Lawrence’s Train
Arthur S. Firkins (Saudi Arabia 2014)
He landed at Dammam International Airport and faced a line of guest workers from all over Asia, a line as long as the Nile River , with no immigration officers to be seen. “Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald”, a man in a white thobe was making his way along the line quietly whispering his name as he went, then not so quietly came, “FITGERALD !!!”. “I am Fitzgerald” — “ow, very good, very good, welcome to Saudi Arabia, you look like that guy, that really fat guy, in London, you know, the one who owns Harrods, what’s his name, you know…um… um… Dodi right?”. He was a bit shocked and replied — — “really! but Dodi is Egyptian, I’m Australian, not British” — -ow, yes, yes of course, British, yes — you British”.
He didn’t seem to listen, in fact no one listens in Saudi Arabia, they just keep talking — “yes, yes, you British, like that Dodi”. He kept it up until finally he couldn’t take it and he answered “ Dodi is older than me and a quite a bit fatter too and he’s got no hair” …. “Yes, yes, you are just like him — follow, follow me, and bring your bags”.
He followed him through the immigration gate to the lift and up to the second floor. “Have you been here before?”, “no” he said — “but I have lived in Alice Springs, that is in a desert, do you know it? — Australia ? — in the middle of Australia”. The Saudi man thought for a moment , just for a second he stopped talking, and replied— “No not really, what is that like?. “ Well it seems a bit like this place but I think even hotter”. “Good, well you will like this, it’s in a desert, and it’s hot, very , very hot” — “do you have camel — urr in that place, Alice? — “Well yes actually there are many”. — “good we have many camels here and you can eat the meat, you should try, very good, very good”.
Damman is in the Eastern Province, on the coast of the Arabian Gulf and the city looked as though the desert was raised in a violent earth tremor after which the hand of God had formed the facades of supermarkets, malls, houses, and short office towers, the buildings, all seemed to be sculptured from sand, unevenly scattered like sandcastles on a beach and the wind had sprayed them a tan color.
The surrounds were flat and Half Moon Bay, true to its name, wraps an arm around its shoulders while the sea, a light aqua color, laps at the shore of what they call the Cornish, a wide strip of sand that runs the perimeter of the bay.
As he was driven in the car along the highway, he could see the bustle of activity on this Cornish, people riding horses, old men leading camels and young men on four-wheel motor bikes, Fords driving along with Arab men in full thobes with ghutras on their heads, held down with a black shemagh , families picnicking on all manner of grassy knolls, sitting under trees to catch a small patch of relief from the heat. Little huts were positioned equally distant along the sand dunes, red, green, blue, all selling food, with camels parked beside ready to be rented and prayer mats to put on the sand when the call to prayer started, covered woman with hoards of young children scurrying after them, kids of all ages digging in the sand, building sand castles.
This place runs on oil, the vast expanses of sand are subdivided into compounds. Dammam was where the last remains of the British Empire sucked the oil, and the Americans came to clean up the rest, to the last drop. ARAMCO, the Saudi American Oil Company runs this town. The driver was wearing a full thobe, a copy of the Koran on the dash, a beard, and perfect English. “Your wife, will she join you” — — “yes maybe later I hope she will, she is from Africa, from Guinea, do you know Guinea?
The driver was a Touareg, a tribe that had brought Islam to Guinea . The Touareg were originally nomads herding goats all over the place and from nowhere in particular. The driver had come to Saudi almost twenty years ago, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj , had met his wife a Saudi woman, a forbidden love, but a love nonetheless and stayed. Everything is secret, everything is buried in Saudi Arabia, everything is hidden from view, behind closed doors, behind the veil. All is under the surface in Saudi Arabia, behind closed doors or behind high fences and it is hard to know what is actually going on.
All he knew of Saudi Arabia were from the enigmatic scenes out of the epic movie Lawrence of Arabia, which he watched as a kid , well actually the parts where Peter O’Toole was charging full ahead on a camel, sword drawn, in his thobe yelling “no prisoners, no prisoners” with the Bedouins following behind swords drawn in one hand, riffle in the other, camel reins in their teeth shooting, yelling, shouting, they seemed to be much better shots, the Turks all fell down dead.
He really felt sorry for the Turks, they had better guns, nicer uniforms but they didn’t seem to shoot straight nor did they see it coming. They never managed to shoot Peter O Toole, or his mangy camel, a pity really, and O’Toole always managed to get twenty of them with one bullet. Lawrence’s reputation was built in these attacks during WW I all detailed in his book the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and O’Toole was the perfect man to play the part, slick, posh and English, just like Lawrence.
He remembered the train scenes, Peter O’Toole was always attacking trains, what on earth did he have against trains ? Lawrence and his rabble of Bedouin sabotaged the Hejaz railway and Lawrence’s train is buried somewhere near the Jordanian border, a rusting locomotive lying on its side, ninety years on, buried by the sand and periodically unburied by the wind , with it the half destroyed carriages, the wood now all rotting with the skeleton of steel beaming in the sun.
The Hejaz use to ran 1,300 Km from Damascus to Medina, then on to Mecca, built by the Ottomans it carried Pilgrims to the Hajj and then weapons and cannon to put down the Arab revolt. The tracks are all still there buried in the sand, with small cottages with half exposed platforms and railway signs. The sand keeps the track in top condition, stripping back the rust, but the trains don’t run there anymore, well not after Lawrence put an end to that, blew them all up, bloody Peter O’Toole, the bastard.
How romantic it would have been to ride the train to Damascus , just like Lawrence had done at the end of the film when he installed Faisal as the new king, but now the whole railway lay there buried, like the Turkish troops who had fought there, like the dead kings of Saudi Arabia, thrown in the dessert in unmarked graves, buried, just like Lawrence’s train, forgotten, with just the occasional Bedouin, passing by and disturbed only by children digging for old bits of the train, anything which might be sold for scrap.
After awhile the driver turned and said “so when is your wife going to joi you, I can also pick her up, let me know her flight” ? “Next month she should arrive, then we might go and explore, you know, maybe we can find that train — the one in the Lawrence of Arabia film”. “No train in Arabia, no train, used to be one, but it’s all buried now, lying in the desert.” — Just like the truth about this country, he thought, all covered in sand and going nowhere.
