water's edge and stared at the world of contrasts. Both behind her and across the gulf's other side rose stark desert peaks. The water was crystal clear and as blue as the sky. The sand was the color of crushed pearls.

“Here, put these on.” Leah handed her a snorkel and fins.
“Be sure to stay close enough that we always have each other in sight.”

They walked out to where the water was waist deep, then lowered themselves and began swimming out. With her first glimpse under the surface, Allison nearly gasped.

Sunlight cascaded through the sea as through a prism, turning the sandy bottom into an ever-changing rainbow. As they swam farther out, the bottom dropped off, and up rose a fairy-tale undersea kingdom. Fan corals formed a series of gateways, rising twenty feet and more from the bottom. Smaller versions clustered on rocks and ledges, sculpted into fantasy shapes of orange and rose and purple. Brain coral fifteen feet across crowned underwater peaks. Schools of fish as brightly colored as the coral swam everywhere.

Allison swam for almost an hour, until her shoulders began sending warning tingles of too much desert sun. She signaled and followed Leah back to the shore. “That was incredible.”

“We say that all Jordan is like this,” Leah replied. “With much beauty hidden just beneath the surface. All you have to do is make that little extra effort to search it out.”

Toward evening, Allison returned to the clinic dormitory to find that a note had been slipped under her bedroom door. She opened the buff envelope and took out the single sheet of paper.

She read, “Meet me in Petra tomorrow. C.”

15

The trucks arrived at the main road to Beloti around midafternoon. Fifty yards before the turnout, Rogue halted the trucks and waited. Once an hour, their hostess had told them, Russian-led convoys drove through, headed for villages still controlled by the enemy. Otherwise, the roads belonged to the Ossetians.

They took a late lunch and waited behind the high hedges until a deep rumbling announced the convoy's arrival. They watched through the leaves as a pair of Russian tanks rolled into view. Behind these came several armored personnel carriers, and following them was a hodgepodge of vehicles—trucks, buses, autos, ambulances, farm transports piled to the brim with produce, even an occasional horse-drawn wagon.

“Russian troops were brought in to protect the enclaves held by non-Ossetians,” Wade explained in an undertone. “Stalin emptied a lot of villages. He hated the Ossetians' patriotism, so he shipped more than a hundred thousand either to Siberia or Kazakhstan.”

“And imported Russians to fill in the holes,” Rogue finished.

“Georgians, too,” Wade added. “Stalin wanted to scatter them around as well.”

“So why don't the Georgians have something to say about these Russian troops being around here? Didn't you tell me they claimed this territory for their own?”

Wade nodded. “It's not as simple as that.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“The Georgians have been tied up fighting a civil war with the Abkhazi tribe farther to the east. That area has been a part of Georgia for more than a thousand years, and the Abkhazis make up less than fifteen percent of the total population. This trouble started before Georgia actually became a nation,
and the Russian troops arrived long before independence. So the Georgians sort of turn a blind eye to the Russians' still being here.”