Dune Time (2 page)

Tariq was struggling not to sleep through prayer times. He had built himself a nest of cushions, power cords, and water bottles in the hammock outside the door, and rarely stirred from it. He would swing in the hammock, obsessively checking his phone's Wi-Fi like a fisherman angling for a catch that never came. The cloud was as remote and elusive in the desert as its namesakes above..

Some days it was so silent that he could hear the tiny shutter-click of the camera every three hours. Other times, the horizon hummed like a field of locusts. It was just vibrations from wind rolling sand grains down the slopes, Google told him, but it was unnerving, and he kept his earphones in at those times.

Today there was something wrong with the music on Tariq's phone. The beats of all his songs had sped up, the singers sounded like chipmunks. He experimented with settings and playback for five minutes until he gave up and threw the phone into the sand with a curse.

The drone of the wind bored into his head. Hasan seemed unfazed by the sound. He sat in a sagging deck chair beside Tariq, peacefully contemplating the dunes.

“Hasan, let's sing. Remember when we did our own version of ‘Buffalo Soldier'?
Old camel herdman! Sand in his turban!
”

He sang the verse out into the sky, then waited for Hasan to chime in on the chorus.

“I don't remember,” said Hasan, after a pause. “I don't listen to music much anymore. Sorry.”

Tariq rolled his eyes. He picked up one of the
National Geographic
magazines, flipped through it, flung it back down.

“You act like an animal in a cage,” Hasan commented, without turning his head. “What happened to your love of freedom? This is as free as you have ever been. Rich Westerners pay thousands of dollars to come to the desert.”

“It's a desert of shit.”

Hasan glanced at him pityingly. “In the old days, caravans used to take fifty-two days to cross the Sahara. Without phones. Out there, it's just you and God. The Tuareg say that the journey puts you in a trance, that you can wake up in the evening and not remember anything from the day. They call it Dune Time.”

“This whole country's in a trance! I should be helping my friends, not hiding down here.”

“You should be as far away from those friends as possible. They're not looking to make things better, they just want to be martyrs. How does throwing rocks at the police help your cause?”

“The police broke Ali's fingers!”

“The police are people. Some good, some bad. They need to earn bread for their family. When was the last time you put family first?”

“Everyone putting their own family first is the whole reason the country is messed up.”

Like a reclining imam, Hasan flung his arms out in mock admonishment, “Be maintainers of justice, bearers of witness for God, though it may be against your own selves, your parents, or your relatives.”

“There you go, then,” said Tariq. “It's clear.”

“So clear, so clear.” Hasan repeated, drumming his fingers on his knees. Then, abruptly—“Did you know that Dad had a visit from the police last month? They threatened to close his business down if he didn't pull you into line.”

The wind hissed between them for long moments. At last Tariq said, “Why didn't he tell me that?”

“I'm telling you now.”

Tariq turned away, onto his side. “Well, I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment to you all,” he said bitterly.

Hasan sighed. “You're not a disappointment, Tariq. Why do you think Dad didn't say anything? We're all proud of you. You just need to gain some perspective.”

Tariq held his silence.

“Things will get better,” Hasan went on. “We just need to show the world we're responsible, that we can do the same jobs as Westerners and the Chinese. The government will adapt to keep the investment flowing. Trust in God.”

“And just hope that happens before we die of old age?”

“Inshallah,” said Hasan.

His family's favorite way to shut down a difficult conversation. Tariq gave his hammock a few passive-aggressive swings and watched a ball of dead grass blow up against the dune and roll back again.

The sun glinted on the casing of his phone, taunting him. He retrieved it and blew the sand from its screen. This time it showed the elusive one-bar signal.

Hasan forgotten, Tariq started circling the house, waving his arms in the air. The bar came and went. Desperate, he put his foot up on the window ledge and chased the signal onto the blistering concrete of the roof. And there, wedged beneath the solar panel for shade, he could finally reach the life-giving waters of the information sea.

Tariq felt the tension ease from his shoulders as his browser loaded. While the signal lasted, he opened as many tabs as he could. He checked Al-Jazeera and the BBC. There had been more unrest since he'd gone into exile, and the government had backed down on its proposed curfew law. His friends' Twitter feeds were exultant. He should be there.

A pop-up blinked at him. Freedom21 had come online. Ali. Tariq eagerly called him and leaned in toward the screen.

Ali's image appeared, pixelated and bleached of its normal color. He squinted at his screen uncertainly for a moment, then relaxed into a grin.

“Hey, the Bedouin is back! How's the desert?”

There was a bad lag in the visual, giving a creepy de-synchronization effect. When Ali's voice did come through it sounded hollow and far away, like he was at the bottom of a well.

“It's as exciting as watching my fingernails grow. What's happening there?”

Ali spread his hands—
so much.
“We need you, man! The walls are crumbling, but there're rumors that the army is going to come back in. Fucking pigs. We need men on the street!”

According to Ali, the walls had been crumbling for three years now. Tariq could see a mound of comic books piled behind him on his bed. “I can't, I've got to stay low,” he said.

“Because of that warrant? Don't worry about it; we'll hide you in the medina. And remember, ‘Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.'”

“It's not that, brother.”

“Then what?”

“The police threatened my parents. If I got in trouble again.”

Ali shrugged. “Sorry, man. But it just goes to show that we have to keep going, you know? This is
important,
Tariq
.
”

“So's my family!”

The pixelated Ali looked taken aback. Tariq paused, embarrassed at the way his voice had boomed across the emptiness. He glanced down, but Hasan sat with his hands behind his head and showed no signs of having heard.

“Shit, man, of course they are. Sorry.”

“I'm sorry too. Can you tell me more about what's happening?”

He saw Ali rub his chin doubtfully and glance at something offscreen. “I don't know, man, it's been crazy. Things are moving so fast. Look, I have to go; we've got a strategy meeting soon. I'll let everyone know you're doing good, eh? Salaam, brother.”

“Salaam,” murmured Tariq. Ali switched off the connection and his image withdrew five hundred miles to the north.

Tariq sat back glumly and let the heat soak through his shirt. From up here he could see long fingers of sand reaching out from the dunes toward the distant road. Someone had erected little palm leaf fences to slow the desert's advance, but they were already half-buried. There were a few tooth-like clouds in the sky now, drifting aimlessly out into the erg.

With a pang of conscience, Tariq tapped out a short email to his family:
Doing well, getting on with Hasan,
etc. Then he halfheartedly browsed for another hour until the Internet stuttered out, and he became aware of just how dehydrated he was becoming. He rolled to the edge of the roof and lowered his head below the awning.

Hasan was kneeling at his prayer mat again, bowing to the western dunes. Tariq hopped down beside him.

“Miss me?”

There was no response for a moment, then Hasan turned his head slowly and looked up at him, squinting against the glare.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I've just been on the roof for two hours,” Tariq said. “Where did you think I'd been?”

“I didn't notice.”

“Sure,” said Tariq. “You know, Mecca is that way,” he added, pointing east. Hasan blinked up at the sky, then shifted his prayer mat around.

“You know, if I have to be here, I can at least help maintain the camera.” Tariq said. “You're crap at the tech stuff anyway.”

Hasan nodded vaguely, not really listening.

“You're sandcracked,” Tariq told him, and retreated to the hammock to await the coming of another night.

*   *   *

The weeks stretched out interminably as the days bled into each other. Tariq learned to distinguish the hiss of a sand eddy from the scrape of grains rustling through the thorns of the acacia trees. He took to dozing in the afternoon heat and staying up into the cool night, illuminated by the blue glow of the laptop as he clicked back and forth through the photos of the dunes.

There were enough photos that Tariq could run about ten seconds of film now; the pockmarked sand hills undulating across the screen like a caravan of ghosts. In the foreground the desert surface bulged and rippled like muscle flexing beneath skin. It gave him chills.

The photos were designed to be grouped in their respective time blocks for morning, noon, or afternoon footage, but he preferred to run them all together so that the alternating lines of shadow flickered back and forth like strobe lighting. He looped them to songs, obsessively updating the makeshift music videos every few days to add in the latest footage.

On nights when the hypnotic film had lulled him into a half-sleep, Tariq often thought he saw Hasan pacing the crest of the dunes in the moonlight. Those moments, detached from the time around them, flowed seamlessly into dreams of home. Dreams of his family, of girls, of the terror and exultation of the square. Or worse. He walked through an endless nighttime desert like the bottom of a vast deep sea; the dunes frozen waves poised to crash over him and drive him down among the creatures swimming the depths below. Above him the stars whined like feedback from a broken speaker.

Fatima …

Tariq woke with a start into choking heat, his skin prickly and goose-pimpled, as if his body didn't know if it was cold or hot. A tinny rendition of a dated pop hit was sounding out across the sand; Hasan's ringtone. His brother was prostrate in the heat a few meters away, head bowed toward the dunes.

“Hasan. Your phone.”

Hasan remained deep in prayer.
Fatima … Fatima … Je me souviens de vous,
moaned the stupid ringtone.

Tariq heaved himself out of his nest and ran across the sand, nudging Hasan in the backside. “Hasan!”

No reply. Tariq could hear him whispering something to the ground. The phone began its kitschy little loop again, and Tariq fished it out of his brother's sun-bleached robe. The caller ID read
Michael BBC.
Shit. He answered.

“Hello, Hasan?” came a man's voice speaking English. Young, confident, impatient.

“No, this is Tariq … I'm his brother. I am assisting on the project.”

There was a doubtful silence from Michael BBC. Tariq clamped a hand over his free ear to block the whistling of the wind and tried to think of what he could say next to prove his professionalism. “I do the IT work,” he hazarded.

“Is Hasan there?”

Tariq covered the mouthpiece and crouched by his brother. “Hasan!” he hissed, giving him a savage poke in the ribs. Hasan straightened slowly and gave him a blank, sleepwalker's stare. There was sand encrusted on his cheek.

Tariq straightened again and said, “Hasan is on-site, examining the equipment. We're getting some lovely shots here. Panoramic views.”

“Panoramic?”

“Very panoramic,” Tariq emphasized, walking back to the house. “We don't have much Internet out here, but I'd be happy to bring them into town and email you the pictures. Or to Mr. Attenborough—is he there with you?”

The voice was amused. “No, Mr. Attenborough is in London. Yeah, if you could get Hasan to send some footage my way, that would be great. No other problems at your end? You don't need more crew?”

Tariq glanced back at Hasan, who was whispering something to the horizon. “Uh, no. Thank you. Things are tip-top.Tip. Top.”

“All right, great. Tell Hasan that I'm not going to be able to swing by as planned, but we'll try to schedule something for next month. Cheers, mate.”

“Cheers,” said Tariq rotely. The phone went dead, and he wiped the sweat from his forehead. After his panic subsided he felt a surge of fury at his brother. He grabbed a water bottle and strode back outside. Hasan was sitting cross-legged on the mat, eyes unfocused.

“What's wrong with you, donkey?” demanded Tariq, handing his brother the water. “You leave me to do the business? You want them to think we're amateurs? That you've brought your family down to squat here?”

Hasan rubbed his faced and took a slow gulp. “I was praying, Tariq. Something you should do a bit more of.”

“Praying?” Tariq glanced at his phone. “It's 3 p.m.!”

“There are some things more important than money,” Hasan said dully, staring out at the horizon. “Can't you feel God's presence here?”

“Weren't you the one who told me we needed this job? Hasan? Hasan!”

Hasan didn't answer.

“I don't think you should sleep out here anymore,” Tariq said. He looked at the sun. It balanced on the distant line of dunes, poised to roll away into night. “I don't think either of us should.”

After a lengthy pause, Hasan said slowly, “Thank you, Tariq. I'll come back inside soon.”