The Turtle of Oman (7 page)

Delicious Detours

A
ref's mother came outside to wave them off. She had a mop over her shoulder and a wide smile. “Have fun! Be safe!”

Sidi backed out of the driveway, looking into his mirror closely. He announced, “We are going to the Night of a Thousand Stars camp! You wore the perfect shirt. Remember when we went there a few years ago, but had to leave quickly because of the sandstorm? Remember the baby camel that kept licking your head?” He turned right at the corner.

Aref laughed. “The baby camel thought I was its mother. No, father. That was crazy. Sand was getting in its eyes so it couldn't see clearly. It is probably grown up by now.”

“It is probably in Saudi Arabia, drinking tea,” Sidi said, stopping at a traffic light. “Do you have your toothbrush?”

“Yes! I even have underpants!”

Sidi laughed and said, “It is always fun to have an expedition, no?” Now he turned left toward the brown hills and mountains and the white ribbon of highway heading out of the city. A giant oil tanker truck lumbered past them going in the other direction, making a huge roaring sound. They passed gas stations, and a falafel restaurant, and a store for furniture and lamps. They passed a high school with a soccer field and a water filtering plant.

“Can we pass by the turtle beach?” Aref asked.

“On our way home,” said Sidi, “we'll see what's happening with the turtles. We'll find out if any remember us. Right now we're going to drive up the road through the wild olive trees. Keep your eyes open for vultures. I'd like to take a turn to see one old friend on the way, if it's fine with you.”

“Is his name Mohammed?”

Sidi laughed. “In fact, it is.”

All Sidi's old friends were named Mohammed. Mohammed was a very precious name. In fact, Sidi's own name was Mohammed—but Aref never called him that.

“How long will we stay there, Sidi?”

“Not too long. Just long enough to get gas and chewing gum and sesame crackers and guava juice and sit on a big rock and ask Mohammed how his life is going. Later we will find a secret cave filled with prehistoric bones. . . .”

“Really? Bones?”

“Not really. But last time I drove up here, I saw a cave that might have some. Would you like to check?”

“Can we look for fossils too?”

This was the way they talked for miles and miles, syllables unrolling with the pavement. Were those goats or sheep? Well, maybe both, goats and sheep probably got along fine in the field. Did they speak the same language? Aref liked the large goats with horns. Near a tiny house beside an old stone well, blue towels flapped on a line. A girl wearing a red dress ran through a golden field carrying something yellow, like a stuffed bear.

Sidi and Aref rumbled along in Monsieur till the city felt far behind them.

“Look at that house,” said Aref, pointing at another run-down little house the size of one room. “Who do you think lives there?”

“Obviously someone older than me,” said Sidi.

To the left, up among some huge brown boulders, a truck seemed abandoned. “Why is that truck sitting in the middle of the field?” asked Aref.

“A hopeful uncle got lost searching for precious gems.”

“Where is he now?”

“At the bank.”

A white school bus passed them going the other way. Three large white vans followed the bus. “Looks like a field trip,” Sidi said. There wasn't too much traffic headed toward the mountains, though.

“What's that smoke over there?” asked Aref. Large plumes floated over a distant slope.

“It's not smoke. It's dust. I heard they're building a new fancy neighborhood way out from the city, with good views, and the houses will all have swimming pools.”

“We will have a swimming pool in Michigan,” said Aref. “Did I tell you that? The other night, I thought I heard a wolf howling. Or maybe it was that fox in our neighborhood—Ummi Salwa told my mom she saw it sitting in the moonlight on her porch.”

Sidi said, “Hmmm, did she open the door? I heard there have been more wolves spotted in the northern wilderness lately . . . but if it's in the city, I think it is a fox. Do foxes lick themselves the way cats do? I don't know that, do you? Do you think of a fox as being more like a cat or a dog?”

“A cat. But a wild cat.”

“I think it's in between. I think it's just itself, not like either of them.”

The jeep was hardly a smooth ride, but Aref loved it. He pretended he was riding a horse. Sulima took horseback riding lessons at the Muscat Equestrian School and Aref had gone with her parents once, to observe a special display of proud Arabian horses (wearing flower necklaces and headdresses) doing tricks and jumps. Sulima loved it, but Aref's parents had never wanted him to ride a horse. They were afraid he'd hurt himself.

Aref gripped the door handle and fiddled with the radio with his other hand. Voices floated in from outer space. He liked the crackling, the scraps of messages and music that didn't really connect. Arabic and English and Farsi mixed together when you flipped quickly from one station to another.

They heard a faraway voice mentioning “A NEW MUSEUM!!!” and Aref said, “Where do you think this is coming from?”

“Abu Dhabi—for sure,” Sidi said.

Aref twiddled the dial, letting more voices crackle out.

“Basra! Bahrain! Doha!” said Sidi.

Monsieur rumbled past long lines of palm trees and wadis. They passed an ancient sand-colored fort with holes in the walls. In the distance loomed an old blue-tiled mosque with a minaret. They sang a bird song in Arabic, with a chorus of “Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!” and Aref clapped his hands. Sidi snapped the fingers of one hand. They waved at people driving in the other direction and those people waved back.

And sure enough, just as Aref had known they would, they took detours. They turned down a tiny road near a donkey stall and stopped at a field so Sidi could collect some stones that were orange, speckled and strange.

“I think these fell from another planet,” he said. “They were meteorites that hit the earth. They came blasting down when I was a boy and split into pieces. I have always meant to stop. And look! So many. Still here.”

Sidi dropped one into Aref's hand and the other stones into a canvas bag in the back of his jeep. Aref stared at his chunk of meteorite, which seemed very fresh despite being so old, and whispered, “Hello, outer space. Hello, faraway galaxies.”

When they pulled in at Mohammed's shop, which seemed to Aref to sit too far off the road to have any customers ever, there was bad news for Sidi—another man named Sami was sitting behind the dusty counter. He said Mohammed caught a ride into Muscat to check on his foot.

“
Harram
, what's wrong with his foot?” Sidi asked.

“If he knew, he would fix it!” said Sami, and the two men laughed together.

“Well, tell him my two feet stopped to wish his foot well,” said Sidi, “and Aref's feet did too, and we will come back another time, in three years maybe.”

“I will tell him,” said Sami. “I am sure his foot will be grateful. Would you like some falafel? I just made a fresh batch.”

Sidi bought two steaming hot falafel sandwiches, which they ate outside by a chipped green plant pot shaped like a frog.

Then they zoomed down the golden-brown highway like two meteorites speeding through the heavens. It was incredible how much energy a falafel sandwich could give you. Sidi put on his sunglasses and sang a song in Arabic about a beautiful day and sunshine bathing the ground. Aref noticed the jeep rising to a higher altitude, its nose tipping up, up.

Before they got well into the mountains, Sidi pulled over to check out a watermelon stand. Ripe chunks of deep red watermelon were displayed on a table with a plastic cover over them, like a transparent tent, keeping off flies. The watermelon man seemed to be sleeping in his plastic chair. He jumped up and offered them samples, which were sweet and ripe and juicy. Sidi bought a watermelon and placed it on Monsieur's little backseat.

“Seen anything interesting lately?” Sidi asked.

The watermelon man told him some giant white cranes had been gathering behind the village at a pond, at sundown. The babies had already hatched, but the nests were still there.

“You think there might be any around the pond right now?” Sidi asked.

The man shrugged. “Don't know. You could go and look.” He pointed behind him to a small road Aref hadn't even noticed. Aref and Sidi took a little hike that way.

Down the road lay a village of a few scattered houses, brown as putty or mud, and behind those houses was a shining pond as round as a coin. Some people stepped out of their houses to wave at them.

At the pond, Sidi spotted a few large nests of woven reeds and sticks tucked by the banks. Sidi motioned Aref to come over and said, “Look! Maybe they'll use them again for their next eggs.” But not a crane was in sight. Sidi glanced around the bright sky. “Bet they're off having lunch like we did. Or maybe they've gone to another country too. Did you know that sometimes the father cranes sit on the nests just like the moms? They share the job. Have you ever heard a crane making wild trumpet sounds at dusk?”

“No.”

“Well, we'll put that on our agenda. To come back here someday and hide in those tall reeds over there and wait for them. Good idea?”

“Very good.”

Almost Lost

T
o get to the Night of a Thousand Stars camp, they had to drive through more brown mountains, green valleys and curvy passes, then off the paved road into a huge desert. There were still mountains all around. Sidi paused for a moment, looking out carefully, to make sure this was the place to turn. Then he drove straight onto the uneven golden sand. It felt strange driving without a road.

“This looks like the moon,” Sidi said, as he steered with mighty effort, turning the wheel hand over hand. Monsieur careened forward.

“How do you know that?” asked Aref.

“It's how I dream of the moon,” said Sidi. “No signs. No roads. Just a huge blankness.”

Aref stared at him. “I look at the moon, but never think about
being there
on its surface. Do you really dream of that?”

“Of course,” said Sidi. “I am secretly an astronaut. Except—oh right, I don't like to travel. Never mind.”

The jeep seemed to be slipping and sliding in the sand.

Sidi turned the wheel hard to the left. He held it tightly.

“Are we okay?” Aref asked.

“I remember this strange part of the trip from the other time we came here,” Sidi said. “It goes on for a few miles.”

“It seems really long,” said Aref. He was gripping his door handle, jostling side to side.

Monsieur stirred up a big sandy dust cloud—some of the dust came in through the windows, which made Sidi cough. He stopped driving till he finished coughing. “We'd better close these windows all the way. Sorry, I know it feels as hot as a stove with them closed.”

Sidi looked to the right and the left. Then he stared at his compass with the big black and white face attached to the dashboard.

Aref couldn't see any camp anywhere. “Are we okay?” he repeated. “Where are we? What direction do we want?”

“Southwest. We might be lost.”

The sand stretched out like a giant sea—rumpled and brown and deep and entirely empty of trees or other vehicles or people. A ring of mountains still surrounded them. “It's huge,” Aref whispered.

“And it's not dead, either,” said Sidi. “Some people act as if a desert is dead, but it's very alive and constantly shifting and changing.”

A string of camels, some big ones and some smaller, like teen camels, gracefully crossed along the top of a dune way up ahead of them on the horizon. They walked in a perfect line, as if they had very good manners. But Aref knew camels sometimes got irritated if people made them carry things and walk for a long time. All of a sudden, they might go berserk and start spitting. The camel that had licked his head out here three years ago was very sweet, though.

Aref wished they could talk to the man who was riding on the first camel, and ask him for directions, but the caravan was too far away. Another man who looked like a shepherd in a flapping cloak walked behind the line of camels.

“I wonder if they take turns riding,” said Sidi. “Maybe not. I wish I could talk to them, find out where they're going or coming from . . . I wonder if they're Bedouins. See that fat saddle-bag under the first one? They're carrying their pans and food and water in there. Their blankets. It's their suitcase, all wrapped up. Everything they need, so they can camp at night. He's sitting on his traveling suitcase.”

“Should we hike over and talk to them?” asked Aref.

But Sidi said it was getting too late. He didn't want to be lost in the desert. The sky turned orange and puffed. The camels shrank into little moving spots.

Finally, when Aref was really starting to feel a little worried, the Night of a Thousand Stars camp appeared in the distance, with its loops of glittering white lights strung from posts and a few thin, deserty trees scattered around as if outlining an oasis. “There it is!” Aref cried, very happy the long drive was almost over.

Sidi parked Monsieur beneath a crooked desert tree. He took a deep breath and said, “Yes! I was getting worried. Did you know that? Could you tell? I tried to hide it. I thought we might have to sleep in the jeep. And that is not good sleep. Jeep sleep.”