The Hidden Oasis (19 page)

He was tougher than they had anticipated. And braver. They had to burn off both of his feet and one hand before he broke and told them everything they wanted to know. They put him out of his misery and shot the remaining camels – it was a remote spot and it would be days if not weeks before the massacre was discovered. Their business complete, the gunmen returned to the chopper and took off, speeding south over the desert and away into the night.

Chuckling to himself, his dirty brown
djellaba
already bulging at the crotch in anticipation, Mahmoud Gharoub carried the wooden ladder through the olive grove towards Doctor Alex’s house. It was dark, the moon not yet risen, the grove shrouded in an inky fog of gloom and shadow. More than once he stumbled, his feet crunching on the carpet of dried leaves with which the ground was covered, the end of the ladder clattering loudly against the tree trunks all around. He wasn’t concerned by the noise. He had watched the American woman jogging up the track towards Dakhla, knew he had plenty of time to get himself positioned before she came back, and continued on his way untroubled by the racket he was making. He chattered to himself, occasionally breaking into tuneless bursts of song:

When he reached Alex’s house he worked his way round to the far end, pushing between a pair of flowering oleander
bushes and leaning the ladder against the wall. He began to climb, up and up until he reached the flat roof. The distant scattered lights of Dakhla glittered on one side, the empty grey billow of the desert rolled away on the other. Pulling a bottle from the pocket of his
djellaba
he took a swig, then crossed to the small skylight above the bathroom and squatted down beside it. The tingling in his crotch grew more intense.

He’d watched the woman’s sister many times, even after she’d become ill and lost her looks. His own wife was fat and ugly, more water buffalo than woman. Anything was better than that, even a cripple who had to sit in a special chair to shower. When she’d died he’d been sad, assuming all the fun was over. But now her sister had arrived, young and blonde and fit. Wanton, like all western women. Mahmoud Gharoub could barely control himself. He would have come sooner but his wife had been suspicious, and it was only because she was with her family tonight that he had been able to get away. He took another swig from the bottle, gazing down through the skylight into the room beneath. It was pitch black now, a well of impenetratable darkness, but once the light was on he’d be able to see everything: shower, toilet, every movement, every contour, his own private show. He broke into song again, rubbing at his groin:

He broke off, head coming up and tipping to one side, listening. What was that? The noise grew louder, a spitting,
droning sound. Helicopter. Heading straight towards him by the sound of it. He stood, suddenly nervous, fearful it might be the police. He’d have some explaining to do if he was found up here on someone else’s roof, both to the authorities and, more worryingly, to his horror of a wife. His erection sagging, the bathroom forgotten, he hurried back across the roof to the ladder, swinging himself onto it and starting down, anxious to get away. He only managed a couple of rungs before a pummelling rush of wind enveloped him, his
djellaba
flapping wildly, dust and sand blowing into his eyes. There was a blinding flash as the helicopter’s searchlight came on, rotating this way and that before picking him out and locking onto him. Gharoub clutched the ladder, moaning in terror, shouting out that he had just been sweeping the roof, that it was all a misunderstanding. Then the force of the downdraught caused him to lose his grip and he pitched backwards away from the wall, plummeting with a high-pitched scream and a crash of snapping branches three metres into the bushes below. The helicopter hovered overhead like some monstrous dragonfly, eyeing the old man as he squirmed and floundered beneath, still calling out that it was all a misunderstanding, he’d just been sweeping the roof, there had been leaves up there, lots of messy leaves, whole drifts of them …

The Kodak shop had turned out to be a complete waste of time, although the forty-minute walk back along the track to Dakhla at least allowed Freya to stretch her legs and clear her head a bit.

It had still been open when she got there, its brightly lit glass windows visible from half a mile away. The air-conditioned interior – all marble floors, chrome furniture and framed, soft-focus photographs of grinning newlyweds and overweight babies – had looked promising, as had the fact that the young woman behind the counter actually spoke English. From there it had all been downhill. The developing machines at the rear of the shop didn’t work; had never worked, apparently. As for the ‘Fast Foto devilp’ promised by the advertising board outside, that meant ‘fast’ in the Dakhla sense of the word: about a week. Fighting to suppress her frustration, Freya had chatted with the woman for a while, allowing her to touch her blond hair, trying to explain why at twenty-six she still didn’t have a husband, and then left. She had briefly toyed with the idea of trying to hitch a ride into Mut to see if she could get the films developed there, before deciding it was too late, too much hassle, and setting off back towards Alex’s house.

Now she was walking along the track again, the sky overhead ablaze with stars, the only sounds the soft crunch of her footsteps and the distant braying of a donkey. A gentle breeze had come up, pushing away the last heat of day; the moon was slowly rising behind her, its buttery glow turning the desert sepia so that she felt as though she was trudging through some old-fashioned photograph. The solitude calmed and relaxed her, and the further she walked the more her spirits lifted. She’d get back, have something to eat, maybe listen to some music, get a good night’s sleep and then review things in the morning. Things were always clearer in the morning.

She came to the top of the ridge from which Zahir had
pointed out Alex’s house the previous afternoon. The miniature oasis loomed below, a dark, elongated oval stamped on the otherwise featureless landscape, the ghostly outline of the house clearly visible. She descended the slope and crossed the flat, passing through the oasis’s outlying fields before plunging into the trees. Dense walls of vegetation crowded in on either side of her, shutting out what little light there was and leaving her in almost complete darkness. Pausing a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the gloom, she became aware of a distant whining, chopping sound. It grew steadily louder – a helicopter. Closer and closer it came, louder and louder. The air vibrated to the thud of its rotors, the branches around her started to sway and hiss as it flew in low over the treetops away to her right, its silhouette just visible through the tangled canopy above.

Freya stood where she was, expecting the sound to recede. Instead it held steady, its volume neither increasing nor decreasing, as though the helicopter was now hovering. A couple of seconds passed, then, from ahead, roughly the direction of Alex’s house, there came a sudden sharp burst of illumination. Misty shreds of light filtered back through the undergrowth towards her, throwing parts of the surrounding foliage into clearer focus, plunging others into even deeper shadow. At the same moment, all but lost behind the heavy throb of the engines, she heard what sounded like a scream. More from instinct than any conscious decision, Freya stepped off the track and onto one of the small paths that ran away from it. She moved further into the trees, trying not to dwell on Zahir’s warning about snakes, listening as the rotors gradually slowed and
quietened. The light disappeared. The helicopter must have landed. There were muffled voices, another scream and then the dull clank of breaking glass.

It was dark again now, black. Freya stood motionless, her heart pounding, trying to work out what was going on. Thirty seconds passed. As the leaves and branches came back into murky focus around her, she started to move. Slowly, trying not to make too much noise, she pushed deeper into the trees, following the path as it twisted and turned before plunging through a bank of reeds and emerging into an open field beyond.

There was more light here, the moon higher in the sky than it had been when she’d begun her walk back from the village, its glow bathing everything in a wash of muted silver. She paused to get her bearings, then crossed the field and picked up another path at its far corner, circling her way around through the oasis until she came into a shadowy olive grove beyond which she could see the pale outline of Alex’s house. The lights were on. More voices.

She hesitated, wondering if it wouldn’t be better just to lie low, wait for whoever was there to leave. Then there was another scream – a man’s scream, feeble, terrified. Her curiosity getting the better of her, she continued forward, treading carefully so as not to disturb the dried leaves littering the ground, moving from tree to tree, her breath coming in short, nervous pants. She reached a low brushwood fence at the edge of the grove and squatted down behind it. The voices were louder now, clearer, and again she wondered if she shouldn’t just keep watch from a safe distance. Again curiosity got the better of her. She crept through a gap in the fence and on towards the house, freezing every couple
of metres as though she was playing grandma’s footsteps, ready to turn and run should anyone come out. No one did, and she was able to skirt round the building, pressing herself behind one of the jacaranda trees that shaded the veranda at the back. Now she had a clear view through the living room window.

There were men in there, muscular, hard-looking men. Three that she could see, although a clatter of opening drawers and cupboards from Alex’s study to her left suggested there were more of them. Two of the three were physically identical: same brawny build and slicked ginger hair, their ring-covered fingers glinting in the lamplight. They seemed to be addressing someone on the other side of the room, out of her line of sight. The words ‘camra’ and ‘film’ were repeated over and over again. A terrified voice jabbered back at them. On and on it went, always the same words, always the same wailing response until, with an annoyed shake of the head, one of the two clicked his fingers. There was movement, and three more figures came into view: two of them broad and tough-looking, like the others. Between them, cowering and wringing his hands, a scrawny dog tormented by a pack of larger animals, was Mahmoud Gharoub, the wizened farmer who had given her a lift on his cart earlier in the day. Freya pressed herself harder against the tree, staring in horrified fascination, her hand coming round and touching the knapsack on her back, where the camera and film were sitting.

At a signal Gharoub’s
djellaba
was hoicked up around his waist, revealing scrawny legs and grimy white underpants. In the same motion, arms were hooked around his back and under his thighs and, struggling feebly, he was hoisted off
the floor and his legs levered open as though he was about to give birth.

‘La!’
he moaned, eyes so wide with terror it looked as if they were going to spring right out of the sockets.
‘La! Minfadlak, la!’

His interrogators came up to him, faces blank, as though they were engaging in some mundane household chore. To Freya’s disgust one of them hooked a finger beneath the gusset of the old man’s pants, yanking it aside; the other clicked open a flick-knife. Leaning right in between the man’s legs, he touched its tip to the exposed flesh. Their victim howled in shock, hips bucking up and down. More questions were asked. When the required answers weren’t forthcoming, pressure was applied to the blade. Freya’s throat filled with a sharp acidic taste as the knife was forced into the old man’s perineum, the skin depressing and then splitting.

‘No!’

Her voice filled the night. There was a fractional pause, a second, no more, the scene in the room freeze-framed, then shouting and a stampede of feet. The veranda doors crashed open, figures spilled out, there were flashes of red as guns opened fire and bullets thudded into the jacaranda tree where Freya had been standing. But she was no longer there. Sprinting round the side of the building and back towards the olive grove, she hurdled the low brushwood fence and slalomed on through the trees, stumbling on the uneven ground, her heart hammering, sounds of gunfire and shouting behind her.